First Day of School

Woke up a little late today as I was kinda tired from yesterday's hike. Reached the lab at around 10am and realized most people were not there yet. the XH told me that the computer that I am going to use was infected with a virus and I gotta reformat the whole computer. It took quite some time and I went to lunch at around 12pm.

Went for Dr. Yu's CHEM244 Analytical Chemistry II lecture at 1pm as she required all TAs to attend the first class. The horror came when I couldn't locate the classroom!! It was located at a new extension block and I was running around looking for it frantically. When I found it, it was already 1.20pm. Her class was boring and the students were talking non-stop, typical of any HK classes. I was about to fall to sleep when the lesson ended. I met her after that and to my surprise, I was not required to give any tutorial. I realized that TA in Chemistry are only required to grade and invigilate mid-terms and finals in courses. Other than that, we are required to take a lab module each. In short, no classroom teaching for me, which is bad. Yawn.

I dropped Biochemistry for bioengineers as its course content was far from what I expected. It's not biochemistry altogether. Sigh. Left with only 3 modules- CHEM512 Advanced Organic Chemistry II, CHEM544 Bioanalytical Chemistry and CHEM588 Polymer Chemistry. At 4pm, I went with my seniors to a seminar given by Prof. Jasper Knoester from University of Groningen in Netherlands. It's on Optical Spectroscopy in Condensed Phase Systems; quite an eye opener for me as I learnt something new :)

At the end of the day, after some rearrangement of the tables, I had my own space, cleaned and almost ready to use. What's left will be to upload the necessary programs and I am ready to learn the computational techniques. I think it's gonna be a little hard for me since I am pretty bad at computers. However, it'll be a good learning experience for me. Once I master the basics, I'll be ready to do some good research and hope to publish some good papers eventually.

Finally, I will like to say that I miss NUS. Yah, as much as I think the education system there is not so good, at least there are a lot of modules to choose from. This is good for me as I like to attend classes. Also, I miss the people - friends and juniors, the office staff, the profs, the lab technicians etc. Getting a little homesick but I am feeling better already. I hope as I get busier, such feelings will gradually fade.

I used to tell people that tomorrow is always a better day. 1 year ago, when I started my honours project, I had a hard time too but I survived eventually, with many other committments bundled. Since I survived that, 2 years Masters here shoudln't be a problem. Friends are not with me physically to shower me with warmth and support; however, deep in my heart, I know that they are with me "spiritually". Come grow old with me as the best is yet to be.