Zen of Tofu

Last night I was just flipping through the channels on the tube and was pleasantly surprised to see Gordon Ramsay’s latest TV show airing — Kitchen Nightmares. It was a mediocre episode with enough drama and cursing to make it a Gordon Ramsay show, but it still had a bit of the feel of the UK Kitchen Nightmares series. It lacked some of the structure due to the drama, but I think things will return to a more traditional feel once the season continues.

So far I’ve stayed away from the new seasons of the popular TV shows like Lost or Prison Break, and it seems like I’ll mostly just be looking forward to Kitchen Nightmares. If I start watching all these shows, my grades will definitely suffer. These shows just cover too much of my free time (AKA prime time), and all that free time I should be using towards reading, coding, and calculating. When will the math applications end?! Computer science isn’t the same without the math so I better get used to it!

written by tofu

I know I haven’t written a post for some time now, but that can’t be helped. I’ve been busy being a busybody.

Ever since school started this week, I have been bombarded with 9-5 classes. Presentations, readings, discussions were handed out abundantly by professors. The work load for professional faculties sure is different from undergrad. Three days in and I realize I can no longer find time to participate in some of my most treasured extra-curriculars. Gone are the times of choir, band, dance and art shows. Slim are the chances of going to the gym…

If only there are more hours in a day! A study once concluded that if people were to do everything deemed “necessary” in a day (brush, floss, communicate, exercise, sleep and eat properly…), we would need about 42 hours per day. Maybe it’s because of this lack of time that most of us have become multi-taskers. As an example, I am eating, chatting, writing and listening to music at the moment. Being so accustomed to splitting my focus, I find it real difficult to bid goodbye to hobbies and focus solely on academic tasks. But studies do show multi-tasking as a factor of diminished excellence in all tasks attempted. Doing three tasks at once would actually take more time than doing each of those tasks separately. Therefore, I am learning to concentrate, complete one task at a time.

“If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what’s the point?” Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life, p. 32-33)

written by tlc

I’m one excited guy! After tons of research, forum browsing, and website browsing I finally decided to take the plunge to buy a digital SLR camera. Despite the prestige of Nikon SLR cameras, I decided to go for a Canon; more specifically the Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D). It’s an 8MP wonder! But of course all those megapixels won’t do me any good if I didn’t have a good lens to accompany the camera body. So along with the camera body, it also came with the “must-have” lens of every photo enthusiast, that is the 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. Not only cheap, but very effective!

I look forward to using the camera a lot, and taking advantage of its capabilities. It’s amazing how much of a difference an SLR makes when compared to a point-n-shoot, or even a full-featured camera. I may also be adding a photo gallery section to the site provided I find the time to set it up in between snapping shots, and keeping up with my studies! I’m thinking of trying templates in Flash but we’ll see just how much time I have.

written by tofu

Today was back to university for me, and like just about every other “first day of school” that I can recall, it rained. At least it didn’t rain for the entire day, but nevertheless I’m not sure if it’s just around here, but every “first day of school” it has rained or at least drizzled (sprinkled, spit, tinkled, whatever you refer to as “scattered showers”). I’ve always wondered why it rains on first days of school quite often. I’ve often theorized that it was because so many people were in bad moods or were nervous that nature itself felt their concern and could only shed tears of rain. I wonder if the whole world was genuinely happy for a brief moment, what would happen? Would the skies clear, the sun shine bright, and food will fall from the sky to cure world hunger? Or would the world just sit in stillness while everyone enjoys the moment? It’s amazing what we can do as a unified population in co-operation. Of course things could never be perfect, or else what will we have to compare to, to rejoice over?

written by tofu