NUS Sem 1 Year 1 + Randomness

So.... I'm still alive. Yay~
Semester 1 of my first year in NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is almost over! Right now I'm on my study break and final examinations are coming soon. How fast. It feels just like yesterday when I was wondering when my classes will first start.

At least one thing has improved so far: my typing. I'm typing a lot faster now and with more accuracy. xD

So FASS is trying to implement a partial liberal arts system where before you major, you have no compulsory or pre-allocated modules. Good news is, you are free to take whatever module you want~ Bad news is, you have to bid for EVERYTHING. The bidding system is so tedious. For FASS students we have 600 faculty points and 400 other points. Good luck bidding for more popular courses that can go up to 300+ points for one module.

In order to graduate with a degree from FASS, we need to take 2 General Education modules, 1 Singapore Studies module, 2 breadth modules, 3 faculty exposure modules, 7 unrestricted modules (which can be used for minors), 15 major modules for bachelor and another 8 more major modules for honours. Each module is about 4 MCs (module credit).

To graduate, we need
BA- 120 MCs and CAP 2.0
BA (Hons) or BSocSci (Hons) - 160 MCs and CAP 3.2- (optional Honours thesis)

This semester I'm taking
1. Introduction to Philosophy (PH1102E)
2. Einstein's Universe and Quantum Weirdness (PC1325)
3. Introduction to Public Speaking (GEM2027)
4. Environmental Biology (GEK1515)
5. South Asia: People, Culture, Development (SN1101E)

1&5 are FASS mods and I'm taking them to fulfil exposure modules requirement. 3&4 are general education modules, one arts and one science and I'm taking 2 as my breadth module (from physics department). I wanted to try more FASS modules but the bid points were too damn high and I couldn't get what I wanted. Philosophy cost 300+ bid points! That's more than half of my 600 faculty point! The rest all cost only 1 bid point each though... I'm saving up for semester 2.

In FASS you have to declare a major latest by year 2 and earliest year 1 semester 2. Most majors don't have any prerequisites but for the one I'm interested in, Psychology, requires at least a B- in two of its introduction modules.
I wanted to bid for Psychology modules but they were too popular and cost too much. T^T
So I'm saving up for next semester!

If you really need more time, you can appeal to the school admin and ask to extend time before you declare your major. Of course, then you'll have to plan your timetable carefully because you would miss one semester of your major modules. And if you don't graduate in time, the government's subsidy will run out... and you'll run out of $$$.

For now the expenses are about S$4k/sem and I'm using my Dad's CPF to pay first. I'll have to return the money to him, with interest, when I start working of course, but honestly I'd much rather pay interest to my Dad than to banks.

To learn more about CPF Education Scheme, click here.

To be honest though, I don't really know what I'm doing in university. I have no motivation to study because I don't know what I'm studying for. I'm just going along with the paper chase because I don't know what I want.
I've tried working in retail, admin, charity organisations etc and I cannot survive for longer than 1 month in any of them.

I constantly put myself in a position where I have many options to choose from... Maybe that's my security. On one hand I have many, many opportunities. On the other I have too many options and I don't know how to choose. I really want to find a job that I love and I would be happy to do for the rest of my life but really, so far there is nothing I can do for the rest of my life.
No joke, I even get tired of eating sometimes (mostly during long holidays) and I just stop eating because I don't like eating anymore. And eating is a necessity essential for my survival.*sighhh~*

What to do.

On a side note, I really think that I was born 30. I'm only 19 and I feel like birthdays have lost their meaning because I have celebrated too many and they just don't feel as special.

I'll tell you a secret. I'm actually 50-year-old fabricating the life of a 19-year-old for my own amusement. And if you see me outside it's because I am really, really, prodigiously good at make-up. Also botox. My friends can testify to this.

-just kidding-

Even my sense of humor is old. Oh well. Off to knit christmas mittens.

Side-side note: I reallllyyy love christmas and I have no idea why. We don't even have snow in Singapore. Or cold weather, or egg nogs or roasted turkeys or nutcrackers or plain old fireplaces... Landed property is scarce. :'(

We do have the heck a lot of chocolates though~ Mmmh~

Tumblr

Hi. Sorry there really is nothing going on with me right now and I have no inspiration as of yet so... here is my tumblr.

http://laugh-it-up--honey.tumblr.com/

I mainly reblog stuff that I find funny, interesting or meaningful. I'm also kind of a geek so I find some sciency stuff really interesting. Also Harry Potter. ♥

Bad Month

I try to post at least once a month, but I really just don't have anything to post. My life is just school, home, school, home. I lead a boring life.

Anyway, this month has not been good to me. I've been failing at everything.
I failed the auditions for my school's acapella group (no surprise here though haha). I failed my driving test (it's not that I failed, it's how I failed that I can't get over). I suck at philosophy and I don't understand crap about any other modules I'm taking. And just today, a tutor for one of my mods (environmental biology) gave me a 0/2.5% because I uploaded the assignment in the wrong format. 2.5% is nothing, I know, but she could have emailed me to tell me to re-upload it, hello.

In one of the lectures she randomly selected a guy that was sleeping in lecture and asked him to throw a feathered seed up on stage so that the whole lecture can see the seed slowly float down (yes this is what we do in  university). That guy happens to be my friend so he told me that afterwards, she found his email amongst ~100 other people in the lecture to thank him for throwing the seed. She could email a guy to thank him for throwing a feathered seed but couldn't email me to ask me to re-upload a submission in a format she couldn't open?
She had to scrutinise all the faces to pick out his face to find his email to thank him, but my email was right there with the submission! What?

I'm just pissed because of the difference in treatment. What if the assignment was 25% HUH??? 25% down the drain because she couldn't open the file. It's not like they specified what format they wanted either.


So, for the driving test. I failed at the S-curve because I mounted the curb. WHAT????
I have never struck the curb in the S-curve before, so when I did strike the curb on test day, I didn't know what to do and panicked and up the curb I went. -____-
Worst way to fail ever.
Moreover I had a trial run beforehand with the same car and everything went perfectly. No striking of curbs, no honking, no nothing.
Maybe next time I should just be like, 'screw the warm-up. Lemme at it NOW.'

Don't ever fail at S-curve. It's so embarrassing. Like all other instructors and testers will notice. And remember. Because nobody fails the s-curve.


Last thing! Guys go check out Alex G's new album, Alex G. She's a youtube-based independent artist and she's awesomeeee. She started by singing covers and collaborating with Tyler Ward and now she has her first full-length album!

Bones and Make Your Move off her album:

Some covers:

Alex G's
Youtube account
iTunes album


Okay bye :3

C.S. Lewis Quote, Mere Christianity

"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, `Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Education Rant, University Stuff and Other Stuff

The coming Monday will mark my 3rd week since lessons started. I do not look forward to studying at all. D: I know I'm whiny haha.


Education Rant

Studying used to be a privilege that only the best of the best, those with brains, money and time could afford (or you can just use money to override everything else). Studying is a means to know more information and upgrade yourself. Well, theoretically at least. It all sound very romantic, but that is just not true for me. The main reason why I even enrolled in college at all is because I have no idea what I want to do with my life and I'm dragging the deadline for a career. I don't know what I'm good at. I'm not good at anything. It's like, no matter how good you think you are or how much effort you put in to perfect your skill, there will always be a buttload more people way better than you. Good thing is, this thought keeps you humble. Bad thing is, it is also extremely depressing.

To be honest, there is nothing that is 100% this or that. Everything is a grey area. If white is good and black is bad, everything we have is just varying degrees of grey. Moral values, laws, family, technology.... So same goes for knowledge. If you know too little you are ignorant. If you know too much, you become judgemental because it is just easier for your brain to compartmentalise according to what you already know.

I am unable to enjoy studying. I'm trying to change that, but in my 15 years of education and conditioning according to society's demands, I was forced to learn things that only became progressively (how do I put this nicely) useless as I climbed the education sector. Honestly, what can I gain from knowing how to calculate the number of mols of a very specific and rare element, say cobalt, and what happens when you drop it in water or if you drop it in another equally unaccessible chemical. Really, what are the chances of you just happening by a piece of cobalt when walking on the road.

Of course, if I actually liked chemistry I might have found studying these reactions fascinating. I'm not saying I completely learned nothing from my 2 years in JC, but at this point which is about 8 months after my A Levels, I only retained about 10% of the information that my school shoved down my throat.
A few days ago I was just talking to my mom and I realised that hey, what happened to studying to quench your thirst of adventuring the unknown?
While I cannot account for education in other countries, I have been in Singapore education for 15 years of my 19-year life so I think I am pretty qualified to complain about the education system.

The whole point of schooling is no longer to educate us. Rather, we are all stuck in the never-ending paper chase where, somewhere along our evolution, a piece of paper with some writing on it becomes tantamount to decades of hard work and is known to employers as a decent enough judge of character. No, schools do not care how much information we actually retain after we leave them. They care only about the results we give in one round of gruelling examinations.
Ministry of Education may argue and say that they are trying very hard to promote an "all-rounded education" and they are, but that's not the point. Students are unable to receive an "all-rounded" education because we have reached the point where education has become a passive chore. The main purpose of schools has eventually become to train us to answer examination questions.

Take me for example. I did not understand a single crap about say Chemistry even after 6 years of "education". I knew what reactions would give what results, but I never understood why. I memorised it and managed to pass my exams, but really, I still understand Chemistry as much as when I was 14. I don't.

I am going off topic, ranting about the past 19 years of my life. I just... I don't know. It doesn't feel like 19 years well spent. My posts start nowhere and end nowhere. I don't have an introduction nor a conclusion. I just type whatever I'm thinking of right at the instant.... and perhaps, that's the beauty of informal writing.

Notice: Not that I'm hating on Chemistry (I totally am), it's just the hardest subject to study for me. I am a subjecist exercising subjecism on the subject Chemistry. (Yeah I'm lame like that.)


University Stuff

Oh yeah, about my university life, nothing much happened. I found out that Architecture students have absolutely no life and according to what Horsefly (formerly known as Poh or Lizzy) says and my observation of her recently deranged brain, most of the first-year architecture students have gone crazy staying up all night, night after night, to draw hundreds of lines, circles, and triangles.

A typical (wayy dramatised) scene in the archi studio: imagine yourself with baggy eyes, clouded mind and empty stomach, stuck in a enclosed air-conditioned room with many others in the same state as you as you draw, oh you draw, repeatedly, the same lines, lines, lines, hundreds of them, on gigantic pieces of A1-sized papers as you screw up paper after paper and have to repeat the whole process.
3 days of doing the same assignment, deprived of sleep, you finally manage to get your hand into a momentum. You are happy; relieved. You've never known such peace as your brain shuts down and your hand is able to move by itself. You start to get into your assignment. Lines start flowing perfectly from the pen that you paid too much for when suddenly, the guy sitting beside you starts laughing to himself. He stops. You ignore him and continue drawing your lines. One line, two lines, three lines. He laughs again, only this time, you detect a slightly more noticeable hint of insanity in his outburst. He must have triggered something in the room, because suddenly, the girl sitting at the back starts mumbling to herself. Her mumbles grow louder, louder, then they stop abruptly. You think it's over, you release the breath you didn't know you were holding. You start to turn back to your assignment, but he laughs again and she mumbles again. You are trapped. You are desperate. Help me.

Notice: Horsefly told me about the mumbling and the laughing but I made everything else up HAHAHA. If you want, you can make up a story about FASS students too. xD


Other Stuff

So... This happened.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees the rap. xD

This is proof that insanity is transferable from archi students (namely Horsefly) to us normal humans.

Bye~

Periods

I guess I really am running out of things to write given that I've been hermit-ing in my room for days.

Anyway, for the girls out there who are just starting to go through puberty, I got you. ;D

Frequency

Everyone's body clock is different. Normally periods have a 20-40 days cycle. Mine is about 30+ days so it comes later and later every month but that's normal. I have a friend whose cycle is like 3 months. -_____- Apparently it's genetic. As long as the cycle is regular there is nothing wrong.

PMS

They are very, very real. Secondary school biology will teach you all the names of the changing levels of hormones in your body. If you find yourself getting all moody -sudden bursts of anger, happiness, hilarity etc- then you are most probably experiencing PMS (Pre-Menstrual Syndrome) and your period should come a few days later.

Bigger Boobies

Yes they do get slightly bigger. Part of PMS.

Cramps

Some have it, some don't. If you don't properly take care of your body, you'll get it one day and believe me, it is horrible. I didn't use to have cramps and I took that for granted and continued eating ice cream, drinking cold drinks, and sleeping late and now I have cramps. T^T
Sometimes I forget that it's that time of the month and I'll forget to take precautions. If I slept late or had cold foods the day or the day before my period came, the cramps would be so horrible. It's like someone repeatedly stabbing your uterus (where the womb would be if you're pregnant) (lower than your belly, slightly above your bladder area). Or someone slowly peeling away the walls of your uterus, leaving a bloody mess (this is essentially what is happening inside your body).
So, moral of the story, take care of your body.


Sleepiness

I don't know about others, but this is true for me. I sleep a lot when I'm on my period and get tired really easily.

Body Odour

Your odour becomes really concentrated because of hormonal change. This happens to all animals. If your female dog suddenly smells really strongly, then she's in heat (fertile period).

Pads / Tampons

Please, please use the right type of pads/ tampons. If you know you have a really heavy flow then get the gigantic ones. It is really embarrassing and annoying when you 'leak'. Some friends 'leak' almost every single time and I don't understand why. Can't get bigger pads? Bad positioning?? Bad sitting posture?

On the side note, do you know that pads and tampons are a very recent invention? My mom didn't have them in her school years so they had to stuff big wads of tissue in their underwear instead. And big wads of tissue fall out really easily. The students often find wads of bloody tissue lying on the ground and nobody would dare to go pick it up because how embarrassing is that?? And she was in a co-ed school. Tough times, tough times.


In very conservative countries like India, periods are considered as punishment for girls and is shameful and taboo. Thus they are embarrassed and often use the same piece of cloth, over and over again, without washing because they are too ashamed to wash it in case anyone sees. This is extremely unsanitary and needless to say, the women have contracted many diseases.
Article here (warning: harsh reality)


Alright I hope I shed some light on things regarding menstrual periods. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Half the world population have it or had it, and that's about 3.5 billion now.
University starts next week. GAHHH.

Note: I got all the images from google images search. I must have the weirdest image search history.

Hi there

So I was just browsing YouTube and I found some videos I wanted to share!

Marianas Trench

I really like their style.. Which I can't pinpoint haha.

Like how they stutter-sang

And made a satire song

Pop music 101

Some simple instructions

For a good first impression

Now lets start with a first one

A minor chord, tensions grow

Fade in the bass, like so

Now, with momentum, go, stop

And bring the beat back

It’s called "four-on-the-floor"

A beat you can’t ignore

I’ll bring sexy back once more, yeah

They’ll love that, yeah, fo sho!

The chords are 1-4-6-4

Now I’m talkin' familiar

Harmony in thirds, not fourths

Will take you into the pre-chorus

[Pre-Chorus]

Real quick now, don’t you bore us

Hurry up and get to the chorus

Dumb down, they won’t ignore us

[Chorus]

Get to the floor

And here’s some words you should know

Like, “DJ, never let me go”

"Pour shots and then we'll lose control"

Or, “Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby”

How about one more last word like

"Hey girl, we’ve only got tonight"

Some things just go together like

"Higher", "desire," and "fire"

"Higher", "desire," and "fire"

[Verse 2]

Guitar and strings like these

To sound like Black Eyed Peas

This ones a filtered swing

This one’s a legend key

Hipster music on cassette

But you probably don’t know that yet

808s, hey, ho, hell yeah!

Heartfelt pop anthems from Mumford and his Sons

Gang vocals, here we come

Thinking, “I will always wait”

Drop more bass

[Pre-Chorus]

K, slow down

Take it to the chorus

[Chorus]

[Bridge]

I can pitch shift my voice if I want

I can pitch shift my voice if I want

I can pitch shift my voice if I want

I can make my voice low

The bridge is

The part when

You bring in

A rapper friend, 'sup?

Simplify, slow the beat

Abbreviate "feature" to "feat."

[Verse 3]

Quick now, fill in the gaps, I'll try

Right up and down, eliminate that which you really would rap and

Give them a classic, like, "Get get get"

[Chorus]

Oh, yeah, dance

[Outro]

Boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots

Joshua Ramsay

Boots and cats and boots and cats and boots

-From Jackie Toews comment

"boots and cats and boots and cats" XD

Another artist: Moriah Peters

She sings Christian-Pop~

Her voice is ♥ ♥ ♥