고려대학교 Korea University
OH MY GOD. I LOVE 高麗大學校!!!
KOREA UNIVERSITY’S CAMPUS IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel like I’m in HANA YORI DANGO (Meteor Garden/Boys Over Flowers)!!! The school looks exactly like the elite school in the drama! Maybe I can find my Domyoji Tsukasa here HAHAHAHAHAHA. Hanazawa Rui will be great too. I AM SO HAPPY. There are even fashion boutiques/manicure shops/Popeyes in the campus!
This school is so utterly elite and gorgeous!
The fountain wasn’t switched on (the circle) when I took the photo..but WHEN IT’S ON…SO PRETTY!!!
And the campus is MEGA HUGE…like 3 times the size of NUS. WEEEEE. All the bushes and trees are nicely trimmed. The floorings are either made of shiny marble or polished wood or carpeted.. the exteriors of the buildings look medieval, but the interiors are extremely modern and well-wired.
On a side note, I really like guys like Domyoji Tsukasa – a kind, sensitive boyfriend who is really mean sometimes but when Makino Tsukushi needs him, he will always protect her and be a MANLY man. Hanazawa Rui is too soft and emo. Okay I need to stop reading so much manga.
Central Plaza.
The Main Hall Administration Building.
Inchon Memorial Hall. IS OMG BEAUTIFUL. It’s like a castle!!
Korean Studies Hall.
Main Library..it’s too huge for my camera to take in.
The Tiger Statue..mascot of the university. There are a lot of monuments around the school.
Woo Dang Hall, where my classes are held. This is the nicest building I’ve ever studied in.
Students can smoke freely anywhere in the campus here..and a lot of students smoke. Girls walk around in 5-inch wedges/heels and wear mini-skirts to attend classes. There are mirrors everywhere, even behind toilet cubicle doors for the image-conscious South Koreans to groom themselves 24/7. And students are always brushing their teeth in the restrooms. They are sooo obsessed with their appearance.
Centennial Memorial Samsung Museum Hall.
The school is surrounded by shops of all kinds..so it’s really convenient to head out after school. And that’s the elite-looking main castle gate.
Lunch is spicy stewed tofu…(T_T) NICE. Korean food is yummy!
Side dishes..all FREE OF CHARGE. And you can keep asking for more without any waiting staff giving you the evil eye. F&B service in Korea is fantastic.
The elite-looking lift to my hostel room…which really feels and looks like a freaking HOTEL. ELITE SCHOOL.
My elite hostel room with its very own DIGITAL DOORBELL SYSTEM WITH VIDEO CAMERA. ELITE. I feel like I’m living in a condominium instead.
Map of the elite campus. It’s really huge..I’ve only been to like 1/8 of it so far.
1 more to go
Another fun (and yet frustrating) semester ends..and I’ll only have one more semester to go before I end my 4 years of Honours education. Shocking how fast time flies. I thought I was only still a freshman yesterday?
Had a great time with all my Honours friends to ‘celebrate’ the last day of school, and I think I did very well for my project presentation that day too (my group did a design and network revamp of Twitter), so double yayness!
Don’t know what I was smiling at.
I talked about how my Manchester United-supporting friends like to flood my Twitter account with their non-stop Man Utd-related tweets and made fun of all the Man Utd fans in my class hahahahaha. REVENGE. I got a scolding from all of them afterwards. (>_<)
Dinner was at the supposedly prestigious and exclusive NUS Alumni Guild House on Suntec’s rooftop. Probably gonna be my only chance to dine there because there is no way in hell I will pay for the exorbitant membership.
blink
I finally got around to finishing this book..after almost 1.5 years. And I will digress a lot in this post because this book makes you think a lot about your surroundings, and the things you have been through.
I won this book during a journalism lecture class..because I was the only one who knew the answer to my lecturer’s question..or maybe I was the only one who bothered to answer since the consensus among juvenile college students is probably that it is uncool to answer anything remotely academic in a lecture hall. I is uncool, so I didn’t care.
It went down like this:
Journalism lecturer: “What was the thing that Michael Phelps found most difficult about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?”
Being the complete geek and no-lifer than I am, I raised up my hand immediately and shouted: “LEARNING MANDARIN!!!!” In retrospect, there was no need for me to be so eager since I was the only one who bothered.
Walked down haughtily along the lecture hall stairs to collect my free book while my lecturer went: “See, obviously she reads the papers. All of you should be like her!” HAHAHAHA. All I was thinking about was, “YES! FREE BOOK!”. Or maybe, “YES! EXTRA CREDIT!”. I did end up getting an A+ for that module..but I have to be honest here..I hate journalism. I wanted to vomit when my sister suggested that I apply for our local paper’s journalism scholarship. NEVER.
So this book.
It isn’t super fantastic, but it is a very interesting read. It might actually bore some people (I stopped reading it mid-way and only picked it up again after a year), because it’s pretty brain-draining at some parts. But it is fascinating, filled with short stories of how people are able to perform rapid-fire decision-making, either correctly or wrongly.
For example, you have been a fan of luxury brand Chanel for years, and own many of their products, and you are planning to buy a new $20,000 bag online since you can’t get it in stores. Since you are going to spend $20,000 on it, it is logical that you should do tonnes of research on the bag, no?
But what you might not have realised is that you are actually able to judge within 1 second whether the bag is a real or fake, even without all the research.
This book talks about how humans, in many situations, are actually able to make decisions rapidly and accurately without spending all the money, time, or effort on unnecessary research. Our ability to judge comes from our experience, training, knowledge, or cultural backgrounds.
If you have ever heard the song “American Skin (41 Shots)” by Bruce Springsteen, you might know that this song was written for Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant living in New York. He got shot, 41 times, by 4 different White police officers one night, for being a dark-skinned person. This was because the 4 police officers, without substantial training, were unable to make accurate decisions at the moment of visual contact with Amadou Diallo. They decided that Diallo, a dark-skinned person, standing in a ghetto area in the middle of the night, must be up to no good. So when Diallo tried to take out his wallet, they immediately mistook it for a gun and shot him 41 times.
However, a police officer with enough training in such high-pressure situations, might have been able to deduce within 1 second whether Diallo is actually innocent.
Many of our decision-making comes from our stereotypes of people, or our ridiculous, untrue assumptions/judgments about others.
For example…take a look at the tests from the book below..and judge your own stereotypes.
Is it easier for you to categorise this form?
Or is it easier for you to categorise this form?
Next. Is it easier for you to classify the following labels?
Or is it easier for you to do this?
By now, you might have realised you already hold some social stereotypes that you didn’t want to admit you hold..but subconsciously you do. And it’s not your fault, it’s just the way you were brought up. Culture..the media..they condition you to think and act in a certain way.
Many of us are simply too quick to judge others these days, or too eager to label others as dumb/stupid just because their beliefs are not similar to ours. Just because they think differently does not mean that they are necessarily wrong. Different is NOT wrong..yet so many people don’t understand this simple concept.
And who is to say what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’? After all, what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are all socially-constructed by humans, so no one should ever think they are above others just because he holds a better job, has better academic qualifications, or comes from a privileged background.
This is honestly what I think and feel…because when I was a Year-1 fresh college student, I inquired about what kind of results are needed to get onto the Dean’s List or graduate with a good Honours..and then the Year-3 female student (from Junior College) who was talking to me, looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, “Er..you are from Polytechnic right?”
I was so shocked and taken aback by her utter rudeness I didn’t even know what to say, so I just mumbled a feeble “yah” in reply. She didn’t explicitly say, “Why are you even asking about it? You are a Polytechnic student! You think you can get into Honours?”..but her tone and her facial expression said it all. This is one of the reasons why I will forever hold a grudge against students or parents who disapprove Polytechnic education.
Last I heard, that female student graduated with very mediocre results. KARMA.
Anyway, if you ask me whether this is a great book, I would probably say it’s OK. But it is an eye-opener, interesting, and very refreshing. So if you have some time to spare, you might want to pick up this book by Malcolm Gladwell.
books and steamboat
Do not order the spicy soup stock at Crystal Jade, it’s freaking hot..and.. 一分钱一分货 ($25+++)。Nothing particularly great about this buffet, and the service staff were super grumpy (probably because they were understaffed). The XO wine chicken stock was pretty nice but people don’t go to the steamboat buffet to drink soup right?
Oh yes, there was a redeeming factor – free flow of 小笼包! I ate them until I wanted to puke. Ding Tai Fung will always be better though. Do not compute how some people can actually think that Crystal Jade has better 小笼包. The travesty!!! My love for Ding Tai Fung is further reinforced when I bit into a completely DRIED-out 小笼包 at the buffet. Yelch…#@&($#@. 鼎泰丰 ♥♥♥♥
But the desserts were so pretty..there were actual flowers in it. 
end of third year
After the exams (which will be over soon), I will progress on to become a 4th year Honours student. It’s shocking how fast everything is moving. I remember being utterly depressed when I just finished Polytechnic education because there was another 4 more years of misery waiting for me. But looking back, I actually enjoyed college quite a bit.
I don’t really want this semester to end because come next year, I’ll be pretty lonely. All my closest friends have filed for graduation..none of them are staying for Honours (people normally don’t stay for Honours in the faculty of Arts). Sigh. Sian. These are friends I have had lunches with since I was a clueless Year 1 student..and some of them were with me since my Poly days.
SAD.
swiss cheese fondue
Byebye Dominik~ see you in Switzerland if I ever save enough money, hah!
blasé
My productivity has been dismally low and I am guilty about not being guilty over my conscious inability to study. But it’s too late to do anything about it. And studying infront of the laptop really helps because I get distracted every 30 seconds. It’s like everything on the internet becomes exponentially more interesting during the exams.
Like I really need to watch Ellen DeGeneres singing in her bathroom concert series at 3:36 am with my paper being hours away.
End of term 5
Another semester flies past and I don’t think I’ve given it my best to be honest…bah. I didn’t particularly like all the modules I took but luckily I had the chance to work with nice people..so that made everything better.
Game Design: I regret appealing so hard for this module because I know I’m not going to score well for it. What started out as a strong bout of enthusiasm quickly turned wayward to a negative point of no return. If you like playing games, just bear in mind that designing game is a very different domain. Actually I sort of impressed myself with my ability to conquer the programming nightmares…but it’s still mediocre at best.
Intercultural Communication: I love this module! It totally took me by surprise because I was expecting another useless module..but this is by far the most practical and relevant module I’ve taken in my university life. Through this module I found out why Asian commercials tend to employ more actors than Western ones, why the Chinese have the best memory, and why there is a difference between the aircraft cockpit design of Airbus and Boeing.
I hope my exams will pull up my less than stellar performance so far. Pifff. Thanks to the recession I really have no other choice but to embark on my Honours track. 3 more semesters to go.
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