Numb (Yuan)

Initially, I was planning to have some fun in writing down my very relaxing holiday and the things (or the lack of) I managed to get done over that week but sadly, life goes on and things, not always good, happen.

Take last Friday, for example. I had my first test. Admittedly, it was only a short 20 MCQs exam but I guess that was exactly what was bad about it. Everybody (or mostly everybody) studied and revised the general concepts, principles and the stuff the lecturers said were examinable. So we rocked up to the exam, confident that we have at least 90% of the contents down pat. Unfortunately, it was the other 10% – facts that the lecturers chucked out just to interest us, almost like an afterthought – that was on the exam. All in all, it was relatively painless, we either knew it or we didn’t. It wasn’t like a math exam where after a 10 minute panick session over a problem, you suddenly realize how stupid you have been and discover the solution. This was pure memory – no amount of scratching your head or chewing your nails will help you. But being painless doesn’t mean it was easy. I already know for certain I’ve got 2 questions wrong. *sigh* But it was a new experience, completely different from exams in high school, which was a breeze.

The Easter break was good. I camped out in my room and managed to turn my sleeping pattern around until I was 100% nocturnal. I would get up at 4pm in the afternoon and stay up all the way till 8am the next morning. My housemates were completely surprised when I popped out of my room on the weekend cause they haven’t seen me all week. Of course, I did run out of food and had to do a grocery run in the middle of the week but all in all, it was a nice, long relaxing week where I literally did nothing. Pity it wasn’t for longer. But then again, I am still not doing much work these days and nothing has changed at all so I guess I’m still kind of in the holiday mode.

Socialising at uni is definitely different from (and harder than) high school. This is even more so when almost all your friends are in another state. However, like life, things move along and you eventually adapt to the new environment (no, this is not natural selection or survival of the fittest… These days, I seem to be able to do nothing but make puns and analogies relating to biology). I no longer have any trouble finding friends before lectures, which either means that my friendship circle has gotten bigger or my friends have now picked one congregational place to gather around. I sincerely hope it is the former. I can remember almost all of my friends’ names, which is good, since now that we’re getting into week 5, it’s kind of embarrassing asking people for their names. And last weekend, a couple of my friends and I hanged out at Melbourne central, had lunch and watched the movie “the Other Boelyn Girl”. Has anybody else watched it? For people who enjoyed “Elizabeth: the Golden Age” and other such movies, you would probably also enjoy this one. Be warned, it has a lot of stuff that is ridiculously fictional. For my review on the movie, visit: http://www.helium.com/items/974679-ambition-politics-betrayal-again (To the moderators: if we are not allowed to put links into these blogs, I apologize in advance and plead ignorance. I can’t remember whether it was one of the rules. If it is, can you just delete this sentence?). After watching “Atonement” and this movie one after the other, I am in serious need of some romantic comedy or chick flicks to empty my brain. Anybody have any suggestions?

Lectures and tutorials have just settled into a mandatory schedule. They are no longer the exciting unknown adventures that they were a couple of weeks ago. I’m increasingly finding myself looking at the clock, which is kind of sad. The stuff that we are learning are very interesting and I actually enjoy them. It’s just the learning process is so cut up and dried. My lecturers change every single week, which is slightly frustrating because just when you’ve found a lecturer’s style to your taste, a week later, he’s gone and another lecturer is in his place. But considering how my results from the last test won’t be very good, I can’t really complain and should be spending more time studying than surfing the net.

In other news, the Clinton-Obama duel is yet to come to a close. I am getting really frustrated. The media know that Clinton has almost no chance of beating Obama in terms of delegates by the August convention. The voters know that. The Democratic party knows that. For goodness sakes, even Hillary Clinton and her campaign team knows that. So why on earth is she still in the race, refusing to give up when even several key members of the Democratic party have publicly asked for her to step down already. The longer she stays in, slugging dirt on Obama, the more voters will be swayed towards John McCain.

Tomorrow, I have my first real prac, which should be interesting. I’ve had pracs before but they were computer-simulated learning so it wasn’t much fun staring at the computer screen for 3 hours. Tomorrow, we’ll be in the labs, wearing our newly-purchased Melbourne Uni lab coats and undoubtedly looking extremely nerdy. At least, none of us will have a stethoscope around our necks (sorry, med inside joke). Lol, I had trouble in the bookshop today, buying my lab coat because there were so many types to choose from, my eyes got dizzy. There was the lab coats with the Uni Melb logo stamped on it, the short white coats that had a tag saying “consultation coat” but with a label saying lab coat, the white gown-like coat called theatre gown, the blue dentistry coat and another blue unidentified type. Couldn’t they just make an all-in-one coat for us?

Now, moving on to a random topic regarding time zones. Theoretically, we are 10 hours ahead of GMT. Last week, when we were still on Daylight Saving, we were 11 hours ahead (understandable). Yet sometime during that week, I got an email from my parents in Glasgow informing me that they’ve also gone on Daylight saving so that our time difference is once again 10 hours. Yet last Sunday, we reverted back to normal times, so now Glasgow is only 9 hours behind us. So in the span of a couple of days, the time difference between my parents and me has changed by 2 hours. It might not seem like such a big deal but it just seems pointless and humourous for the time zone to change when in reality, we are all living in the same time (the now) and there shouldn’t really be any differences at all. After all, my parents are not literally 10 hours back in time from me, are they? I’ll leave you on that weird and seemingly pointless note.

Cheers