Went for a 3f class outing which had a fantastic turnout. More than half the class + 2 teachers.. wow. Yup RJ was the anomaly. It's a conglomeration of many many intelligent people in a school, in a class. It's where I was wow-ed by classmates and teachers' zai-ness. That was harder to find in uni, maybe cos there was less interaction with classmates than there was in JC, we definitely don't borrow each other's tutorials or essays in uni.. But maybe it's really because the inspiring people are not concentrated in a class any more, you have to look to find them. No one takes the exact same classes with you any more and there really isn't anyone who can say something amazing to link your chem class to that genetics class..

Anyway, had a farewell "party" just now for a RA. Gosh, it was more of a meeting than a party. In the meeting room, there's food, but everyone just keeps quiet and eats. The problems of having too many chinese people. Once the PI leaves, the noise level goes up immediately. It's ridiculous.

The style of this lab is so different. It's supported by RAs, not postdocs. It's like a company, when 1 product is doing well, everyone invests energy into that product to speed its improvement and production. It's supposed to promote group work and speed and reduce fighting within the lab for projects. Does it work? I don't know.

Taking GRE tomorrow. I read through my GP notebook. There are actually some substance in there. We actually talked about Engels and John Mill and stuff like existentialism. I have no recollections of those. Probably just took them to be names of old famous guys whom I don't know the significance of. And I looked at my Hum summaries. There are names of people that I have no clue what they did. Who was Schlegel? Or Novalis? Seriously, what was I doing when I read those people's works?