[28]

The semester is over! Now for the exams. Yay.

I'm really glad that the last day of semester 1 was a good day. Lit. tutorial in the morning was pretty fruitful, even if I didn't quite understand every single thing during the class. (To tell the truth, I didn't understand any of the questions in the tutorial, but oh well.) It helps that my tutor is a nice person. And an excellent tutor. (Unfortunate for him that this lousy lit. student is in his class. Very unfortunate.)

Then I had lunch with Yuekai and Johan at the engineering canteen. Nice food. (I wouldn't be able to stomach science canteen food 'cause I absolutely insist that my last meal in school for this semester must be a nice one.)
The mix of company is rather weird, I know. A girl from the school of business in my lit. class and a guy from my OG. And the guy can be rather weird, to boot.
It was a good lunch 'cause the food was YUM. Everyone should try the Indonesian grilled food stall in the engineering canteen.

Johan is amazing at exploiting people's friendships. I can't reveal the reasons yet... except for one: he calls up friends to serve as lunch company when he's alone in school. Staying in a hall has its downsides huh.

After that I had my last lesson for the semester. Thank goodness it was a fun one. Hahah. Final lesson, final practical: a trip to the zoo! Everyone who can should take the biodiversity module too. LSM1103; go check it out. Heh.

The zoo is a great place to spend the entire afternoon in, but having great company makes it even better. A4 is a funny group. (Maybe 'cause we're named after the standard paper size. HAHAH.)

Okay um, credits to Wes and his brother's camera for the photos. (I plucked them off Facebook.)

Animal species 1. Our lab group's unofficial rep who was forced upon the job. He does a good job of emailing everyone and telling them to wear the science faculty tee though. He calls himself the monitor lizard. ('Cause class monitor/lab group monitor. Get it? Sorry eh, this isn't very funny. Bio students' joke.)

Camwhoring on the bus. See how well we're camouflaged against the blue backdrop of the bus? Biodiversity lessons come in handy.


Our group with the nice lecturer aka Otterman. (He studies otters hahah.)

Too bad our TA had something on, so he couldn't come. We had an Andrew-Seow-lookalike substitute TA who was very nice to us too.

Animal species 2. Wes in a raincoat that makes him look like he's going trick-or-treating. Halloween's over, my boy.

It was raining very heavily on our way there, and we were all going "OH NO" on the bus. Thankfully after we reached, it slowed to a drizzle, but not after Ricky spent $15 on an umbrella. (More about the brolly later.)

I'm pretending that this act of blogging is a way to consolidate the stuff I've learnt, so humour me. Here goes the more interesting parts. (Gosh I'm actually reading my practical schedule as I type this.)

The tapirs have interesting disruptive colouration. My notes say that they resemble brown watermelons. Hmm.

Each tapir is brown with a white middle section. To me they look like jigsaw puzzles with straight lines; that's how stark the difference in colour is.

It's really a pity we can't see the white tigers 'cause some suicidal guy jumped into the enclosure, got attacked by the tigers, and died. He should have stuck to cleaning the monkey enclosures.

We saw jaguars, leopards and lions though. Big cats are seriously sexy. Especially those sleek lines. Mmmm.

Anyway, tigers are the biggest cats (i.e. the heaviest), followed by lions, jaguars, and leopards. These large cats are slender 'cause of their short alimentary canals (aka digestive tract: mouth, oesophagus/gullet, stomach, intestines etc., you get the idea). Unlike herbivores which need a relatively more complicated digestive system to digest all those cellulose, carnivores don't need so much stuff in their bellies.

One way to remain slim and sexy is to only eat meat huh. HAHAH. (I'm kidding. Don't take my word for it.)

Don't you just love bio terms. Heh. Jargon, jargon.

This just occured to me: Toothpaste is a white tiger!

If you don't know what Toothpaste is, it shows that you haven't been visiting facebook often enough. Check out my (fluff)pet.

Jaguars' coats are patterened with rosettes, with a spot in the centre. Leopards' coats have no spots in the centre of the rosettes but they're really sexy too.

Black panthers are black 'cause of the extra melamine they produce. And black is a sexy colour.

Crap, the zoo trip screwed up my sexual orientation.

Ohhh. Pumas can purr but can't roar, unlike the other big cats. Silent and deadly.

Now about lions. Apparently the darker the mane, the more melamine is produced, the more testosterone the lion has. So lionesses prefer brunette lions to blond lions. (And our TA waited till all the tourists were gone from the little air-conditioned hut before he said this. Hahah.)

The pygmy hippotamus undergoes progenesis, i.e. they develop sexual maturity precociously, so there's no need for them to grow any bigger. Thus they remain small.

Kangaroos are so cute. I love their paws.

There's this whole section on animals found in Australia, which I thought was rather cool. There's also a placard that's dedicated to Steve Irwin. Sweet.

The primates (monkeys/baboons etc.) didn't impress me much, so I won't talk about them. Severe bias. Hahah.

We saw two manatees kissing when we went by their enclosure, and this group of Japanese tourists were going "KAWAII!" and "SO SWEET!".

It was interesting to watch. They were using their tongues... Hmm it should be highly unlikely that they were feeding each other or something. SHOULD BE.

Dugongs have forked tails while manatees have spooned tails. No pun/joke/whatever intended.

Apparently penguins do not only exist at the poles. (I can't remember where else they're found, but they ARE found in tropical areas too.) So there was one open-air area and one air-conditioned area just beside it, and we were like, "Eh why is there an air-conditioned area here?"

Hmm maybe the air-conditioned enclosure is for the richer penguins.

One of the penguins was semi-bald 'cause its feathers fell out, I think. Poor thing.

Otters are cute. And social. And so pretty to watch when they're swimming. Streamlined body shape.

Zebras are black-and-white 'cause their main predator, the lion, is colour blind. And they're striped to mimic their natural habitat, the grassland.

Giraffes are sexy too 'cause they have impossibly long legs with tight skin, such that they look like they're wearing tights. The tight skin on the legs is to prevent excessive blood flow to their limbs (constriction). Their hearts can weigh as much as 20kg, 'cause they need really strong hearts to pump blood all the way up to their heads. Um, their eyes are extremely pretty as they have the thickest and longest eyelashes.

My sentences are badly linked now 'cause it's... 0147h. Oh no, so disjointed.

Two rhinoceros(es?) were fighting when we dropped by their enclosure. They were chasing each other to and fro, and were surprisingly fast. They have thick hides, so predators are not very fond of hunting them. Their butts are huge and saggy. Hahah.

For some reason the rhino reminded me of Jensen Ackles. I'm sure the physical appearances had nothing to do with it.

The orang utan enclosure was closed, but we saw some of them hanging out in the trees. They started swinging on the vines from tree to tree but one was left napping on the platform. And then Wes shouted up to it, "Eh exams are coming!"

In other words, time to get up and study. Wahahah we've become mugging mammals, to use Wes' words.

We saw some bats hanging upside down on branches. Apparently they have to flap and right themselves when they uh, defecate, or their excrement will flow all over their bodies/faces. Ugh.

Alex "Irwin" Goh with a group of croc enthusiasts.

The group went nuts posing with the bronze statues of animals around the entrance/exit. Alex has this series of photos which should be put in an album titled "Alex's dangerous adventures at the zoo". Okay I can't find any of those photos. Basically he was just posing with the statues and taking photos with his foot in their open mouths. He wanted to put his head in but crouching down was a tad too unglam. Hahah.

OHH I forgot about Ricky's umbrella! Anyway after we walked for a while, he started talking about how he wasted $15, and immediately after he said that, it started pouring.

Better still, we were approaching this rainforest open enclosure thing that kinda looked like an aviary, and there was this bridge that we were supposed to walk on. AND, Ricky asked whether we'll see dinosaurs. (Think Jurassic Park.)

I told him, "No. You'd better not say anything in case it really comes true."

Dinner was fun. We ate at KFC, and decided to send a message to our original TA to congratulate him on getting a teaching award. So being the group that we are, we composed identical messages and sent them at the same time. It was like a dictation session HAHAH. One person composed and read it out for everyone to type. Hilarious. People like us with nothing better to do than to annoy others with little pranks... annoying right.

Alex "Irwin" chilling out with a bowl of ice-cream after wrestling with the (fake) croc.

Hahah we shared a Ben and Jerry's ice-cream. Yum yum yum.
We saw this cute caucasian girl with huge eyes and everyone couldn't stop ogling at her. We saw her again at the bus-stop on the way home and the ogling started again. Gosh we're turning into paedophiles!
Maybe the wanting to visit the water playground had something to do with our paedophilic tendencies. Oh my.

I want to visit the zoo again. And the night safari, and the bird park.
Tickets are kind of expensive, but they cost as much as tickets to a concert. Plus you can spend the whole day there, so I guess it's kind of more worth it?

The bus ride and train ride home was hilarious. We've all gone mad with mugging. Normal curve, ellipse, regression line, halophiles, nucleophiles, double-blind randomized control test etc. were terms heard throughout the day. On the other hand, I guess you could say that we were doing some cross-module application. Hahah.

It got so bad that while we were waiting for the train from Choa Chu Kang to Jurong East, while discussing which carriage was more crowded, we hypothesized that the level of crowdedness follows a normal curve (congested in the middle, sparse at the ends). Anyway we found out that that wasn't the case. I can't really draw the curve here, so. Just know that it doesn't follow the normal curve. Don't even ask about the standard deviation and average, which was what Wes did.

I'm tired, and I'm not making sense anymore.
Next entry, I shall explore the definition of mugging. Whee. Do remind me if I get too caught up in mugging and forget all about it.

[12]

Out of utter boredom and complete unwillingness to get on with my theory homework, here I am again! School has been exciting so far; I like the freedom and having to take charge of my own learning. Not that I'm succeeding in my resolution to be a mugger. Maybe I will become one after I get all my textbooks, hahah.
I know I just said that I like being responsible for my stuff, but at the same time I kind of miss how everything is readied for us like in secondary school or JC. There weren't so many decisions to make then. You choose your subjects, and the timetabling committee takes care of the rest. No hard choices like which module to choose, how many points to use to bid for it, which lecture/tutorial session to go for, the list goes on.

My classes have been okay so far, I guess. Early mornings (i.e. lecture at 0800h) aren't much of a problem, though I admit I dozed off for a minute during Organic Chemistry. (Sidetrack: many thanks to Weekeat who woke me up, hahah.) I have more of a problem with the contents of certain subjects, especially the Economics module.
Some divine intervention is definitely needed here.
Sure, there're people I can go to for help, but I don't really want to keep bothering them. It took me one whole day and 3 OG mates to understand what on earth the principle of marginal benefit/cost was about. And that's only the first lecture, second principle. There're about thirteen weeks to go before this semester finishes. Can you imagine how the rest of the term will go?

I'm still not quite used to having two 2-hour lectures back-to-back. Four hours of sitting down and taking notes and listening attentively does help us to expend a lot of energy, mainly through trying to keep awake. Hahah. It reminds me of those days when I was in JC 1 and trying not to fall asleep during choir rehearsals. (Now that I think about it, rehearsals were good training for sitting still/not talking/staying awake for like, 5 hours at a time. Very useful.)

Biodiversity is my favourite module this term. Today we just had a field trip to Kent Ridge, and well, it was fun. (The not-so-fun part came when the field trip ended and we had a test that counts towards our grades. Gosh, it's only the first week of school! Worse still, the test had an essay component.) I do like walking around looking at nature, even if the weather was insanely hot. The Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (aiyah, I can't remember the exact name; it's really very long) is a cool place, literally and figuratively. Some of the exhibits are a bit freaky, but it was interesting. Next time there's an outing, we should go there!

Literature is the other module that I'm slightly worried about, 'cause I'm really out-of-touch with all the Lit. stuff. The last time I had any formal encounter with Lit. was in secondary school, and I got C6 for my combined humanities. Not very promising huh.
The good thing is, the lecturers said that there's no need to have prior knowledge, and that people might even have to unlearn some of the things they picked up in secondary school/JC. So hopefully everything will turn out fine even though I'm not essay-inclined.
At least the texts seem rather exciting. I can't wait to study Shakespeare's The Tempest. We're even going to do a film text, which is all new and fine and dandy.
The other thing I like about this module is that the lecturers all sound like angels. Sitting in the LT, it felt like we were listening to music. It was such a pleasure to hear them talk, hahah.

More than once in a while, we get lecturers who don't speak coherently/don't know how to use the microphone properly/mumble their way through, and then following the lecture gets kind of tough. Listening is already difficult enough without having to deal with these problems. (Yeah, my audio skills are poor. Enough said.)

My only conclusion: it's a time for new challenges.
I won't say that I've been stepping out of my comfort zone, 'cause to do so would be like... joining a sports CCA. I know my limitations, okay. Trying new things has been fun, and the company has been great. (The only bad things are finding out certain things that I never wanted to know, for example, that in secondary school, senior guys actually ogle at cute junior girls. Like, eew much?) To a certain extent, it's better than my JC days, when it felt like I didn't particularly fit in. Or maybe it just stems from being more comfortable in my own skin.

Whatever it is, I'm happy.
And I'll be happier if all my tutorial/laboratory slots go through and I have Wednesdays free!

[11]

Alrighty, I'm back from camp. SOW 2008 was one blast of an experience, and I sure don't regret going. Johnny English (i.e. the OG I was in) has a lot of quirky people; just look at all those photos on Facebook.
Good times and good memories are too hard to put into words, so I won't even attempt to do so.

The use-three-adjectives-to-describe-XXX game can be pretty interesting. Good fodder for conversations on the way home.
Occasionally it does freak me out how easily others read me. Or maybe it's just that others are good at analyzing people and I suck at it.

Running around all week with an average of three hours of sleep per night does tend to make people a little nutty. All the um, unusual tendencies start emerging. Scary. (Half the guys in my OG can testify to that. Heh.)

Sometimes I fear that I don't know who exactly I am any more, 'cause of all the vastly different backgrounds I've been in. (Yes, people still find it weird that an RV girl chose to go to AC.)
It's like I have different personae for dealing with different groups of people, and I don't know if that's a good thing. (Multiple personality disorder huh.) Somehow first impressions do count a lot, and people's expectations just don't allow you to be any other way besides the way they first saw you.

"People are layered, like onions. Friends peel off layers for each other, letting you in deeper and deeper - even if tears are part of the deal."
So. Who's a real friend, and who isn't?