Socrates is an idiot. His way of arguing is similar to He Who Must Not Be Named's - he says he's stupid and dumb and shows how everyone is also stupid and dumb. Hahaha.

***

Looking at the amount of material covered during lectures, the length of each lecture (excluding the pre-lecture settling down, mid-lecture break) the amount of time allocated to tutorials (and how they don't even cover everything that we're taught) and the seeming lack of structure in some lectures, I am drawn inexorably to one of 2 conclusions:

1) We don't need to know much for each module beyond general, vague and often confusing stuff
2) There's an insane amount of reading to be done, most of which we don't know about, while the part we know about is often neither useful nor clear, and we're supposed to digest and assimilate everything by ourselves

I do not know what I do not know. And having a 10 minute attention span doesn't help either.

Maybe this is just my brain waking up from its long period of hibernation. At this juncture, I am reminded of a quote about A Maths: "Study also fail. Don't study also fail. Might as well don't study". Heh heh heh.

A source opines that exposure modules are like that, since they have no focus but rather are meant to give you exposure, as their name suggests. So even though they are supposedly the easiest, they are also difficult in that way.

At least I'm not the only one feeling this way. It seems other Year 1s doing arts modules all have this feeling :)

Let's see what it's like after my first Arts tutorial tomorrow...


I wonder why ECAs hold their AGMs at this time, around the start of the school year. For one, Year 1s are allowed to vote, and are accepted as nominees for most posts. Given that they have just joined the ECAs in question, they won't know much about the nominees they are voting for, and if they're running, no one will know much about them. Thus, most Year 1s will end up voting for candidates, and most people will end up voting for Year 1s, on the basis of: prior acquaintance, looks, personality, the nomination speech, gimmicks, freebies and marketing, which is hardly ideal. Also, not having had much experience in the ECA, Year 1s won't have much of an idea of what they're running for. Perhaps a better time would be at the start of Semester 2, since Year 4s don't usually take up leadership positions.

At the Economics Society AGM, 5 of the top posts were walkovers. How Singaporean *g*


I just watched my first webcast lecture today. It was better than I expected, really. Though some others have been having problems, for me the sound was loud, and the slides were shown me exactly as the lecturer had shown them to the audience.

The only problem was that I couldn't seek to any location in the webcast, and the file markers were broken so I couldn't jump around to pre-determined parts of the lecture. Consequently, I was stuck watching the pre-lecture confusion and mid-lecture break. At first I thought that there was a problem with the file encoding, or that it was a bug in the WMV format, but the problem soon became clear: although the webcast was timed at 1 hr 41 mins (or so), I was rudely booted out after the mid-lecture break: the WMV was incomplete (this is a limitation of the WMV format that irks me - if the file is incomplete, you are unable to seek to any location).

Meanwhile the IVLE site proclaims that Part II of Lecture 3 will be broadcast live next Tuesday (which is actually the date of Lecture 3 of a parallel lecture series).


People tell me that NTU halls are centres of 'debauchery', and to support this claim, they say that people smoke ganja there. A sad testament to the power of the tobacco lobby, that even though marijuana does less harm than tobacco, people perceive pot to be more sinful.

I was at the Vietnamese coffee cafe at Engineering, and the auntie preparing my Soda Chanh asked me how much syrup I wanted. Apparently the "xiao2 nu3 shen1" (Translation: Small Girls) don't like any syrup. As for me, after she pumped 3 generous squeezes of syrup into my drink, I still found it sour. Bleah.

My friend told me about his interesting experience trying to join Club Exchange. All in all, it was like an initiation rite into some Evil Cult. Take the location, for example. Their clubhouse was housed in some half-abandoned building in Chinatown: half the building was not paved, so you were walking on concrete instead of marble, parquet or even tiles and the clubhouse was at the third storey, but the lifts and escalators were all not turned on. And then to prove their worthiness to join the club, they had to sell 25 CDs at $25 each (ie $500 in all) to prove their "resourcefulness". All of which is quite ridiculous if you think about it.

Me: One should not let such vulgar things as popular opinion prevent one from achieving one's dreams
Yisa: Yes, but the manifestation of your dreams will be everyone else's nightmare.
Gah.


Quotes:

She scares me a little - she keeps laughing. You better come see me... Did that answer your question, laughing woman?

They don't normally allow themselves to be hailed into court (hauled)

[On Dale Carnegie] Thank god that he realised that philosophy was useless, and wrote the book that he did and made a lot of money.

You read 10 pages of Plato like you were reading Harry Potter, then you think: What did I just read?... This happens to me too when I read Plato too late at night... You wipe your mind clean. There are other ways to wipe your mind clean. You can play video games - it's a lot more fun.

[On Emile Durkheim] Please, it's 'Emile'. Don't tell me 'Emily'.

You don't wear clothes, the little men in uniforms come with the net and take you away.

[On University Students being socialists by definition] Now you can go home and tell your mother: 'Guess what? My lecturer told me I was a socialist.' Then I'll get this collection of emails in the morning.

[On our roles if we subscribe to Goffman's Dramaturgical Analysis] You've got to sit there and pretend you look interested. You've got to laugh at my jokes.

[On a possible interpretation of the wedding ring] The days of slavery, when you're someone else's property.

[On the short mid-lecture break] You had a big long break the last time. That's enough to last for the next 4 lectures.

A friend of mine dropped by the other day. 'Oh, I was touched by god.' 'Really? What did he look like?'

[On the limits of using common sense] Common sense told us that... prostitutes really enjoyed their jobs.

Any upper-class people here? They're all off at UCLA and Stanford.

[On spurious correlation] We know that in Singapore, the shorter people's pants, the more bubble tea they drink... It's statistically proven. (because in hot weather people drink more)

[On the advantages of questionnaires] You can't go and ask people that: 'Hi, I'm your professor. Do you do illegal drugs?'

Maybe you mailed out a questionnaire on women's sexuality, and the men's soccer team got hold of it. *flighty voice* 'Oh ho, all the time.'

[End of lecture buzzer sounds] Don't pay attention to that.

I never listen to my own webcasts because it's too disturbing.

[On priests having the power to influence gods with sacrifices, prayers, incantations and spells] If you had email, you'd have gotten spam about this sort of offerings, presumably.

If you're having trouble with your math homework, you could pray to Zeus, and Zeus, no doubt being very good at math, could give you the answer to your problem set (?)

[On a sunglasses-wearing guy sitting at the front of the LT, at the lecturer's long table, and facing the students instead of the lecturer] Maybe he's just checking out the girls

[Me: One should not let such vulgar things as popular opinion prevent one from achieving one's dreams] Yes, but the manifestation of your dreams will be everyone else's nightmare.

Camp Exotica?... Not Erotica or something like that. [Someone on 'Erotica': That was the name of one of the groups.]

[On Bollywood Hollywood] If you dress up as a coconut tree, we'll dance around you.

We've all heard the speeches of the chew candidates vying for the position (two)

[Candidate for Treasurer on finanacial statements and accounts] They're not difficult *realises he's committed a faux pas* They're not easy.

[On heading the Sports and Social Committee] As you can see from my relaxed mood, this job suits me quite well.

[On drinking Root Beer, which he hates] Let me try a bit. See whether they changed the formula.