NTU and NIE

Yesterday me and Azlina went to NTU to purchase a laptop. NTU had this laptop fare where sales people from various brands like IBM, Fujitsu, Toshiba, etc.. Hehe first thing which caught my eye when I entered the bazaar is the Apple Macintosh's booth. The Mac Book Pro 15"... yummy ... heheh... Too bad that they don't have the 17" model on display.

Anyway Azlina purchased an Acer Travelmate 3010... for portability reasons. Never mind that the optical drive is an external device... It's very light (as compared with my old iBook or my office HP laptop) ... Love the wide-screen-display of most modern laptops nowadays. But the waiting time for the purchase to complete, urgh.... extremely horrendous!!!

We went there in the morning. Had to get a queue slot to collect it. No available queue in the morning so had to come back in the afternoon at 3:30... I went back home (yes... to Pasir Ris!) and came back again at 4pm to join the queue. Thought that since the queue was short, but I was deceived... It took me one hour in the queue for me to reached my turn!!! There were like 3 people manning at the counter but what were they doing??? Not efficient I would say. But hey, I had my Sony DVD Walkman to occupy my time on the queue.. heheh. Watched the second disc of Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam 2 at that time...

Azlina gave me a short tour of NTU and NIE in the afternoon. Noticed that in NTU there's not many power points for laptop usage (unlike NUS where students made use of their laptops for online LAN games among their peers... hehe). And hey, there's a bridge linking NTU to NIE (similar to the Engine bridge at NUS .. *wink wink*) . It's been a long time since I stepped into a university campus ... feels nice that I'm out of the uni system now... yay!!

Time filler for bus and train rides

Thanks to Starhub, I can now watch DVDs/VCDs and Divx movie files on the new Sony DVD Walkman below
Got this from the Starhub reward points plus top up some cash. I've been eyeing on portable DVD players for some time as I would want to watch movies on the go, especially borrowed French DVDs from the Alliance Francaise library. The player above can practically play all region discs (hurray!!) which means you can pop in any DVD and wham out comes the video! I had this fear when I got back home with it as it stated in the manual that it would play only code 3 discs. Here's a features list from Sony's website:

Feature List


7" Widescreen1 LCD is large enough to view movies in theatrical 16:9 while still being portable.

Unique slim one piece design allows you to easily pack and take anywhere you go.

Built-in Lithium-ion Battery gives up to 3 hours2 of battery life on one charge and is un-obtrusive.

Multi-Format Compatibility3 Able to playback multiple formats of both audio and video discs. Supported formats includes both dual and single layer DVD-R/R DL/RW, DVD+R/R DL/RW, Jpeg CD’s, MP3 CD’s, CD-R/RW.

High power speaker/charging cradle has 450mW + 450mW of power which can turn any space into your own personal theater.

Selectable Video In/Out allows you to connect external video sources such as your game system, camera or VCR and use the unit as a Monitor. The video and audio out ports allow you to hook the DVD player up to a full size TV and sound system.

Twin headphone jacks make sharing a movie with family and friends easy by allowing two people to listen to the same audio at the same time and share the enjoyment.

Wireless Remote controls playback and volume functions.

Kick Stand and ergonomic grip add convenience and ease of use while on the go by providing a comfortable and easy way to hold or display the unit while on the go.

Le Héros

Here's something which I got from a French AvantGo mobile webpage. Managed to download some French stuff for my reading pleasure at my PDA. The stuff below is about the myths of a 'hero' ... I'll upload a translation of it soon.

Le Héros

Donnez-moi un héros, j'en ferai un mythe.
II portera une armure brillante, ou peut-être pas,
un héros ne craint pas les coups.
II sera empêtré dans une sombre histoire,
avec des morts évidemment cachés dans les placards.
II s'en sortira sûrement, ou peut-être pas,
on peut mourir en héros si l'opportunité se presente.
II aura un cheval, pas le choix.
II aura à sa disposition un millier de situations convenablement construites afin qu'il puisse y briller.
II aura mille occasions de se conduire en héros.
II sauvera quelque chose, une femme, le monde, voire sa seule peau,
mais un héros se doit de sauver - ne serait-ce que les apparences.
II prononcera de grandes phrases dramatiques,
les yeux mi-clos et le mégot rouge vif.
II aura des signes particuliers, comme une cicatrice et l'héroïsme.
II verra souvent le trépas de tres prés mais pas trop.
II aura un nom, que je lui aurai choisi.

Donnez-moi un héros, il sera remarquable.
Des héros comme lui, il n'y en aura pas deux au monde.
II fera l'Histoire des lors que je ferai la sienne.
Et l'on dira de lui : "Ce type-là, nom d'une pipe, c'est un héros".
Sans doute, même, je serai fier de lui.