Some of the reasons why I wish I never had to graduate. Some of the reasons why I love NUS.


I love the Central Library. This is a picture of the Journals collection on the fifth floor, but what really was love at first sight for me was the open shelves section which takes up more than half of the third floor. I still remember my first day of school when the librarian informed us blur little freshmen that the open shelves were downstairs, and upon rounding the corner, we were greeted with literally hundreds of shelves, *filled* with books. I was immediately besotted. :P

Yes, listen to my inner nerd waxing lyrical. :)




A sign posted beside a Literature prof's office door; most likely put up by he himself. This prof was my lecturer when I took the Literature intro module in my first semester, and he always has funny stuff stuck on his door.

The second picture is just to show you that "six doors away" is actually the door out of the Literature department. :P



After stepping down as exco, I'm now just a school archer. And this is how we occupy ourselves when the new batch of juniors are being taught how to shoot. Here's Nic and Weizheng playing tic tac toe, archery style. Other activities in the lao jiao club also include playing blackjack, *also* archery style-- a score of 21 is counted as blackjack. :)



Now for something from hall. When room doors become like a chatroom for the entire floor--posting one message after another, yelling at each other, goading each other on, and all the other things friends do for fun.


When else are we ever going to have the chance to experience things like these again...?

Getting swamped by readings all over again.

Getting so tired of trying to keep up with the workload, but at the same time, I know that I really can't afford to fall behind. Argh.

Running away isn't the solution, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't like to. However, my timetable for this semester ensures that the only "free" night I have (when I can stay up late and do anything I want) is Tuesday night, because Wednesday is the only day of my four-day week which does not start at 8 am. Sigh.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm sure I really wanna go for Honours year when I'm still struggling the way I am. I hate the system, but without the system, I have no direction, I have no idea what I'd do with myself; this is all we've been taught to be.

Who really cares what you believe if it isn't what everyone else thinks is true?


Fidelis probably hates me for neglecting her for the past month or so. She hit me in the face just now after training. On the other hand, it probably goes to show that I shouldn't shoot when I'm sick, contrary to my own belief.


And speaking of being sick, meanwhile, my throat feels likeit has a pincushion (with pins) stuck down it, and my own nose tries its very best to suffocate me.

If you're in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS, then you should know by now that the faculty club's student elections are coming up soon... on the 7th of September, in fact. If you didn't know, where've you been..?

Anyway, just helping out a few friends:

This is a link to a podcast by one of the teams contesting in the election; there're actually 13 members in this team, and their website can be found here.


To all in NUS FASS, please vote on 7th September. And please vote based on who you believe can best represent you; this is not some simple popularity contest.

Overslept.

And I missed Science of Music lecture.

No, it's not that I've never missed lectures before (let's not forget that in my second semester, I skipped my E Lang and Philo lectures from week 4 onwards, haha; I *so* should've taken 6 modules in that semester.. I had too much free time), it's just that I've never.. um.. overslept through them before. :P

Oh well.

First time for everything.

But the really bad thing about this is that I think I'm falling sick. Sigh... I'm starting to wish I had Vitamin C in my room or something. I like those nice orange-flavoured types that you can either chew or suck; I hate tablets and the like.



Archery AGM yesterday was quite the farce... not enough people so it was a walkover for almost all the cells. Bleah. But it seems that there're a lot of Eusoff Hall people this year! Almost everyone who was there who stayed on campus said that they're either in Eusoff or PGP... cool. :)

Hm.. speaking of Hall, I decided to sign up for IBG (Inter-Block Games) road relay. I've been thinking of running road relay for sometime now, but since it isn't confirmed that I'll be staying in Hall next sem (and I don't even know if I'll be allowed to) and I don't have that much running experience, I thought maybe I'd just try out in IBG first, haha.

I can't do very well in all the other sports, anyway. The only other thing I could play would be netball, but for some reason, I can never seem to gel with netball players, so playing netball is kinda out of the question.

Road relay... I'm pretty good at pacing, I think-- I paced my whole JC class for 2.4, haha. Excluding the one guy in our class, of course. :D So, I figured that if I had enough time to build up stamina, I might probably be better at distance running than sprinting. I just hope my knee doesn't give out on me though. I have stupid knees and ankles and arches and whatnot.



Went over to KR last night after Archery AGM; Kristy came over to Eusoff to have a look at my room, and the first thing she said was "Waahh..!! So big!!" Then she said the same thing about Jasmine's room as well when we dropped by her room. Haha.

Then I walked with her to Kent Ridge, since it was about 11.15 by then and the shuttle buses had stopped running. It's not very far anyway, and it's pretty nice to walk in school at night.

KR is nice... very lovely and new and all. I can't get over just how much it seems like a hotel! You use your matric card to open the main door and to lock and unlock your own room too.

The rooms are pretty small; the last time I saw a KR room was when I was in Year 1 (bleah, now I feel terribly old) and I didn't think they were that small before. Now that I look at it, they're probably about half the size of Eusoff's rooms! But they're still cozy. And they have nice views. I really like their windows!

Chwan stays one floor above Kristy, so we spent a couple of hours in Chwan's room talking about archery and other crap and watching archery videos, haha.

Have I mentioned that I love staying in school? :)

So... I heard about the decision regarding Pluto's planetary status yesterday. Michelle told me about it when I got back to Hall; she'd stayed the night in my room after Bash.

"Pluto's not a planet anymore."

"Yeah, I heard they were trying to come to a decision... So what's it now if it isn't a planet?"

"A dwarf planet."

My brain goes, "What the hell??"

Me: "So a dwarf planet isn't a planet? So a dwarf isn't human?"


Poor Pluto.

Am going to be so dead tomorrow.

Both literally and metaphorically speaking.

I swear that one day, when you look up "madness" in the dictionary, my picture's gonna be on there. What other kind of idiot goes for a bash on Thursday night when she has class from 8am-6pm on Friday?

Madness. Idiocy. Gerri.

Synonymous, no.

Anyway. Doing the student helper thing in the AS7 com lab again. Watching the minutes tick away before I can scurry back to Hall to get ready and leave with the other girls. Busy ignoring my Welfare and Social Justice reading for tomorrow's lesson in front of me. Because all that it's done for the whole of yesterday and today is confuse me.

And this is only the second reading.

Saw a friend just now who's also taking the course, and as she hasn't zapped the reading yet (you're so gonna die, girl), I lent her mine to do so. She was flipping through it when she was done and she asked, "He (our lecturer) wants to explain this in one and a half hours?"

The first thing which popped into my head was: "Huh? Explain?"

And being oh-so-intelligent and being in the habit of speaking without thinking, it happened to be the first thing that popped out of my mouth as well.

But, I saved myself by elaborating: "He's not gonna explain; it's taken for granted that we've all read and understood it, so all we're gonna do is discuss."

I.e: Confuse yourself even further if you don't even understand the reading itself in the first place.

"Oh, man," was her reply.

Yeah, you and me both, girl.

We're two of the seven Year 3s in the module fighting with the remaining thirty-two Year 4s for a good grade. And if the readings carry on like this.....

Someone save me.

TGIF...? Whoever thought of that phrase hasn't seen my Friday schedule for this semester...

8-10am: GEK1519, Science of Music. All the way in Science fac. And I have to walk up the blardy slope and how many flights of stairs to get to LT 32. Even getting to wake up at 7 am because I stay in hall isn't much concession.

12-2pm: SN2234, Gender and Society in South Asia. Lunch made me a little sleepy. Maybe in future I should just go back to hall and sleep...

3-6pm: SC4215D, Welfare and Social Justice. My very first level 4 module. Woot. Wish me luck. First lecture is later, in about half and hour's time. It's a seminar-style module though, and from my experience with seminar classes, they're usually more fun than lectures. Probably coz they're more interactive and stuff. Hope this one will be the same.

So... 8 to 6 on a Friday. Sigh. At least there are breaks in between. And at least I still have a four-day week. Mondays are free. Yay. :)



Things I have found out about hall recently: was working at the AS7 computer lab yesterday, doing the student helper thing. Turns out that Bingjie's my partner for the timeslot, and his eyes yesterday were damn bloody (pun intended) RED.

So he tells me that I should be careful coz apparently there's a bout of conjunctivitis making its way around Eusoff. Eeks. And there're about ten victims already. :S Somehow this sounds familiar... last semester I heard that a lot of people staying in Kent Ridge Hall got dengue or some other fever-related virus...?

Also, last night, Yuimin dragged Meiling and me down to the function hall to go for the interim committee interviews. So we all decided to go for the IBG (Inter-Block Games) comm, since after careful consideration, we realised that that was the only "short-term commitment" comm. (IBG is only on for about a couple of weeks; after that then no more comm, haha. :P)



And in other news, Gerri has made two purchases today which make her very happy: earphones and a LAN cable. Yay. :) :) I can now enjoy my music while in the library (provided I don't turn it on too loud) and I don't have to rely on the shoddy wireless in hall anymore! It's not that NUS' network is terrible or anything, it's just that the Halls are all far away from the main buildings (hence the main area where the network is stronger), so it makes more sense for the residents to plug into the LAN, which is *even* faster. Like whoa. Haha. :D

Well, shall go back tonight and have fun. :D