Realm of the Imponderable

RDOC #26
Sunday... the day of forboding, for the next day is one that promises more work and bad things to happen...
Well, At least there's a fair amount of time to rest and relax.
Went to a football game yesterday. American football is a really huge thing here, which is not surprising considering we have I think the biggest stadium in central US or something like that. People travel for hours to come for this event. There's marching bands, crowds of people and everywhere you see people dressed in blue with a huge M written somewhere in bright yellow.
They have a section set aside for students in the stadium and in that section, even though there are seats everybody stands and if you don't you don't see anything. The students were really supportive and vocal; we jingled keys, beat drums and stuff like that and every now and then when the referee makes a decision agains Michigan you hear someone shout "Bullshit!!!" from the crowd.
The game itself was fast paced. Action is very fast but really short lived. Everytime the player with the ball gets tackled and falls down, they stop the game and start a new scrum (They call it something else here but I can only remember the name for the equivalent in rugby). Each side has I think 3 teams of 11 players: one for offense, one for defense and one special tactics team that does stuff like kickoffs and other wierd stuff. Basically when they start you see a mess of guys clubbing each other and you don't really see the ball till you see one player running like a lunatic and a bunch of opposing team players chasing him like a pack of starving dogs. There's a lot of faking goin on too... the idea is for the offensive team to make the defending team think the all is where it isn't. It's a good strategy, except you can never se the ball till you see the aforementioned phenomena followed shortly by a human sandwich which is the accumulation of about 11 guys trying to gang bang the nutter with the ball.
Well, at 7 minutes to the end the winner was pretty clear; michigan 31, indiana 3, so the michigan coach decided to let the rookie quarterback get some flak and sent him into the field, upon which in 7 minutes indiana managed to score 2 touchdowns. I guess that's a pretty good demonstration of how important the quarterback is.
Well, it's been a pretty restful weekend, and I guess I really couldn't ask for more. Back to the grinder again (sigh)

RDOC #25
It's friday night and I'm sitting in my room like a good little boy with nothing to do and a sinking feeling that somewhere there's a party going on that I want to be at and I'm not there. But then again, it's raining. That's bad weather because usually one ends up having to walk home from the party (hopefully straight home. Most people get the home part right but not the straight part)
Just turned down one invitation because I didn't know anybody else at the party, and I think on hindsight, it was a good thing I did cos' there's thunder and lightning out there.
Felt demoralised a few days ago, so I sent myself a little present from Todd Smith Juggling Prducts: A nice little Devilstick. Someday when I'm good enough I'll get the fire variety and have a little fun with it. heehee...
(For those who don't know, Devilsticks are circus props that you twirl around with two smaller handsticks.)
Had my first test here for bio anthro yesterday. Seems they have a sense of humor even in formal exams...
One of the questions was about random mutation (things like these cause stuff like Down syndrome) and how it occurs: There were 5 possible answers. The correct one was that meiosis was disturbed and the resulting gamete had the wrong number of chromosomes. Among the wrong answers was "being bitten by a radioactive spider"... I wonder if any jokers actually put that down as their answer...
Found out today that my math prof is a bit of a scerwball too. He sets questions in the exam where you're not supposed to use a calculator, and the question is such that calculators give a diferent answer. He claims that he can sometimes even guess the brand of calculator if you use one on his question.
Just realised that there haven't been much photos for a while... When i get better with the devilstick I'll post some pics

RDOC #24
Another dreary week has passed. I've learned that if you've done bio before, you're probably wasting your money studying niological anthropology, and if you haven't you need to learn what a bio student learns in school over the span of 2 years in 3 months. I'm feeling a little like alice in wonderland right now...
Well, to just summarize what I'm going over in class: in Engineering 100, I'm learning how to write technical memos and I just went on a field trip to a little stretch of shoreline on lake St. Claire to gather data for designing an offshore habitat for fish, while preserving the functionality of the original coastline. Basically the original coastline is a recreation park with a field and a ramp for lowering small boats into the water.
In Eng 101 I'm learning how to program in C++, and the prof. is right now teaching us how to do subroutines, iterations and declarations. I think at the present moment, though, it's my favorite class, both because I find it easiest to understand and least time consuming in terms of homework.
Math 215. We're just starting to get to the part where I have to listen because the stuff we're doing is stuff I didn't learn in JC. We're on 3 dimensional calculus and it's applications right now, and to facilitate this brain-to-cottage-cheese process of learning, we have this wonderful program called Maple for plotting graphs. It's such a wonderful program that I had to spend 2 hours learning how to work it, another 1 hour trying to troubleshoot and make my diagrams look nice and guess what? We get to work in teams for this lab session. How nice. I have nothing against working in teams but for this you can't really split the work and it complicates the decision making process. But then, I did notice that when we were working on our stuff later on there were just enough computers around for each team to get 1. Now we discover the real reason...
Anthropology 161:.. I just mentioned earlier what goes on in here, no need to get more pain by repeating it. Suffice to say, I think I should be able to get through it, even though the prof can't do math and the lab instructor doesn't really speak english very well. There's always the textbook to fall back on, thankfully.

RDOC #23
Mid Autumn festival. Celebrated a little late, but still with the reasonable dose of full moon, just short of werewolf season. We were at the Arb (Short form for a really long and complicated name that I can't even begin to remember. It's a nature reserve near the hill district in Ann Arbor) doing our little lantern thing and eating mooncakes. (Hats off to the seniors. I haven't the slightest clue how you managed to get those things; they were wonderful) It was really a romantic scene, if you don't mind the fifty or so people crowding around in the clearing next to the river. I would be the perfect place to be sitting under a tree on full moon with your GF/BF and having a nice chit chat or um... whatever...
Anyway, as most of you people reading this will probably predict, my lantern got burnt to ashes at the end and became fertilizer for the grass. I never realised paper lanterns could burn so quickly...
All in all, it was a nice get together for all of us Singaporeans and some of our new American friends, and lacking foresight as we all were, we neglicted to bring extra candles for the return trip out of the forest. The end result was a 10 minute groping around in the darkness using handphones and PDAs as makeshift torchlights. It's really pitch dark in there. Really re
reminds me of the good old days in pulau tekong...

RDOC #22
It's a nice sunny friday and not a cloud in sight. I have 25 mins to my next class and I'm sitting here typing blogs... Kinda shows you what kind of an attitude they have towards time here.
Basically when you say "Michigan Time" it means 10 mins late. It's a universal concept here. Everybody know what it is, almost everybody applies it. I might as well turn my watch 10 mins slower...
Just applied for my driving license on monday; it was a typical Singaporean experience: go there, wait 2 hours in que, spend about 10 mins doing whatever with the official who's supposed to process your documents... But there's a really casual attitude towards things here. In Singapore when you sit for a driving written test you have to follow the testing centre's schedule and sit in an exam hall. Here you just walk up, apply for the test, get the test paper and just sit anywhere in the roomm to take it. And it'a also the same room in which everyone's waiting in line for service and they don't care if you can't find a chair and sit on the floor...
Flags flew at half mast yesterday as commoration of what happened two years ago. There was a candle light vigil held in the main Diag (field) and people made speeches or said prayers last night. I felt a little out of place there after a while and anyway it was kind of boring listening to all these speeches where basically they say we must be strong, it's ok to grieve for those who lost their lives that day, but we must never forget that terrorism and the people who practice it are the ultimate evil and we must do all we can to punish them,,, et cetera... I did discover a few interesting ways people demonstrated their feelings today.. There's this rock near downtown Ann Arbor that's been traditionally painted and repainted at a frequency of I think once every one or two weeks. Today there was written "Bin Laden must Die" or something to that effect on it, and stuff like chalk writing on the sidawalk saying stuff like "Clinton saved Osama teice"...
It's a big advertising thing here; everywhere you go you'll see chalk writing on the pavement advertising some event or club and of course the occasional slogan advocating peace or something else.
Going to a frat party tonight.. Should be interesting to see how people get themselved wasted and how they eventually get themselves home after that.

RDOC #21
Monday monday monday.. the baddest day of the week where even the strongest expresso fails to get you up sufficiently to allow yourself to add 1 and 1.
Early morning rides jumping on pavements on a bike that rattles does....
Seriously though, waking up isn't hard. I believe the average time the alarm clock spends ringing in the morning is about 7 seconds. It helps when it's really loud and sounds like the old cheapskate bell alarms. You're guaranteed to jump everytime it goes off. The hard part actually is not waking up my dear roommate Eugene when I try to get everything pointed in the right direction for class.

That's all for now folks

RDOC #20
Second weekend in Michigan. Starting to settle into a rhythm of things. Waking up at 7 for 8 o'clock classes aren't too difficult, considering I've had plenty of practice waking up at odd hours and the like for the last 2 years... And then again it's only 3 times a week. And it's really refreshing to have a good morning breeze when I cycle to classes. I begin to think it was a good thing I got a relatively cheap bike because right now with all my stunt pulling even a good bike will start to warp. As it is, my bike right now has a slightly deformed rear wheel as a result of my continuous jumping on and off sidewalks. There's also a really steep slope just next to my dorm that I have to go up everytime I return to my room; it's about 50 metres long and about 30-40 degrees average.... I'm going to have really strong legs when I get back next year.
I passed my drivng test last saturday. It was a no brainer, considering I have never driven on an american road, never driven on Left Side Driver cars before, got told off once for driving 5mph faster than the speed limit, almost turned into the wrong side of the road and drove too slowly in the expressway. haha.. I'm going to set a world record soon...
Workload for the first week is pretty light... most of the professors spent their time in lectures telling us about the system, how most of our homework will be electronically handed up and what the course syllabus will cover. It'll get rough soon, I'm pretty sure.
Going for dinner soon. There's this place downtown that reputedly has 6 foot bongs on the roof for weed smoking. Should be interesting to see.

That's all for now folks...

RDOC #19
First days of school have begun. Man, I feel like I'm in JC again... boring lecturers and the occasional good or entertaining ones...
Fortunately here there are fewer boring or crappy lecturers then in Singapore. In fact there's only been one lecturer so far that I really couldn't pay attention to. She is the epitome of the class of people known as the "Duracell People"... Keeps going on and on and on and on and on..........

Joined the Juggling Club a few days ago... The regular members are rally good; most of them can juggle at least 5 balls or clubs and still do loads of tricks at the same time.Of course, there's beginners as well, and I've basically joined them and sort of taken the partial job of teaching them the basics. The variety of stuff they do is quite wide; I've seen diabolos (AKA Chinese Yoyos), Poi, crystal balls and cigar boxes in addition to the standard ball and club juggling. I've been trying club juggling for a bit and it's significantly harder to do than balls. It looks alot cooler though... But nah.. they take up too much space and as we all know, space is a premium in the dorm. Not to mention that if you screw up with clubs the best thing you can do is cover your head and hope nothing breakable is nearby.

I went in an a TKD club session too, though I found that it wasn't really my cup of tea anymore because there's little that they do that I haven't done before. Well, you can say I probably need the practice but then again it's nice to also learn a few new things every now and then. They're also pretty good; there's at least 7 or 8 black belts there, most of them 2 or 3 dan( which is 2 or three grades higher than your standard black belt). I just didn't really like the regimentation and the repetitiveness in the class. Still, things may change, so perhaps I'll stick around a few more sessions and see.

As for classes, well, classes..... boring as ever? Sometimes. Some professors are boring in the extreme (Like the one I mentioned earlier) and others are entertaining and keep their lectures interesting and we do actually learn something there. Everyone emphasizes on "open door policy" where the professor is in his office and you can approach him for any cock and bull problem you have.

KK enuff crapping for now
Miss you all, esp. Jo

DDOC #18


Oops... sorry for the loss of picture.
Damn that sounds too cliche

How about "Aw F**K those idiots at tripod finally discovered their loophole and fixed it... nevermind that puny users like me have to lose our photos as a resut..."

Posted by: Kai / 8:40 AM