Tomorrow is our continuous assessment 2 deadline (major milestone evaluation) for our EE2001 design project.

They need us to pull together a good amount of documentation about our designs so far. And with the requirement of having revision information, this is feeling strangely familiar to me putting together an ECO package.

Preparing all these documents, getting the latest numeric revisions up to scratch, and then gathering all the different document types together to make sure I don't miss anything. It's almost like I'm gathering all these together for a major release or something.

Plus the documents themselves are reminiscent of what I'd be used to seeing... parts lists, specification documents, schematics, block diagrams, etc. All I'm missing are some mechanical drawings and perhaps some test procedures with their respective reports.

That and a one page sheet listing all the documents affected and who needs to approve them

So I completed my interview set with Rovisys Asia today. The format was four 30-minute interviews, one after the other each with different staff members. I thought that each interviewer would focus on different aspects of interviews (eg, technical, behavioural, classical, etc), but in actual fact, each interviewer conducted a rather run-of-the-mill co-op interview. So it was just like having four interviews in the same day.

Overall, I don't know what to say about how things went. I arrived early, and actually just casually chatted with one of the interviewers for about 15 or 30 minutes prior to my interview. So when I did reach him, it was a pretty short interview, with him just asking me a few questions about my work experience. Not much else, really.

The other interviewers were similar. Tell me about yourself, and then dove into my work experience.

It was fairly typical and I think I should have been able to do very well. But I don't think that I did.

The problem was that, although I was able to talk with all the interviewers quite casually and amiably, I don't think I sold my skill-set well enough. Yes I talked about my work experience here and there, mentioning things that I did here and there. But I didn't feel that I gave solid evidence of my past achievements in the workplace.

So I don't know what they thought of me. It could be that they thought I was a very friendly guy, but then when they go home, they may not have that many notes about my prospective performance.

Hard to say.

Including myself, there were three internship students being interviewed for two internship positions. So, chances should be good. And I think I will feel stupid if I don't get the job, given the fact that I've worked in industry for nearly two years now, and have gone through a good number of job interviews in the past.

But then again I could not get the position for other reasons (namely the fact that I'm not a Singapore PR or citizen, and they may want to give priority to people who will be more likely to stick around full time afterward). I would consider joining on full-time if conditions were right. But I can understand why they might be a bit more hesitant to hire an exchange student rather than a full-time student.

We'll see. My resume may carry me through a lot, but hard to say.

Tomorrow afternoon will be my first ever job interview landed without JobMine. I'm very unsure of what to expect, because I've been told that the interview will last around two hours. Contrast this to most of the UW co-op interviews I've had scheduled for at most 30 minutes.

Yushi brought up the point that it might have a large technical component. So I'm really unsure of how it's going to go in that light. Most of the job interviews I've gone through during my career at UW have been heavily classic profile-based. (Eg, what are your strengths/weaknesses, etc)

The most technical interview I've had was for Texas Instruments (I was asked to analyze a piece of C++ code), but even then, it was only a portion of a 30 minute interview, which then incorporated a large amount of typical classical questions.

Otherwise, I've found that once I hit my third and fourth work terms, my resume typically carried me through interviews almost exclusively on its own. The employer would often look through my resume, and then ask me questions about my experience at the various places I've worked.

But I'm almost thinking now that interviews you get through UW's co-op program might be fairly different from outside interviews because the employer coming into to hire UW co-op students will already know that they are for sure full-time undergraduate students enrolled in a good amount of solid engineering courses.

But right now? The employer doesn't know for sure I am who I say I am. My work history on my resume is not validated by an official transcript anymore (well, it is validated by my UW transcript of course, but it's not something they would necessarily recognize). So, I might expect a higher degree of scrutiny than what I might experience back home.

But this is all just speculation. I guess I can't do anything else but wait and see tomorrow.

Better head off to bed now so I'm not half asleep for the interview

我今天跟雨石一起去打籃球．　我很喜歡打籃球但是你要知道在NUS PGP Residence Hall basketball court，有很多中國人也喜歡打籃球．　中國人比新加坡人很多．　其實我不知道如果在那裡有沒有新加坡人．　有可能只有中國人．　不是我不要跟中國人打籃球．　就是我還沒有自信說國語．　

雨石當然沒有問題因為他會說完美的普通話．　可是我不一樣的．　我知道最近有一點兒進步．　比如，今天開始打球的時候有個人問我：＂你要防誰？＂　我聽懂這句話所以我看一個別的人然後說：＂嗯．．．他＂

那就好了但是還沒有那麼多用．　

打球的時候有個人誤傷了．　是我防守的人．　誰的錯我不知道（有可能是我的錯？）　在加拿大如果有個人誤傷了我說：＂Are you alright?＂或者＂Sorry about that＂

所以我覺得這次也應該說話．　我想也許該說＂不好意思我很抱歉！＂可是我真的沒有自信．．．　所以不開口．　說不出口．　

哎！　該怎麼做啦．．．　我什麼機會說國語都沒用．．．　

四年之後我還不會說有用的華語．　真的很麻煩．　

嗯．．．　回來加拿大的時候我該怎麼做？　也許我應該去Sunshine Express吃飯．　因為我那裡會說國語．　還有Mr. Panino's、Taiwan Garden、China Legend．　都會說國語．　

除了一些人，UWCCF都說廣東話．　

算了．　我該別想那麼多！　

My fourth HY2254 (Popular Culture in Singapore) response paper required me to watch this 1998 Singapore film titled, Forever Fever (That's the Way I Like it). Class viewings of the show are taking place on Monday through Wednesday, but due to the fact that I was supposed to be travelling with my grandparents on those days, I had to find my own time to watch the movie.

Alas this morning, the DVD was shown as on-hold in the library, so I wasn't too sure what to do - with the paper due on Friday, today was the only day I could watch it assuming I was going away on Sunday.

Not wanting to give up all hope, I called up the library to see if there was anything that could be done. The librarian said she'd have to call me back.

Some fifteen minutes later my phone rang and I was informed that I could indeed view the DVD in-library today. She mentioned that she informed the loans desk that I would be coming down to pick up the DVD.

Happy and relieved at this (I was contemplating going to Vivo City to try to find a place to buy the movie), I thanked her and then got dressed and went to eat my breakfast. Two egg prata with curry is always a safe choice.

After that, I headed down to the central library and over to the loans desk to inquire about my DVD. And what do you know, the staff at that desk had just lent it out to someone else who came by thinking that the person who asked for the DVD was me. I'd have to come back in a few hours time to pick it up after they returned it... This time, she took my name down so as to not lend it out to any other person.

Tried to kill time by picking up a birthday card for my grandfather, and then going back home to pick up my laptop's DVD drive, and then trying to look up some additional resources for the response paper.

Finally after what seemed like too long, I got a call informing me that I could pick up the DVD.

Went up to the loans desk, and what do you know there were yet more people (two girls) wanting to take the DVD out to watch it. Of course, the librarian wouldn't give it to them as it was reserved by name this time around. But being as reasonable as I am, I agreed that we all could watch the DVD together.

Walking away from the desk to find a place to watch the movie, one of the girls asked me if I was an exchange student. Yes, I replied. Not really a strange question, and one that I'd come to expect. But what I did not expect was when her friend responded in a bit of surprise asking her friend how she knew that I was an exchange student. Her friend responded that she saw my student number on my matric (student) card. The letters "NT" denoting that I was a non-graduating exchange student.

This surpised me a bit, because before seeing my student number, they were both actually inclined to think I was a local student. It's a given that I do look more local than my Caucasian friends (after all, both my parents grew up as "true-blue" Singaporeans). But typically, my accent should give it away that I was not raised in Singapore. That either means I'm losing my Canadian accent (I'm going to be in big trouble from my mom if I do), or that they weren't really paying attention to my accent.

At any rate, we went to watch the movie. And despite the frequent audio problems we experienced during the film, it was a fairly entertaining movie. Perhaps for it's silliness. And of course, you have your typical Asian stigma of living up to your parents expectations shining through certain aspects of the movie. But I'll leave that discussion for my response paper.

One of the girls commented on how Singaporean the movie was, and asked if I understood any of the Hokkien in the movie. Unfortunately, being as limited as my Hokkien is, I think the only thing I understood correctly was whenever the grandmother commented on how someone wasn't eating. Only because I somehow know that "chiat" (or something sounding like that) is to eat (I've heard this term so many times at my parents' cell group meetings growing up), probably 吃. And then my Mandarin picked up the rest of what probably equated to 他 or 你, and 没.

And then of course there is "ah moh," which I know from childhood as well. And although I knew the meaning, it didn't click in me as to what it meant till later, but I also should have known "ah gua." However, thankfully, I don't know "ah gua" from childhood. Rather, from another Singaporean movie, I Not Stupid... because the "ah moh" pronounced "ba gua" as "ah gua" during his marketing presentation which completely frustrated the client.

Luckily, not much more Hokkien in the show. But then there were apparently some other nuances that I didn't understand. One of them being a scene where the main character has a fight with his parents for always coming home late for dinner, which is supposed to be at 6:30. The phrase 6:30 is thrown around a lot, in particular with respect to the main character's job, dreams, etc.

The girl next to me later explained that in Chinese, there is a play on words for 6:30 that uses the same sounds as the words for a half-full bucket of water. So the implication is that you're never really doing anything properly, etc. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact Chinese phrase she told me (it's not 六点半).

After returning the movie, we talked a bit about school and (internship) work. And of course the discussion of the differences between school in Singapore and Canada came up. She mentioned that she knew some young children who went to Canada to study, and how for math, they would do something like count apples. And for English, they would do creative writing. Ah, so that is a difference. Canada's schooling system is so much more focused on applied learning, I mentioned.

So then did I learn math by counting apples, she asked? Ha, yes, I suppose I did. Afterall, I did grow up in the Canadian schooling system.

But, I continued, my mom also imported a lot of Singaporean math assessment books for me to work on. "So," she responded, "you got the best of both worlds!" And what's more, she continued, "and so that's why you're in engineering!"

Haha? Perhaps?