It’s Finally Over… A Summary of my Year 1 in NTU

It is finally over… I want to believe God will deliver me… been feeling worried for the last paper… felt that I screwed it up, maybe only 50 marks received? I don’t know… all will be known come 31 May 2005…

Caution: Beware for a long post… in an attempt in sum up my Year 1 life in NTU…

4 years passed in a twinkling of an eye… I could recall the days of Year 1 when I just entered NTU… full of hopes, dreams and desires… wanting to prove myself…

I remembered going out Union FOC, doing the silliest things like rolling on the ground at the Takashimaya foundation and making a fool of ourselves… of course, that was also the last time SAO permit student activities aka FOCs to be done in the city as it disturbs that the place and tarnish the name of the university… in subsequent years, we are limited to Sentosa, neighbourhoods and other recreational areas… the first time I went to a club was also during UOC… I remember clearly it was a foam party… during that time it was the hippest thing to do… although it was dry foam, it was still gross… cause you can’t see when you are standing/walking/dancing… you might just step on someone’s toes…

B28… that was the class I was assigned to… fortunately for me, I have a JC classmate, Lian Hong, which was assigned to the same class. And Kai Li, my FYP partner was in B27… the first time I saw my class was during some introductory period, I sat next to a gal called Vivian, who wore the same pair of shoes as me that day… funny that I could recall such details…later on, she became the class representative and Arjun became the assistant class rep… stories about Arjun… haha… will always remember the attitude Andrew and Eugene have towards Arjun… I remembered that in Semester 1, we have to take a subject called G170 called Engineering Graphics (btw, I remembered all my subject codes, like G140, G143, G160 to G172, Year 2 to Year 4 as well… I know all this don’t mean anything to you but it means a lot to me… the tutorials, reports and projects mean different things for me)… since graphics class was on Friday, Thursday nights will always be spent at Hall 2, looking for Mike to teach us how to tackle the designs for class the next day… really grateful to Mike but I always felt that I’m ungrateful…

We used to have combined laboratory sessions in Year 1, B27 and B28 will combine and split into 2 groups… Andrew and I are in the same group, whereas Eugene, Jun Hong and Sy Ming are in the other group… tutorial period were kind of fun… we have fixed sitting locations and Eugene will always be sitting with Jun Hong behind me… making fun of my t-shirt… Eugene and Jun Hong were neighbours staying in the same block in Hall 8 then…

In December 2001, Eugene asked me to join him for a Christmas Service at his church… I was like ok… I always felt that Eugene wasn’t the sower but the reaper… if I have to credit a sower, that would be Huiling aka Emily (she’s in UM)… wanting to make sure I wasn’t the only one, I was glad that Jun Hong was going too… well, the rest was history…

In Year 1, I used to stick around with Kai Li and Lian Hong, since we came from the same university, but seriously we were never ever that close… after a while, I got tired of their company…I know I sound horrible for saying this but please pardon me… then I joined the guys, this was the group I sticked with for the rest of my Year 1 and I am glad that I maintain relatively good relations with until now, well except for… anyway, this is the group: Andrew (aka Shin Ping), Eugene, Jun Hong and Sy Ming… In lectures, we would sit together although I find it’s a pity that B28 wasn’t very united…

Once, we even gave Andrew a birthday surprise… it was a day before the Dynamics paper… at 12 midnight, we went knocking on his door, and I won’t forget the blur look on his face… well, that was the first and only and last time we did that… We even went for outings, once was to watch Spiderman at Cineleisure…

My ECA for Year 1 were; Volunteer Management of the Welfare Services Club and the Union Orientation Camp Committee as a Secretary… I stayed in Hall 15 Block 69 Unit 03-1432 with my JC friend Mei Mei aka Iris (some people actually called her Eyeball)… She was a great roommate, well, she is the only room mate I considered to have… the rest were like…. I talk about them in subsequent posts… Mei Mei and I were crap talkers… we crap like nobody business… we talk a lot… I remember the first night in the room, we actually went to bed at 11pm cause we can’t find anything to do… of course that was when our computer wasn’t there yet… slowly our sleeping habits grew weird and we began bathing at 2am (before the water heater switches off) and sleeping at 4am… even when we off the lights, we will lie on the bed and talk for a while before sleeping… then we will wake up 730am to go for 830 class… those were the time I pride myself for not skipping lectures (for tutorials, attendance are marked)… even the most boring ones like Engineers and Society… of course after a while, I began skipping lectures, especially like Physics and Chemistry… as I couldn’t understand what the accent of the lecturers… of course there was other factors like listening to my friends saying that they would teach me especially Chemistry since they took it in JC and it was tougher then…

Eugene and Jun Hong will sometimes pop by my room when they went jogging… we always did the hide and seek thingy where they would knock the door and hide behind the wall… however, during that time, my room was next to the toilet entrance, hiding behind the wall effectively seems that 2 perverts lurking around the girls toilet… haha…

At the end of Year 1, it was time for us to go separate ways… we chose to go to different schools… Andrew, Sy Ming and I went to EEE while Eugene and Jun Hong went to MPE and CEE respectively…

This sort of sums up what happened in Year 1 of my life in NTU…