Note: The author has been tagged for this meme (and its several other versions) since she could remember. She is grateful that the suspension of classes gave her the opportunity to payback this blogging debt that has accumulated in time. And since she is pressed for time to do other work, she considers this entry her take on all the random facts meme that she has been tagged for and will be tagged, probably in the not so distant future.

Here are the rules for “8 facts”:

• In the 8 facts about [name], you share 8 things that your readers don’t know about you. At the end, you tag 8 other bloggers to keep the fun going. Each blogger must post these rules first.
• Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• At the end of the post, a blogger needs to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Such resolutions couldn’t be maintained no matter how hard I try. Blogging once a week is one of them. And it’s really ironic considering that I have no scheduled exams last week. Oh well, nothing really happened last week anyway, that is if you exclude the weekend.

It’s been years since I last saw Ally Mcbeal. I guess even cable TV has no time for old TV shows with the number of new series fighting for people’s attention.

What made me miss this show more is when I saw these clips from YouTube. One is a cute little dance number of the cast to Barry White’s classic songs. The next clip is one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the series (so I’m a romantic weirdo who loves dramatic scenes, got a problem with that? ).

I hope I could buy a DVD boxset of Ally McBeal someday. I not so sure if the friendly Quiapo DVD vendor has a loot of old TV series under his coat. Do they? A little help here.

After weeks of much anticipation (brought by the fear of the proposal deadline, mind you), my thesis topic has already been decided.

Development of Emotion Classification for Call Center Speech Analysis

Basically, my thesis partner and I will have to analyze a number of recordings to determine the factors indicating certain moods of customers. Of course, this could be done by the call center agent but the goal of this project is to actually replace a call center agent with a machine so that he/she could go on doing more tasks.

Truth to be told, I have never been this excited to take on an academic project ever since the license plate recognition project for a number of reasons:

1. I am officially assigned to the speech group of DSP — my preference ever since my application
2. I get to be tutored under Sir Franz and Dean Gev (yup, THE College Dean). Both a blessing and a challenge, if you ask me.
3. I have the chance to learn a new subject aside from hardcore signals processing.
4. The project is part of a big undertaking of DSP, in partnership with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Speech Comm and Theater Arts. Plus, it has already been approved by the OVCRD (Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development).
5. A corollary of number 3: My thesis partner and I will be granted honorarium! Woot!

Of course, there are times when I ask myself what in the world did I put myself into. Then again, it’s only a few moments where you could actually seize an undertaking that will be worth all the hard work. Yes, Risha the geek is alive once again.

And since it will take a huge amount of my time, expect more thesis entries from this point onward.

First wave of exams have commenced — damn.

For everyone’s information, this entry is an attempt to calm myself before I dive once again into my piles upon piles of books, notes, and scratch papers full of computations (hopefully, my calculator won’t break the fall).

I should have seen this coming anyway. With 20 units (again) to endure this semester, 17 of which fall on the ‘eng’g majors ‘ category, 2-3 exams in a week are expected. Fortunately, I don’t have to relive the time when I have to take 3 2-3 hour, major exams on Saturdays. Come to think of it, it’s been so long since I had those days, I already forgot my batting average.

Anyway, as a way to motivate (or intimidate… I’m really gunning for the former) my psyche, here is the list of the storm called exams:

Thursday – July 19: CoE 127 (Speech and Audio Signal Processing)
Tuesday – July 24: EEE 53 (Electronic Circuits II)
Thursday – July 26: Comm 3
Friday – July 27: CE 22 (Engineering Economy)

Until then, any thought-provoking, profound, funny, angsty blog entries would have to wait.

Wish me luck!

Ahhh, the blogging sickness… It has struck once again.

It’s not as serious as not posting for a month in my other blogs, of course. maybe it’s because of the computer i’m using. come to think of it, it’s only now that my fingers really feel comfortable typing on a computer. I never did like typewriters and clacky keyboards for they need much effort to strike the keys. horay for soft laptop keyboards~

The weekly posts are expected considering I don’t have constant internet connection. A consequence of residing in a dorm devoid of any internet service, save perhaps for the unsecured wireless connection that I leech from time to time . And even if I do avail of the free internet access of DSP and the ESC office, I have no time for a blog post. Thank God for weekends, I tell you.

Just when I thought the horrible vertigo episode was enough to seal my sickness phase, I was diagnosed with shingles last Monday.

Yup. All the water-filled lesions (which I mistook for allergies) and unbearable muscle pain (that could have been brought by hyperactivity) were all caused by the stupid herpes zoster virus.

Great. Just great.

Fortunately, shingles does not come with fever unlike chicken pox and flu. The muscle pain, however, has left me one-handed for a whole week (since it has only inflicted my right arm). It really sucks considering there isn’t enough paracetamols and mefenamic acid to drown the pain away. And to think I don’t even take them even at the worst case of dysmenorrhea. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday, I’ll be too dependent on them.

And being a museum exhibit doesn’t help much, either. I don’t know which was worse — to have it covered in gauze (which everyone can see) or skip the gauze and pray no one sees anything (but once they do…) I do want to be noticed very now and then, but not for this. Oh well, at least I could serve as a public service announcement for everyone…

Warning: Stay away from Risha if you: 1. haven’t got or have been vaccinated against chicken pox; 2. have a weak immune system; 3. are too young; 4. are too old; 5. are pregnant