Day 2: Devour

Video editing is a new thing for me.
In my final years of high school, I tried delving into the surface of it.
First, it was just a slideshow+music for a Powerpoint presentation contest. A year later, I did it again but it was just cutting and pasting video clips together.
Back then, I used Windows Movie Maker for the job (read: have not been exposed to a Mac yet).
Somehow, things were simple enough and I managed to get things done.

I thought I could do the same, but I was clearly overwhelmed when I first opened my iMovie app.
I'm not sure if it's because doing editing on a Mac is different or my youthful ability to adapt to new technology is rusting. But I really hope it's more of the former and not the latter.

Not to mention the amount of time it takes to do these edits!
I think I could spend about two to three hours just doing cuts and pastes for a single video entry.
That eats into my daily schedule a bit and I do find myself being incredibly busy because of it.
I wish I could just grab a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue and just do it by-hand.
Somehow, I feel that it would go twice as fast if I did it that way!
Right now, I'm just bracing myself for the other five more days' worth of videos that needs to be done, two of which will be particularly large I reckon.

Figure 1. If you've managed to watch three days' worth of videos already. Or if you're an avid reader of my blog, I'd like to express my gratitude and reward you with this picture of flowers in front of a random house I passed by. Also, I couldn't find any good pictures of what I did on Day 2, so this is basically a filler image! But still, if you have read my blog (whatever the amount), thank you and I hope you've enjoyed it.

Listening to Flashlight - Jessie J

Zwei,

TK

Day 1: Compose

So why did I suddenly decide to up and make a Vlog?
A few weeks ago, when I was in the middle of my finals, I (like everyone else) was desperately looking for a way to procrastinate.
Thankfully, my prayers of ruin were answered when I found Emma's Vlogs.
Emma is a PhD student in London, studying ancient greek tragedy in postdramatic theatre.
She started a month long Vlog, where she recorded her life as a PhD student each day for a month.
In fact, today is the last day of her PhD, which means she's just about to submit her 3-year long thesis.
And since I didn't have anything better to do (except studying), I got completely hooked.
I watched video after video, day by day. Procrastination was one thing, but I was also curious about what a day in the life of a PhD student would be like.
After that, I thought it would, at the very least, be an eye-opening experience. And that's how I ended up with this little project.

Another motivation for this daily Vlog was to make myself update this blog more frequently. But that wasn't the primary reason, I think.
Let's face it. Blogging is dead. People have either stopped altogether, or moved on to micro-blogging with Tumblr and Twitter etc.
I thought it would be nice to try this alternate form of blogging and see how it would turn out.

Figure 1. Our trusty whiteboard at the Music Library. It felt good to jot down all the ideas we had, and using a whiteboard is always a fun treat. As you can see, for our medley, we've planned to use Meteor Shower (Owl City), Fireflies (Owl City), You're Beautiful (James Blunt) and Photograph (Ed Sheeran). We're also using smaller bits of Small Bump (Ed Sheeran) and Bloodstream (Ed Sheeran). Hopefully, the final product would be around 10 minutes long.

Listening to Because I Love You - The Master's Apprentice

Eins,

TK

Day 0: Introductions

Hey everyone!
This week (well, last week, technically) I decided to try something different. I'm making a Vlog series!
Seven Vlog entries, each detailing what I did that day.
And this post marks the first one: Day 0, which is like a brief introduction to myself.

All seven (or eight, if you count Day 0) videos will be uploaded on Youtube but are only accessible through my blog (because privacy). They'll be under a special tag known as "OVA 2: Sieben Chronicles" (sieben is German for seven, because SPOILERS: it's seven videos).

I will talk a little bit about my Vlogging experience in each post. So I hope you look forward to those too!

Figure 1. For those of you who've never tried it, you have no idea how easy it is to 'accidentally' press the 'Take a picture' button instead of the 'Take a video' button. As a result, cringe-worthy pictures usually result with you facepalming yourself extremely hard. The effects are amplified when in the presence of other people.

Listening to Feeling Electric - Parade of Lights

Null,

TK

This Is Me

According to Blogspot/Blogger, I've had this blogging here since 2009.
Yet, I've never actually had a post dedicated to welcoming new readers (read: YOU!) and telling them more about myself; something like a profile page of sort. So, I thought I would spend today writing one in case I have any new readers.

Figure 1. This is me, Theo, at the Fremantle Market. I saw this Domo beanie and couldn't help myself: I tried it on.
It was so adorable, I mean LOOK AT HIS FACE. I describes me perfectly! Too bad the price was incredibly high,
I couldn't afford it, not for a simple beanie. It would be great if someone bought it for me as a birthday gift!
Price: approx. $25.

Let's start. Hey everyone, my name's Theo. In case you're wondering, that isn't my real name and yes, I am Asian. I'm a science student at the University of Western Australia, studying environmental science and conservation biology (a.k.a Bachelors of Tree-hugging). In my first year of uni, I (somehow) got into the wonders of soil science. It's such a valuable resource but it's also so undervalued, kinda like phosphorus too (I like phosphorus in case you're wondering). I'm also a really keen communicator in science because A) that's what a good scientist should be doing and B) science communication can be a very creative and satisfying process. I particularly enjoy At the moment, I am keen on trying to do research and getting into an Honours program but I'll see how that goes.

Figure 2. My collection of books. Everything from technical 'HTML in 10 minutes' to success story 'Facebook Effect' to Asian 'Unpolished Gem'. The image is a little old and my collection has expanded by a fair bit. Surprisingly, almost half of these books have yet been read because I've just been so busy! I'm also a massive shopaholic when it comes to bookie bargains.

You could say I'm a nerd of sort. I enjoy watching anime (e.g. Naruto Shippuden) and reading manga (e.g. Fairy Tail). But I also enjoy playing games (e.g. Ingress, Final Fantasy), playing on the piano (Grade 5) and going through my ever-growing collection of books (e.g. Brekky Central, The Story of the Soil, The Russel Middlebrook series). Oh wait, that doesn't change a thing: I'm still sorta nerdy. Did I mention I tried laser-tag once and fell completely in love with it? It's like paintball without all the pain! Yep, definitely a nerd. Other random things about me: I enjoy a nice cup of chai latte, I take pictures of plants (that sounded weird),

Figure 3. I usually spend long hours at my uni library. This is where I do my work, mostly because I can't concentrate at home and because I need a big PC to work on. My tiny 11' inch Mac would never suffice as I grew up with Windows. I also make quite a mess when I work, as you can see. I guess this helps motivate me by creating a visual impression that I'm really busy and 'all over the place'. However, keeping up with my course work usually means I get less stress when exam times arrive, so it's always worth it to spend extra time getting work done.

Figure 4. A couple of plants I got from my uni's native plant sale. I went on the last day after everything good has been snatched but still managed to find some nice lil' plants. The one on the left is cool because it has moss growing on top of its soils, and I got the one on the right for free. It's supposed to be some sort of lettuce. I can grow it and add it to my salad or something, but I'll see if I'm willing to take the risk. I've handed them both to my mum because it seems I never remember to water them frequently and both were found half-dead in my room after a week.

To reinforce my nerdiness, I spend my days hidden at my uni library till the dark hours. But it's also because I am a perfectionist when it comes to my academic work. I like it when I produce high-quality work. As you can tell, it would be an absolute dream-come-true if I do research (, end up enjoying it) and become a academic at a university. Alas, such dreams are rare and competitive; but hey, I'm still young and I can dream, can't I?

Figure 5. My attendance at the Volunteers Welcome Night for the Our Outback, Our Story campaign. There was a diverse group of people in our midst: a teacher for asylum seekers, an ex-lawyer, a psychologist and someone who was apparently allergic to peanuts (running gag for the night). I didn't get to speak to a lot of people due to my horrific social skills and *sshole resting face (as confirmed by one of my friends). I look forward to contributing to the campaign though, and networking, of course! Photo taken from Our Outback, Our Story.

Figure 6. This is me, looking incredibly un-photogenic, while volunteering to run the MicroBlitz stall during my uni's Envirofest. Lots of the work I do involves manning a stall at events, doing outreach and trying to get people to join us. My facial expressions don't usually help bring people in, and if I try to smile, well, that'll just look creepy (also confirmed by my friend). MicroBlitz is currently where I spend most of my time volunteering. It's also where I've been volunteering the longest. Hopefully, doing good will reap some benefits at the end of the day. Photo taken from UWA Student Guild.

Currently, my official employment hours are 0. But, that doesn't mean all I do is eat and sleep (and lurk in the library). I have done casual volunteering with several organisations such as Salvation Army, ClimateWatch and SEN UWA. However, I'm mostly interested in long-term projects, as such I devote most of my time to UWA's MicroBlitz project, UWA student guild's Urban Orchard project and recently, the Our Outback, Our Story campaign as well as UWA's Unimentor program. To show my interest in all things research, I am an occasional guinea pig for behavioural psychology experiments and also assist PhD students in harvesting their experiments (which causes some major RSI).

Figure 7. This was taken while I was volunteering for PhD student, Kenny. He does research at UWA's School of Plant Biology, where he studies the relationship between soil and nitrogen-fixing plants (e.g. legumes). I assist by helping him harvest his plants, removing the soil and litter tangled between its roots, as well as collecting root nodules attached to roots (the black mass stuck in the roots). Those root nodules help capture atmospheric nitrogen and converts it to a form that plants can take up, which is really useful, especially in nutrient-poor environments such as Australia. Harvesting has been done over the course of several months because he did admit that he might've been a little overly ambitious with his project and had millions (that's clearly an exaggeration) of pots that needed harvesting. Oh dear...

Figure 8. These chairs are so cool! They've got wheels under them so people can move around the room while seated! I can already imagine how a tutorial class would end up playing tag with these chairs. These were found in one of the tutorial rooms in the Social Science building. Access was granted when I joined SEN UWA in doing environmental audits in these buildings. The program aims to gather information on all university buildings so that more sustainable and eco-friendly measures can be taken when improving campus facilities. I was told that it's highly successful, both in yielding large amounts of data and in the number of participants who registered. The latter might come from the promise of free chocolate and pizza.

I started blogging in 2009 because it was the apparent trend for everyone in school. At first, it was a very personal website where grammar mistakes and cringe-worthy sentences were abound. Slowly, I started becoming self-conscious about the way I write because...well, I'm sure no one wants the whole world to see how bad their writing is. I also became more wary of putting names up on my blog because I wouldn't want to endanger their lives. And who knows, a stalker might be a frequent visitor of my blog. As of lately, I've tried to blog more generally about my life, with not so many names because I wouldn't want to bore readers with names they don't know. I also try to do a bit of science communication by blogging about stuff that I work on in assignments or learn in class. I find that it helps me practice my writing as well as structuring. And it might even help someone out if they're having trouble with it. Or it could provide an entertaining read for the day.

Figure 9. Here's something completely random. A smiley face made from oranges and a banana. This was taken on the last week of uni. You can clearly tell that I've let my sanity slip ever so slightly. But what's really interesting is that the oranges were actually just picked from trees outside Hackett Hall (UWA). One of the perks of being tall (by Asian standard). They taste pretty alright. Nothing extraordinary, but not bad either. I think looking at this can definitely turn someone's frown upside down, don't you think?

Well, I hope that painted a clearer of what kind of person I am. If you're a new reader who just to happened to have stumbled upon this blog, welcome! If you're a frequent reader of my blog (whoever you are!), thank you so much for taking an interest in my blog. I'll catch you in my next post!



Listening to Little Lion Man (Cover) - Future Idiots

Time for a Break,

TK