Ladies and gents, welcome to yet another semester.

School for me starts at 12 pm later; for now, it's good to be back in hall. My room now is kinda bare-- especially if you compare it to the cluttered state that it was in during the exam period last sem-- since I've just moved back in, but with all the notes and stuff which accumulates over the course of one semester, I think the shelves will be filled soon enough.

Michelle's just moved in this sem; hey girl, you're finally a full-time Eusoffian! Haha... So now I have one more person's room that I can just pop in to. :P

This sem, four out of my five classes have lectures in seminar rooms; the classes must all be pretty small. I checked the class rosters this morning, and it looks like there're less than a hundred people in all those classes. Not to mention that this must be the most amusing thing that I've seen in my five-- six?-- semesters here: the XD3102 module (Gender Studies across Disciplines) I'm reading this semester has a grand total of SEVEN students.

Lol. Frankly, I'm not surprised. The module's one of the two compulsory modules for my Gender Studies minor, but it's only being offered for the first time this semester, and a prerequisite is that one must have read four other modules in the Gender Studies minor course. Lucky thing for me that I have.

But if the number of students in the class doesn't change even after all the bidding rounds that're still going on... hm. Can we say "no bell curve", anyone? ^_^

This sem is also the one and only semester in which I managed to completely clear out my Program Account: over 3000 points accumulated over the course of five semesters, and I blew it all one just one module this semester: a level-4000 module for which there was a vacancy of one in round 2B, when students other than honours-year students were allowed to bid.

So I got the module, but at an extremely high price. To quote my mum: "better make sure you bring back a super A+ for that one".


Joseph was helping me move most of my clothes and the bulkier stuff into my room on Saturday, after which we sat down for a while and watched "The Devil Wears Prada". It's funny and all, and you know, it's one of those shows where the lead character has to make a choice: relationships versus career. Invariably, the lead is a woman.

So then it begs the question: why should she need to choose? Why can she not have both? Why is there always something "wrong" when a woman has a dysfunctional social life at the expense of her career?

As Andrea pointed out in the film (regarding Miranda's semi-slave driver work style): "if she were a man, there wouldn't be anything wrong with it".

So the way I see it, perhaps "The Devil Wears Prada" isn't just about how we shouldn't sacrifice our personal lives for corporate success. Perhaps it's also about how women always seem to be the ones who run into more of these dilemmas, and how the media continues to play a part in this. And perhaps if we believe it enough, we have a hand in our own unhappiness.