Cheap thrill

This is from MIT Prof Walter Lewin’s FB page. I refuse to believe he was serious.

Well played, sir, well played

(The answer is two words long. Click on the comments section to know what those two words are!)

And I am back! Did you not expect the revival of this blog? Did you arbitrarily collapse the wave function describing my presence in cyberspace such as to consign me to eternal non-existence at these coordinates?

Well, you were wrong!

Endearingly naive, endearingly wrong

Earlier, I was about to post this picture so we could all snicker at it and shake our heads despairingly at the state of Physics amongst youngsters today, but then I got distracted by this news. Shocking, shocking. CERN scientists, did you really just cast aspersions on one of the mighty grandpapas of Physics theories just because of a loose cable? Ouch – I’m sure that even now they must be preparing for the storm of public flak if this turns out to be true. Lesson learnt: never inspire public hope on a shaky premise(, especially before you have published your paper). Obama, I’m sure, will vouch for that.

So, how has life been these few days? I’ve just completed an internship at one of the government ministries. The environment took some getting used to – although what felt alien wasn’t so much the humanities students buzzing around me like surround-sound, but the lack of science students! Let me state for the record that I enjoyed hanging out with my fellow interns. But I was slightly irked that they seemed to naturally assume some sort of incongruity between the study of science and critical analysis. No, we are not all cretins.

I also realised what an unusual environment NUSHS provided. For instance, I’m not sure that you’d find such a large army of passionate burger flippers (inside joke, leave a comment if unsure) in conventional schools – and I’m all the more thankful that we were provided so many avenues and such flexibility to pursue our (scientific) passions. What distinguishes the NUSHS student? It’s not just a sense of reverse elitism (although that comes into play too) but also a sort of quirky unconventionality, a sort of resistance to the conventional doctor-lawyer-politician mould, I think. Not to forget an aversion to canteen food, a fetish for using scientific terms unnecessarily in conversations (refer to introductory paragraph) and a tendency to intone, along with the fire alarm announcement, “The fire alarm has been sounded. Please keep calm and wait for further instructions”…

Oh and Seo Youn is back!! ^^ In commemoration of her return, let me share with you the only Korean song that I have managed to listen to in full on my first try! I cackled the first time I watched this, I really did. SUCH familiar scenarios!

I can’t seem to persuade Seo Youn to climb Bukit Timah Hill with us (do you think she’ll agree if I speak in Korean?)! Am thinking of taking her to Haji Lane since we’re eating at Illuma tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be one of those overtly touristy places that are clearly after your $$. (No, you don’t really need to be too concerned, I guard my wallet with the ferocity of a fire-breathing dragon.)

NATAS travel fair newspaper supplement. I am once again consumed with the urge to visit ALL the places profiled! Ahem, have I ever mentioned that I have a fetish for reading travel articles? One of the two Chinese books that I bought in the past year was a compilation of travel articles… (By the way, it is only courteous to hide your surprise that I bought 2 Chinese books at all)