argh

My msn nick is finally justified. pop history quiz today and i was stunned because it was a straight F for me. I've no idea how to fill in the countries and cities and bodies of water in the middle east!!!! We never had to care where the places were on a map, just which bloody king killed how many bloody people. I "finished" the test in record time and was going to start panicking until the TA said it probablywasn't going to be graded and if it was it would be a very small percentage. what the... he shouldn't play around with my feelings like this lah i'm a sensitive person you know. Anyway now i've to memorise the map of the middle east i couldn't even tell where the land ended and the sea began this afternoon and there'll be another map quiz, a real one this time. wah crap. But other than that i love the TA. He really knows his stuff and wants us to be involved in our learning too. The whole system here for the humanities is scary because it demands not just hard work but also classroom contribution and constant processing of what we get in lectures, discussions, readings. Scary but super rewarding in the end i think, if i can survive the first semester.

Econ is frustrating cos it's just the two years of jc crammed into one semester. So i'm going to have a condensed boring cos repeated experience. But i should give it a chance i guess, just that i feel it's a waste of time. The seniors didn't have to do this... grrr. My poetry class was crazy hell this Chilean guy was super rude and disruptive and he refused to shut up and some people yelled at him to shut up and the professor was like "stop it" "you're getting on my nerves" all the time. Chao annoying and we didn't learn much but an exciting one half hours. Oh yeah can anyone tell me the meaning of the lines "When the stars threw down their spears / And watered heaven with their tears" from William Blake's "The Tyger"?????? The professor refuses to answer questions most of the time. He's just "I don't know!" i think he's trying to make a point. But when he does lecture he says very fascinating things: eg do great works make you think or do they free you from thinking? Do they give you a grip on an experience that would otherwise be too big to handle and in doing so not remake that experience? Hmmm stupid Chilean guy should have shut up instead of wasting everyone's time.

ok enough on classes let's try and upload some pictures from our 5 hour foray into san francisco.

Gorgeous statue at Union Square against the cloudless blue sky. I'm in constant wonder about the blueness of the sky in California due to the lack of clouds.

The modern day fire department as enacted by me and wilson with yonghe as the damsel in distress.

At a very sad beach but i made it a happier place with my presence heh heh.

This is back in Berkeley but it's possibly my favourite picture ever. ROAR!