Monday, February 27, 2006

Counselling needed?

Thanks to snowboarding, my knees are entirely covered with blue-blacks, and my whole body is aching like hell. A 2-wk hiatus from SNB pretty slowed down my already-very-slow progress in SNB, but heck, any small progress i make is still worth celebrating.

Ironically, my multiple SPECTACULAR falls on my tailbone and/or head actually constituted the best day of my past week.

This must be the worst week i have ever had since i came here. all the stuff about adapting to life in foreign country, homesickness, not coping well with the academic pressures of college blah blah - i am suddenly going through that crisis now, err after spending one semester here?! weird isn't it?

In the past week, my health condition worsened, my stress level peaked, my self-esteem took a dip, no, DIVE. (scored below the median mark for math prelim - Gary, i know you would laugh your head off upon reading this) i cried at least once every day, over the tiniest possible catalyst. I swear this is one of the first symptoms of depression. the good news? i don't have suicidal thoughts, yet.

the weekend and snowboarding had an uplifting effect on my mood though. i guess sport is a good distracter. it's kinda weird: i am so lousy at snowboarding that i keep falling and falling but i still look forward to more snb - sometimes i suspect i am a masochist. hee

anyway, i see the effect of a 5-day-a-week japanese course setting in - these days, when i am forming my thoughts, random words are being substituted by japanese words, for eg when i think "being good at" then "joozu" will pop into my mind instead. nah, i am still pok in conversing in jap lor, haiz.

* 12:34 PM

Sunday, February 19, 2006

I'm sick :(

After resisting lindy's virus for 3 weeks and yuan xiang's virus for 4 weeks, my immune system finally surrendered. had fever last night, and coughing really badly now... haiz. so had to give snowboarding a miss today - it's honestly physically impossible to tahan 5 hr of -22 deg temp without being confined to bed for the next 3 days. got math prelim leh! :S

the whole world found the org chem prelim easy except me - i couldn't even answer every question! :(

it never fails to amaze me when my TAs (excluding lab courses TAs) actually know my name. My econs TA knows me even though i ponned half of all the sections last sem, and now even my org chem TA knows me even though there is NO section for the course and i only went for one office hour so far. I'm just impressed by their motivation to learn their students' names even when it's not necessary, really.

i befriended a 2nd freshman in my org chem class! (note: the org chem class is primarily a sophomore course) he's also in my math class, always sits adjacent to me in math lect. he's going to skip all the math sections this sem because they clash head-on with his chem labs so he asked me to help him collect his hw haha. i wonder how the conflict in his schedule can escape the registrar's notice?

i started learning driving yesterday! my senior luke kindly risked his car and taught me how to drive! thought it was a pretty good start! :) then he risked his car and our lives and let yx drove us back from the mall. haha :P i must say, maneuvering a car feels great!

* 3:27 AM

Thursday, February 16, 2006

It's a FREAKING hot and sunny day!

12 deg celcius! O_O such a wonderful day! perfect day to play frisbee!

if only i don't have chem prelim tonight.

And of course, it was a wonderful night last night :) thanks for the nice surprises..

if only i don't have chem prelim tonight.

* 4:29 AM

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

AHHHH....

i am completely drowned in my workload!!! have to mug and piah hw non-stop until fri before i get a short, momentous break. help!!!! :(

slammed my head not once but twice on the ground during snowboarding. i bet my gpa has dropped by 0.5 from that concussion. knees covered with lotsa blue-black, and right side of neck still aching like shit. but hey, i finally moved on from bunny slope to alpha slope, took off successfully from the ski lift on 2nd try, and my success rate of braking without falling has shot up from 10% to at least 80%! :) snowboarding rocks!

i am soooo happy the parcel finally reached les's house! :D

* 12:58 PM

Friday, February 03, 2006

I just have to rave about this

The weather today is AWESOME! blue sky, warm and sunny - feels like i am back in california! It's so warm (9 deg only!) that i walked back to dorm in only t-shirt and sweatshirt!

My favorite lunch-break haunt is now Sage Hall! It has this bright spacious square area right under a tall glass ceiling with sunlight filtering in and lighting up the whole place - think Parco bugis junction but with tables instead of those makeshift stalls! - and it's simply a fantastic place to chill out! Though i wasn't chilling out la.. Was doing my jap homework while savouring my bagels topped with liberal amounts of sinful cream cheese, peanut butter and strawberry jam and sipping snapple iced tea, but i still felt so good cuz i would see the blue sky whenever i lifted my head :)

Lab was pretty good today! I am still one of the slowest but at least it was smooth today. I really like this lab course despite all the pre-lab and actual lab and post-lab work i have to do. Till now, i have done distillation and extraction and crystallisation - they sound juvenile cuz these are the things which we have read in sec 1 science textbook, but do you realise, we have never actually done them before! I rmb seeing the gigantic Liebig condensor on the teacher's bench in sec 1 ("SEE-NO-TOUCH"), but now i get to set up my own distillation apparatus myself! Every tiny step involved, precautions to be taken, the science behind every step - reading them on textbooks and utilising them feel so different! I like how this lab course makes us go back to the basics, and appreciate and master these basic lab techniques which we would otherwise have taken for granted. Besides, my TA is a very nice person, so i'm really thankful!

Japanese class was good too! Had a spring test on vocab but survived it; after all nothing can be worse than my oral. It was nice talking to a few classmates after class. For some complicated reasons which i'll refrain from narrating, i am now attending a certain section on mon/wed/fri and a different section on tue/thu, so i actually get to know one extra group of friends hehe :)

Feel so energetic now despite only 5hr of slp last night - doing pre-lab lor, what else? My 2hr nap yest afternoon helped :P i have to mug for some basic theory test later cuz we're going to apply for Driver learner's permit tmr!

* 3:27 AM

Thursday, February 02, 2006

what's with me and waiting lists??!!

i had a horrible monday cuz cornell's outdoor education department screwed up my course registration email and i only learnt on monday i didn't get into the utah backpacking course and was put on the waiting list! and things were made more complicated by the fact that yx has a place in the class but the last day to withdraw from the course without penalty was the next day and it had to take a miracle for one person to drop the course within the next 24 hr so that i get a place! i was pissed and upset and disappointed the whole afternoon, but the miracle actually happened miraculously! i got out of the chem lab course and japanese course waiting lists too, that makes it 3 waiting lists in one week. now that i am safely enrolled in my desired courses it doesn't seem a big deal but i somehow just don't like the feeling of uncertainty while put on waiting lists.

in any case, i really shouldn't be blogging now cuz i have tonnes of homework to do. which also explains the lack of updates for the past one and a half week. grrr... i know lessons have barely started at cornell but i swear my schedule and workload are crazy. On mon i have 6 classes from 9am to 3.20pm w/o lunch break, wed and fri 9-2.15pm w/o break as well, tue and thur slightly better - end by 1.10pm but i have 2 3hr-labs starting at 8am! i have jap homework every day, and i have to do readings and pre-labs before every lab which means every mon and wed night i will be sleep deprived.

enough of my rantings. i can go on and on but what's the point?

but truth to be told, i love my courses this semester. the professors i get this sem are really superior to those i got last sem. both my chem professors are great lecturers, though they are polar opposites in their style. my math prof seemed old and frail and boring initially (which kinda explained why the classroom was packed on the first lesson then enrollment seemed to drop thereafter), but he actually teaches well too! jap lessons are fun, and the best part is i really get to know my classmates, proving the theory lindy and i came up with correct! ;) my writing seminar prof is kind of boring, but anthropology seems cool cuz it's a new subject to me so it's bearable for now.

on a lighter note, i went for my snowboarding lesson last sat! it was such fine weather on that day, sunny and warm, yet the snow at Greek Peak didn't melt! no idea why. but anw, snowboarding is so cool and fun, but i once again prove that i have zero ti3 yu4 xi4 bao1. i took some time to find my balance while sliding down, but i still could master the skill of stopping in time without falling! :P suffered from blisters on my feet due to dragging my feet (that was locked to the huge board) up the slope after every descend (which is the most tiring part of the sport, i think!), and also numerous blue-blacks on both legs! but such falls aren't a big deal to me anymore, after my spectacular fall from a horse's back! lol.. so yeah, i am game for more snowboarding!

i also went for ballroom dancing lessons on mon night, and it was damn fun too! felt good putting on my pretty dancing shoes - felt like a pro but of course i am far from that! there were some dancesports team members sorta helping out in the class, and it was great dancing with these pros!

anyway, an accident happened in my neighbouring lab yesterday. the fire alarm was set off, and while we were evacuating, we saw this guy on our corridor, holding paper towel to his face and blood was dripping from his face onto the ground. :S apparently he was just distilling alcohol and it blew up, when it really should not have. such accidents can happen anytime and on any one of us, and this thought makes me shudder.

my chinese new year was sad. zero festive mood in ithaca la. only went for a 'reunion dinner' with fellow singaporean freshmen at this chinese restaurant (not exactly restaurant either) in Collegetown on chu xi, and that's all. celebrations organised by residence hall and spore students association will only come later this weekend.

i used to think of cny as just a public holiday when i get to eat nice stuff and take a break from lessons, but i never was excited about it in recent years cuz i thought the whole reunion dinner and bai nian thing was just a mandatory routine repeated every yr until i was bored of it. it's only when i am deprived of this 'routine' that i realised this routine has already become part of my life even if i didn't realise its significance of it before. perhaps the desire to stick to this routine as best as i could made me want to wash my bedsheet on new year's eve (like how my mum always changes new bedsheet every new yr) and to eat an orange after every dinner at the dining hall (like how i used to peel and eat one whole mandarin orange after every meal during CNY period).

i want my abalone! and bak kwa! and egg rolls!

oh cornell was warm the past week. global climate is screwing up man.

* 9:08 AM