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...AND I'M BACK! Sorry for the hiatus, I've been incredibly busy with all the never-ending projects and assignments.

I haven't really given all of you an update on how life is like in SMU. I've decided to document some of the nice moments I've experienced with fellow students in SMU (who are acquaintances or complete strangers) / things that have changed my perspective.

Walking into the gents'

Guys just being nice in general

Haven't posted in such a long time, sorry about that! I am so overwhelmed with excitement now and I think it's time to share with all of you my new CCA:


Ardiente is SMU's latin ballroom CCA and I am over the moon over the fact that a non-dancer like me could be chosen to be part of the team :') My dance partner/classmate also made it to the team and I can't wait to congratulate him and see him during trainings.

I first auditioned for SMU's Caderas Latinas (Salsa Dance CCA, also the hardest to get in) and was quite bummed out I didn't make it to the team. I actually found out I didn't make it on the day of my Ardiente audition which was really excellent timing and it nearly killed my motivation to continue auditioning.

Miracles can happen :) Can't wait for trainings to start!

Bidding is over and I can FINALLY sleep in peace.

I must say, I am pretty pleased with my current uni schedule :)

I go to school on monday to wednesday, and my weekend starts from thursday all the way til' Sunday!! (It won't actually be a weekend per se because of all the work I have to do during these 4 days, however, it feels nice to see more 'off-days' than 'work-days') :D

I finally resumed driving yesterday. I was really worried I would go to SSDC looking like an absolute idiot because I didn't drive for about 2 weeks thanks to dengue; I could potentially have forgotten a lot of little (but very important) things.

As if that wasn't worrying enough, I saw the dreaded car number that was assigned to me for the day: 101. (For those of you who don't know how the system works: On the day of the lesson, the system will randomly assign you a car number unless you had booked an instructor beforehand. There is a specific instructor who is attached to the car number so you roughly know who is going to teach you for the day.)

LET ME JUST SAY in the past, the instructor of car 101 was really, really strict and moody, which made the 2 hours painful. He wasn't friendly and you wouldn't even dare to strike a conversation with him. He picked on everything and would stare at you if you made a mistake.

While he wasn't as moody as before, I nearly caused an accident because of him.

After making a right turn on the way back to SSDC, instructor101 suddenly reached forward and pressed the horn 2 times. I went into complete shock and slammed the breaks (did an emergency break), thinking that I was going to get into an accident and I had to avoid it. I made sure I didn't jam the breaks too hard so we wouldn't be injured and the car stopped in time. He suddenly looked and me and shouted "WHY DID YOU STOP? I DIDN'T TELL YOU TO STOP!!" I quickly defended myself, "I thought you sounded the horn to avoid an accident!" I quickly resumed driving; I was BREATHING SO HARD and my heart was just racing. Just had a huge scare but he went on and on about how he could have his license revoked if a car bumped into the one I was driving in and how he didn't mean for me to do an emergency brake.

That being said, the car behind me was travelling at a safe distance so no accident occurred and I could not be more thankful.

Ugh I was fuming at this moment because I honestly didn't want both of us to go into shock and reaching over to press the horn without warning me/telling me if there's a hazard in front was a legitimate cause for concern -.- (fact: he sounded the horn to warn another lorry driver I was approaching as he looked like he wanted to make a turn) Whatever, I kept my cool and told him I didn't mean it and that I was sorry. He then cooled down and toned down a little when he realised how startled I must have looked when he shouted at me.

I still feel it's my fault, I mean I'm the driver after all. For any and every accident, the driver is always to blame. Never the passenger. NTS: be a thousand more percent careful.

Other than that, I still got it! My driving's still intact.

Finally realised why everyone was complaining about bidding for courses; inflation from the previous year is absolutely crazy and timetabling isn't that easy.

Only 1/3 of my bids were successful. That one successful bid was actually pretty worth it because the minimum successful bid was $12.01 and I had placed a bid of $12.11 :) Without a doubt, all slots of that class were taken so I was really lucky because the prof was said to be quite good/decent.

First unsuccessful bid: I did not get the stats prof I (and everyone else) wanted ): Missed the minimum successful bid by slightly over $1. The max bid for the class was $28.00. I should have invested more e$ into the bidding for that prof's class but let's face it - at that point in time, it was illogical. SMU's bidding system is very much like bidding for COE;you get last year's stats and you strategise/predict what will land you a successful bid. You can't see other people's bids so it's a lot of blind-bidding.

On the other hand, you have the absolute spoil-market ding dongs who bid $36.50 (I was given $40.00 let's think about how absurd that is) for one of my ideal stats prof's classes.

Second unsuccessful bid: I also bid 20 points for my workshop (everyone spams the max amount). The bidding opened at 1000, I placed my max bid at 1002 but I didn't get a place -.- Looks like a lot of people are more kiasu than me hahaha.

The next window opened at 5pm and being the absolute worst I camped at my laptop and submitted all my bids before 5.01pm. Hope I get the modules I want this time round :/

I honestly thought the fever I had on Monday night was just a normal fever. I didn't think much about the fever until I spotted some other symptoms.

The paranoid person in me decided to go for a blood test today to make sure I was perfectly ok and I was just worrying too much (as usual).

Then the results came back positive for dengue fever.

And I have never felt so alone and upset.

I think yesterday was the first time my friends and I had a disagreement with Neil. T, H and I had extra practice last friday because Neil called for it the night before and told us it would be better if the 3 (out of 4) of us rehearsed first. Flawed logic because a quartet needs 4 people, but we agreed nonetheless.

When the quartet met yesterday, he asked C (who couldn't turn up) to play and let him hear. She played the part accurately and correctly, but TC kept saying, "No, it's too slow." "Why does it sound wrong?" "Can you try again?" "No, what I meant is (starts singing what he wants to hear from C which was super hard to emulate)". Even after a while C was starting to get mildly irritated because she had tried so many times and kept wondering what's wrong (when there's nothing wrong).

Eventually, it was getting no where and I told Neil that C was playing correctly. She wasn't playing too slow nor too fast; she was playing at the same speed we played when we rehearsed on Saturday. He started becoming very irritated as well because it seemed that we did not understand what he was hearing from his perspective and he was like "...Amanda can you explain what I mean?". OMG.

As we were all disagreeing over the tempo (the quartet vs Neil), I suggested that we pick a fixed tempo, for example crotchet = ? to act as a reference so that we know approximately what tempo to play in. You could see Neil trying to control his temper when he said that he didn't want the piece to be played in strict tempo and it should be akin to how a person would sing it (ie. more 'free'). I said yes, I completely understand, but it seemed that we were all in different tempos so a reference would be better since the tempo marked on the score (crotchet = 80) wasn't the tempo we were using. Then he was like "The tempo is crotchet = 80. Don't ask me about the tempo."

By this point all 4 of us were quite riled at his attitude and responses so we decided to let Neil give us the tempo he wanted (faster) and he clapped while we played. In the end he said "It sounds better. But  now it's too fast." When we gave feedback it was actually manageable and more fun, he said "But it's too fast and the individual instruments aren't really 'singing'." He f-ing gave us the new tempo -.-

Since C had the solo at that point, I suggested that she picked the tempo where she felt she could manage the solo, and we would follow because it wasn't hard for the rest of us since we worked on that on Saturday. When everyone agreed, Neil finally said "Oh yeah. Ok."

We got it on the first try and it was perfect.

Sigh what my teacher said about how working with Neil could be potentially difficult was right.