- 28.02.08 in the marae @ Epsom Campus, Auckland, New Zealand -

Doing the laundry is a pain these days, what’s with all the rain. It’s been a week, and the constant rain is starting to get on my nerves. I have a bundle of clothes I need washing. We don’t have the luxury of having a dryer in this house. Wait, is there dryers on sale in the market for household use? I need to look into that.

I’ve been back in Malaysia for a little over a month. My holiday is coming to an end. Not really, but I’ll be going back to Auckland on February 7. I’m going to be early, I know. I initially thought Mira and I’d go to Wellington for a week or two, but with very little money left in my account, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Trust me to waste all those money I got on pointless things. I know I have only myself to blame.

My English is also getting a little bit rusty. I need to write more before going back or I’ll never hear the end from Sheryl’s energetic mouth. She already reminded us waaaaay back then to not let our guards down just because we’re on holiday. Speaking of Sheryl, I still have two electives to choose. I haven’t decided on anything yet. I took Linguistics in the first semester of 2008, and Computer Science in the second. I’m thinking of taking Japanese, but what about the other elective? I’m at lost. In the end, I guess I’ll just take up Sheryl’s offer of doing Teaching Literature (LANGTCHG paper) or something as an elective. The problem is… I totally hate LANGTCHG papers. The final paper for my last LANGTCHG subject was full of WTFness. I wonder if the lecturers actually knew how poor the questions were. It didn’t help my mood much that our frying pans in the kitchen caught fire two hours before the test.

What should I do about this money problem, I wonder. The allowance won’t be in until early or mid March. I’m not worried about my food money. I’m more worried about the money I’ll need to prepare for the rent. $192 per week WITHOUT electricity and internet. The $200 per week accommodation allowance is barely enough to support us. Why haven’t those people in the Ministry of Education given the allowance a raise already? Even if it’s just by $50, it would already be VERY helpful. Houses and rents are going up, and food prices are climbing up the ladder way to gleefully. The prices aren’t going down, so shouldn’t our allowance go up too? Come on. They can’t expect us to work ourselves to the bone while studying, or to rely on our parents. Not all of us are rich.

I’ve started another separate blog for my gameplay logs. It’s not what I’d call blog. I’ll be updating it way to often to call it a blog, so I’ll settle for a log. I’m calling it PlayLog. I’ll be dumping my PC, Nintendo DS, Wii, Playstation and PSP game logs there. I figured it wouldn’t be appropriate to dump everything on this blog. I tend to ramble long. Oh, and I also need to finish those Wordpress theme projects I’ve started. Can’t be using other people’s forever, I guess.

On an important, site related note: I’ll be taking after the site more carefully after this, and I’ll try to update often. I’ll check my personal mailboxes more often too. I’m sorry if I never replied to hosting application and whatnot before, but I’ll try to after this.

- Lecture Theater, School of Engineering, University of Auckland (21.05.08) -

I was feeling quite sleepy in EDUC 283 tutorial today, but I only have myself to blame for that. I slept at about 3.15am last night, so you could guess how hard it was to get out of bed and walk to class at 10am. Our pedagogy discussion today centered on the Facilitator approach to teaching. Theorists we’re familiar with including Vygotsky, Piaget, Hunter, Maslow and Gardner were brought up. I don’t think I will be much of a facilitator when I graduate, though (or should I say ‘if’ I graduate?). I’m more inclined towards the Executive approach, I think. When discussing the Facilitator approach, we delved into the MAKER profile and discussed the redeeming qualities and features of this approach.

A facilitator teacher engages in what we call the Care Pedagogy, which is why teachers who adopt this approach are high in awareness of the needs of students; they also emphasise on attaining and maintaining good relationships with students. This approach considers features of Humanistic Psychology, Constructivism, Multiple Intelligences and a few other aspects. In short, it’s all about teaching students by guiding them to achieve self-actualisation (the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), providing them care and making students a priority when making decisions.

No, that certainly doesn’t sound like me.

After the tutorial, Mira and I went to UBS to browse for books. I should remind myself more often to not wander around the psychology and the history sections of the bookstore when I have less than $400 in my bank account. It made me slightly distressed, not being able to buy the books that I want. I think I’ll be buying a few books with the coming allowance. Granted, we should have gotten our allowance about a month ago. Some titles that I want to buy are:

1. Truth
2. Artificial Happiness
3. Rousseau’s Dog
4. Social Intelligence

A lot? Yes, I know. I have an unhealthy obsession with non-fiction books. I find them more compelling to read, which explains why my bedtime reading usually involves… a grammar book.

EDUC 223 lecture and tutorial today dealt with the topic of classroom management. It’s basically similar to what I’ve learnt back in IPBA during my 1st year, only that the one I learned last year was more in depth. EDUC 223 only covers the theories and practices, common rules, logics, etc. Last year, my coursemates and I were not only exposed to Classroom Management as a standalone subject, but also to classroom management theorists such as Colorosso (Teaching With Love and Care), Canter and Canter (Assertive Discipline) and Alfie Kohn (Beyond Discipline).

I love Alfie Kohn and his ideas. And his classroom management beliefs, of course.

That aside, I’ve made a list of what I should be doing online after having done with the finals (or soon, if I have time):

1. Move my technology blog to geekdom.info and start tech blogging again.
2. Revamp stylishgeeks.net into a collective or a graphic site with photoshop brushes, etc.
3. Finish my web/blog directory at ireadyou.net
4. Launch booklyhour.com where I’ll be writing mainly about books
5. Revamp junjou.info to make it more user-friendly
6. Make new photoshop brushes, graphic items, Joomla/Wordpress themes and PSDs
7. Launch words.ireadyou.net for original artistic pieces

On another matter, I’m currently really happy that Junjou.info now boasts of minimum 10,000 unique visitors per month Way to go!

It seems that Advertlets is not the only one in failing to pay bills in time. The oh-so-famous FBI does too. I was reading the news over at MSN Live and cracked up at one of the headlines: FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills.

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

Advertlets is just a small fry compared to this. Just proves how twisted this world is. Many crime investigators and authorities worldwide commit crimes behind our backs and play nice in front of us.

Anyways, I’ve been caught up in work and real life this past couple of days. And I’ve been commissioned~ One is an ongoing project of copywriting. It’s a very small project, $1.5 per 200-400 words but I have to do around 5 to 10 per day. For a lazy student like me, $10 - $15 per day is already okay. I get paid on the spot everytime I submit my work. I so love being a part-time freelancer at GetAFreelancer.Com! What I did was the past few days were:

- Sunday: Installed, configured and test-run a Joomla site with Virtuemart
- Monday: Fix scripting on one Arabics football news website
- Tuesday: Write 5 lengthy articles on language and technology
- Wednesday: Made a custom Wordpress template for a maid agency

I guess I can take a break now.

The title itself is self explanatory. I went on a designing frenzy for two days, which resulted in me forgetting to update all of my blogs when I really should. I’m trying to get my online store project up as soon as I can. It’s not much, actually. Just a small store offering print-on-demand and high quality silkscreen-printed t-shirts, custom-design service, mugs, caps and other small stuff. There are many similar store like these, but almost 95% of them are US-based or international-based. I thought it would be more convenient to set up a Malaysian-based store for us Malaysians. I hope to be able to launch the shop before the term starts.

Which reminds me… I have to add extra $2 to my monthly hosting bill for a dedicated IP. Else, I won’t be able to properly install my SSL certificate. The Visa credit/debit card payment gateway via Siteheart is settled and the payment gateway is secure (encrypted, 128 bit). I just thought it would be nicer for the whole store to run in secure https mode. Go me! Work harder!

I made a few t-shirt designs yesterday, and my personal favourite is this:

Wait, I love these too…

Click on those pictures to get a better view of them. I really want to get them printed and wear them around!

I also played around a bit with Stylish Geeks. You can go play around with the ‘Skin Me!‘ module. I added a new theme to the site to those who are fond of cheerful colours.

Okay. I think I better go and work on my store project… And finish uploading Junjou Romantica scans to Junjou.info. Uploaded Volume 5 - 9. I need to upload Volume 1 - 4.