I know that I have yet to give my report on how I have found uni to be so far, despite having spent more than 2 weeks in school, not including the orientation week. So here are some of my comments.

Firstly, I have to get used/getting used to wearing mufti to school (in other words, no more school uniform). After 12 years of school uniform, all with a tie and somewhat long sleeves that reach near my elbow, I now have to decide what to wear in the morning. In the past, I didn't even need to think at all, it was routine. I could even do it with my eyes half-closed, and probably did so many times. Now I have to consider, whether I feel more dressed up or more casual/"sloppy", whether the colours, top and bottom match, and what watch to wear since it's inconvenient to keep taking the phone out of my pocket, that is if I remember to wear a watch. And sometimes whether to accessorise (reader: *gasp*, did I hear that?) or not but I keep that to what necklace to wear and whether to wear those blue giodarno rubber wristbands. I keep a cap in my bag to use if it gets quite sunny or if it's just after the rain (the trees continue to shower us with blessings, no?)

Lecturers: I never had lecturers worse than the 3 out of 5 of them. The two lecturers, who are Singaporean are quite fine, I pay attention during their lectures unless I'm busy looking at my notes, solving some equation or just thinking through and trying to understand what's being taught.

Then there are these 3, one Singaporean, one Indian, and best of all, this Chinese man. I am not being racist here. Actually, I only have a problem with the Chinese one.

This Singaporean lecturer is a very steady lecturer. Whatever you do, he goes on talking steadily as if nothing has happened, as if you aren't there. The only thing that means you are there is him looking at the audience. Even if you eat a giant sandwich in front of him, or your phone rings loud loud or whatever, he continues talking at the same speed and tone and whatever.

This Indian lecturer, he can't hear how he sounds like apparently or notice how the audience reacts to him. He sometimes talk like it's entertaining but it's boring, but at least I can understand his accent cos of experience for 2 years with Zac (yes, we owe it to you Zac, you have inadvertedly given us training for NUS lectures.)

Then we have this Chinese lecturer. I can't stand it when he lectures. Firstly, he MUMBLES so you have to pay VERY VERY VERY hard attention to understand what he says, or you can zone out and either sit there with an empty head or sleep. The word "path" sounds like "pass", "atom" is pronounced as "ay-tum", and "bonding" is "bunding" and because he mumbles and doesn't open his mouth or form his words clearly, a lot of crackles can be heard, something like when you wake up in the middle of the night and have no energy to talk but you talk. ya. Bad pronounciation, enunciation, and bad talking. It certainly helps he lectures on a dry topic that we never ever heard of before.

And I notice that the AVA equipment used for the lectures, particularly the audio system, is quite bad. SAJC has way better stuff. And the lecturers there don't know how to operate the AVA stuff properly. To the horror of former AVA crew, one lecturer swung the microphone (tiny clip-on mikes are used) in circles to demonstrate centripetal circular motion. gah!

Since most of my lectures (past 2 weeks were lecture only) were in the afternoon, I travelled to school on my own very often (and if lectures were late enough I had lunch at home to save $$). Usually I got a lift from my parents but I go home on my own. Yup, that's what the cap is for when you leave home btwn 10am~12nn. Bus fares are expensive, but less than when I worked cos I got a nearly direct bus to school and back. It's not too long a ride, and though sometimes it can get a bit crowded, I would've found a seat by then because I start my journey before the crowded bus stops.

Canteen food at the engin canteen (in NUS they like to call canteens with special names. engin canteen is called "Techno Edge" [it sounds corny] and Arts is called "The Deck", which befits it's layout, 2 tiers of seating area, and a burger king on another upper storey. is bizad canteen called "the terrace"?) The food is not bad (the fishball noodles are just ok though but then again it's the cheapest thing in the whole canteen at $1.80) but the canteen gets crowded from 12noon to 1pm. By 11.30am crowds build up, then some people leave at 1pm because they have lecture. But during peak period the queues are very long. don't bother queuing.

Tutorials just begun this week, few of the tutorial rooms, if any, have proper tables and chairs. 2 out of 3 of my tutorials so far have rows of lecture theatre chairs with those fold out tables (NUS's ones are not as cheapo as SAJC's cos now the NUS ones have to support laptop's weight. It can clearly take the weight of a heavy sleeping boy's head.) I have been fortunate to get what I think are good tutors, who explain things to us patiently and in detail too and we understand them. They can teach, unlike my friend's tutor.

I brought laptop to school twice so far. It's a bit heavy but I am learning how to pack light. I brought today because I wasn't able to print my notes at home (printer is protesting about the ink levels - need to replace the printer cartridge asap.) So needed laptop or else no slides to follow and take down notes. Fortunately this laptop has an easy-to-use power manager that can keep my battery life at more than 3 hours, 4 if fully charged and running at maximum battery life. But this laptop has the battery cell jutting out at the end so the laptop casing cannot fully close properly.

It's a good thing that my laptop is tough cos I have dropped it several times. One was at the school of computing. I went there for lab today and 3 of us in total were lost, walking around and around in circles looking for the way to the lab. We had individually come from the FASS side of the building and not the main entrance which faces the shuttle bus stop and the halls, so there weren't signs to clearly point us there and we had to find our way down to the basement after asking some people who were studying.

So I've not fully adjusted to uni life yet. I haven't settled on a cca yet. results for CAC+US 2009 comm will only be out mid-september, so in the meantime, i'm still looking around.

Oh yes, every tuesday now is OG lunch. It's nice to see them again. :)