砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Monday, August 22, 2005

Good day!

Welcome back to school, as my phone rang me up 6am in the morning. I just slept at 1.30am following the Chelsea's lucky win over Arsenal (virtue of a fluke goal from Drogba). I went for a morning run, in the dark lanes where the trees made the ground dark, and cars were rare on the route I took. After that, even with the early preparation of ironing my clothes the day before, I was still late for class by 8 mins due to an unfortunate incident - my pen was leaking ink and it smudged my hands! Till now the ink still stays.

The first class was Business Processes. In factI was intending to depart since I was locked out of class, but fortunately, someone else was as late as me. A kind hearted soul opened the door for her, of course I took the chance to 'steal' into class as well. The first segment was self introduction, but I got to talk more when the lecturer asked if anyone had working experience. I described my current golf travel consultant job in a very summarised manner, trying to keep relevance to class. In the end, the class was more about mathematical models used to improve procedures and decision makings in business processes, not the typical case study kind of class you would expect. While we were treated to a show of facilities in the seminar room (6 whiteboards available for writing), I was wondering if the professor knew of any technology afterall. He made the class copy one stupid question as he scribbled onto the whiteboard, and somebody even requested for him to write in larger font. Actually he could always use some thing called 'projector' or certainly just upload the question beforehand onto the virtual learning portal, SMU Vista. Yet some of my classmates were furiously typing and caught out in the end when they didn't know how to draw a graph in MS Word, while others had on their notebooks, scribbling, that you wonder if they were legible at all. Sheeshzzz.. so much for being a high-tech, resourceful school.

The positive segment about class was that my previous groupmates, Xiaoxiang and Esther did not recognise that it was me till I had spoken. I was actually wearing contact lenses and donned a lively hairstyle. The 2 testimonials from them proved that my changeover had succeeded in some sort, which was good news. Unfortunately, I may need to wear my unsightly spectacles again on Wed with the 3x 3hour classes and no breaks in between, which were no good for my eyes as my left eye seem to be uncomfortable with the contact lens on it for more than 3 hours. Perhaps I need to budget for a new pair of spectacles but there isn't any budget manoeveurability left for that, unless Singapore Pools blesses me with a windfall! Hahaha.

After school, life reverted to the usual - enjoying making calls and talking to strangers across territorial borders, via this thing called 'telephone' and 'IDD'. I had been assigned the project to acquire merchants for a certain program we were designing, and hence had to dial up the various merchants for their responses. Not too enjoyable, but still, it was a valuable experience considering I rarely call up people to talk.

Prior to school, the weekend was filled with football activities except for Saturday morning, which I had to bring my grandparents to hospital for a short check-up. After that it was the usual soccer game at NUS. I have to admit that it was a really bad day for me, even though I recorded 3 assists out of the 9 goals my team managed in the small tennis court sized area. I made several mistakes amounting to 20 in total, and 3 of those were sitters that I missed. Guess my shoes were firing blanks. My greatest asset - passing - was erratic and had caused my team several dropbacks for the counterattacks were quick and furious.

After the soccer game it was more of watching soccer for the rest of the day and resting as I acquired a present from the great o sun - sunburnt! My shoulders were burnt while my face had a healthy tan. Perhaps that contributed to my ex-project mates' inability to recognise me.

The new term brings a new challenge, a time-juggling act that I have to balance among the array of responsibilities in the many organisations I have got myself involved with. Notwithstanding any major downfall, I predict that I will make good time out of these 15 weeks and then enjoy a marvellous end to 2005, which will consequently, lead me nearer to higher achievements. Some may say it is too early to count the chickens before the eggs hatch, yet I still want to emphasise that, having set the goals early, having decided on the ways to reach it, constantly getting feedback and being on the ball for sudden breakouts by having flexiblity, at least ensures that I will not be driven to desperation like last term.

I will not want to live the ridiculous life of last term again. (Oh well, this sentence looks pretty nostalgic.. did I say it beginning of last term!?)

Acknowledged my existence at
8:49 PM