First day of school!

28 Feb 05 (Monday)

First day of school ... =)

After breakfast, I came across a slightly drenched parrot perched on the edge of a plastic box. It was busy pecking on a left-over peach seed in the box. In order to capture this beautiful parrot, I ran in to grab my camera and begin snapping shots of my new found subject. Out of a sudden, it started flapping its wings and chased me into the lodge… A fellow Singaporean (an Indian who is a final student in UQ) stood down and had the parrot perched onto his hand… Toni, the loge owner also brought out watermelon for the parrot to munch on… I am sure the parrot must be feeling very lucky about flying into the right lodge. However, the parrot had really bad toilet manners… Before long, it started passing its waste onto our dinner table!!! It was then Michael, the manager of the lodge came in and took the parrot away… Oppz…

Today’s weather was a little cloudy… and guess what… it finally rained!!!! I felt happy for the grasses and plants in Brisbane…coz they have not seen rain since the day I step onto Brisbane. They sure have a high tolerance to survive without rain for such a long period of time. It was a rare occasion that I found walking in the rain a luxury… I can see autumn beckoning… =)

First lesson of the day was at 12pm for COMP3300: Operating Systems… I went early to school to get myself familiarize with the environment… Got lost a couple of times but I managed to find my destination lecture theatre.=) The lecturer was Dr Philip… He gave us an overview of the course and began on his lecture straightway!!! ArghzZz… I thought it will be pretty slack for the first lecture and I was still hoping for an early release form lecture… But none of that happened… I realized that students here are willing to speak up and question the lecturer when in doubt; this is something that is really lacking back in NUS.I guessed that’s why some modules have even set aside a certain percentage of the final grade for class room participation to stem this problem…(Some people can ask really brainless questions while ‘participating’ in classroom discussion) However, I feel that questioning when in doubt should be natural and marks should not be allocated to it at all!

Went for fencing “Come & Try” free session at Connell Gym with Hong Ee and Jolene at 6 pm…(We sent Cindy off to her faculty before going). I think it is great fun; we learnt about the 3 main weapons used in fencing and some of the basic footwork too. In addition, the equipments for fencing are provided by the UQ Fencing Club too. My partner during the session was an Italian lady called Anna whoworks in UQ Chemistry department. At the point of typing this entry, Hong Ee has joined the fencing course… Zhihong, Jolene and I will be signing up soon… It is quite affordable as the 10 lessons cost AUD $60 and fencing equipments will be provided for too… =) Last but not least, this introductory course will covers the fundamentals of attack and defence, basic footwork and the simple parries and deceptions that are involved in the sport of fencing. The president mentioned that there are some excellent fencers in UQ and one even went to the Olympics before!!!

As the buses in the night come in half an hour interval, I called Cindy at 7:58pm asking her to run from her class… Haaz…. She made it on time…=) One thing I must mention is that the buses here arrived accurately at the time stipulated in the bus schedule.