Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Oh man... damn tired but damn happy. Haha.

I've never had this much fun after exams before. And then again, I've never been this tired before either. :P My phone is chock-full of pictures, but probably not as full as it could have been, considering that it only occurred to me to take a lot of pictures halfway through the day.

With that, you should be warned. This is a massive, damn long blogpost-cum-picspam.

So here's where the day started: in bed. Of course. Unless you wake up on the floor.

Heehee.

Had NM1101E paper at 9 am. I haven't done a level-1000 module in what feels like bloody ages. Well, actually it was just two sems ago, but it feels longer. Anyway, NM1101. 35 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. And the short answer questions really are meant to be short. They give us lined space to answer in the question paper itself and make sure we don't exceed it; and for good reason-- Arts students tend to define "short answer" as "not more than 3 pages".

The question paper for NM had to be the funniest exam paper I'd ever seen in my whole life. Mainly because of two questions: no. 26 and 27, to be exact.

26 ran something like this:

After graduating from CNM (Communications and New Media; that's what the programme is called), you get called up for a job interview! The interview goes very well, and towards the end, your prospective employer asks, "Would you happen to know anything about copyright law?" You reply, "Oh yes, I took this fantastic course in University called NM1101E-- New Media and Society, and we got a nice overview of copyright law." Your employer then smiles and asks, "When does a copyright law go into effect?"

There were five options for this question. The first four sounded completely feasible, running along the lines of "When it is put down on paper/ registered/ thought up, etc."

But the fifth one. I really wonder if anyone dared to be cheeky enough to put down their answer as the fifth option:

"Oops! I think I was SMSing my friend when the professor covered this!"


And no. 27 was a follow-up:

Your employer's a nice guy; he understands that you can't possibly expect someone to stay awake for two hours in a lecture, so he decides to let it slide. So instead, he asks, "What do you know about Intellectual Commons?"

Again, the first four options were completely feasible. And this was the fifth:

"I think I was replying to my friend's SMS when the lecturer covered this! Please ask me something else!"

Maybe what was even more amusing than those two questions was seeing the occasional quiet sniggering on the side of the hall that was taking the NM paper.


Walked out of the exam hall at 10.15 am; lazed around in the archery lounge till about 10.30, reading the copy of Archery Focus magazine that someone had left on the table, then finally decided to go shoot, as was planned.

Didn't end up shooting for very long; no bloody strength at all. Looks like it's back to doing push-ups every day and night...

And I finally took a picture of my new bow and arrows..!


My new bow, my baby, Fidelis.



My old aluminium Jazz arrows with orange and white plasti-fletches. These are 3 of the remaining 6. There were originally 12 when I bought them two years ago.



And these are my new ones: Beman Carbon Flash arrows. The fletches are blue spin-vanes; they're curled, as you can see, to increase spin as the arrows fly.


My arrows, old and new; the large black thing you see behind the carbon arrows is my main stabiliser.


Next stop: Orchard. To meet kor and Edward for lunch and pool. At least, that was all we'd planned in the beginning. In fact, all it started with was kor's and my idea to play pool after my last paper. Little did we know how much more was to come of that. :D


For all that Eugene was saying about how he sucked at pool, we still certainly didn't expect this: he started the first set that we played, he broke, and the cue ball *bounced* AND THEN rolled into the corner left pocket.

Edward and I were stunned. For all of three seconds before bursting into laughter.


Kor. Also known as Eugene. :P This shot missed, by the way. XD

Kor won that set anyway; I had three balls left on the table. And to prove a point, he poked in the 8-ball with the *back* of the cue. -_- In later sets, he'd frequently start chalking his cue, then stop and say, "Eh, why I chalk this side ah?" and then proceed to flip it around and chalk the butt of the cue.

-_-... *bashes kor over the head with cue*


Edward played a couple of sets too. But if I remember right, he lost both to Eugene.

It was only after about four sets that we sort of "warmed up" and kor and me had a pretty evenly-matched set; we each had about 4 shots at the 8-ball before I finally put it in. :P

But that was the score for the day though. Me, 1; Ed, 0; and Eugene got all the rest. Like, 5. I think.


Played for two and a half hours, then proceeded to walk aimlessly down Orchard road. Kor brought us to eat Rochor road tau huay which really is damn nice; and then we wandered further on to the newly renovated Cathay cinema.

It looked like a white version of Cineleisure from the outside; the same almost-completely-glass facade and bright lights and shopping mall-cum-cinema concept.

But the shops weren't open yet; all that was open was the 5th and 6th floors, where the cinemas were. The shops were still undergoing renovation, and some of the graphics on the boarded-up shop spaces just cracked us up.

I love this one because the dinosaur in it is just too adorable for words:


If you can't see the caption: "Oh, for heaven's sake-- it was on 50% discount. And besides, size does matter."

And next was this one, which each of us took a picture of. Click on it to see the text.


The "Buyability Scale".


We laughed over that one for quite some time. And then kor told us about a lesser-known part of the "got boyfriend can still break up" saying that guys seem to be fond of.

"Got boyfriend, can break;
Got husband, can divorce;
Got children, can sell."

-_-... Kor, I don't envy your kids in future.

Went up to the fourth and fifth floors, and on the fourth floor, the walls are covered with huge floor-to-ceiling spreads of all the movies that're opening during the holidays; : X-Men 3, Da Vinci Code, MI-3...

I couldn't resist taking a shot of a *part* of the X-Men 3 spread:


My favourite character in the movies. But in the entire X-Men universe, my fave is still Quicksilver; his sister, Scarlet Witch, comes a close second. I was so disappointed when I found out that the Maximoff twins wouldn't be in X-Men 3.


After that, went to see the NLB's new reference library. It really doesn't look like a library. And the inside is DAMN nice.

The lifts on the left side of the lift lobby have one wall that's completely glass, so as you ride the lift up, you can see all the surrounding area; and at night, with all the street lights on, it looks even more lovely. And me being the easily excitable little nut I am, was gushing so much over the view that it didn't occur to me to take a picture of it. Sigh.

And on the 7th floor is where all the books for the social sciences are. I swear, I've never been this in love with a library ever since I first stepped into NUS' Central Library.


Next stop: 301-- Sociology and Anthropology. :D



The Encyclopaedia of Sociology....



The title of this series of books on a top shelf caught my attention: "Mainstream and Critical Social Theory: Classical, Modern and Contemporary". So I took a picture of it as a tribute to my 3101 module: "Social Thought and Social Theory". I hadn't had this much fun in a soci module ever since Sociology of Deviance in my second semester.
Lower down, Mary Douglas' series on anthropological studies had a whole shelf to itself.


The three White Dead Men who make the lives of soci students everywhere hell. Nah, just kidding. :P
If you're not a soci student, then you might not know that we call the founding fathers of our discipline White Dead Men because well, they're all white, all men, and they're all dead-- the first two qualities are of greater significance obviously, since that creates room for criticism of their theories as being androcentric and Eurocentric. Coincidentally, the first letters of the words "White Dead Men" are also all their initials.
When I took Sociology of Deviance, my tutor, Lloyd, then called them Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lol.


In particular, Emile Durkheim, without whom Sociology wouldn't have become recognised as a discipline of its own. Personally, I'm glad for that particular outcome of his life's work. :)

I'm a nerd, I know. Some people in NUS haven't even finished their exams yet, and I'm here gushing over books. :P At one point, I sat down on the floor and announced that I didn't want to leave. I got up when Eugene proceeded to start dragging me across the floor though. -_-

We hung around till it was almost closing time, then headed down to Suntec for dinner. At least, kor and I had dinner; Edward had dinner waiting for him at home. Ate at Pastamania and I buried my Creamy Chicken pasta in cheese. Quite literally. :D On our way out, we passed by the Fountain of Wealth, and after some laughing and joking, we figured it wouldn't hurt to go stick our hands in the water and reap its rumoured benefits. :D


Obviously I'm not going to tell you what we wished for. But hey, we'd all just finished our exams; what else do you think we wished for...??


Crossed the road to get to the Esplanade, from where we'd be taking our bus home; despite the fact that we'd just eaten, kor insisted on getting kaya fondue. Which is what is sounds like. Instead of the famous kaya toast, it's kaya fondue.


Ta-da. Toast, butter in the right tub, and "really liquefied" kaya in the left tub. You dip it in the butter before the kaya; kaya alone isn't bad, but it tastes better with the butter. :)




And well, this is us on the bus home:


It was kinda difficult to fit three people into the picture, but hey, we managed it! Haha...

Which would bring me to where I am now, sitting here and typing this and almost dozing off. I'm damn tired but damn happy, haha.

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