Of Skirts and Words

Alright. At the behest of Kenneth Wong, well that’s part of the reason besides the inspiration drawn from my newfound life in SMU, I have decided to churn out this entry to update you Amigos on the SMU situation through the objective and unbiased eyes of yours truly.

I went for 2 orientations, the first being the social science one (my faculty) and the second being the official freshman one involving the whole school. The first was a 2 day 1 night thing held within the smu compound and the surrounding town area for the couple of amazing race like activities that were part of the rather slack camp. Well, to my disappointment, I saw ok looking girls but failed to spot a hot enough girl that will actually make me turn my head and say ‘whoa’. However, the camp was ok and I made friends. The second orientation was 3 days 2 nights held at Changi Adventure Camp and it definitely wasn’t a pleasant adventure as the site’s name suggests. It was specifically called Team-Building Camp and not Orientation Camp and that fact was constantly reiterated to us. So, as you can expect, the camp turned out to be more than a phantasma of irrelevant games and activities that were ill-catered to the proper nurturing of team-building (the camp’s main objective), which is in any case something we already know by now and for those who don’t, it’s obviously pointless instilling it now. The games and activities also required a reflection/feedback/AAR session after the completion of each individual one which became a bloody pain in the ass and a foolish waste of time. Since you have an idea of what this camp was like, I’ll spare y’all the lurid details save one: the bloody toilets were clogged by the time my group and a few others had our turn to bathe, hence we ended up bathing in the few miserable cubicles with our feet submerged up to our ankles in the grime, slime and filth infested water. And to top off the torrid tale, the girl situation was the same as the one in my first orientation camp. However, I made friends once again and this is the only consolation to a hellish 3 days of quasi-army rigour (ok I’m exaggerating). Haha.

This week is my first week in school and I’m still trying to find my footing in the classes I’m attending esp the Stats module since the mathematical recesses of my brains have been washed out by the VJ arts stream and more recently, army. I’m still trying to get used to the 5 diff modules/classes I’m attending a week this semester as it is rather peculiar in smu that we have discussion groups of 40 as compared to the more familiar few hundred-a-lecture in the other unis, thus our timetables are randomly arranged which results in barely a few ppl sharing similar timetables without minor or major variations. So, this implies that I have to constantly readjust to a new class of ppl. But I’m already beginning to spot repeated faces here and there and successfully locating the right seminar rooms among the multitude with ease. I’m starting to enjoy my classes esp the sociology, communications and political science ones.

Best of all, I’m starting to experience the proverbial and much vaunted about smu girls that are the drooling fantasy of many deprived Singaporean boys. Yes, today has been the main inspiration for me to detach myself away from my stack of readings to spare some time for this inevitable entry.
Today has been an interesting day indeed. I had a class in the morning up till lunch (my classes come in blocks of 3hrs 15min) and another at 3.30. Incidentally, this not bad looking, funny and intelligent girl, who happens to be from VJ and topped VJ in French, from my social science orientation group happened to be in the same class as me and I bumped into her before class. She was talking to this other girl she just got to know and I said hi to her and sandwiched myself between them and got to know the other girl, who is incidentally really nice, friendly and faring pretty well in the looks department. I got both their numbers and for the record, THEY were the ones that asked me for mine on 2 separate occasions. Haha so that counts for 2 jackpots in a row. The next jackpot was bagging a lunch with the first girl (the one I already knew briefly from orientation) since incidentally again, I had a class at 3.30 which gives me 3 hrs to kill and she didn’t have anyone to have lunch with since her sis decided not to have lunch with her. Yet again, the jackpots persist in their roll: while having lunch, an above average looker albeit with unsatisfactory complexion from my social science orientation came up to my table and said hi and introduced herself. The next jackpot in my rapidly growing strikes of the day appeared in the form of a 3rd yr student sitting beside me during the next class cos the school missed her out during yr one hence her joining of my class. Again, a humourous and good natured girl who joined me in sneaky criticisms and making fun of our classmates, she eventually became my project partner cos both of us didn’t bother choosing so in the end we realized we didn’t have partners after class and became partners. Perhaps in the course of the project, we’ll be more than project ‘partners’. Haha. Ok. Last strike of the day: This attractive girl whom I recognized to be from the social science orientation happened to be in front of me when I was walking out of school. I’ve always wanted to strike up a conversation with her but failed to cos of lack of opportunity and her always being with her grp of friends. However, the tides turned when she turned and recognized me and to my pleasant surprise, she even knew my name from the orientation. I was embarrassed not to know hers but later reflected that that fact actually gave me leverage over her since she knows mine but I don’t know hers. Haha. Who da man.

As y’all can see, today has indeed been an eventful day. A day of skirts and words. Hope that the rest of my fellow Amigos, with the exceptions of the one going to Bristol and the other who is already well settled, are coping well with this new phase. And for all, hope that everyone is happy where they are including Kenneth who is venturing into a relative unknown, and that we will stand the test of time and flourish along with it.

Justin