projectfalcon

Yo, its been a long time since my last entry so ill keep it up to speed.  About three months ago I finished another semester of college and I’m worried sick about my grades.  It should have gone out a long time ago but I’m terrified to see my results.  I have disappointed my father, my self and my family way to many times, i just feel like a total failure. 

To iron the worry, I decided to go home for the holidays to visit my parents in Cambodia.  To do this, i had to go home first to Jakarta and get my black passport (diplomatic) with the Cambodian visa.  Before departing to Jakarta, I caught the flu and was sick beyond belief (My damn house mate caught the flu earlier and didn’t bother to quarantine himself and thus getting me infected).  During this time, the Swine flu epidemic has sky rocketed, spreading throughout Australia.  My parents and my sister was worried that I had caught the disease.  Fortunately, I didn’t but it has made me so ill that I couldn’t walk or stand up straight (getting flu and flying for 8 hours is a bad combination).  So for the rest of the week I had to stay home and rest.

So our preparation to fly to Cambodia is set, and in addition to that, we get to visit Singapore for a couple of days.  Everything went smoothly, we got the tickets and our bags are packed.  One thing left is the passport, the most important travel document.  Now, I don’t know why but I got a call from the person handling it.  He said that it’s going to be ready at the 22^nd.  At first I thought “ok” because I assumed our flight was at the 23^rd.  The day he called was at the 21^st and our flight is supposed to depart at the 22^nd!.  I should have said it must be done today and tomorrow is our flight.  When sister found out, she couldn’t stop crying and my father called me on the phone and told me I was an Idiot.  Pretty much sums it up, I come home, mess everything up, end of story.  I remembered I couldn’t sleep that night, waiting for a miracle to happen.  At that night I called the person handling it and told him about the error.  He told me that he would try to handle it.

“Hopefully, at 8 am ill get it done and I will wait for you near the airport to give you the documents.” Said the guy handling our passports.

Then my father called me again and said that the Cambodian embassy won’t open until 9 am.  It was a devastating mistake I had done.  For one thing the tickets are not refundable and my father worked his ass off to get that business class pass for my sister and grandmother.  So, for the rest of the night I stayed awake and was sweating like crazy and at the same time hallucinating and getting quick dreams about that guy calling and saying “I got it done”. 

I finally woke up at 6am, getting only a few hours of sleep.  My sister pretty much hated me right now and my grandmother sitting and knitting some fabrics.  I was pretty much half asleep, still hoping that we can get our passports.  Everyone had taken a shower and dressed up for the flight while I just got out of bed.  Suddenly, we got a call from the guy handling our Passports.

“I got it” he said, “I got the passports, just come to Carefour near Poin Square and we can meet up there”

My sister gave a big sigh of relieve and I did too.  It was almost a miracle that we got our passports on time.  As soon as that call ended, I rushed upstairs, took a shower and got ready.  Cambodia Here We Come!!!!

Now that was not all the worry of my problems.  One more thing that we did not have is my grandmother’s ticket.  I already confirmed this with the agent the other day and there is no way we got a wrong date.  As instructed, my father told me to call them one more time and tell them to wait in the airport so that we can pick them up.  Fortunately, everything went fine.  We got our passports and we picked up our grandmother’s ticket (fyi, it was me, my grandmother and my sister that are flying).  Two business class tickets and one economy class one.  The economy class is for my grandmother but my father told me to sit in economy class and let her sit in business.  I thought, “Yeah, I guess it’s reasonable, besides, I deserve to be punished this way for the major screw up that I did.”

So we arrived at Singapore.  Immediately near the gate we met with some familiar faces.  It was my father’s old friend from New York.  I call him Om Desra.  So me, my grandmother and my sister went on to the exit.  Now at this point, I am worried about the infrared scanner set up near the exit.  Remember I had the flu and at that point in time every country around the world is working hard to contain the epidemic.  Those infrared scanners can detect body heat that are above normal temperature, which is one of the major symptom of the H1N1 influenza.  Fortunately, I went passed the machine and went by unharmed.

The 3 days I had in Singapore was quite fantastic.  I have never been there before so its pretty fun exploring the area.  Other than that we just went shopping the whole time.  I was never an avid shopper, but damn they got some nice clothes in Singapore.  For one thing, it was also the great Singapore sale, 15% off for every thing sold there, it was awesome.  I pretty much bought alot of cool shirts there since I lack cool shirts in my wardrobe.  So, the 3 days of Singapore went by, my sister was happy, my grandmother was happy and I was happy. 

Ill tell the rest of the story later, for now ill just stop here.

I consider my self a stay home kind of guy, the person that does not go out alot and spends most of my time at home.  So because of this, it is important for me to get the best accommodation I can get that is comfortable and clean. 

Since I was in High School, my parents left me in New York city to continue my studies and graduate high school there.  I got used to living by my self, taking care of my self and so on.  I used to live in a house in queens back then and it quite nice.  It had a dryer and a washing machine and the whole place is ours.  The place was not rented by me tho, i live with another family and they somewhat act like a guardian for me.  i am just there free loading the whole time getting free accommodation.  It was quite uncomfortable at times when conflict arise.  Nevertheless, it was a really awesome place to stay, the family that I lived with was more than kind to acomedate me in their house and i would like to thank them again for their generosity.

When i finished high school in New York, I moved to Melbourne Australia to do my University Degree. I stayed in a homestay for almost 4 months.  It was awesome as the house that i live in was huge.  They had about 8 rooms, 1 for the house parent and 7 for the students.  We get dinner cooked for us everyday by the house parent and also laundry done.  It was nice staying in a house full with students as we can interract with each other and become friends. 

However, there are some cons.  There are rules that we have to follow, like not going home late, calling home if we are going to miss dinner, introduce outside friends etc.  I do not like staying somewhere where i am restricted by rules.  The house mother was very sensitive, and i do feel sorry for her when she does chores by her self.  At times i do help her out doing the laundry, washing dishes etc, and we did get along... still, having some one doing this stuff for me does not fit me very well. 

Now don't get me wrong, she was very nice to every one in the house and boy does she cook some great healthy foods (baked food most of the time instead of fried).  She told me that I can visit anytime I want and enjoy her cooking.  This type of acomedation is pretty cheap... well for my standards that is.  It costs about 880 Australian Dollar a month BUT we get food, electricity, gas and water bill included, internet is an extra 25 bucks and its not very fast.  Still, great place to live for a student. 

After 5 months or so, i decided to move to flat near my university with 2 friends of mine.  The flat is suitable for 2 people, but we made the living room into a bedroom/ living room hybrid, my room.  The place was damn cheap, 800 dollars per month split to 3 = about 240 per person... so we ended up saving alot of money.  Bills we get to share as well and we water is free.  So in total, about 400 dollars per month including internet, electricity.

The place was great because of its location.  All the facilites are nearby and can be accessed easily (such as grocery store, 24 hour mc donalds).  The kitchen was a little bit dirty but it was alright.  All was good and the money we saved was used to buy a large 42' lcd TV (which i regret buying and ill tell you why) and also cable.  When my house mates want to watch TV, they visit my living room and watch.  I only ask that whenever I was sleeping, I want low volume levels on the TV and my friends co-operate.

So, with all the good things that came with that place, we also had a share of unpleasant experience.  For instance, me and another flat mate went home for the end of semester break.  When we came back, the hot water on our shower isn't working, this was during winter.  It was insane, we called the landlord to fix it but it took em forever to repair it (we held out for almost 3 months i think).  So in the meantime, we cook our own hot water and showered using buckets... unpleasant experience but pretty cool to tell people about it. 

One day, one of my house mates just got him self a girlfriend and spends most of his time with her.  We rarely see him at home, most of the time he sleeps with his girlfriend.  So it was still good for me and my other friend because we get the flat for our selves AND the other guy still pays the rent.  THEN  the unthinkable happens.  The guy that spends most of his time with his girlfriend just said that his girlfriend is going to move in WITH US.  If you can see the size of the flat, you would say "that just too many people".  On top of that, she has her own stuff that almost filled the whole flat, literally almost giving us no space to move around.  This is when i regret buying the TV,  my room gets invaded almost all the time and pretty much i had no privacy.  It went on for almost a year and i try to cope with it. 
It was fine with my other flatmate, who has his own room, but for me, it wasn't. 

Overall, this was the worst place I ever lived due to my room as the living room with the TV.  When we moved out, I told the guy who suggested the TV to just take it with him.  It would have been a nice place to stay if that TV never existed, and my housemates girlfriend that came and moved in with us.

For one thing, i am a university student and so i use my mobile phone most of the time.  Also the fact that the majority of my university friends call and text me on my mobile, forces me to rely on it.  I do have a home line at home, but we subscribe for it so that we can use Adsl to connect the modem to the phone line.  Most of the time we only recieve phone calls from telemarketers so ussualy just pick the phone up when it rings and hang up after 10 seconds or so.. poor telemarketers..

So why do i rely on my mobile? well i already said that most of my friends only call me on my mobile which is my number one reason.  Also, i can use text messaging to communicate to friends.  I also dont need to take out a phone book to call some one, simply dial the person from my contact list inside the phone.

Now, the contact list thing you can also have on your home phone, but then you have to do it manually one by one from like 100 or so people i have saved on my phone, which is a hastle.  Friends also don't know who the heck is calling them since i never used my home line to call some one's mobile. 

But then again, i do use the home line when i want to call internationaly.  I only need to go out and buy a phone card that can cost 10 bucks for i dont know, bout 2 to 3 hours of phone conversation, and i only need to pay 50 cent to the phone company... but that has also diminished lately for me because i use skype (voip rules). 

2 June 2009, 8:05 pm

So, its already the second of june and im procrastinating the hell out of my project.  Its due the 5th this month and it has to be bound and burned into a cd.  So farr, my progress is 6 pages and i have only pasted some simple graphs explaining the trends of the Indonesian exchange rate against the Australian dollar.  The target is a 40 page essay that involves me to generate a model that can forecast next months exchange rate at a high confidence level... gah...

If you are wondering what subject im doing, its MAE305 Financial forecasting.  The subject is pretty awesome as it teaches us on how to forecast interest rates, gdp, and whatever business stats by using some forecasting techniques.  Basically, we take some raw data (eg:  monthly employement stats, quarterly interest rate stats or yearly gdp stats) and turn them into line graphs, scatter plots and other types of graphs to detect trends.  Then we make a model based on those data to generate a formula to calculate next months data. 

Now, you may think that this involves statistics or whatever, and i have to say it does a little.  For one thing you have to understand what standard deviation are, null-hypothesis etc etc to understand the models.  Knowing that i hate stats, it was quite hard for me to catch this subject.  In addition to that, there wasn't alot of people taking the subject which means i have to survive it on my own. 

Thou this subject has a little statistics in it, i kind of like it because it teaches us to understand business data better.  Most of the time i see graphs and well we always see its trends right? like if the line graph goes up or down.  But in this subject, you can guess alot of things and explain what might be the cause of why the line goes up or down (eg: some patterns can show that the country has a new monetary policy, war, unemployment, recession etc, its pretty cool). 

We also use this software called E-views which is an econometric software that helps us genereate graphs from data sets.  Its a pretty neat tool as it can generate models and graphs in an instant. My lecturer told me it can take quite a loong time to genereate one model with hand and its prone from human errors, making it a bad model.

So yeah its really cool, and hard hehehe.... especially this project... wooh i never had to do a project that needs 40 pages....


Today is also the day i opened this account and this is my first article, neato.  At least, i can procrastinate and write something about something rather than play Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead... god the hours i spent on those games.. kind of regret building this new rig and spend countles hours which i shud have use for studiying.