You know what they should have? A post exam scream instead of a pre scream. I need a scream now. AAARGGGH!!! Virtual scream better than nothing lah. Finished all finals. Now just wait for results. Screwed. Wrote an essay on nothing. I can't remember how I managed to vomit out some coherent essay during JC times in 1.5h. I had a bit more than an hour today and wrote trash. What was I doing? 2 consecutive crazy papers. Even though chem was a killer paper, I shouldn't be that badly slaughtered. Tired.
Possibly going Mexico next week. Extreme last minute decision in my opinion. Decided last week. Well, hope the people are fun. A bit too tired to blog.. will say sth substantial later..
Thursday, 23 March 2006
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
It's the time of the year when the US unis send out admission letters.
Everybody who replied me knows sth abt Singapore and A*. One of them knows so much I'm amazed.. He even talks about the amount of funding we get.. wow. They are all very impressed with Astar of course. But I'm taking a biased sample, cos if they don't like, they wouldn't have asked to meet this girl from Singapore in the first place, even if she got a good grade in O chem. I need to make a decision very very soon, like by Friday, on which I should go. I can't decide. A new one vs an established one. Working for a grad vs working for a post-doc. One where they're used to undergrads vs one that doesn't have a single undergrad. I can't decide.
Haha. wy's amazing. she always ask the right questions. I need people like this around.
Finals next week. Why are all my classes so mug? How much of it would I eventually remember anyway? I couldn't remember what a yeast is this morning. Is it a protist or a fungus or just a yeast kingdom? It's a single cell fungus. Current study plan: mug all my bio and chem stuff by the end of this week and spend next week on hum. As usual, it's a super disproportionate time spent on hum, but i need it.
Strange as it may sound, I want time to move slower. I don't want the term to end. Wonder why, it's only the 2nd quarter of my 1st yr here.
DNA origami.. really cool
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060313/full/060313-8.html
"Why are you hesitating?"
Everybody who replied me knows sth abt Singapore and A*. One of them knows so much I'm amazed.. He even talks about the amount of funding we get.. wow. They are all very impressed with Astar of course. But I'm taking a biased sample, cos if they don't like, they wouldn't have asked to meet this girl from Singapore in the first place, even if she got a good grade in O chem. I need to make a decision very very soon, like by Friday, on which I should go. I can't decide. A new one vs an established one. Working for a grad vs working for a post-doc. One where they're used to undergrads vs one that doesn't have a single undergrad. I can't decide.
Haha. wy's amazing. she always ask the right questions. I need people like this around.
Finals next week. Why are all my classes so mug? How much of it would I eventually remember anyway? I couldn't remember what a yeast is this morning. Is it a protist or a fungus or just a yeast kingdom? It's a single cell fungus. Current study plan: mug all my bio and chem stuff by the end of this week and spend next week on hum. As usual, it's a super disproportionate time spent on hum, but i need it.
Strange as it may sound, I want time to move slower. I don't want the term to end. Wonder why, it's only the 2nd quarter of my 1st yr here.
DNA origami.. really cool
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060313/full/060313-8.html
"Why are you hesitating?"
Thursday, 9 March 2006
I'm writing a essay arguing about something which I haven't decided, and telling more stories in the essay than talking abt the significance of the stories.. screwy once again.. need a lot more work on it..
This psyc professor talked about his research on learning and memory. According to his research, ok a bit hard to explain. Firstly, if you revise something after you learn it, you'll remember the thing better. That's quite obvious, that's why we all revise. The time between the learning and revising, however, determines how long you can remember the thing. And according to his research, the optimum gap between learning and revising is 10% of the time you want to remember the thing for. Which means if you want to remember something for 10h, you should do the revision 1h after you learn it, and after 10h, you'll still remember it. After that, not so sure, most likely you'll forget it.
So let's look at the education systems now. Quarter system. 10 weeks per quarter. Let's say there's 1 final exam that covers everything you've learnt in this quarter, and you study right before it, so there's about 10 weeks' time between learning and revision. Acc to his predictions, you'll be able to remember stuff in this course for 100 weeks, that's about 2 years. A levels system, 2 year syllabus, 1 final exam at the end. 2 years time between learning and revision. You'll be able to remember the stuff for 20 years.
I'm not sure how accurate this 10% thing is, but I certainly remember A levels stuff better than my psychology stuff last quarter. Is the British system better then? Americans have been surviving on this kind of quarter/ semester system since middle school? Do they learn less? I would say probably. Haha. But of course the 2yr syllabus also has many many assessments in the middle, so you study for the same thing over and over again, and remember it better. Then for science and math courses, you have to build further learning on foundations, so you'll always need to know how to solve x2 +2x + 1 = 4.. and because of all the practice, you'll remember it very well. Also when you forget something, say in a psychology course, when you relearn it the 2nd time, not revision, but totally forgot and have to relearn, it takes a shorter time to learn. So you did make some marks in your brain when you learn stuff.
Ok, enough about this psychology stuff. I think it's pretty interesting. =)
There's this guy in my Hum class. He's really smart. 1 of the few brilliant Americans I've met here. He's the only person other than my seniors recommending me to take Nesbitt, he even recommended her class to a computer engineer who wants to take a bio course. That's a bit crazy but anyway this smart guy got an A for her class. You know how you'll roughly know where the brains come from in a discussion class, like in 3f during gp, can see how sophisticated wang ning's arguments are.. These kind of people just ooze intelligence.. ok a bit gross.. Like how we want beef to diffuse some of her geniusness to us all.. haha. Anyway you get the point. So with him in our group for debate, we thrashed the opposition. Just amazed at how he puts all my unlinked, unrelated ideas into a coherent argument. If only he writes my essay for me, save all my trouble. Haha.
"You don't seem to know what you're doing, but you're doing a pretty good job of it" ~John about my Hum thesis
I wanted to quote some other people, but I forgot.. Not paying attention much in lectures..
This psyc professor talked about his research on learning and memory. According to his research, ok a bit hard to explain. Firstly, if you revise something after you learn it, you'll remember the thing better. That's quite obvious, that's why we all revise. The time between the learning and revising, however, determines how long you can remember the thing. And according to his research, the optimum gap between learning and revising is 10% of the time you want to remember the thing for. Which means if you want to remember something for 10h, you should do the revision 1h after you learn it, and after 10h, you'll still remember it. After that, not so sure, most likely you'll forget it.
So let's look at the education systems now. Quarter system. 10 weeks per quarter. Let's say there's 1 final exam that covers everything you've learnt in this quarter, and you study right before it, so there's about 10 weeks' time between learning and revision. Acc to his predictions, you'll be able to remember stuff in this course for 100 weeks, that's about 2 years. A levels system, 2 year syllabus, 1 final exam at the end. 2 years time between learning and revision. You'll be able to remember the stuff for 20 years.
I'm not sure how accurate this 10% thing is, but I certainly remember A levels stuff better than my psychology stuff last quarter. Is the British system better then? Americans have been surviving on this kind of quarter/ semester system since middle school? Do they learn less? I would say probably. Haha. But of course the 2yr syllabus also has many many assessments in the middle, so you study for the same thing over and over again, and remember it better. Then for science and math courses, you have to build further learning on foundations, so you'll always need to know how to solve x2 +2x + 1 = 4.. and because of all the practice, you'll remember it very well. Also when you forget something, say in a psychology course, when you relearn it the 2nd time, not revision, but totally forgot and have to relearn, it takes a shorter time to learn. So you did make some marks in your brain when you learn stuff.
Ok, enough about this psychology stuff. I think it's pretty interesting. =)
There's this guy in my Hum class. He's really smart. 1 of the few brilliant Americans I've met here. He's the only person other than my seniors recommending me to take Nesbitt, he even recommended her class to a computer engineer who wants to take a bio course. That's a bit crazy but anyway this smart guy got an A for her class. You know how you'll roughly know where the brains come from in a discussion class, like in 3f during gp, can see how sophisticated wang ning's arguments are.. These kind of people just ooze intelligence.. ok a bit gross.. Like how we want beef to diffuse some of her geniusness to us all.. haha. Anyway you get the point. So with him in our group for debate, we thrashed the opposition. Just amazed at how he puts all my unlinked, unrelated ideas into a coherent argument. If only he writes my essay for me, save all my trouble. Haha.
"You don't seem to know what you're doing, but you're doing a pretty good job of it" ~John about my Hum thesis
I wanted to quote some other people, but I forgot.. Not paying attention much in lectures..
Monday, 6 March 2006
I got an A!! Haha. Done the impossible, though I didn't know how. Must work on my next one now.. My TA made me promise that I would know how to get As by the end of the quarter. I sure hope I will..
Had a super efficient day. Went to 3 professors' offices to talk to them abt all I needed to talk to them about in 2h. Amazed at myself. I like what I heard today. =)
Flowers everywhere. On trees and bushes I mean. Spring's coming.
"You can't take a compliment?"
Had a super efficient day. Went to 3 professors' offices to talk to them abt all I needed to talk to them about in 2h. Amazed at myself. I like what I heard today. =)
Flowers everywhere. On trees and bushes I mean. Spring's coming.
"You can't take a compliment?"
Sunday, 5 March 2006
Went to Mt Laguna. =) 45min away fr school.. 6000+ feet. But we went up to about 4000ft only. To do what? Watch the stars. =) Love this class and love the small size of the class. A class with a waitlist of a hundred people but end up with a class size of 7. How cool is that?
Wasn't as cold as it's supposed to be. Weather report says it's 0C but it's nowhere near there, 7-8C I'll say. But of course that's cold enough for Southern Californians. Haha. I'm glad I have my Boston/ NY clothes and I'm glad there's a chance to wear them. Saw a moon halo, remember the sun halo? It's going to rain tomorrow. Saw meteors. 2 of them. Made wishes. =) Saw a man-made satellite. Most of the time, just hung around and tried not to get blinded by camera flashes. Lay on the ground and stare at the night sky. This is life man. Too bad there were clouds and we couldn't see the Milky Way. That would have been fantastic. But managed to use my planosphere to locate many many constellations. Rocks. Saturn is, as usual, fascinating; Nebulae are cool; Moon was blinding through the telescope, took quite a while to unbleach my visual purple after looking at it. Fantastic class.
一闪一闪亮晶晶，
满天都是小星星，
躲在天上放光明，
好象你的小眼睛
一闪一闪亮晶晶，
满天都是小星星.
Just couldn't remember the lyrics just now, or maybe I never knew it. Couldn't get past the 2nd line. Hee. And while googling that up, found this..
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Jane Taylor wrote the lyrics in 1806.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Then the traveler in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark;
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
In the dark blue sky you keep,
While you thro' my window peep,
And you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Was this the original song?
Wasn't as cold as it's supposed to be. Weather report says it's 0C but it's nowhere near there, 7-8C I'll say. But of course that's cold enough for Southern Californians. Haha. I'm glad I have my Boston/ NY clothes and I'm glad there's a chance to wear them. Saw a moon halo, remember the sun halo? It's going to rain tomorrow. Saw meteors. 2 of them. Made wishes. =) Saw a man-made satellite. Most of the time, just hung around and tried not to get blinded by camera flashes. Lay on the ground and stare at the night sky. This is life man. Too bad there were clouds and we couldn't see the Milky Way. That would have been fantastic. But managed to use my planosphere to locate many many constellations. Rocks. Saturn is, as usual, fascinating; Nebulae are cool; Moon was blinding through the telescope, took quite a while to unbleach my visual purple after looking at it. Fantastic class.
一闪一闪亮晶晶，
满天都是小星星，
躲在天上放光明，
好象你的小眼睛
一闪一闪亮晶晶，
满天都是小星星.
Just couldn't remember the lyrics just now, or maybe I never knew it. Couldn't get past the 2nd line. Hee. And while googling that up, found this..
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Jane Taylor wrote the lyrics in 1806.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Then the traveler in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark;
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
In the dark blue sky you keep,
While you thro' my window peep,
And you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Was this the original song?
Saturday, 4 March 2006
Jasmine 点心 for breakfast/ lunch. First time having dim sum in the year and first time eating it in San Diego. I wouldn't say Jasmine has very good dim sum. But it's nice going out as a huge group again to eat somewhere. Been a while since we did that. And it was a long long breakfast/ lunch, almost 3h.. in the true spirit of 饮茶. =) And in a meal that's that long, politics/ religion/ some other controversial topic is bound to come up..
Highlight of the lunch: fingers kana squashed by the car door. Oww. Due to my previous week of being accident prone, I had cuts on my fingers, the slam opened one of the wounds, that's why my finger was bleeding. I was wondering why it was bleeding when all that happened to it was high pressure, would need extreme high pressure to force vessels to bleed and my hand won't be in the right shape if it had happened. To tell the truth, I don't remember my reaction, and I don't know what my reaction should have been, but I probably hesitated for a sec before realising I should ask the person who closed the door to open it. Good thing my fingers are still in shape..
Lab..
不是我要说，可是这些人真的很势利眼。sorry grammar very wrong, nvm lah hor. Point is, I sent out a bunch of emails asking if any lab want free labour from me and I got either negative replies or no reply. Then I decided that I must be more assertive, so I sent out the next batch with my transcript attached, immediately I got replies. But of course I wanted to get into the first batch more.. So now I'm not sure if I should resend to the 1st batch or just leave it. I was looking at the careers website just now, and guess what? people who rejected me are hiring.. hmm.. maybe those they're hiring do diff stuff from volunteers.. Sian..
I think that this quarter has been pretty sociable. Turning many 2nd and 3rd degree friends into 1st degree. And hum is a big know more people class. So somehow or other, I already know someone in all my classes next quarter. Oh, but I've been neglecting 1st degree people.. like my suitemates. AS-ing them like crazy. I need personal space.
Housing
I don't know what I want.
Hum
Super difficult.
Classes next quarter
I can't decide.
I announce that the amount of studying I do now is comparable to J2 time, even though I'm not learning that much stuff, am I?
I need time to think and sort out stuff.
Highlight of the lunch: fingers kana squashed by the car door. Oww. Due to my previous week of being accident prone, I had cuts on my fingers, the slam opened one of the wounds, that's why my finger was bleeding. I was wondering why it was bleeding when all that happened to it was high pressure, would need extreme high pressure to force vessels to bleed and my hand won't be in the right shape if it had happened. To tell the truth, I don't remember my reaction, and I don't know what my reaction should have been, but I probably hesitated for a sec before realising I should ask the person who closed the door to open it. Good thing my fingers are still in shape..
Lab..
不是我要说，可是这些人真的很势利眼。sorry grammar very wrong, nvm lah hor. Point is, I sent out a bunch of emails asking if any lab want free labour from me and I got either negative replies or no reply. Then I decided that I must be more assertive, so I sent out the next batch with my transcript attached, immediately I got replies. But of course I wanted to get into the first batch more.. So now I'm not sure if I should resend to the 1st batch or just leave it. I was looking at the careers website just now, and guess what? people who rejected me are hiring.. hmm.. maybe those they're hiring do diff stuff from volunteers.. Sian..
I think that this quarter has been pretty sociable. Turning many 2nd and 3rd degree friends into 1st degree. And hum is a big know more people class. So somehow or other, I already know someone in all my classes next quarter. Oh, but I've been neglecting 1st degree people.. like my suitemates. AS-ing them like crazy. I need personal space.
Housing
I don't know what I want.
Hum
Super difficult.
Classes next quarter
I can't decide.
I announce that the amount of studying I do now is comparable to J2 time, even though I'm not learning that much stuff, am I?
I need time to think and sort out stuff.
Thursday, 2 March 2006
A level results
囊括全国最多优秀生的莱佛士初院再次以出色表现，创造了学院25年历史上的最佳成绩。获得3科主修特优的学生有651人，占该校总考生人数的76.4%，其中504人获得4科主修特优的好成绩。
RJ broke record again? How is it possible for RJ to get the best result in don't know how many years every year? Because every time something new comes up, SPA in this case, they'll look to RJ students as standards to grade others? Or RJ teachers are just fantastic and students superb?
http://www.zaobao.com/sp/sp060302_509.html
Congrats to all with fantastic results. To others who don't think they've done well enough, well, A levels is not everything in life. To people working towards As, jiayou!!
RJ broke record again? How is it possible for RJ to get the best result in don't know how many years every year? Because every time something new comes up, SPA in this case, they'll look to RJ students as standards to grade others? Or RJ teachers are just fantastic and students superb?
http://www.zaobao.com/sp/sp060302_509.html
Congrats to all with fantastic results. To others who don't think they've done well enough, well, A levels is not everything in life. To people working towards As, jiayou!!
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