"Doing a thing well is often a waste of time." - Robert Byrne

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You learn more economics in Business than in Economics.

At the start of Week 6 I couldn't find the book I lent to the USP community, but later in the week someone pointed out that it was wedged behind a stand. Maybe the admin people were showing guests around and went to hide it.

I saw a PRC girl in white stockings. Err.

The Thai Express CEO has a NUS philosophy degree. His wife has a philosophy degree too. Hah.

An Indonesian told me that the main difference between Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia is that the former is 2-3 times faster.

I was at a seminar on Malayness in Singapore. It was chaired by a Chinese and of the 4 speakers, 1 was Japanese, 1 Indian and 2 Arab. In other words, none of them were Malay.

The politicking in the LKY school is interesting. On one occasion, when they asked the Chinese to stand up, they said that "we'd like to invite our friends from Taiwan to stand up as well."

I've a Year 1 Arts friend who, at the end of Week 4, hadn't been to the library yet. She said all her readings were online. I asked what she'd do for term papers, and she said she'd look for material online. Hurr hurr. She finally went in at the start of Week 5, but proclaimed that this was because she was accompanying a friend.

There're 198 USP students in Year 4 and older (maybe less than 10 in other years), 151 in Year 3, 183 in Year 2 and 161 in Year 1. The last surprised me the most, given how the Dragon Girls have swelled the incoming freshman batch by maybe 5% (10% for the year as a whole, and assuming the boys make up half of it, that becomes 5%).

I am told that to facilitate social engineering, Indians and PRCs on scholarships (ie most of them) are not allowed into Law and Business, which is why the latter is mostly Viets, who form the largest contingent from ASEAN, because they want to position us to enter the ASEAN market.

I was waiting for my Applied Maths tutorial and was wondering why there were so many girls outside the class, who didn't look the sort to be in Applied Maths. Then they filed into the classroom next to mine - they were going for a Level 1 or 2 economics tutorial. Figures.

7/8 of the elected members of the current USC management committee are from Arts. Hurr hurr.

Someone was complaining to me and suggested that I ask why the Dear Leader's son's bodyguard can enter the Central Library.

Last year some of us wanted to get a fridge in Chatterbox but there were only about 10 of us so the plan was scrapped. Fortuitously, they found a discarded fridge in PGP. It's not very strong and some complain it stinks, but hey it does the job.

I swear that requiring essays to be double-spaced is a plot to earn the printing shop more money.

I see so many people wearing NUSSU T-shirts nowadays. I have no idea why.

The Co-Op sells sanitary pads but not tampons, and cigarette lighters but not cigarettes (hah). And now they sell condoms again!

At one bazaar they were selling a "Seven Dwarfs" line of tops at $12 each (free size). There wasn't a price for a bundle of 7, contary to expectations.

Cunning Linguist and I both got a BJ at a bazaar, but the scoop she was given was much bigger than mine (which was smaller than what I'd have gotten outside!), gah.

They merged the Medicine library with the Science library. Maybe they were sick of people walking in lab coats and decided to let the Science staff deal with them.
[Addendum: A reader writes in informing me that the former is being renovated.]

An interesting theory I've heard about why we always have bazaars in the Forum - it's to stop activists gathering.

Ever since I asked California Girl where her ang moh was (when she showed up, atypically, without one) she has stopped showing up with them. And I am not the only one to notice this!


LDPVTP said the new canteen is not an appealing place to eat (and thus, being sensitive, refused to eat there) since it looked like Raffles Place and was designed to get you in and out as quickly as possible.

In the new Arts canteen they have pictures to illustrate what food you get (like in new food courts). The mixed rice stall had one with 1 serving of meat, 1 of prawns and 1 of vegetables. Yeah right, I've never seen prawns there, and never will, at least not for $0.90.

In some ways I miss the food situation last semester, since we had food scattered all around school, necessitating less walking. They should kick the waffle stall back to their temporary place in AS6 and free up the current stall for other people.

There's a new listed item at the noodles stall - fishball soup. Must be to compete with the Yong Tau Hoo stall for SACSALs' business.

Pseudo-Western is going Halal, but it's not much loss - only the ham was ever haram. Some people told me the quality had dropped, so I investigated, but it seemed about the same to me.

Japanese has a new budget option of Su Udon which costs $2. Oddly, Kitsune Udon still costs $3. Apparently beancurd is cheaper than fishcake.

4 stalls have Chinese words on the graphical menus erected above them: Noodles, Sichuan, Claypot (a mixture of both) and Yong Tau Hoo. Curiously enough, all 4 of them use Traditional Chinese words. This is especially bizarre for Sichuan since it's run by PRCs.