I'm just Mr. Brightside...

Lately been revisiting the Killers again for music, got some nice techno remixes of "Mr. Brightside" stuck in my head. I was actually forced a few days ago to sing my own rendition of the US national anthem for an international student meeting. I refused for as long as I could, as I'm a horrible singer, but they insisted forever so I finally sung just two lines for them, the last two. The US anthem is quite badass, I must say. All the other anthems sound like pansy-songs... even Germany's now that they seem to have be wary of using violent/hateful anthems, for good reason admittedly.

So unfortunately the workload is really starting to crush me now. The main problem is that I have no idea how much effort I should put into my classes to pass them. I've heard that the fail-rate is quite high around here, about 10% of the students in engineering classes are repeating the course, which doesn't account for those who just failed and left. And the last day to set classes to audit for exchange students is TODAY, so as I'm writing this I'm still wondering if I should be cautious and just audit one of my courses.

The course in major question is Power Electronics, which I mentioned before has a terrible lab. Actually the second one was a lot better, but we also had the midterm this week... that was the scariest test of my life quite honestly. It's been a while since I've had to take so many in-class tests, and this one was in an extra-secure atmosphere, to the point where I could hardly concentrate on the test without feeling someone watching my every move... The professor and 3 other test proctors were there making sure none of us were cheating. The prof even went up to this girl sitting behind me and wrote on her test that he had suspected her of possible cheating, because she just had a piece of paper or something on the floor nearby, when the prof said he didn't want to see any other papers but the test out. The girl protested that it was nothing, but the prof insisted that he had to be fair to everyone... so that sucked for her. The test itself was brutal, alas I didn't study as much as I should have, but who does? Hopefully not too many others do, or the curve is going to kick my ass.

Which leads me to the dilemma of whether or not I'm going to audit this class or not... I don't know yet what grade I got on this exam, so I have to guess whether it's worth it or not. I think I'm going to stick to it, because I keep telling myself that only a pansy would drop it now. I came here to Singapore to see what it was like to be in one the best universities in Asia; how will I get a taste of the real thing if I wuss out of a normal-to-light courseload for a typical NUS engineering student? If it turns out the midterm went very badly, then I'll just go into "AZN lockdown" for reading period before finals, and hopefully do much better on the big mamu, which accounts for 60% of the grade. And if I fail... well that's just the price I pei, destiny is calling me, open up my eeeageeer eyes... 'cause I'm Mr. Brightside : )

Why are Asians so studious and hardworking? I feel like I should know this, but somehow I think I was left in the dust when it came to inheriting the "study-like-mad" gene from my Asian side. I think it's because Asians have such strong families centered typically around a tradition of encouraging the success of their future generations in a professional world, which in their belief begins with success in the academic world. I also read in some history book that Asians, particularly Chinese, were known for having civil service exams since the ancient days. These exams were meant in a way to select the Emperor's future department of administrative officals, and were taken very seriously in that time. That has led to today's perception of Asian culture, which I think the hilarious parody site "Onion News" summarizes quite well with one of their headlines "National Asian-American Society Prepares a Well-Organized and Somewhat Nerdy Report on Stereotypes Facing Asians in America".

And what drives them isn't just getting a good grade for their resume, they believe it's just honorable to get good personal rankings. My research-supervising undergrad, who is graduating this year, told me when I asked why he still studies so hard when he already has a job after graduation, "I want to go out with a bang." Wow, that's dedication. I remember my senior year of high-school I pretty much lost all interest in school, since I got into the college I wanted and that was the end of the story for me. But it's not like Gabriel (that's his name) is a complete nerd either, he even drove me down to Holland Village on a Friday night after we've been working late in the lab (I find this is a common curse shared universally among ELECS...) and there we'll have a beer and laugh about politics, women, etc. like I would normally do with a lazy-ass back home (with whom coversations are usually not that interesting, either). That reminds me actually, I came back to PGP last Friday evening after hanging out with Gabe when a certain... somebody... *coughcoughChua coughBi coughQuan cough* asked me when I got out of Gabe's car into the foyer, "Ryan, are you straight la??"... What?! Give me a break, woman... LAAA. In America a man just having a beer with another man is the ultimate symbol of heterosexual brotherhood, all that could have been done further to perpetuate the idea is if we were also watching football. And no, not cootsie-footsie foot football, but real. American. football. Actually we did have ice cream after the beers, but HEY it was HOT OUT... this is Singapore, duh...

Anyway, so yes, I'm shocked by how much the students here take their good grades to heart. They even have this hardcore ranking system, somewhat like the Latin honors in the US, except taken to a higher level, where you have First Class, Second Upper Class, Second Lower Class, Third Class, Passing, and of course... the Fail-Whales. First Class I believe is A- and above, which means if I converted my GPA from Rice directly to NUS I'd be in First Class... but something tells me that I really, really wouldn't belong there... First Class here absolutely means first-f**king class, no joke. Not this fluffy-wuffy, hyper-inflated GPA I have from Rice.

Man I'm already having resent about having to go back in less than 2 months... even with the hardcore schoolwork weighing me down. I had major resent too when I was in my final weeks of Switzerland, so I am beginning to think that I just don't like Houston... Having to go back to Houston, even if you're going through beautiful California first for a few weeks on the way, is a horrible punishment. When I was in Houston last semester I spent my bitter days in ELEC classes and in our spartan off-campus apartment wishing I was skiing in the Alps or riding the Bahn across the Swiss countryside... now I think I'll be going back wishing I was in People's Park in Chinatown having sugarcane juice, Siam coconuts, steamed fish-head, baklah pork jerkey, xiaolongbao or in Holland Village having my favorite sambol fish, chili crab, pratha, kaya... *tear*.

And on top of that, I've realized that since I arrived in Singapore, I have not yet been ill or stricken with allergies, which is an absolute miracle in my view considering that I am in Asia, which I usually associate with a fair certainty of getting food-poisoning at least once, and also it's technically spring-time, which is the worst season for pollen, and Singapore is covered in flowering plants. For stomach sickness, I think the fact that Singapore is so clean that has really spared me the experience of having to live on the toilet for half a day. This has allowed me to be especially experimental in trying new foods while I'm here, although today I did stumble on one nasty meat dish for lunch, some Indian curry that had liver and kidneys in it. Usually I like liver, but I don't know what they did to this one... it was just bad. Oh well, that's just one experiment gone ary, the rest are usually pleasant surprises. And as for the pollen, I think it has something to do with either the humidity taking the pollen out of the air, or just that flowers in Singapore are simply much better at targeting their own kind rather than accidentally fertilizing my eyeballs or my sinuses, which are usually very annoyed whenever those flowers make this unfortunate mistake. But yes, usually March is the worst month of the year for me back in the US (either CA or TX), I get so stuffed up that I can't even go outside to play tennis or anything because I'll just suffocate in the process.

Ok I think that'll be enough for this week... time to be a cool kid again and stop blogging... and start working ha... Or maybe go see a movie. Anyone want to see Watchman with me? Subhash highly recommends it, and I don't require much of anyone who wants to see it too, just don't be one of those people who talks during the movie or laughs like a madman at really bad jokes, or I will be most upset and demand a refund from you. Or at least an explanation for what-the-f**k-is-so-damn-funny-you-dick

Cheers!