A Day of Ups & Downs

Wow, today is a really day with mixed luck. Morning was totally rotten, yet evening onwards is pretty good. Sheesh. Oh yah, that’s the summary of the narrative entry ahead (omitting my 2cents on my tutorials). So if you’re too busy to be reading lengthy texts, feel free to move on. Otherwise, have fun reading the rest of the entry.

Well, the first wrong move came when I decided to take 154 to Clementi to change to 96 instead of waiting for 151 to come, which the latter can bring me straight to NUS Central Forum. Well yeah, reached Clementi area quite early and should have ample time to get to our first class promptly. But no, 96 has to be packed with hordes and hordes of presumably NUS students. The first 7 (yes you read that right. 7. S-E-V-E-N. 七.) bus 96 were so full they didn’t even stop, and one of them even took the rightmost lane (if you dont know, bus stops are on the pavement/sidewalk beside the leftmost lane) way before approaching the bus stop. Needless to say, by then, we’re already late for our first lesson of the day. While waiting for the bus, my sec 1/2 classmate Pei Gen (nicknamed pigeon ^_^||) nudged me on the back. What a surprise. Didn’t know he stay that area. Haha. Haven’t met him in years and it seems that he has slimmed down, probably thanks to NS.

Moral of the (part of the) day: don’t ever attempt to take this route if I have a lesson at 10am. Yesterday was fine though since my first lesson’s at 12pm.

All right, so reaching late for school just isn’t enough. Something embarrassing happened to me while trying to rush to class. I’m not gonna say it here, but some of you guys already know. Just suay lah. That kind of incident hardly happens to me when I’m just getting myself from a bus stop to a destination. Being late for something like a quarter of the tutorial lesson for the very first session isn’t going to leave a very good impression on the lecturer (who’s also the tutor lahz), who seems to be grading each of us for tutorial participation as well. Being a non-examinable module, I guess that’s very much understandable. Knowing me, I believe my tutorial participation points isn’t going to be very good.

Sidetracking a bit, I shall talk about my first tutorial session of the sem I had yesterday, which is for CS1101S. Yeah, this module places some importance on tutorial participation (10% of grade). 0.5% for turning up, 0.5% for participating with the extra 1% from lecture/forum participation. Amazingly, I got the mark yesterday just by asking an intelligent question and pointing an error in one of my peer’s suggested answer. I didn’t even have to present my lousy answers/codes. What a contrast to CS1105 tutorial. My TA’s pretty casual in the way speaks but does his stuff properly, making the lesson not so uptight bah. However, my class is like mostly non-SGean, so it sometimes requires extra effort in getting every word they say since I’m not all that used to their accents yet. Just for trivia sake, my tutorial group has only 1 gal. Hehz.

Ok, back to today’s events. There’s nothing very heng or suay for the rest until the end of the day, so I guess the next few paragraphs will be just more boring narration. Next up was CS1231Y tutorial. Not conducted by the lecturer though. A PRC TA but at least her English is quite good though there’s still the accent there. Easily understood though so I guess it’s good enough =) Realised that my concepts are rather okay so far since I got most of the answers right, and also realised that all those in my class are at least as good as me. And I dont see the super enthu lecture dudes in my group so the outlook for the bell curve for this module isn’t very promising. Will I end up below average? =( Time shall tell…

Anyways, today seems to be another day that I bump into people I know in NUS. All right, first up is part 1 of a triple combo involving my BMT bunk mate. Met him outside my 1105 tutorial room, since he’s waiting for the next slot for his tutorial. Part 2 – met him at the Deck by chance. Actually one of my OG “regulars” was beside him but I didn’t know until he msn-ed just a couple of hours back. Lol. Small world, smaller campus. And then part 3, met him the “study area” outside COM1 SR1 even though he ate at the canteen while I went to BK with zong and dom. Hehz. Crossing each other paths 3 times in a day (without prior arrangement) is the most I have so far. Okay, and lastly while having my meal at BK, I saw my classmate from NJ 1st 3 mths but I think he didn’t see me since he’s busy hunting for seats. All right, seems to be capped at 3 (the one from my og doesnt count since I didn’t notice him) people per day.

Since I think this entry is already lengthy enough, I’ll just fast forward to my 3rd (and final) tutorial of the day. GEK1505 tutorial, conducted by the lecturer himself which means it’s pretty much as enjoyable as the lectures. Was like a third late for the lesson lo, partly due to the bus being so wols on the road thanks to a 95 in front that blocks the damn road and the need to hunt for the classroom in an unfamiliar Science building. At least I’m quite comfortable with the first topic for this module since it’s pretty much a subset of what I’ve learnt in 1231Y, presented in a more linguistic form. The next tutorial should be covering on counting which also should be all right since it’ll be covered in 1231Y as well, with a bit of sequence and series in MA1505. Wow, nice complements. Oh, the classroom is too small lah, or maybe with me in it, it makes the room seem even smaller! Hahaha.

All right, the time u’ve been waiting for. So what’s so heng about my day right? Haven’t really touched on it. Actually it’s just something very trivial lahz. Let’s see, while walking towards the the Science bus stop there’s a 95 but I couldn’t be bothered to run for it so I just let it pass. In 2.5mins another one came. That’s like uber fast. No shuttle has arrived even. All right man, make full use of the damn concession =D And so I took to Central forum and saw 151A at the bus stop opposite. I crossed the road and in 30s, 151 came. To think I thought I needed to wait a while. All right, so I slept for the most part of my 151 trip back home until the junction after the stop opposite Coronation. I woke up and saw 186 at the other junction (those who know that area and routes will know what I’m talking about). I was like, wow. Tyco max (try figuring the probability of that happening). Yay, the trip home is so freaking smooth larhz. What a contrast to my horrible morning.

Moral of the day: What goes down (luck) must come up (at least for me).

I shall NOT attempt to tempt fate tmr. Taking 151 to school. Confirm.

p.s. somewhere in this entry features my 50k-th word, excluding My Records, My Videos and RF2 pages. Wow, I sure have written a lot on my blog. (hey, it’s entries like these lor. =_=)