Mulling over memories

We had a 602 gathering with Ms Dass on Saturday! Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention this, but this one really brought on waves of nostalgia. 

(And that’s the thing about transitions: no matter how much we resolve to enshrine the past in memory, once we settle into our new ways of life we adopt a new equilibrium that fills us up, becomes the new ‘now’ and almost entirely supplants the minutiae of the past. It’s disconcerting how readily we let the events of the present debase cherished memories - until something like this occurs to jog them.
What to do – except let events remain in the past, but follow their protagonists into the present.)

 All the same, I don’t want to look back after 10 years and find myself unable to remember anything about my high school life. So here’s a list of things I miss about school:

- Dear, segregated, political 602.

There’s the Bryce clique, the happy clique, our clique, the guys’ bloc, and several nonsectarian renegade agents. With so many factions, it may be surprising that harmony presided in 602 (for the most part). (It should suffice to note that cross-border cooperation is often necessary to counter unpredictable, non-state actors.) Petty grievances (‘WHY ACE SO BORING’), fondness for our very frank and funny mentor, wisecracks about teachers (‘HAO KANG CHEONG’), love for bubble tea, FYP (‘Feel Your Pain’)-induced stress and grade anxiety united us all. Our class spirit may pale in comparison to, say, 606′s, but the demarcation lines were never set in stone. There was a huge amount of - often very friendly -communication between the factions.

Speaking of stress, I miss the

- Insane workload

There is a limit to how much you can descend into blobbiness. Nowadays, there is little cause for stress in my life - but the evolutionary remnants that are my stress circuits seem to have missed the stop sign.  Although I’ve already taken steps to prevent my brain from atrophying, a part of my brain that strangely, speaks in my mother’s voice, keeps on urging me to do more! I’m really upset this is why I have never been able to carry to fruition my grand plans of lolling around and stuffing myself with potato chips.

Anyway, yes, I am going to stick my head out and admit that I miss the insane workload because it kept my mental reflexes limber. Just as we willingly subject ourself to the torture of exercise because it keeps us in good health, my brain somehow knows when it’s being fed junk – and often launches a revolt!

- The company

I’ve already acclimatized to being around people much older than I, and I love teaching my juniors – but really, nothing can replace the breezy comfort of talking to peers who already know my concerns and can empathise with them. I realised that in the time I spent sequestered away, silence has been descending on me.

There are so many things that can be filed into this category, so I’m just going to list them out:
- Complaining with Seo Youn about the 4 hons workload (“I can’t believe the rest of them are complaining about their 4 tests next week, when WE HAVE 5 TESTS AND A PROJECT”)
- Routinely embarrassing myself by practising  my Korean in front of Seo Youn (I told her ‘Bogoshipda’ once when she was right in front of me)
- Laughing at EAT DA POO POO and overwrought Bollywood dances as we sat around round tables in the canteen
- Complaining about canteen food and joking that it was a very good weight-control measure thought up by the school
- Imitating Barbarella and Lulu
- Complaining about Separation Science, Statistics and meaningless Chem Prac reports – Oh Sorry, was it only I who did that?
- Looking on wide-eyed while Desmond, Cheryl and Cleo discussed their plans for marriage
- Complaining with Cheryl about our respective parents
- Calling Cleo an Or Jiao
- Offloading my nightmares about being rejected by every overseas university I applied to
-  Stopping by at Gong Cha at Vivocity with the NEL gang
- Long train rides home that were time-contracted because of the wonderful company of the NEL gang
- RIG@NUSH and the really quirky characters I met there
- Finding ways to be cheapskate (I don’t really miss resource room food because I still adhere to that time-honoured tradition, but I miss the company)
- Making fun of Johnny (‘Later the computer got virus’) , Mr Wang HB and Dr Li Wei (‘Cheer configuration’) with the trolls
- Basking in the fount of unproductivity known as the library - because Ryan would keep on distracting me with funny memes. Really, though. The library was always the last place I would go to get work done.
- Thinking of ways to play pranks on the members of tmp
- Gathering gravitons
- Waving my arms frantically in an up-down configuration with Ryan and Viet Anh, for no reason in particular
- Sesquipedalianism
- Recording Keren’s Kerfuffles
- Math O on Saturdays with Jia Yi and sometimes Jiahui, when we’d share answers on Friday for the Saturday problem sets

(I will edit this when I think of more things)

Student surprises

So I added a couple of my students on RenRen (Chinese Facebook)(Yes, surprisingly I am capable of creating an account on such a website) and found that they had been gossiping about my module behind my back!!

This made my day

Translation (italics are my own)

学术状态帝 (on its webpage): How do you fit a 11m wooden pole into a 10m long room? Answer: Run with the pole into the room at 0.46c? ………………………………….. You must be crazy. Why don’t you just hold the pole diagonally and enter the room?

Whereupon my students started sharing it. One of them wrote “I have caught the Phys O contagion…”

[By the way, this works because the pole will length-contract from the frame of the room, and will therefore be able to fit into the room momentarily. Of course, at some point the pole will crash into the walls of the room... but at least you have the satisfaction of saying that you managed to fit the pole in for one nanosecond.]

(I don’t need to translate this, do I?)

Such gems!

I felt an upwelling of what I can only term – job satisfaction. Despite knowing that their teacher is but their senior with no formal pedagogical training, my students are taking my module seriously. It’s become so much a part of their life that they’ve slipped naturally into all the idiosyncrasies of the Phys O student – discussing Phys O online, poking fun at themselves for their perceived ineptitude, donning the geek suits that make them stand out from miles away.

In short, my students have caught the contagion. WAHOO!

(I sound like a sop, but-) It’s immensely rewarding to know that I am significantly to blame for this. I can finally comprehend why people give up lucrative careers to become teachers. There is nothing quite like the feeling that your students’ glories are yours too.

—-
Let us end off with a random photo from my phone:

There is always hope

What I will do after the exams

My life now is dominated by two activities:

1. FYP. This accursed assessment has soaked up large tracts of my time. Continually editing, commenting, sending back and forth emails, chasing people for their parts, incorporating new stuff into what’s already been done – certainly not butterflies and dandelions. Having said that, I do understand the English department’s motivations and maintain that the skills that FYP was meant to cultivate are useful and applicable.

Only I wish it were individual instead. I fail to see the point of a group essay when the work will be asymmetrically distributed anyway – unless perhaps FYP is socialist in origin and intended to promote mark redistribution?

2. Uni apps. Every time this subject crops up, my palms break into a sweat. Nightmarish visions of me receiving rejection letter after rej – okay, okay, I think my id really needs to learn to shut up.

My life after the exams (hopefully):

1. Study for EG1108 exams -.- Hopefully this will not be too much of a chore because we already learnt some of the stuff under Ricardo

2. Shop for a prom dress. I do not have high hopes for this, however. Why? Suffice to say that if my parents had run the US economy, the 2008 financial crisis might have been averted and the country would right now be rolling in its exponentially growing reserves.

3. Finish off Griffiths’ QM. Griffiths is an awesome troll!

4. Bid sayonara to Chemistry! Perhaps I will write an epitaph for it here someday ^^ Expect lots of crocodile tears. 别了, 别了, 别了~

5. Actually read the books on my bookshelf. Books I possess but have not read (but hope to read):

The Unconsoled  by Kazuo Ishiguro
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

And perhaps I’ll leave The Color Purple for some other time, I can’t abide the slang in it Also, I should really find out what all the hype is about sci-fi.

Books I do not possess and have not read but hope to read:

Dune by Frank Herbert
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut/Phillip K. Dick/Arthur C. Clarke that I can get my hands on!

By the way, I’m reading The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht now and it’s very masterfully written. I love it!

6. Watch City Hunter! *Min-ho yum!* Desmond we can have another tea party at your house and watch City Hunter at the same time!

7. Learn Korean/German. I think if I’ll learn German in Uni if I get the chance to take up a 3rd Lang! I have immense respect for the German people – their culture with its ingrained reverence for Science and Technology is so remarkable.

Will add stuff to this list as we go along!

A thought: I am constantly amazed by how much I enjoy Bio. I have the utmost respect for people who LOVE Bio and do well in it (I certainly don’t fall into either category) because a) They seem to have some innate understanding that I lack and b) innovations in Bio are key to improving our quality of life. The world needs such people, just as it needs Physicists and … Chemists.

BTW, if you are wondering where the links went in my new blog layout, they’re all the way down below. I’ve linked a few interesting pages!

A finite simple group of order two

This video is underappreciated!

Presidential elections tomorrow – I hope Dr Tony Tan/Tan Cheng Bock wins! Dr Tan’s Chinese is incomprehensible, but I find it admirable that he actually made the effort to try. He could just have taken the easy way out and opted to have his speech dubbed, like Tan Cheng Bock.

# Here lay a long unwieldy paragraph on the Presidential election that was deleted for viewing pleasure#

Rambling thoughts

Today, I shall categorise and number my thoughts, starting with

1. Math!

An ode to Math that I devised on the spot! Technically it’s a haiku but stylistically it isn’t …

Abstract Algebra
is one of the reasons why
I still go to school

The concepts taught are interesting and non-obvious (okay perhaps if you’re Ryan Chan/Ang Yan Sheng they’re kindergarten standard), though a mild headache is a frequent after-effect. And although an A+, or even an A, isn’t guaranteed, I still do look forward to the revelations of Abstract Algebra. Call it the one irregular, exciting activity in an otherwise predictable school regimen.

(Also, after looking through Ryan Goh’s notes the other day, I felt an urge to stamp on myself for not taking Graph Theory. I never thought I’d second my father’s views on the merits of signing up for every module in sight, but in this case he was probably right. I do think I’m overly cautious sometimes.)

Naomi and I were talking the other day and we agreed that Complex No.s should have been taught alongside Polar Coords in Year 4- firstly, because at that time we wouldn’t have had forgotten most of the Trigo needed for both modules, and secondly because their standards are comparable.

2. Increase in transport fares

I feel that Singaporeans are making a needless fuss about this latest development. In an era of ballooning inflation (and now another impending financial crisis -goodness-), I find it neither surprising nor remarkable. At most it seems a symptom of larger economic problems. IMHO, the complaints about the quantum of the raise do not really merit consideration (because 2 extra cents for every adult trip –> an additional 0.02*2*5 weekdays+0.20 if you go on an Amazing Race around Singapore every weekend = $0.40/week, is really going to burn a hole in our pockets).

If people are objecting to the stagnation of service standards or the poor timing of the fare increase, then (while I don’t concur) I can put it down to a difference in opinion/experiences. I am quite a skeptical person, yet I must admit that these days even Bus 97 no longer arrives grossly late, and peak hour overcrowding on the North East Line seems to have been alleviated by more frequent train services. (But perhaps my experiences are anomalous – maybe more seasoned commuters know better that there has been zero improvement in public transport services.)

I don’t see why people expect that the fare increase should translate to better service if the motivations behind the fare increase have already been expressly stated to be otherwise. Yes, we have a right to demand better service, but this demand should not have been exacerbated by news of fare increases,which are unrelated. If the transport operators say, we want more money from you because we need to finance training programmes for our staff, but later commuters find that there has been no corresponding improvement in service standards – then complaining is justified. But no one has made any pretensions that the additional fare will be channeled towards raising service standards, so I don’t think commuters have a right to complain that service standards have not improved in line with fare increases.

I could go on about this…

The Beginning of the End

I am no stranger to sentiment, and yet … the thought of graduating soon provokes nothing more than a touch of wistfulness on my part.

Though I have truly enjoyed Year 6 so far – the coalescing of my different social circles, the intensity of PO training juxtaposed with the slackness of the rest of the semester, a June holidays spent mostly abroad – graduation seems to represent nothing more nerve-wracking than a transition into the next stage of my life.

Then again, this may be symptomatic of my stubborn insistence on living in the present and consequent inability to project my feelings as far ahead as graduation.

On to happier thoughts, then. For the last time, let me rank my modules in order of preference:

1. Abstract algebra

This module boasts the dual qualities of being taught by Mr Wang, and being rather – abstract! ie. a cocktail of mirth, bedlam and – I insist on using this adorable word – DISCOMBOBULATION!!

2. Complex numbers

This module ranks so highly not only because of its intrinsic qualities, but because of how it compares to its predecessor. Nothing stifles intellectual curiousity as much as an overdose of t-tests, z-tests, confounding variables, histograms, stem-and-leaf diagrams and (I am running out of things to list because I paid so little attention in Stats).. aha…CONFIDENCE LEVELS. Complex numbers, I am happy to announce, is more complex and therefore more interesting.

3. Spectroscopy

This may be part of self-propaganda, but I do love a good detective story. While I do wish there was an Organic Chemistry Part III, I’m glad enough to say 再见, or rather 再也不见, to Physical/Inorganic Chemistry.

4. English

I, too, am surprised that this is only in fourth position. But I cannot help but feel resentment at the amount of homework so generously bequeathed upon us by our venerable teachers. And I’m not even one of those people who haven’t handed in their Term 1 Article Reviews…

5. Proteins

This would have ranked higher if it didn’t largely cover topics that we had already learnt before. I think that Dr Low is a very enthusiastic and interesting teacher. Also, he occasionally brinks on nonsense, which is always a good sign.

6. Separation Science

SS is not unenjoyable, but it lacks the intrinsic mystery of Spectro. (I mean, it’s like comparing a Statistics textbook to a murder story! Yes, I insist on abusing Stats.) Anyway, it is my hope that the ACS motto applies to this module: ‘The Best is Yet to Be”.

As a parting shot, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the advice that was dished out to us when it was time for us to choose our subject combination: Don’t do 4 Honours. Any more than 2 Honours will give you a very heavy workload.

C’est vrai? I don’t think 4 Hons has made me significantly busier. This is not a boast, but sincere advice if any Year 4s happen to chance upon this blog. Perhaps you will be just slightly inconvenienced by Advanced Organic Chem and lovely Biochemistry, but that’s about the only dire effect.

Also, whoever told me that Physics Honours would kill my interest in Physics deserves a thorough knocking – for goodness’ sake, there are at most 3 more modules than for Physics Majors, and none of them came close to the promised level of deadliness.

Grouchy

I realised that my liking for the English subject over the past five years stemmed partly from the strange paucity of homework in our modules.

Unfortunately, this compact with the English teachers seems to have been rescinded!

ICH MAG DAS NICHT! :@

– I’m lying, of course; if my allegiance were so easily bought I would be a top Russian spy by now –

(A random observation: It intrigues me when people give their Facebook photo albums names that have nothing to do with the photos inside. No matter how much I love ducks,  I would not dream of naming an album full of school pictures ‘La Revolution de Quekadoodles’.)

Another 30 hours, then a 14-hour sojourn in the soulless void of an airplane cabin [I sincerely hope we get the new entertainment systems]… then Camborne!

This Camborne trip is completely non-academic – I rather enjoy academic trips really, XLAB being a case in point – but oh well I hope it’s going to be fun nonetheless.

Now, my benevolent group-mates UNILATERALLY decided that I should present my ARP to the Sixth Form… so now I have a backlog of English homework, plus personal essay, plus a random assortment of small stuff, plus an ARP presentation and a presentation on Singapore, all to be completed by tomorrow! Please place yourself in my webbed feet for a moment…

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At this point, perhaps two quotes are in order from my favourite German neurophysiology lecturer of all time, Barbara Ritter:

What a LARGE WHOPPER!

OH HAPPY DAY!

Blimey, Dawkins!

Good news to share (if you haven’t already heard): Herng Yi won the First Award in the Computer Science category at ISEF, as well as 2 Second Awards worth US$650 in total! It is believed that he has also had an asteroid named after him. GOOD ON YA (Time to claim our dinner treats)!

Our Stats teacher has also won US$5000 for being a nurturing and dedicated project mentor. As his favourite Year 6 class, 02 will rally behind him because he regularly demonstrates these outstanding qualities. These are most aptly manifested in his singular belief in the importance of Reading (our Stats notes) Aloud

Now, about the title of this post. Richard Dawkins wrote a very spirited letter to Prince Charles. Presumably, the letter is a retort to a speech by the latter on GM. (GM, in this case, is not a reference to friend Greater Mind, but to Genetically Modified foods.) I am particularly struck by his analogy of Darwinism:

Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. There is no mechanism for going downhill, for crossing the valley to the lower slopes of the high mountain on the other side. There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction – and indeed, 99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.

2 reasons why I love Statistics

Stats is such a lovable topic that I can only think of 2 reasons to like it:

1. It will be over tomorrow! If I get 5 for AP Stats, I will be exempted from it in Uni!

2. Stats is such a mean topic that it makes even the most Normal of students go into thinking mode.
For instance, if not for Stats, we wouldn’t even know that descriptions of boxplots are wrong unless they mention the centre, shape and spread. We would be ignorant of such fundamental truths as: 1) One cannot derive any conclusions from an observational studies and 2) If we wish to accept a null hypothesis we must not reject it!

Pause for a moment, my friends and fellow Singaporeans. Let us be silent as we ruminate on the erudition that Statistics has introduced into our lives. Without Stats, where would we be when our future bosses demand to know what the conditions are for significance tests?