Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Sophomore Journal 2.3.2

Overview
Taking 5 modules and a respite from a half-year of fun and murderous excitement. Holidays were good; In fact, it is Mighty Fine. Will not deign to elaborate more here *smirk.

With any luck, these modules here listed below will develop themselves out of control and make the school life as hard as it was before. But first,

CM1111 Inorganic Chemistry 1 - DR HUYNH Van Vinh
CM1501 Organic Chemistry for Engineers - DR ZENG Huaqiang

Dr Vinh is the lecturer for this ere 4 hour per week module. He has a weakness for Youtube and pronounces all the French and German words properly, much to my delight and to the surprise of those around me.

Chemistry lectures at this point are quite similar in content, although Inorganic seems to be progressing more slowly, with more gossiping about dead people in wigs.

MLE2101 Structure of Materials - DR CHIU Cheng-Hsin
MLE2102 Thermodynamics and Phase Diagrams - DR WANG Qing

As anticipated, Thermodynamics would be the most challenging and the most somber module which the Materials Science students will take this side of Christmas. The lecturer, who people say look like me, opened the lecture with the question of why everything in this world must eventually die. It seems that one is unable to think about Thermodynamics on any other level of emotion.

Structure of Materials starts out rather dodderingly with lecture notes which look almost the same at every page. However, its lab activities for this week prominently features this:


The experiment is entitled "Preparation, Structure and Properties of a High-Temperature Superconductor", although it would be preferable to refer to it as the Flying Bits of Metal Experiment.

LAF3201 French 3 - MRS Francesca MANGANELLI-LENG
The first lesson was on Monday, carried out to the setting sun. And it would gradually come to light that French would be used in class almost all of the time, but what else can one expect after scraping into this class through the placement test?

On the other hand, the penciled notes on Tina's textbook have been great help!

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Valedictorian Speech

It just so happens that recently, in a university near you, a speech by a valedictorian filled the air with outrage and disapproval from those who fancied themselves respectable.

I feel that I must join them, but only because I have watched her speech and found the exit to be poorly executed. Sneaking in the f-word timidly like she did does no justice to the feelings of joy and accomplishment which typifies the occasion. It is more befitting for her either to stick to a no-swearing regime or to vault to mid-stage after the speech and do a lewd dance until her friends, posing as security officers, rush onstage to subdue her with tasers (or anything else to that effect). Future valedictorians, I leave you to consider your choices.