Monday, January 23, 2006
Campus Accommodation
I just got notified that I've been offered a place in Temasek Hall!!! Yeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh babyyyy. This is a-fricking-mazing. :D All's well that ends well eh. Here's to more autonomy in the days to come :)
Shu at 3:09 PM
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Starting School at NUS
Okay so here's the update. I've managed to secure a place in NUS starting this semester! Wooohooo. No more waiting till July. Although it is kind of lonely when you start school in Semester 2 and miss out on Mass Orientation and what not. Everyone seems to know everyone already, even the exchange students have their own form of introduction to school or each other.
To add to the list of problems, the rounds involved for the bidding of the modules that I want are mostly filled by now cos it's been open since Dec. Which means, I have to take the modules that no one else wants. And of course, psychology was one of the first few that went. :( Argg. But the admin has done me a huge favour of letting me start halfway through the academic year, so I shouldn't complain :) And dear Aliii has been such a great help to me! She's been teaching me the ways of the world, in the NUS bidding system at least hahah. If not for her, I'd be left not knowing what to do cos as I have found out the hard way, in NUS, you have to ask for everything. Even an introduction to school administrative processes and what you need for uni (like a matric card, ez-link, etc etc.) No one in admin tells you that you should have this or that, you're supposed to find out what you need and go about getting it. Or maybe it's just the fact that everything you need to know is usually included in talks during Orientation in the first sem, and I just happened to not be party to it haha. Whichever the case, Ali's the best at helping and I owe her big time. :)
Right now, I'm aiming for modules in philosophy, sociology, literature, and communications management (these are some of the only few which don't require prerequisites and are still open for bidding). I hope I get them. I'm still short of one module for the standard 5 each semester. But then again, I'm not planning on graduating from NUS, so I guess it won't matter so much if I take four modules which I'm vaguely interested in, as opposed to taking an extra 'Singapore Studies' (Oh mann.) module just to fulfill that quota.
I really hope I can get a place on-campus though, cos I stay so bloody far from NUS. Feh. But the chances of that are close to nothing, seeing that there're on average 300+ people on the waiting list. Haha oh well. Maybe I'll be able to move out and find someone to share an apartment with - the prices aren't too bad from what I've seen.
Anyway, back to point one! I'm so glad that I'm starting this week! It's such a last minute thing, haha. I wrote a letter to NUS explaining my gap year and alot of other stuff last weekend, and they wrote back the next day saying I could come down on Monday to finalize my admission. So it was happy-happy joy-joy for me!
Okay, maybe you should ask me if I feel the same in 2 weeks time. I have a feeling I might have dropped quite a few notches on the happiness scale by the time essays start to pile up. And the fact that I won't have as much time to laze around and go out, worst of all, to travel. But then again, you could call me lucky in the sense that I've been able to take a whole year off to travel and do what I wanted to do, and still start schooling half a year after everyone else who started before me. I don't find the trade-off too bad :) In fact, I feel better commencing on my studies, whilst knowing that I've seen at least a bit of what is out there.
I'll still be able to travel as much during during the semester break, so all is not lost. Just gotta try and bring myself back to Study Mode. Which is the hard part when the closest I've had to studying for the past year, has been reading travel books and photocopied novels bought on my sojourns. Oh well, here's looking forward to the semester break even before school has properly started! Haha, it'll be Europe if I can get good enough grades..(or cash, haha)!
Shu at 11:17 AM
Monday, January 02, 2006
Continued.
A few pictures from the shoot with Quentin as the photographer and Shannon, the designer :)
B. and I.
Angsy and I at Mama Han's xmas party.
Joey and Ed, from Hong Kong.
Our bus driver on his sleep shift haha!
Having a beer with some friends from New Zealand.
Shu at 6:00 PM
Back from Vietnam.
Bert and Baptiste having some Bia Hoi.
School children outside the DMZ museum getting all excited over having their picture taken, haha.
The interior of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Joey and I with My Hanh, one of the vietnamese friends we made in Mui Ne.
In Ho Chi Minh.
Sitting on the beach in Mui Ne - love it.
Our second day in Hanoi!
The things I've been up to these past few months. Haven't uploaded the sydney pics yet though cos there're just too many. The scroll of photos above is already long as it is. Haha. I'll write more about it later on, it's just too hard to summarize everything right now. :)
Shu at 4:36 PM
