Busy and sick.... but not busily sick.

The few days after convo day (wed) were busy days, from settling solar car stuff, attending EEE convocation and photo taking, to MAE grad dinner and activities with John before he flies back to New York. Unfortunately, i fell sick on Sunday and subsequently both Monday and Tuesday too.

Right now... i probably have recovered about 70% liao. But still feeling tired and 'energy-less'. Lots of photos with me, but not much time.. actually strength to post it up. I tried to write this post since this morning, but failed as i got back to sleep instead. =P

Still, am pretty happy that i had managed to meet yx, kx, bev and the star -> John, on both Sunday and Monday. Sunday was while they were giving John a crash course on mahjong and Monday for both lunch and dinner + farewell at Changi Airport. Although it was a short 2 months, but one can see that John had been 'Singaporeanised' to a certain degree.. how much? have to wait for updates of photo evidence when i feel much better.

Convo thoughts

Felt quite tired out as i was compiling the photos in powerpoint for posting in my blog, maybe will finish it later but for now, lets just jot down my thoughts.. heh.

I guess it is an 'official' close to the 4 years in NTU, of which the most valuable things gained are not knowledge, but of friends. Despite being older and of a different age group, without friends from JC or secondary schools in MAE, i am very happy to have made so many friends who cares about me. Am touched whenever someone asks about my health and much more.

While the usual saying that it is difficult to make good friends in university where competition is stiff .. blah blah blah. I am fortunate to have quite a number of friends whom i would want to take photos with for memory, and hopefully one day, i will find time to ask them out for coffee or lunch outside of school. Didnt really get to go out often as we met only within campus, so i guess it will be different after everyone starts working. =P

Was also lucky to have crossed paths with wonderful professors such as Yeo S.H., David Butler and later on Tek Seang, John Heng etc. Of which they had supported me till today, where i had grown much in terms of experience, knowledge, exposure etc.

As my fate with NTU has yet to end though it has officially 'ended', as my next phase in life is evolved with a bunch of fantastic people who are still pushing on with the project in NTU for the next few months. So. .. till then, i foresee more events to unfold, and am looking forward to more positive news and results. =D Thus the conclusion to the chapter with NTU/MAE has yet to be written.

Recap of monday night makan.

It was Convo today, but am pretty tired out liao, so only posting this picture of John's ever increasing skill level in using chopsticks and spoon. Not to mention his 1st time with durians.



Oh.... the crap durian was the sweet ones, john found the bitter durians to be much nicer, like alcohol. heh.

Designing of canopy and missed free lunches

Major stuff we did today was mainly on deciding to design and make our own canopy which would save us about SGD 900, but of course it will not be that sleek and beautiful, but will suffice for our car. Maybe it would be a convertible after all.

Met butler in the morning, chatted and settled the petty cash account, which means i can continue on my buying spree of essential components. =D Main parts will be the steering stuff from States, and many small stuff which we would require along the way. Payment for the 4130 tubings seems to have been made, will chase up with the suppliers with an email later.

Forgotten why we missed the free lunch this afternoon, but the dinner was due to us working overtime at the workshop on the suspension bushings and also experimenting on possible ways to design the canopy. =P

Tomorrow will be convocation, where i will be graduating (finally, probably the last one in my 1979 clique) with 2nd upper (A bonus as well as an objective met), an important event which i can go through together with friends whom i befriended in these 4 years of university life. Fortunate to have come to know not only acquaintances and friends, but also very close friends. And not to mention a once in a lifetime chance of building up a solar car for a race. Although i had a near hit of a medal, but there is also a piece of good news related to that, but will write more in depth feelings next time.

Looks like writing diary or blogs would be a good thing, as it allocates time for me to collect my thoughts and feelings for the day, to collate the positive points and negative points for the day so as to slowly work towards removing the negative aspects over time. Apparently this would be my 152nd post, maybe in time to come, will post more thoughts onto the blog. heh.

More machining today

Did more machining today as Yongxi brought in the delrin rod. Spent the afternoon machining the suspension bushings and should be done by tomorrow.



Also went to look for Cuimei and also found Juening at their convo in hopes of getting a free lunch. Which we did...find both of them and also had the free lunch. Cheapo you might think, but for the 5 of us who went there, it was worth it. hahaha ... can meet friends and have 'free' food, why not?

Swam in the evening before heading out for dinner, where John had his taste of teochew style bak ku teh (literally meaning pork ribs tea) and also durians. John found the bitter one better than sweet ones which he feels it smells like crap, and probably taste like crap too. But he seems rather pleased with the bitter durian.

Finally reach home at 11pm, just in time to take the chinese medicine my caring mom brewed for me. hee... feel so blessed to have parents who loves me so much. =) Just drank the medicine, which requires another half an hour of preparation (done by me of course, since i am home) and going off the zZZZzz-land. happily tired. =P

A wonderful outing ......

It was a fun and relaxing Sat yesterday. ST Engineering was having its family day or something in Sentosa, so went with my bro (he has the free tickets), sis-in-law, mom and younger bro. The developments on that island changed so much that i feel lost. heh.

At Siloso beach, found kai xin, her fren, john and yong xi playing beach volleyball. And i joined them. It has been a long time since i last went and play volleyball at the beach, and would probably even be my first time... cos i couldnt remember if i went there much (Not counting FOC). Had fun and laughed quite a bit, pretty relaxing. Not much of sunshine as light showers peppered from late morning till evening with almost permanent overcast sky. As i reached about 11, didnt have the chance to apply sunblock, nonetheless, it think it was wonderful weather with cool winds, light rain with plenty of volleyball, swimming, frisbee and water soccer.

Wanted to bury someone in the sand, but no one volunteered... somehow it ended up being me who was buried. Quite cooling actually... i guess i can strike off the 'being buried in sand experience' off my list liao. heh heh.

Day ended and it was all goodbyes as we head home separately, more like, i went my own way as only i stay in the east. Somehow, all good times have to come to an end. john would be flying back soon, going to miss him on the team. NOT because i am turning gay. =P His contribution this past 2 months was invaluable, but his friendship is even more priceless. To be able to meet someone from so far away and be friends, have fun and work together, is something i call fate. =)

Being tired out from yesterday, today is rest day, slept in the early afternoon before going for a short tennis session with linda and yi zhang. Not met them for such a long time, my JC frens. heh heh. Only lasted for about half an hour before i have to take a break..... heh... need time for my stamina to slowly increase. =) Went for dinner with family before heading back home. Watched movie together and laugh laugh, chatted about my brother's coming marriage etc etc. I guess moving back from hall gives me more time with my family, which i love to have. =D Not so good will be that i find the traveling very tiring. Hope i get used to it soon. hmmmm ....

The next lap

Met up with most of the new FYP batch for the solar car today. Hopefully they would bond together as a team over time, and decide on which aspects of the their solar car they would be working on.

Having started on nothing and designing the solar car through the past year, felt that having someone with experience in actually building up a car is essential. Especially with integration of all the parts, considerations etc. I hope that the new batch would be able to learn stuff together with us, thus able to have a shorter learning curve in regards to designing a 'buildable' car which would be able to perform better. I, and i believe yongxi too, had learnt a lot from John, especially his input on how to design interfaces between components.

I hope that the new group will be able to maintain interest in building a new car of their own in time to come, and form a solar car racing team for NTU, so as to give a chance for undergrads from different majors to join in the fun in designing, building and driving solar cars. Lets hope i can hands off once the WSC is over... and move on to the next lap for my adventure in life. =)

Rainy day .....

It was a rainy day today. Showered intermittently in the morning as i went to Eunos to meet the supplier of EVA film with yuen man. The meet up was positive, except that i suspect that the EVA they were using wasn't thin enough. However, they did have a vacuum 'oven' machine which could be useful to us, unfortunately, the environment was way too dusty for encapsulation of solar cells. Will have to check with Butler if we have such facilities within NTU.

Took some photos of the workpieces today. Further machining was done to the pieces to improve the finishing and make it look pro. =P Except that they were already shorter than designed, thus the pieces are at 47mm, 47.2mm, 49mm and 49.1mm respectively.. i think. To think i wanted them to be at 50mm each. haha... oops. Nonetheless, it is still long enough for my intended purpose. =P

So here are the pictures taken for my suspension parts:


We machined out the fixtures, otherwise known as v-blocks, required for securing the AISI 4130 tubings for drilling holes. As our handsome male (maybe fruity) model proudly presents in the pictures below.....

4 new experiences today

Yup ... today was machining day as John and I went over to the sweaty workshop and started out to machine my suspension parts. First was to cut the AISI 4130 1" rods into 50mm lengths (shown the ropes by Daniel, the helpful technician =D), before using the lathe machine to drill a 12mm diameter hole in it. John was the instructor for this, and due to the fact that he teaches well, and it was a simple operation, I completed for 3 of the 4 required pieces. Thanks john.

After completing the holes, yongxi and kai xin arrived and we begun tapping the M14-2 threads in the holes. This piece is meant for holding the rod-ends at the tip of the wishbone suspension. Will take some photos tomorrow and have it posted up. heh heh. Kai xin had some fun laughing at yongxi and me for it is our first time doing such hands-on. To which i didnt mind as it was fun anyway. =P

After my first time at using the bench? or bend saw .. i dunno what it is called ... just a hydraulic saw, lathe machine, tapping a thread in a hole, we went for lunch. The last thing i learnt today was using the milling machine for end mill. Of which i think there are some other uses for it, so will have to explore more in depth tomorrow. And oh... thanks to Kai xin for she was the instructor for this one. =D

We went for soccer game at 6 as the workshop was closed and joined some NTU staff in their soccer training. It was fun, but unfortunately yongxi had pulled his thigh muscle early in the training and had to sit out. Thanks for waiting there for us though, and of course the trip to Serangoon. =P

The going is better for this week. =)

Bought quite a few stuff this week, and my out of pocket expenses for the project is almost reaching $2k. Will need to claim back some before i can continue buying components, hiaz.... hope i can hit the toto jackpot this thurs, or the bigsweep tomorrow, then i can go ahead and fund the project. Then we will be on time. =P

Tomorrow will be machining day, have arranged with the technicians for Argon gas, face shield and gloves for welding, hope the metal arrives very soon.

Soccer tomorrow in the evening, hopefully we get quite a bit of machining done before that. Although i had graduated, a bit sian to realise that i have yet to have hands on in terms of machining, welding etc. I really dunno tons of stuff. Guess the good news is that i will get to learn all these stuff from this project. =D

Extreme low levels of morale ...

Allowed myself to maintain a low morale for almost the entire day today. Looks like my battle against the red tape is not going smoothly with yet another problem of obtaining signatures for approval of buying in critical components. This meant that the timeline for the solar car project is once again pushed back. When i broke the news to the team yesterday, they were not surprised as it has been the case for the pass few months, but even John nodded and .. well, he got used to it too. =P

After having low morale for the day, it finally reached the time when i have to snap out of it, thus got down to informing the team of what we will do tomorrow... which is like what we do everyday.... try to take over the world!! =D



Today they (John and YX) got pretty bored and with their current skills with SolidWorks, they created the world's first F1 racing capable solar car ..



As for the carbon fibre mold, we have completed construction, followed by bonding of the laminated plywood to the mold as seen in the pictures below, using Kangaroo glue. Only managed to take some pictures of them putting weights on the plywood to maximise bonding. Didnt realised i was in some pictures too. =)



After bonding the laminated plywood on the jig, we proceeded to wax the entire surface with mold release. Unfortuately, we were all to busy waxing so only yong xi managed to take 2 shots of our supergal, codename 'iwax'. =P

Busy busy days

Its been busy for the past 2 days. Finished up with the mold for the top shell, will start applying mould release wax tomorrow. 4~6 layers required. heh heh... its going to take some time.

Other than that, it is to chase down signatures from 5 different people for the purchase of 4130 tubings and carbon fibre. and hopefully they pay very soon, else it we will have to wait a fwe days more for the tubings to arrive. hiaz ... Lets hope the fight with red tape will end with victory. =P

Will be adding pictures soon, when i am free and when i have the pictures. =P Now thinking of places we can go weld overnight or something as we cant do that here. tsk tsk.

Almost completed mold for upper shell

Did quite a bit for the past few days, well... i managed to help out only on Mon and Wed as i had to prep and go for shell interview on Tues. With the approval for usage of space granted on Friday evening, we went to work immediately on Monday.

As we had pre-cut the ribs into required shape previously, no time was wasted to knock up the assembly jig, which is now in the process of being modified into a mold. The top right picture is the ribs for bottom shell, as you can see, the alignment strings are still present. The 3/4 completed top shell mold is located at the far right of the picture.



The mold for the top shell can be seen more clearly in the rest of the pictures, with one of our smallest driver, kx, sitting in the centre of the top shell mold. She seems dwarf-ed by the top shell. The gentle curve will allow us to attach the solar arrays required.

3 rather tired team members are featured in the top left corner, with the gal in white a new addition to the team, joining us with one area as her FYP. More pictures will be on the way, now that we have the space to build stuff.

Pics of fishing trip on Sunday

Yx, john and i went for fishing trip on Sunday, but before that, we met up with Roy for fitting of the graduation robes at broadway. Thus we became the harry potter movie extras...



After that, Roy had to go home and rest cos he will be doing the night shift at 8. But he kindly drove us to THE spot for fishing. Maybe next time, he would be able to join us for the fishing trip, and he would be the fisherman's fren as he doesnt fish. Will teach him how to if he joins us. Ok roy?

From the pics, 2 of them are pretty cool looking fishermen, and John nearly caught the cuttlefish, but halfway up, it squirted ink and hit the sidewall before plummeting back into the sea. John was shocked at the amount of ink released... heh.. his first time. =P

Too late for the update on the progress of the car, will do tat tomorrow ba. Night!