david goes to goliath.

shall take a break from my current style.

today was a relatively uneventful day, but one still feels a certain obligation to go to school which is rather close (ok, understatement there) to collect freebies. hey, let's not waste the milk, they'll go bad ok?

certainly one can't help that lingering feeling of unimpression when freshmen sit in some nice velvety auditorium and have to don some ages-old gown and then do some psuedo sichuan-bejing olympics lightup. seems like ntu is some schizophrenic than i initially thought. well if it was academia exellence and good ol' hogwarts style, please do implement that all the way. but if you're going for freshness, let's not try a half-lame candlelight virgil shall we?

you can't help but pity the organisation in retrospect however. seems to me that it is some lumbering monster trying to change tacks and switch tracks. organisational failure? perhaps. or just that it has outgrown the capacity for change, being too steeped in red tape bereaucracy and stone-age style thinking. but it's all speculation and impression until i experience it first hand.

of course the focal point would be the speakers and their awe-inspirating speech that's somehow supposed to motivate us and lead us down 'the road less travelled' (major irony alert!). did they actually mean every word they said? all that say about world-class varsity, state-of-the-art facilities, top-notch research and other ya-ya. obviously the alternative of saying stuff like 'now you're stuck with us, suckers' ain't gonna go down so well but i can't help detecting a bit of hesistation between every compliment and the general feeling that they're not buying their own stories.

cs orientation is deeply steeped in academic affairs but fortunately broken up with a bit of gentle humour and light banter (and the necessary engine pokes) and of course another action replay. well, running joke literally. the magnitude of that mtv along the beach realised too late.

i never quite realised how much ntu has heavily invested in digital learning and academia. it's a pleasant surprise to see the infrastructure well in place but perhaps the one thing left to surmount is still the heavy inertia to adopt soft copies. (point to note: hire apple consultants, make user friendly interfaces. oh yeah, cover flowing courses or doing fancy pop ups work)

highlight of the orientation was the career talk. while it's obviously fun to mythbust, the notion of bringing hurting reality down upon young aspiring media talents probably ranks in the history of worst ideas since STARS. but then again i bring home a memorable quote, worthy of the 'did they say that' column.

'so you want to be a top journalist...like chua lee hoong....'

i'm sorry, but that probably means you're in the wrong faculty. should have taken political science overseas, then go ISD first.

but enough of serious topics! down to the real business!

ntu welcome ceremony freebie bag worth: 7/10, 8/10 if you count reception
jacket is functional but nothing to write home about. (does remind me of f1 tho) organiser's a good inclusion. handphone pouches or files would have been a great addition to the pack. reception was a welcome surprise with soft drinks! (how often do you get that instead of water-down syrup) and of course popcorn and muahchee! (although the main courses tend to be on the heaty and dry side)

cs freebie bag worth: 5.5/10, 7/10 if reception

disappointing stuff. it's not really nice to use a cleaning device that has some dead guy's name on it (and ex-president too to boot). i dunno, every time i wipe my mobile shudders uncontrollably. or maybe it's just an sms.