Monday, February 05, 2007

26 degrees celsius

wow for the first time, i am experiencing 26 degrees celsius here!! woohoo!! and i am not enjoying it... sad..

the weather in Los Angeles has also been wierd lately.. i heard from the locals cursing "it is not normal!!!" when they tugged strongly to their jackets, braving against the strong winds with me.. haha.. the standard deviation is LARGE. day time usually goes to max 18 degrees and min is about 10 degrees while night time it can be between 4 degrees to 9 degrees (all are reported in the degree celsius scale). hence it is so hard to prepare what to wear.. i wear like a polar bear but it is all sunny outside and i wear a single layer but it is freezing.. dots.. and carrying the heavy jackets around is still a hassle..

in america, they are still using the degree Fahrenheit scale for temperatures. to convert from F to C, use the following simple formula C = (F-32)/2. =) they are also using miles instead of kilometres (one mile about 1.6 km). and mass wise, they use pounds instead of kilograms (1 kg about 2.2 pounds). i am finally adjusted and can do the conversions fairly fast now.

so sad! and i am not out enjoying the sun.. finally i think i must start to study abit. about the education system here.. i am kind of disappointed. i feel like i am back to secondary schools. it is quarter system here so i am taking 3 module equivalent for each quarter. each module equivalent has two homeworks due weekly. and you MUST hand in cos it is all counted! omg... back in hwachong i dont do my tutorials that on time. in NUS, i also do if i got e spare time to do (no lab or whatsoever then i do) but they are not counted so i am spared from the stress.

and the culture here is the lecturers love that u go and visit them during office hours (meaning they have a special timeslot for students to ask qns). in NUS, i see that as the lecturer being friendly but usually nobody goes seriously (I never go). here, sometimes they will release impt info on the midterms and exams! omg so u can see the ppl here are very KIASU (queue up outside TA's and Lecturer's offce). oh yah i like the TA system here. they play a very impt part in the lecture - being demonstrators (yes they must attend ALL lectures as us)and the TAs are GREAT!! young, energetic, can teach very well (and cute... hahah) they can speak in e same frequency as the students - very impt.

anyways i think the students are not trained to be independent. every thing is rather spoonfed and the lecturers like to spoonfeed them, telling them what to memorize (yes they just simply memorize). concepts are generally weak among e students. well no wonder most of them wanna do grad studies.. their undergrad seriously never learn much..

now that i am more settled down. i shall just report some interesting phenomenons of my everyday life. haha.. i miss my family and friends of course.. if i have the time, i will do an entry on my family! haha.. look out for that! =)

blabbered by Jinzhan at 5:51 AM |

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