First Two Weeks #yalenus

(pre-school: primary schoolmates Rachel and Teressa slept over at my dorm on National Day! We went out to catch the fireworks. I love meeting up with them. Talented, humble, extremely loving people. And I tried my hand at some really amateur nail art again! Woohoo)

Monday, 12 Aug: Comparative Social Institutions began their Inequality week with a cute video of themselves,  OMGIGOTBRIANMCADOOFORSCIENCE (but sometimes classmates make the best teachers), and Happy First Class, First Class cake and ice cream party!

Tuesday: Yale-NUS Christian Fellowship dedication ceremony & dessert picnic UNDER THE STARS! (& lots and lots of Garrett's thanks to Sumay!)

Wednesday: our free day of the week - an enjoyable lecture by President of NUS, Prof Tan Chor Chuan, about travelling and art. (He has travelled. So. Much. And his paintings are wow.) A bit bummed about missing both SOT and OM/MM meeting on that day though. And Andrew, Huiting and Yan Ee came over to UTown! Poor Andrew's a bald BMT boy now.

Thursday: Our second Scientific Inquiry lecture - YAY SPECTROSCOPES!! Really steep learning curve, though. Week 1 of Scientific Inquiry was about the Atomic Structure - from different philosophers' ideas of the building blocks of nature (Platonic solids, Aristotle's elements and qualities) to Thompson's experiment and the Rutherford model. STEEP LEARNING CURVE for someone who hasn't done any Science since 2009. But it's all really interesting once I understand it (especially with the help of schoolmates).

Also took Sumay out to dinner for her birthday (and drove Pei Yun to Orchard). OverEasy at Fullerton has a great view and awesome food. Kinda ruined the birthday, though, because I thought it'd be nice to drive Sumay around but navigating the CBD is impossible without a GPS, especially when you're a directions idiot (it was also my first time driving anywhere near town) and we spent a lot of time making wrong turns on the road. Felt quite pissed off at myself after that so I banged on Kevin kor kor's (HAHA) door and made him accompany me at the UTown green with my picnic mat and another generous bag of Sumay's popcorn. It's a lovely place to chill, especially with the cool night breeze.

Friday: Got started on our series of Literature classes on the Ramayana - in comic, prose and poetry - and our series of Philosophy and Political Thought classes on Classical Chinese Philosophy (Kong Zi and Mo Zi when pronounced by an angmoh prof = Cozy + Mozy). And Pei Yun made chalkboard paint!
Also (successfully and seamlessly) drove some of us to Raffles to support Evan at his piano recital!

Saturday: visited the National Museum with Sam and my brother (who had just come back from Mongolia - fantastic stories, breathtaking views) to visit the Princely Treasures from the House of Liechtenstein collection. My favourite art piece was of David and Goliath by Girolamo Forabosco - the description read: "While the story is often regarded as a tale of victory over evil, the artist portrays David as a rather melancholic-looking youth with a heavy burden on his shoulders."

WEEK TWO: 

Monday: Yingyan came over!!! + my last tuition session at City College. And for Science, since Week Two was about the Periodic Table, we got cards with the descriptions of 'alien elements' from an 'alien planet' and had to piece together a periodic table. And Kevin posted on the FB group about losing his Old Spice shampoo - in no time, both Sau and I had run up to his floor laughing and kevinfanclubfangirling, unplanned and uncoordinated - we just totally live up to our reputation as his biggest fans!

Tuesday: Christian Fellowship was led by Jared! + First official acapella session - Seasons of Love!

Wednesday: SOT Graduation photo-taking thingy + DRAGONBOATING with Yale-NUS! No pictures of it yet, unfortunately, but it was really fun.
Also, the Social Institutions department gave us homework: go somewhere public and break a social norm. I said hi, complimented and smiled at random people at Suntec, and asked to shake two people's hands at UTown. No, I was too shy to go up to someone with reflective shades and do my makeup.
Also, in half an hour, I felt like I had learnt more from Dylan than I had in my entire two weeks of school. We had a worksheet about electromagnetic waves and emission/absorption spectra and the atomic structure and Dylan was like "this is J2 stuff" and I haven't done Physics since Sec 2 and how did professors expect us to be able to explain quantum physics after 1.5 hours of looking at pretty colours through a spectroscope? Maybe they're just trying to encourage learning from one another. Lol. But it works - I've learnt so much from Dylan and Sau and Pei Yun!

Thursday: During our Literature lecture, as the prof was talking about the Ramayana, Graham came in riding a bicycle with Anshuman as Rama, his body painted blue, waving like royalty.

Because breaking the social norm for homework is awesome.

I hope this wave of weirdness and social-norm-breaking grows into a culture. It's too cute! My friends did other really cute things too - went to the shops at Clementi Mall and queued up just to say Good Morning to the cashier; went around UTown in our dorm's roller chairs; sat on the floor at a foodcourt; burst out in song and dance at Starbucks; curtseyed instead of saying 'hi'...

#hipster

Okay, on a serious note, there are A LOT OF READINGS and I've been consistently sleeping at about 3am. It's a big problem. And I have the Ramayana poetry book 3 and Meng Zi to finish reading by tomorrow. What am I doing blogging?!

Let's see what Friday brings!