nobody looks good in this picture

i have massive legs i know thx

jamie's birthday dinner at ikoi. we managed to get 12 people and reserve a private room, with those long tables that have holes in the floor so you can dangle your feet. japanese cuisine is my favourite and i wharfed down one too many sashimis i think. rive gauche cake to finish it off! i love rive gauche chocolate cake, it tastes like heaven. so expensive though. i brought my sister because i'm nice like that haha.


so yesterday i went for both my lectures and they were both interesting. for chinese politics, my lecturer is a highly animated man who jovially laughs at himself even when the room is silent. i like him. "my office and deng xiaoping's office... last time... 10 minute walk" he says, speaking of how he used to be at the chinese academy of social science, an important institution during china's economic reform back in the 1970's and 80's. also, he explained how 'qin' (as in qin shi huang) was originally 'chin' and that if you read some of the more archaic scholarly texts on china, they referred to the qin dynasty as 'chin'. he explained that that is where the name 'china' comes from, but also he exasperatedly yelled, 'BUT I DON'T KNOW WHO PUT THE 'A' THERE!!!' i like him a lot.

my politics and the visual class was simply an introduction, but already i saw a lot of things that are sure to be intriguing to study. we are going to cover topics such as symbols, gestures, clothing, maps, flags, cartoons, posters, television, film, the Internet and how all of this relates to politics. i'm looking forward to the comics lesson: x-men and captain america! i already knew this, that stan lee created the x-men during the time of civil war, where racism was rife throughout america, and so the mutants came to be the representation of 'outsiders' i.e. african americans, hispanics, etc. as for captain america, i didn't know this, it was originally made especially for american soldiers on the front line of war at the time, in order to instill more patriotism and loyalty to the country.

already possess a massive stack of readings. in the afternoon gus and i pored over his business law homework. this is good, i learn some things when i get to see what work he's doing. i feel better about school this semester than the last.

So after a hectic day of church, lunch, shopping, new house stuff, mother's day!!!, etc etc, I started thinking about the Dean's List. It's something that I forgot I told myself at the beginning of freshman year to work towards to. Evidently I did not because along the way I was convinced I did not need these grades, I did not need to do well. That was my first mistake. NUS students, remember this: your first semester CAP is the most important thing. Mess it up and you'll spend the next 2-3 years trying to pull it up. So I went to look again at what makes a student eligible to be mentioned on the prestigious Dean's List and it was this:

Dean's List

The Dean's List is an award given to the top 5% of each cohort, with meritorious academic achievement, at the end of each semester (excluding the special term).

There is therefore no specific cut-off as only the top 5%, of eligible students, will be selected based on the Semester Average Point (SAP).  Students must have a CAP that is above the current pass with merit cut-off.  Those in their fourth year of study must have a CAP of at least 4.00.

The current Dean's List had about 277 students on it across all cohorts, which means FASS holds about 5000+ students (thanks Bert for the calculations haha). Which is fcking a lot. And to be the top 277 students... well that, to me, seems quite impossible. And yet I feel like I really want to attain this, really want to have something to emerge from uni and be proud of, something more than your average university student life. Is it very Singaporean of me? Craving after these academic achievements, seeking fulfillment in them. Perhaps. But it is very appealing! & I know that even if I don't end up on the Dean's List in any of my semesters after 4 years of study, in aspiring to be on it I will probably pull my grades up by quite a bit. And so that is my new aspiration for next semester. To get onto the Dean's List.