Average Days

We met the whole RSI cohort in the lobby, the went down to the Student Center (yeah Americans spell it that way) for breakfast. The queue was humongous. I ordered the same thing as yesterday – a hamburger. From tomorrow onwards, I’m going to eat cereal for breakfast. Well things have been nice enough, but I’m getting a little concerned that we Singaporeans are not mixing enough. I hope the others will be more agreeable to sitting with the other RSI people at other meals, if not I think I will anyway, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be making new friends just because the others are too shy to.

The humanities lecture today started out a little messy and boring, with things being thrown all over the place. I suppose I was a little surprised at how spontaneous the Americans were, they seemed to want to answer every question and were very keenly interested in the lecture – something you don’t really see in Singapore. The insights given were unique and very creative, I are always admired the ability to interpret and present, something I think some Singaporeans are very lacking in. It was intellectually stimulating, and the lecturer, Mr Lance Rhoade is excellent. What amazed me was that he chose to start with the background and history of the author – something which, again, is not really done in Singapore. It really helps in understanding the different aspects of the book.

Chemistry went over my head at different points. Sir Adrian Campbell lectured on something close to his job at Bayer, colloids. My class seemed to have immense knowledge on the subject, which impressed me to no end. I was clueless as we haven’t covered it in Chemistry yet, and indeed have yet to even discover the word. I must say, though, Sir Campbell gave a very complete picture of colloids, and though I was lost at some points, I understand the applications of it and how to make a colloid now. Although, I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow’s lecture if it’s going to be some bombastic thing.

We joined the rest who were already eating for breakfast, and listened to Logan give a rather interesting opinion on American politics. Not surprisingly enough, most of the Americans around the table thought that Bush was a complete goof. Anyway, after breakfast, Logan led the other to Building 34 for the humanities lecture. Caleb, Jenya, Harold, Priscilla, Milf and I stayed behind because Harold had been kind of put in a difficult situation by Shiling and had to wait for her. I waited as long as I dared – 0828, after which Jenya, Caleb, Veena and I rushed off to campus. Harold and Priscilla, being extremely nice, stayed behind. Second day in a row I got pissed by Shiling. Now everyone has a really bad impression of Singaporeans because we’re always late. What a stupid thing to be doing.

Anyway Humanities today was much more fun than yesterday – we spent most of it discussing how we would treat a monster of our own creation in order to make him worship us. The suggestions given were quite creative, but I don’t think any really made any impact. I didn’t really get to listen to the conclusion, because I suffered a bought of diarrhoea during the last twenty minutes. Maybe it was the ice-cream the previous night, I get them impression that it was full cream. And maybe I can now confirm my suspicion that I am slightly lactose intolerant.

The shuttle ride was quite long, but I had some fun on it with casual talk with Iris (its pronounced ear-iss, by the way). She signed me in to the labs, then we took the stairs to the sixth floor (MILF likes the stairs, apparently). She then did something totally unexpeted - she brought me to get an employer’s pass, so that I can access any room on the sixth floor. I mena, none of the other people working at MGH got one. Its so cool, they took my picture and put it on the pass in two minutes - I have got to take a photo of that and put it up here.

Then we started work. She went out of her way to guide me at every step for the PCR, we even did a trial run before that. The whole thing took about 3 hours because I was still rusty, then we as a lab went down for lunch. I stood throughout lunch, because if not someone working at the lab would not have a space. I kind of made a ‘Singapore must respect elders and let them sit’ excuse for that one. Standing was fun, helps digestion.

Today started out rather sketchy. I first woke up at what I thought was 0745 – perfect for the meeting time we had agreed upon for breakfast. Turning off my alarm clock, I headed downstairs, figuring a quick walk would help me while away the 15 minutes. I made a big mistake in choosing a pair of shorts and a polo shirt, the weather was like an air-conditioner at 16°C, I immediately headed upstairs to change into something a little more fitting – trousers coupled with a jacket.

Upon arriving at the lobby (again), the receptionist asked me if I would like to take a look at the paper, to which, having time to waste, I said yes. Milf pointed at a two-inch stack of newspapers, and my jaw dropped. The whole thing was their entire Sunday paper. Looking at it caused me to think a little sarcastically how well Singapore has done on the newspaper front – our Sunday paper looks more like a tabloid.

Then I happened to look at the wall clock, and found to my astonishment that it was not 8am, it was 7am, I had set my watch an hour fast – don’t ask me how that happened, I’m quite sure I’m not deaf, maybe the pilot got his times mixed up (yeah, that’s it, blame the pilot for your screw-ups…). Anyway, I decided that more sleep would definitely be a good idea – I was a little jet-lagged and as such only slept around 2 the previous night. So I went back to my room, turned my alarm clock back an hour, and hit the sack. Like the genius I am, I forgot to set the alarm.

Well bagels don’t really appeal to me, so I had a hamburger for breakfast, made fresh at the convenience store at W20. the others ate bagels, and I distinctly remember Priscilla having a not-so pleasant encounter with her bagel. I drank a cup of coffee which tasted like crap, but I probably didn’t have a choice, I couldn’t sleep through the entire day. But its kind of stupid, coming here with a ton of jetlag and being expected to be ready to go just 12 hours later.

In time we noticed that there were a lot of people jogging along the river. We found out later that the river was actually a well-used jogging trail, and that Bostonians (that’s what they call themselves) have a passion for jogging – I remember reading somewhere about the Boston marathon and how hard it is to qualify just to run for it. Well there were all kinds of people jogging, but I suppose I was most amazed by the number of females jogging – in Singapore, you don’t see a lot of females jogging on the pavements – they either stick to the treadmills in the gym, or the tracks you can find all around town. I personally prefer the gym, its easier to pace myself (about 9km/h, slow, but my ankle’s still recovering) for 30 minutes is good. Plus there’s air-conditioning, makes running so much easier. The men who were running were all running shirtless, so it was a little awkward to look at them sometimes.

After the short walk, we enquired about sailing, and found out that we would have to pay quite a bit to rent a sailboat, so we gave up that idea and headed to the dorm for the international students’ meeting. The councillors are really nice, they’re all about only a year or two older than us – I don’t really know the age of the people at RSI, but I’m guessing that most of the US students are about 16 or 17 at most. Anyway there are 6 councillors, one of them, Cynthia, was not here today – we heard that milf was receiving some achievement award from President Bush at the white House – proof again of how smart RSI people are – I get the feeling I’m like the odd one out or something – most of the alumnus enter Ivy League universities. The small percentage that do not don’t for a very good reason. The rest of the councillors are: Jacob, Aidan, Arup, Julie and Logan.

Arup and Aidan met us in the airport the previous night. Aidan is British, MILF goes to the University of Cambridge. She’s really very nice, I happened to inquire in the taxi about masses here, and she said she didn’t really know, but we’d probably be taken next week, just not today because some of the international students and all American students weren’t in yet. Anyway, upon returning from football / Frisbee, I found a note from her stuck on my door with a mass time and an offer to bring me – I couldn’t take it up, it wouldn’t be fair for her to walk me for nothing.

After lunch we had a kind of question session where we were asked to write answers to questions posed to us by Immigration via CEE. It was kind of stupid, because they asked us to describe America and Americans in five words each. Of course, I couldn’t exactly be very honest, its not like as if you can expect to write that Americans are bumbling overweight idiots (not that that’s true) and expect to be treated nicely.

We also gave a short presentation on Singapore to all the international students. Its funny, because we were the second-last country to go, and before that, everyone had said which part of their country they came from. So when we presented, the first question was “where in Singapore are you from?” I remember saying something like “well, you see, Singapore is so small there’s no such thing as ‘where in Singapore’, its just: ‘ live in Singapore’”. I don’t know why, but that got a few giggles.

I was pretty surprised that there was so much interest shown in Singapore, but for the smallest country, our presentation was certainly the longest. We were asked things like what kind of food there is in Singapore, what is our official language, etc. I think most of the others thought that Singapore was a third-world country before listening to us. We were also much enlightened by the presentations made by people from other countries, for example, I learnt that the capital of Turkey was really not Istanbul, as the media likes to portray it. I forget how to spell the name of the capital. We learned a lot of things about countries like Bulgaria, Lebanon, Poland, etc, even India, the amount we know about our Asian neighbours is pretty appalling.

Then we took a tour of MIT. Not that I learnt anything in that tour besides follow the corridors and you’ll eventually get to where you want, Harold and I were too pre-occupied looking at all the astounding projects the people at MIT have been doing. We then headed back to the lecture hall for a small discussion on some of our answers about our impressions of Americans – it was hugely entertaining as things like ‘fat’, ‘paranoid’, ‘idiotic’ and crap like that all came up, so they were asking us why they thought they were idiotic and fat and whether we really thought that blondes were stupid.

Matt Pashcke gave a very entertaining speech, I especially liked the part about where he said that it was at RSI that he met his present best friend – a guy from Singapore We clapped quite loudly at that part, I think the audience contained at least a few raised eyebrows.

The last event of the exhausting day was bedcheck, something Jacob calls ‘sacramental’. Bedcheck is apparently the one thing that you should never ever miss, and I wouldn’t want to, because its really fun, we have all sorts of lame jokes, and can ask our counsellor (more like buddy) anything. The people here at RSI are really good, they’re going ou of the way to make life excellent for us. Anything anyone wants to do, as long as he or milf asks, they agree to find a time to do it, and are even going to get us gym memberships to MIT which normally cost $150 for the summer.

Finally started packing today. I just realised what a shitload of stuff I have to bring to the US, formal wear, informal wear, bed sheets, pillowcases, blankets etc. Don’t really know how I’m going to fit everything in. Have to meet Ms Tay at the airport at 5am on Saturday morning. I want to sleeeeeeeeep! Sheesh.

Bought a waistpouch today, figure that’s the best way to carry all my things around, cash, traveller’s cheque, passport, visa, air tickets, etc. Too think for my wallet, and probably safer this way. It also takes my sunglasses! hehe.

Went to MOE to collect my Passport, visa and air tickets. Man. I am so not looking forward to flying. Milf won’t bitch about that session muchly.

Went to church and met Miriam there, we went out for a drink later and talked a bit. Prayed very long today for the choir, they are all wonderful people. Don’t know if I’ll see Miriam tomorrow, I may just walk to her house and say goodbye to her family, they’ve all grown on me, Miriam, Hannah and Deborah are more like sisters or cousins now.

Anyway, I must pack, had a great time with Miriam and am still very happy.

Ok.. today wasn’t as bad as yesterday.. except I thought it would be when I woke up - both my brothers and I had overslept by half an hour. Great thing I didn’t have to worry about tying my hair this morning

Anyway, I was really dead for the first half of the day today, mainly because I slept about 4 hours trying to fix my damned laptop. Which, by the way, is brand spanking new. But the fates decreed that I switch it off - the battery went flat, more like, and I went to bed.

And what’s the worst thing? Virginia Cheng (principal of NJ for those un-enlightened (yes I make up words) ones) came up today to give a mini-speech. When I first saw her do it, the first thing that I thought of was that milf was gonna declare a half day. I mean, we spent our whole Friday and Saturday preparing for and trying to make College Day a success, and she doesn’t even thank us. She thanks the teachers, the VP, everyone else, except the students. Not a half-day in sight. A real way to boost morale.

So, having had my hopes raised and dashed all in three minutes, I trudged to class with my classmates, and oh, what a way to start the week - with an hour of Physics. What’s worse, it was a lecture on Gravitation, something that has been going over my head ever since the topic started a week ago. And I’m not alone in this... thank god I don’t have to sit for the Common Tests. So, totally devoid of energy, it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep and copy whatever was being written on the transparency.. thank goodness the lecture only lasted 30 min to give some time for the SPA briefing, which, of course, I paid no attention to.

Oh yeah... I also found out a few certain other schools (well maybe 80% of the schools) have an unfair advantage over us Nanyang girls in the prelims and O Levels because they know the ‘hidden function’ on our scientific calculators which allows them to find the area under any graph (i.e., they whizz through integration).

Oh well, I think its a more commendable effort having gotten through the O Levels without the ‘cheating’, but I don’t want to disadvantage my MILF. So if you read this, its up to your sense of integrity to use it or not.

1. Hold the ‘Shift’ key on the calculator.
2. Without releasing the ‘Shift’ key, press ‘On’, your calculator screen should be blank.
3. Without releasing either button, press the key marked ‘hyp’.
4. Release the ‘Shift’ key, without releasing the other two.
5. Release the ‘On’ key without releasing the ‘hyp’ key.
6. Press the ‘On’ key without releasing the ‘hyp’ key.
7. Your calculator screen will now appear the way it always does, with the 0 in the answer field.
8. Release the ‘hyp’ key.
9. Press the button marked ‘nCr’, you will now see the integration sign and a dx.
10. Key in the integral as you would any value, using ‘Alpha’ + ')' for your variable x.
11. Press the ‘,’ key after you have keyed in the equation.
12. After the ‘,', key in the ’from' value (you always integrate from say 0 to 5, so if its from 0, key in 0).
13. Press the ‘,’ key.
14. Key in your ‘to’ value for the integration.
15. Press the ‘)’ key.
16. Press the '=' sign. The value you get will be the area under that particular graph for the specified range.