William Chong

This paper’s convenor has to be the laziest one I’ve come across in 4 years of courses. All our tutorials have basically been taken straight off the textbook’s online resources website – the questions all unchanged. During lectures she makes a very, very distant summary of 2, 3 chapters of the textbook at a time, yet everything in those chapters are examinable. What is the point of the lecture if we have to memorise the textbook after that?

Copying the online material from chapters 11-24 have so far given me 45 pages in MS Word. This lecturer is lazy. $500 into the student loan. Not worth it. ‘Nuff said.

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Not much else to write in that title, it really asked for something nonsensical to head this post.  Really.  Am at Tamaki computer labs, typing up notes for 206.  Got 304 and 305 to work on too, both are reasonably difficult.  Sport psychologists don’t make particularly good lecturers, there’s nothing new she shows us, just summaries of the textbook of which we have to had read all through anyways (Swallow it whole, folks).

Had a second sandwich photo, but doesn’t seem to be uploading properly (black image).  Today a friend showed me a live track of the US-NZ foreign exchange rate – told me about psychological resistance at cent marks, pips, short selling (he made over $1000 on paper as we were speaking), supply and demand.  Once upon a time I had wanted to take a Commerce degree and be a stockbroker.  I remember my dad’s response when I informed him of my aspirations.

“You can go to a Malay polytech to do commerce.  It’s useless.”

(of course, in a Mandarin sentence).  The ferocity of his disapproval shocked me: I was taken to a relative’s house to have some sense talked into.  I remember my much-older cousin who did his Masters in Science and now taught Physics to private school students taking me up to his room, and pointing out all the things in the house that were there because of “science”.  (insert awe-inspiring dramatic monologue here).

… actually it was a pretty lame endeavour, but I told myself to pretend it was some sort of life-changing moment and let my dad have his way.  I dropped Economics from the following years’ subject choices in favour of Physics, and with that my aspirations for a six-figure salary in the future (or even $75000 a year, lol).

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Oh yeah, I like my electric toothbrush.  It works very well.

One of my uni assignments requires a meticulous tracking of the foods I’m eating.  I even have to weigh them as much as I can.  So my lunchtime noodles had to be broken down like this:

• 250 g egg noodles
• 100 g silverbeet
• 50 g Shaved Ham
  • EN: 109 kcal
  • PRO: 160 g
  • Fat: 2 g (0.8 g sat)
  • CHO: 7 g (0.9 g sug)
  • Sodium: 1300 mg
• 2 chicken eggs
• 15 ml Kikkoman Soy Sauce

The work required kinda puts me off eating complicated foods, or foods without weight and nutritional breakdowns.  Mleh.

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As part of my Chinese revision, I break down lyrics from Chinese pop artists.  I’m on my 2nd song, but at the moment it’s very interesting how succinct and abstract these lyrics can be.  The first line of one of Jay Chow’s songs is only 15 characters, but has the following:

“As the eaves are like cliffs, and as the chimes are like the blue seas, I wait for the swallow to return.”

… how are eaves like cliffs?  How are wind chimes like blue seas?  How profound.

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