Damn Illness... Get Away from Me DAMNNIT...

Being half-sick is no fun. I seem to have lost almost 50% of my brain power, and am suffering from loss of weekend time specially set aside for doing homework. Oh geez... what am I to do? I guess I just need to bite bullet and fight the whole battle with willpower, caffeine, and more determination than ever before.

Bah. Stupid weather... note to self: don't be a hero and move lumber in the freezing cold. No one cares if you freeze and cough to death... everyone will only care about the Booth and not you. So, don't be such a hero.

I am beholden to myself.

Grak.

Firefox Logo

The Firefox logo is so sweet that it makes a wonderful desktop wall paper. :-)



Oh, if you want the vector versions or ginormous png versions, they can be found here.

In other news, I've upgraded firefox to version 2.0, and have switched from liquifox (breaks in version 2.0, but works very well in 1.5) to miniFoxFlat. That helped me reclaim even more screen space. mwahahahahaha...

Edythe's Face

And yes, I've managed to shrink all the text and other stuff on Edythe down again. Everything is so much more compact than before, and it's becoming more and more like my style. More pixel estate dudes~!



The colour scheme used is Royale, which is essentially a face lift of the standard Luna theme that comes with Windows XP. I first saw this theme on a Windows Media Center edition desktop somewhere in some computer store some time last year, and have fallen in love with the cool shades of blue that it has. Compared with the solid (and dull) Luna, this is certainly a vast improvement.

Unlike most people, I love to keep my start menu and task bar above the screen, set to two lines, and kept hidden unless I move my mouse there. Well, for one, this increases the amount of screen space that I have to see my applications (90+ pixel space is roughly 10+ lines of code). For two, the top location makes it less obtrusive, since the title bar of the windows do not usually show anything worthed reading, while the status bars of most windows are below (and thus show more useful information). So, in the case where the start menu refuses to cooperate, no loss of productivity will be expected.

Notice the little command prompt window on the lower left? That's a bash shell straight out of cygwin, an excellent POSIX compatible interface for Windows machines. I've augmented it with several enhancements, including adding a date/time mechanism, and an in-house built battery indicator (the one in the picture shows that I'm running on AC and so there's no battery meter to show). Needless to say, this prompt packs a punch, and I can and do lots of system management straight from the bash shell. This includes controlling foobar2000, which is easily the most powerful and versatile music player available on the Windows platform.

By the way, the bash shell here is only for system management. Most of my code hacking is done with a much bigger bash shell that sits comfortably on the left side of the screen (always on the left, never shifted anywhere):



And if you thought this was big, wait till you see the next screen shot:



This is the badass way in which I do hard core hacking. It's actually 6 bash shells running in 6 xterms on an X-server, configured as shown in the picture above. It's a pretty powerful combination, allowing me to do lots of stuff at the same time without ever having to run to and fro the main windows interface. It's still Windows XP, but it is really a cygwin innovation.

And no, the 6 windows do not all reside at the same time on the screen; they are partitioned into 2x2 virtual screens. That makes it even more powerful than ever.

So much for a geeky post on Edythe's face. hahahaha...

Chinese New Year... what?

A Chinese New Year away from home, a Chinese New Year away from Singapore. How interesting a concept. Unsurprisingly, the whole mood here in Pittsburgh is nothing short of mundane; no one seems to be really interested in this whole festive season thing. It could just be that everyone's so overworked from all the stuff that they are lobbing at us in college that no one really cares that much anymore.

Or could it be because most people here identify themselves first as Americans, and then next as of being Chinese descent? Guess this question will be unanswered for quite a fair bit.

So the Singapore Students' Association (SSA) organised this Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner. It was a wonderful night. The whole event was organised simply, but it evoked the sense of belonging that appears to be the whole point of the reunion dinner. Food was much different from what we usually have, and since it was steam boat, everyone had a ball of a time trying to boil all the food stuff without causing too much problems (heheheh).

Earlier in the day, I had a teleconferencing with my family back in Singapore over a cross of MSN and Skype. It was quite dumb... MSN couldn't send sound across, while Skype couldn't send video, so we had to hybrid the two. Unfortunately, the house machine is underpowered to be able to perform and so in the end it was mainly a skype-based teleconversation. Not that it was bad, but at least it's good to be able to hear the voices of my family again. And, haha, my mum was surprised at my long-ish hair (it's gonna be so much longer by the time I return, that's for sure).

I gave RX a call too, via Skype, and managed to channel the songs "White and Nerdy" and "I bought on EBay" via the VoIP to him. He literally rofl'ed his way. I feel kinda bad that I couldn't play Diablo II with him over the Internet (had to do homework and stuff like that), and hope that I will be able to do so soon.

I gave Nicole and Yongji a call each to wish them happy new year, and they were kinda pleased too. =)

And so, another Chinese New Year, and another year added to my bludgeoning age. What the heck man... by the time I reach March, I feel as though I've aged by at least 2 years, with my birthday and Chinese New Year and all (yes, if you actually look up my lunar calendar age, I'm a whopping year older than the other 1985 babies).

Gak,

So, what's in for the year of the pig? Well, 3.8 is always hovering about (and will probably do so for the next few years heheheh). There's also other stuff to look into, like setting the ViCOMP question set (yes, I've ideas on the problem set, just need to sit down and type the damn thing out together with all the sample solutions in all the three languages), moving on with some personal life stuff, and going back to general hacking (boy do I miss writing programs).

That's about it, I guess.

新年快乐 to all who read this or the other blog.

Half dead, barely awake, half alive

V-day came... and passed once more. A day unlike any other, a day full of last minute programming, a day of theorem proving. And a day of mistakes.

*walks away, can't bear to say more*

:-(

24 hours of fasting later...

argh. After almost a day full of non-eating later, I've emerged weaker, and with whatever was plaguing my body removed. And now, off to handling a ginormous load of homework. Gark.

I'm so glad. I'm once again setting the programming round questions to ViCOMP 2007, hosted by the new VJC Infocomm Club, which is an incarnation of the iCOMP club.

How evil should I be?


*evil glint in eye*

Sick.... again??

Damn... I think that I'm sick now. Have a weird stomachache and am thinking of Transfinite Induction all the way through.

"Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! Zero Case! Successor Case! Limit Case! ..."

Trying to purge the poison inside. Could it be that the mushrooms that I used to make the spaghetti last night have turned bad, and that my awfully blocked nose didn't realise it? Or is it the compound effect of epoxy glue (having to fix all my 笛子 since they all have fissures from the dry weather)?

Damn damn damn... have so much homework to do some more.... Grawk~ :-(

Now I remember...

In reference to this old post, I remember why I switched over the MSN Live! Messenger.

I could still type messages while appearing offline. Ugh.

Why can't they write the program properly and not let it crash as much?

It's 3:31am here, and...

It's 3:31am here, and I haven't the foggiest clue why I'm still awake. It's so ridiculous that I don't even want to venture a guess. Okay, back to main point.

It's been a long long long ... long week. Homework due almost every other day, bad program specifications (thus making me waste time debugging ugh), weird boolean algebra (why is the homework assigned from chapter 9 when we've scarcely covered chapter 3?), combinatorial game analysis (Hackenbush in "bamboo pole" form is just Nim), combinatorics (at least some thing that is easier, despite it being a level 300 course), paper writing (1 English essay draft to be ready next week, 1 math paper due next week), epoxying my broken watch and my 箫.

Damn, my room smells weird from the fumes of the epoxy. :-(

So, yeah. I've also been half-sick for the most part, which is another ridiculous thing that occurred. *yawnz* Blogging when one is half spaced out is really not a good idea... dunno if I'm coherent or not.

So after so long, I've decided to cut down all the insulation for Winter. That's right, I've started to do jogging. Not out in the cold, but on a treadmill in the gym that is just so close to where I live. I don't really have a choice there... am running out of jeans that I can wear, so I must do something about it. Actually, the main reason was the sad discovery that my legs aren't moving as fast as before; all the fat simply gets in the way and slows down my gait. If there's one thing that I don't really like, it is to be walking slowly when I'm supposed to be able to go further with my "trademark" large gait.

I'm behind in filing stuff now. Will probably spend the rest of the day doing that.

Maybe, if I still have energy, I'll do some work on a new blog that I've wanted to bring out, but have been tardying over...

Guess that's a wrap for now.

Me a Romantic? Wow...

In reference to my previous post, it turns out that I'm more of a romantic than I thought myself out to be. Most of my written works are heavily emotional pieces, juxtaposed with descriptions of the surrounding world.

This revelation came while having my Interpretation and Argument class. After doing sooo much math and science, I've forgot how much I actually enjoyed argumentation and writing in general. :-)

"You're just afraid of failure"

"If... if I asked you out, will you go out with me?"

This... question has been floating about in my head. It's really nasty to be thinking this question when I'm seriously still at odds with myself. There seems to be a complicated mix of emotions/rationalisations that are in existence deep within my psyche. It's really back to the same old arguments, me being the_laptop and me being human-ish. It's so old that I don't even want to rehash them here again.

Jimmy made a completely accurate (and blunt) assessment of my situation.

"You're just afraid of failure."

In more ways than one, that is so true. I've clawed my way to so far (given my highly mediocre skill sets) that I can't afford to lose. Despite efforts to turn into a really well-rounded individual, I realised that I'm far from it. Being a "Jack-of-all-trades" means that there's no single skill that I can rely on to provide for myself in the future, hence the dedication to the study of computer science. Failure is simply not an option that I'm willing to explore, because time is already running short, and there's so much that needs to be done, catching up notwithstanding.

But of course, Jimmy's statement wasn't really directed at my career/specialisation choice. He asked me, in very blunt terms (and in Mandarin, so that the 90% of the people around didn't understand what he said) whether I wanted a girlfriend. That did two things to me. First, it threw me off as I felt that he was really getting a little to close to something deeply personal. Second, I felt instantly irritated with that question, and delivered an icy reply to the effect of "I don't give a flying fuck dude, and stay out of my personal affairs". Which prompted the statement above.

Let's face it. I might act as though I'm fine and dandy, and that life goes on, but deep inside me, all is still not well. There's this inexplicable feeling of sadness whenever I approach the topic of relationships with myself, it seems as though that there is a kind of auto-repulsion to the idea of having a relationship. My human side, on really bad and lonely days, will throw up an idea of possibly hooking up with one girl for a long term relationship. Then, whatever-the-other-side is called will just have and instant revulsion to the idea and start lobbing out all the arguments that I've been laying out for so long. And then my human side gets beaten up senseless and is forced into retreat once again.

Put in other terms, I've lost the ability to approach romantic love. I've no more courage to take the first step (with the likelihood of failure), no more courage to say what I truly mean, no more strength to speak up for what I feel for. In short, I'm turning into a wussy, a cowardly person who, less than a year ago, was willing to fight someone all the way just to prove a point. Now I just sit there and get beaten all over verbally over my ideas.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Paper pile...

It's almost two weeks into the spring semester, and I've gathered enough paper piles to rival the entire first half of the last semester. That's right, paper piles enough to rival the entire first half of the last semester. It's sad, it's amazing but it's true. Taking so many courses (most of them of the high-level abstract-level kind) is really draining. Suddenly, I don't have much time to do stuff that I really like. Ugh. Guess that this comes with the task of having to complete a 4-year course in 3-years.

In other news, my 500GB hard drive has arrived and is working wonderfully. It's nicely compact, tough, and fairly quiet, making it a great addition to the stable of tools that Edythe has. Hopefully, this hard drive can last for quite a while, otherwise I'm gonna be tempted to get another 500GB to make it a whopping 1TB of data storage capability.

I'm now in the stage where I'm like a Math major minoring in CS major. Everything that I do now is heavily abstracted mathematics. Not that I don't like it, but it's starting to take it's toil on me in terms of the way that I view my major. Already, I'm doing very little programming now, and I've totally given up on the ACM ICPC. I mean, I don't even want to participate anymore, having little/no energy.

Ugh, this is starting to turn into a rant. I'll stop now.

*contented sigh*

Oh well. I'm finally 22 years old. Not that it means anything, the day passed like any other, with homework coming as fast as furious as it was before.

My floor did an amazing job. Samira, the RA, and Jimmy pulled the people together (and grabbing Jon the housefellow too) and got two cakes and a couple of pizzas. One was a normal cake, while the other was a New York styled cheesecake. I'm like wow, even though I really don't know how to react. :-(

Needless to say, most of the gang was there, Phil, Abdul, Alonzo, Sam, Mo, Alison, Tim, Justin and of course Linda. I felt kinda awkward, I mean, usually I do stuff for people, rarely the other way round, so I didn't really know how to respond to the "surprise".

What a strange day... Now, if only I didn't have to do crazy Set Theory homework and could just bum around... hahaha, one cannot be too greedy, I guess.

So now, I've gotta factor in the cheesecake for my meals. No wonder I'm getting fatter and fatter. :-)

So yeah, I'm 22 now, on 22 Jan. I wonder what will tomorrow bring...

Oh, there were the usual Facebook greetings from people that I know. Hmm... I wonder if I should ask her out... but then I'm side-tracking already.

Hard drive space seems to be a problem again. Damn, I need to figure out how best to manage this... have just put in an order for a 500GB hard drive, which will be delivered within 6 days. Must resist from storing too much stuff... otherwise the next purchase will be a 1TB drive or something.

And I've changed the layout of the blogs. I mean, I loved the black and green colour scheme thing, but it was starting to get old. White, blue and black seem to be a decent combination, clean and makes the text stand out much better. Hence the change. Hopefully this will make me less moody.... ;-)

Argh. Gotta get back to homework now.

Damn you MSN Live! Messenger

!@#$ I'm sick of the MSN Live! Messenger. It's crashed soooooooo bloody often that I've totally given up on it and reverted to good old fashioned MSN Messenger 7.5. And then I suddenly realised that I had missed out a lot from 7.5, like the compactness of the lists and relatively small footprint.

Why oh why did I upgrade to that other version in the first place?!

Gosh, I've Lived For More Than 21 Years

It's amazing. I've actually lived past 21 years of my life without any serious (life-threatening) mishaps. It's been a rough year, considering all that has happened. I fallen in and out of love, fallen in and out of favour, fallen in and out of the elite.

Whatever the cause, the fact remains that I am still alive.

I guess all that moody and depressive nonsense that I've been putting up should be left well behind. Time to be the Mun Thye that I was meant to be.

Anyway, the first week of classes have more or less ended. Interesting week, I'd say. The course load for this semester is going to be really high, as I've overloaded an additional 9 more units compared to the de facto average. Among the courses that I'm taking, the three that stands out the most is 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science, 21-301 Combinatorics and 21-229 Set Theory.

21-229 is an interesting course, in the sense that it is a purely theoretical construct. It's almost like learning a new programming language, with the introduction of ZFC and all the axioms and schemes that defines what a Set is. The level of abstraction was shocking initially (eg integers are just various sets defined according to the Existence of a Unique Empty Set and the Union Axiom), but after listening to the Professor's exposition, things became more and more clear. The hard part of this course seems to lie in the fact that everything in the course is about proving. Looks like I can retire my calculator from this course for this semester.

21-301 is interesting for a bunch of reasons. It's one of the first high-level courses that I'm taking, and it supposedly kills two birds with one stone by satisfying one requirement of my Computer Science major and one requirement of my Discrete Math/Logic minor (though I'd rather take a harder course 15-451 Algorithm Analysis to cover the CS requirement). The topic is particularly hard, but still fairly understandable, considering the fact that I've been playing with combinatorial objects for quite a while. The professor is not too bad, a little monotonic at times, but still fairly okay. From the list of topics that he gave us, it appears that it's going to be a really fun course of sorts.

15-251 can be considered one of the most random courses around. Its coverage is so big that it has no textbook assigned to it! Prof von Ahn is one of the "new age" professors, full of energy and wit, and very very demanding. Not that I don't like that, but if the first week is of any indication of what is to come, this course is probably going to be one of the most intensive courses that I've taken so far. A class effort assignment was assigned about 3 days before the semester started, and for the first assignment, we were to go on a "treasure hunt" of sorts, CS-style (meaning lots of Math, logic and google bashing). Up for grabs are 4 iPod shuffles for the winning team, and my team seems to have a decent chance at it. I'm hoping for the best in this. :-)

——

Kangyi dropped by from Wednesday to Friday to stay over while waiting for his dorm back at Brown to be open. I feel a little bad in the way I've hosted him; due to the timing, I couldn't take him around Pittsburgh to see the stuff (I had classes), moreover, due to my laziness, I didn't venture out of CMU to visit many places, so I guess I would have been a really lousy guide if I had taken him out. Anyway, he bunked over at my dorm because Mo and I had a spare bed, thanks to Aditya moving out to the frat house to stay. Kangyi was positively in awe when he saw my dorm, heheheh... I had to tell him time and again that my dorm was not one of the "normal" ones, in the sense that it is more of an apartment suite than a dorm outright. Lots of catching up were done, and I got Phil to take him (together with Linda, Eliot, Mo and I) on the Grand Tour of CMU.

Kangyi enjoyed himself thoroughly on the midnight "tour" of CMU. We travelled across the campus to all the eerie places and showed him around, and he was amazed at the extent of our knowledge of the place. He had a field day taking pictures of all the places. :-) He left early in the morning on Saturday, which I regret not waking up to send him off. :-(

——

In other news, I've gotten a new flapdoozy and a nice stainless steel mug, all from Megagear, the Megatokyo store. I've also almost busted my print limit by printing out drawing manuals to figure out how to draw properly. And I've found the palette for the COPiC Markers for use in my drawing programs. Hopefully I can draw something decent and put it up soon. Japanese learning speed has gone down by a lot, partially due to the large amount of events (and the overall instability of it all), and partially due to the arrival of my 笛子 and 箫.

So, yeah, lots of stuff happened for the last week, and there's more stuff to come by. Oh, I went ahead and stocked up my kitchen with edible stuff again. And it's almost 5am now, guess I should finish up the proof for 15-251's assignment and then crash out.

Finally Snowing

After waiting for a whole month in December for the snow to arrive, it has finally done so. Check out what I found outside my window:



Yes, it has finally snowed. The weirdest thing was that it was still hot yesterday before I slept.

Argh, the damn Pittsburgh weather machine...

Winter Break Ends

The Winter Break is almost done, and it's time to get back into the swing of things again. This coming Semsester is going to be one that is extraordinary, for even before the official start of the semester, we've already received our first set of homework. That's right, our first set of homework has been issued.

Check this out: http://15251.11.forumer.com/index.php

It's a collective effort by all in the course to get the secret message. I wonder how long this little exercise will take us.

Anyway, I've been up for the most time trying to help to put together the pieces of the puzzle. An interesting exercise, and makes me yearn for the good old times when I was in the competitive programming circuit. But, haha, I don't have that much free time as before to totally devote myself to competitive programming, so I'll just stick with what I can do at the moment.

Ah, so much to do, so little time to do them all. Seems to be a common theme nowadays among the things that I've been doing. Perhaps it is time to really sit down and think things through once more, just to ensure that I've not lost sight of my aims in life.

Ugh, I find it hard to pen down thoughts when so many things are happening at the same time. Perhaps another time I'll write more.

Onward into the Unknown

Life, as I've realised by now, is really a very fragile yet beautiful thing. It is a little like glass-blowing—if you blow and shape it while it's still hot, you can make wonderful shapes with it. Then when it cools a little, you can only adjust it slightly, and when it cools down completely, the shape is fixed, and an accidental drop will shatter the beautiful creation.

Life has changed by quite a fair bit for me for 2006. An unprecedented amount of major changes have occurred during this period, from the sudden change in management (and managing style) of my office when I was still in NS, to the harsh realisation of the strengths of the different relationships I have with my friends, to failed attempts at romance, to being in a faraway land seeking worth in myself. A few friends temporarily "lost", a few new friends gained; a perspective warped, a perspective changed; confusion of identity and meaning in life, clearer perspective of what and who I am supposed to be. 2006 can be said to be the year where I truly stepped into the global arena of full adult-hood, where I start to learn how to fend for myself of sorts.

Emotional scarring from romances that never was, apprehension of what the future brings—all these are but part of the aging process. What one never experiences, one never learns. Bearing the brunt of so many setbacks have made me a warrior of sorts, a little scarred after each encounter, but learning more and more of what works and what doesn't. I tried to remove my emotional self from me (honestly, I did especially after the episode in August); it didn't quite work the way that I thought it would be. An emotionless me is as good as a computer without power; there is no drive to do anything at all, as evidenced in the sudden drop in the number of writings that I've produced, and the failed attempt at NaNoWriMo. I learnt that I am still very much a human, "the_laptop" is just a moniker to a side of me—it is not me.

Another year passed, another year closer to death, another year of experience gained. Who knows what is lurking in the Unknown of the future? As the days silently count themselves down, I am resigned to my fate that I have, indeed, aged by yet another year. Time to make good use of whatever time I have left to make it all worthwhile. A life without emotions and meaning, is a life that is not human. Time to reconcile with my inner denial.

Onward into the Unknown we go~!

December—A month of sorrow

WHEN I FALL IN LOVE (Celine Dion)

When I fall in love
It will be forever
Or I'll never fall in love

In a restless world
Like this is
Love is ended before it's begun
And too many
Moonlight kisses
Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun

When I give my heart
I give it completely
Or I'll never give my heart

And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you

A simple, sad-ish song, quite apt for sentimental December. Away from people, far from anywhere I truly know, I start to go ever deeper into my shell of comfort. Thinking about the past year, just makes me want to sit down and cry. So many things have happened, some good, mostly bad. Hurt from every direction from people whom I had once trusted, spurned by people whom I once thought were friends, ignored by people whom I thought I could be friends with, I just dunno what is really holding me together all these while.

I miss the moon; I loathe the sun. I hate the heat; I miss the cold. At least, in the cold, when everyone is all huddled up in their warm things, no one will see the coldness and harshness of their eyes when you look at them, and no one will stop for light conversation; the only moment when I truly felt as being a part of the human community. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, and so I'm still as I was... dissociated with almost everyone.

I feel glad for most people. They have a life to look forward to, a significant other to meet up with, places to go, things to do. I look at myself, beyond the faux façade that I present to the world, and discover a certain hollowness deep within. This... hollowness, I cannot explain. I have no idea what has come over me; I'm simply not like the me I was before. I still have the energy, but I don't seem to have any strong... feelings for anything anymore. It is as though I'm just an empty shell of a person walking around with a functioning logical unit, and that's about it. Not much different from a slightly intelligent zombie, I guess.

I miss the days where I just talk with MW, Irene and Su about anything under the sun, from current affairs to some finer aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. I miss the days when I would listen to the tales of "the Old Army" as told by AC; I miss the days when I sat with Kelvin at the canteen drinking tea and talking about cryptography. I miss the days when KX and I would meet up at the Jalan Kayu Thasevi prata shop and eat insane amounts of roti prata and talk about everything that happened. I miss the days when YT and I would slug it out on MSN messenger, I miss the days when BK and I would "wrestle" each other; I miss the days when I was a much happier person.

Is this the by-product of growing up? Or is this a self-inflicted coping mechanism for the whole plethora of bad things that I've been experiencing lately? I... don't think that I will find an answer to this anytime soon.

December to February is a period that I traditionally don't like. Despite of me thinking of myself as an island of mankind, I realise that I'm still very much a human by nature—I still need to be in the company of friends. I don't need to speak; just sitting there and listening to them speak is more than enough for me. It's the... company that I need, I realise. Maybe... it can also be the company of just one special person, whoever she may be.

Maybe one day I'll know the answer.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

First the book, and finally the movie! A dream come true, I guess, to be able to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn in her full glory as Ms Holly Golightly.

This is perhaps one of the few times where I'm actually pleased with the the divergence of the plot of the movie as compared to that of the novella. In the novella, Holly was supposed to have left New York City, never to return, leaving the protagonist and Joe Bell and a whole lot of other people very very broken hearted. However, the movie twisted the ending, and made it into a nice fairytale ending where she actually stayed behind, touched by the protagonist.

Hmm... Guess I should not be talking more about the plot, lest I spoil it for people who've not seen this wonderful little gem. And yes, I agree that Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women to have walked on the surface of this earth.

Till next time...