damian you absolutely HAVE to come VISIT me. thing is my term closes by about end april or so. i dunno if you're still having classes then. 'm just a stone's throw away from New York. you have to come. have to come have to come. have to come.
you get the point right?

my hols start by about end april to early may. and i'll be coming home. then heading to shanghai to visit my dad i think. i wanna travel too!
i should stop lusting over holidays. finals are in like 2 weeks. then i'll finish within a week and a half and winter break's here!
but it only lasts like 2 weeks. weep.

hello people!

i decided to come here and inject some life to this blog.
the tag board's been changed. finally got myself to get it changed.
ironic that i took like a month of procrasination to get something done, when the actual process of getting it changed, was like, in a single minute.

but thats me! procrasination is my greatest sin.
and for that, i'm paying for my horrible progress in medicine. =>

to everyone out there, having exams, all the best!
hope you all are in a much better place than me.
it feels like A levels all again, just that, A levels was actually better... cause we were dealing with stuff being taught over two years...
while right now, we are dealt with almost equal amount of workload that we are supposed to digest in 3 months.
3 months people. its only been 3 months! can you believe it? and guess what? i've been taught almost 3 quarters of my syllabus already, and i'm being tested all that i've been lectured so far.
(unfortunately, my last lecture is two days before my first paper. boo hoo)

so anyway... jiayou!
don't despair if its too tough or hard or anything.
cause bottomlife is, university life isn't as simple as we thought it would be...
so lets just get this sem over and done with, have a good month long break, and start another sem with better planning. =p

hope to see you all soon!
and i think i'll be planning a trip next year...
just wondering if anyone's interested.

oh yeah... to the girls in US. roughly what period are you all actually coming back?
cause i'm going to East USA next year... the new york, chicago, florida, washington stretch... maybe i'll pop down to visit you guys! and you could like be my guide or something!

just look at me. planning trips for the 3 month break next year, when i probably won't pass my anatomy. tsk tsk. =/

cheers!

this is in response to ger's entry.
i think that if a university is aesthetically appealing to begin with, it makes it a lot easier to love the school. and it doesn't always have to be red-brick buildings and all. i mean, in my case, it probably is. but even as a kid in pri sch, i loved my school coz there were all these little nooks and crannies where i hung out and sat and chatted with my friends and that was what that place meant to me, something dear.

these days, as the buildings are increasingly being made of glass and concrete, i can't help but feel that aside from being perhaps architectural successes, they're just empty empty shells. at UofM, there are newere concrete structures scattered amongst the older brick buildings. but perhaps coz the pace of life is rather slow, and we're such a small town establishment, that there's an old vibe about the campus, further emphasized when the weather turns cold and foggy. i can't say i LOVE my school. that'd be pushing it, but it's still rather dear.

and then i look at the other residents in the town. all of whom are probably related to the university(ie. their kid goes there, they own a business that supplies hotdogs to the school, they're working as a janitor at the school, they're fans of our great football team). i mean it, that's how small and homely Ann Arbor is. it's all these people( and not necessarily the students) who are so attached to the school. the students probably are. i mean, in their drunken stupor after a match well-won, they're crazily high and singing really loudly and stuff. but it was this family whom i noticed before the football game even started, and they were singing the university's anthem at the top of their voices, along the sidewalk.
and i wondered.. why am i not?

another thing. i think the UK unis will find a tad more romance. something aout the chilly and wet English weather i suppose. and maybe the older stone buildings.
off now.

an innocent question in lecture today reminded me about huilin's post a while back.

the question by the teacher was, "why did u choose to come to nus?"

immediately there was laughter round the room. and much of it was pretty sour, in the "ha.ha.ha" kind of way. apart from the international students, who said that nus is famous etc, the other responses were the -_-" kind. like this classmate of mine, who said (in german) "because my mum sent me here." another classmate said that she didn't have a choice, since the other 2 unis in sg dont have an arts department and she cant go overseas.

and then the next question was, "is nus good?"

the response was more laughter and i heard a few pple say "oh please." (and contrary to popular opinion, i wasnt the one who said that. heh. =P)

well, in a nutshell, huilin, ur right. many of us here are in nus/ntu because, well, we don't really have a choice. perhaps one might feel attached to the courses taking especially if one had to fight to get in, but for those in the "generic" courses (the "as long as u can get into nus u can get into that course -_-" zzzzz), for most people, unless it was a struggle to qualify for tertiary education, or for some reason in love with the institution and everything it stands for, a love for the university is pretty non-existent.

in science fac, i see people wearing the sci fac tee, but rarely do i see anyone trapising ard in a "i love nus" tee. and the only few i've seen so far are all definately international students. then again, it could be that the shirts i've seen so far are aesthetically unappealing. (for the record, i own one fac shirt, but i will never wear either of the above mentioned.)

i wont say that nobody loves the universities itself, because when i was on the pagoda at chinese garden during mid autumn festival, this bunch of people next to me were yelling out loud "I LOVE NUS!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~~~~~~" and then "let's do it again!" "WE LOVE NUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH~~~~~~~" and i could tell that they were quite sincere (trust me, i would know) though they were irritating the hell out of everyone else present by their whooping and screaming and shouting.

what people might miss would be the people they know. and this can be readily dissociated with the university itself. truthfully, most of the time, unless u had a close relationship with some faculty, or u represented the institution in some competition, you wouldnt feel for the place after you leave it.

actually this ties in quite nicely with the ongoing debate about 1 in 100 nus alumni responding for a call for donations in comparison with a 40% response rate in us universities. i guess the main issue here is how attached one feels towards the university, and that is dependent (to some extent) on whether you chose to go there in the first place. and when you have a choice, did you really have a choice?

just rambling here. back to mugging.

i want pics too!!!
there are bengal tigers in brunei? i thought they were in Bengal.. *scratches head*

my brain's a little woozy now. coz it's filled with thoughts of sleeping on the library table. econs text is really a great cure cure for insomnia.

anyways. my mom is up here and she brought along this brilliant device called Starhub Digital Voice Travel. i have decided that i will randomly call people to chat. so you may just be the next unlucky or lucky one!

This is an offical warning to yisheng: WE WANT PHOTOS.

ahem.

what webcam session? why i'm pangsei-ed again?
anyway. i celebrated halloween here in michigan. complete with dressing up and stuff. i went as a ninja geisha thing. which people insist on calling an anime character thing. whatever. i was in the haunted house scaring people so my makeup's pretty ghastly.
i can't seem to post pictures. i'll try it some other time.
and have a rollin' good time people!

hey! s/o pls post stuff abt the halloween party that you guys have at ys's house! so that ppl like me who overslept through the entire webcam session can busk in the belated atmosphere... haha! (btw, yesh.. i did see that obscene emoticon, hanjie... which makes me wonder why you have tt emoticon in ur comp, yisheng.. *raise eyebrow*)

it's halloween today and my chicago singaporean seniors are at this place called belmont watching a halloween parade but oh well... my batch didn't go... There are kids knocking on my door every now and then coz my residence hall is open for kids from the neighbourhood to trick or treat since the neighbourhood isn't exactly very safe for them. I went around the neighbourhood just now and there were some houses that are really done up in halloween style. It is kind of disappointing to realise that halloween isn't tt big a thing in chicago, or prolly it's just hyde park... Those dumb sweet valley books give me all those false expectations... haha!

oh... what happened to our travelling plans? some kind soul please be nice and plan!! :)

btw, i have the a capella version of bizarre love triangle, the song that was originally played on our blog before it got this screwed up stage... maybe we can upload it when the blog starts functioning normally again...

take care everyone! :)