Worship the Sun by day, indulge in the fun by night

That test I mentioned last in my previous post turned out to be just as nightmarish as rumored to be, but I didn't feel too bad because everyone said it was horrible and historically the average on the test is about 15%. It was a multiple-choice test where more than one of the choices could have been right, or even none of them at all. So you had to indicate all the right choices to get ANY credit for each question... no partial credit awarded for getting just one out of two of the choices correct. It was very strange and I'm not sure if it was an effective testing method, just seemed sadistic. The prof who uses this method is actually my research prof, and he seems to think that this method would award those who both read the class notes AND attend lecture, because usually his questions would be structured to include information from both the print notes and his lecture talks. He even said at the beginning of the test, "Those of you who I see now but not in my lectures, good luck, you need it..."

After the test was unexpectedly a lot of fun to be had though. As celebration for finishing midterms I went with a friend to hit the clubs... yes, I know, I said a few times over the semester I would not be interested in going to any clubs, but this seemed like an appropriate time to make an exception. I was actually feeling very guilty about going, not because of other work to do or that I gave into peer pressure but because I told my other exchange student group that I wouldn't go with them on a nighttime bike-ride on the East Coast beach, because the ride wouldn't be over until at least 2AM and I had to get up early the next day to go on a class field trip for my solar power course. I went clubbing instead... because we started at 8PM and I figured I'd be done by, oh, midnight at the latest. As my friend joked to me, "I can give you a ride back, Cindarella". I'm so naive...

So as you can imagine, 8PM is considered very early for a club, even I knew that, but I met a lot of cool people and, well... I ended up not coming back to campus until past 6AM... yeah... It was admittedly a ton of fun, I'm glad I did it at least once, and it will be hard for me to refuse to go back. Actually... I went back the next day haha but just for a short trip to a hotel-bar, not hopping from club to club for hours and hours over the entire night like I did on Friday. So as for what happened exactly during all that time? Well, use imagination here, when I'm drunk it gets hazy. And wild :)

The people I hung out with were pretty much all native Singaporeans. A lot of bankers, lawyers, businessmen/women, etc... definitely not many engineers. They all like to be the "cool" types, and I like to have witty conversations with people so it worked out better than I thought, but a lot of the time I was just a listener/onlooker, and only sometimes talking/dancing.

So again, very sorry to the bike-riders, I ended up staying wayyy past my bedtime anyway. I didn't even sleep before the field trip, why bother? The field trip itself was interesting too, we went to Singapore's largest solar power station at the Marina Bay barrage, a giant facility that controls the sea-level near the mouth of the Singapore River. It actually wasn't a very impressive solar panel field in terms of area, but the technician there who toured us around definitely knew what he was talking about so that was cool. It was also a hot day out, so as it was for the solar panel lab I did back on campus I felt uncomfortably hot throughout the tour. But when I got home I immediately took a shower and a looong nap. Only to get up for another trip to the Fullerton hotel-bar with the same people I met the night before. Now I'm trying to catch up on work, which as you can see I am still avoiding by writing my blog instead.

Did learn however that a fellow Rice engineering student who came to NUS on exchange in the past did manage to actually fail one of his courses (I think he got a D, which is passing at NUS, but it has to be a C- or above for Rice). That is quite scary, I must admit. Now I feel a little worried about my own courses, so hopefully motivation will strike me and I can get back to work.

Root for me, as I've always been there for you!