6 mods is not fun - but it helps me appreciate how fun everything else can be I guess
Lots of cool things have happened over the last four weeks or so. Now, in no particular order…
6 modules in 1 semester is INSANE. For the first time in my life in SMU I feel like I have no chance to breathe. I exaggerate of course – last semester was pretty tight too, but that was mostly because of dance exco work and Bailamos, which was pretty manageable because at least I had the luxury of switching from one thing to another and keeping myself from feeling jaded. But now the mind-numbness is coming all from the academic avenue, and I want to absorb everything that I'm learning but I find I just can't. Once again I find myself winging it, faking one thing after another and just trying to stay ahead of the curve in every module. I tell myself that this is the only way to take all the modules that I want to take before I leave SMU, but even if I push myself to the brink this year (i.e. end up taking 14 modules or something) I will still probably end up having to deal with 6 modules per semester in my final year as well. I'm a big greedy academic pig! At least we get to watch cool videos every now and then in class.
Sharon’s birthday was a blast! I brilliantly executed my plan to take her out to the grass-covered roof of Marina Barrage for an open-air picnic. The wind was great, the view was lovely and best of all, nobody came to chase us away! The picnic comprised of the following:
- Picnic mat (partially permeable)
- Discman with portable speakers, playing Sharon-selected love songs for ambience
- Improvised tea-light-in-jute-bag lantern (pictured below)
- Take-out dinner from Saizeriya
- 2 slices of cheesecake from Cheesecake Café
- 2 bottles of Seasons flavoured tea
- 1 random cushion from my brother’s car
- Inspired gift of a custom T-shirt in a nice pastel pink box with silver ribbon
Sounds like a recipe for romance? I’ll let the pictures below tell the story.
Improvised Lantern
Birthday Cake from Cheesecake Cafe!
My birthday gift to her!!
And here’s a close-up of the T-shirt. Witty, isn’t it?
I'm really happy at the way it turned out…
Vivace this year was pretty cool. I had my doubts about how things would happen, but I guess God is watching and taking care of all of us. We got pretty good sign-ups for Caderas101, auditions and classes – nobody complained too much. I was surprised at how tired I was by the time it was all over. The only part I was annoyed about was our performance – not only did I have to run across wet asphalt in my ballroom shoes in order to get to the performance stage on time (thereby completely ruining their soles, which was unfortunate but not wholly so since they were almost gone anyway), but our music got cut off at the end, which was positively infuriating. Apart from that I had lots of fun talking to juniors (or rather yelling at them because the music and noise at every booth in the Concourse was deafening) and getting them interested in Caderas. Basically my job for the last year, which I relived for one day.
A couple of weekends ago Angeline and I hit KL for a ballroom competition. Crappy result, but an awesome experience. It was the first time that I had travelled completely on my own itinerary, i.e. planning my own flight, accommodation and preoccupations. So although performed terribly at the competition, didn’t get enough sleep and generally felt like mucus for most of the time, we had a good time just relaxing and shopping, doing whatever we wanted to do and going wherever we wanted to go. Ate Wendy's for the first time in my (very nice) and got some Krispy Kremes too (definitely very nice). We saw the Petronas Towers too, though we didn’t go up (to do that, one has to queue for tickets at like 8am in the morning). I enjoyed the break from school, though when I got back there was a world of suffering because I had to catch up on sleep as well as homework and readings. I feel relatively on top of things now, but that’s a very transient feeling.
Which brings me back to schoolwork. Every weekend is a mad rush for me as I try to complete the tasks that I've accumulated over the course of the entire week. I’ve MPW readings and notes to go through, a surprise Economic Forecasting assignment to complete, Ethics notes submission and readings, as well as a Persuasion thesis statement to come up with. And this won't be the last term of doing random stuff that doesn’t fall under my areas of specialization – there’s still Management Accounting and Strategy to go. Hey, actually that’s not too bad. Oh and of course ICC if I still want to do it next year. Sigh.
6 modules in 1 semester is INSANE. For the first time in my life in SMU I feel like I have no chance to breathe. I exaggerate of course – last semester was pretty tight too, but that was mostly because of dance exco work and Bailamos, which was pretty manageable because at least I had the luxury of switching from one thing to another and keeping myself from feeling jaded. But now the mind-numbness is coming all from the academic avenue, and I want to absorb everything that I'm learning but I find I just can't. Once again I find myself winging it, faking one thing after another and just trying to stay ahead of the curve in every module. I tell myself that this is the only way to take all the modules that I want to take before I leave SMU, but even if I push myself to the brink this year (i.e. end up taking 14 modules or something) I will still probably end up having to deal with 6 modules per semester in my final year as well. I'm a big greedy academic pig! At least we get to watch cool videos every now and then in class.
Sharon’s birthday was a blast! I brilliantly executed my plan to take her out to the grass-covered roof of Marina Barrage for an open-air picnic. The wind was great, the view was lovely and best of all, nobody came to chase us away! The picnic comprised of the following:
- Picnic mat (partially permeable)
- Discman with portable speakers, playing Sharon-selected love songs for ambience
- Improvised tea-light-in-jute-bag lantern (pictured below)
- Take-out dinner from Saizeriya
- 2 slices of cheesecake from Cheesecake Café
- 2 bottles of Seasons flavoured tea
- 1 random cushion from my brother’s car
- Inspired gift of a custom T-shirt in a nice pastel pink box with silver ribbon
Sounds like a recipe for romance? I’ll let the pictures below tell the story.
Improvised Lantern
Birthday Cake from Cheesecake Cafe!
My birthday gift to her!!
And here’s a close-up of the T-shirt. Witty, isn’t it?
I'm really happy at the way it turned out…
Vivace this year was pretty cool. I had my doubts about how things would happen, but I guess God is watching and taking care of all of us. We got pretty good sign-ups for Caderas101, auditions and classes – nobody complained too much. I was surprised at how tired I was by the time it was all over. The only part I was annoyed about was our performance – not only did I have to run across wet asphalt in my ballroom shoes in order to get to the performance stage on time (thereby completely ruining their soles, which was unfortunate but not wholly so since they were almost gone anyway), but our music got cut off at the end, which was positively infuriating. Apart from that I had lots of fun talking to juniors (or rather yelling at them because the music and noise at every booth in the Concourse was deafening) and getting them interested in Caderas. Basically my job for the last year, which I relived for one day.
A couple of weekends ago Angeline and I hit KL for a ballroom competition. Crappy result, but an awesome experience. It was the first time that I had travelled completely on my own itinerary, i.e. planning my own flight, accommodation and preoccupations. So although performed terribly at the competition, didn’t get enough sleep and generally felt like mucus for most of the time, we had a good time just relaxing and shopping, doing whatever we wanted to do and going wherever we wanted to go. Ate Wendy's for the first time in my (very nice) and got some Krispy Kremes too (definitely very nice). We saw the Petronas Towers too, though we didn’t go up (to do that, one has to queue for tickets at like 8am in the morning). I enjoyed the break from school, though when I got back there was a world of suffering because I had to catch up on sleep as well as homework and readings. I feel relatively on top of things now, but that’s a very transient feeling.
Which brings me back to schoolwork. Every weekend is a mad rush for me as I try to complete the tasks that I've accumulated over the course of the entire week. I’ve MPW readings and notes to go through, a surprise Economic Forecasting assignment to complete, Ethics notes submission and readings, as well as a Persuasion thesis statement to come up with. And this won't be the last term of doing random stuff that doesn’t fall under my areas of specialization – there’s still Management Accounting and Strategy to go. Hey, actually that’s not too bad. Oh and of course ICC if I still want to do it next year. Sigh.
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