Monday, October 13, 2008
hey, it's the meanie again. good morning to everyone (it's still sunday late afternoon in LA). The temperature has dropped by quite a bit ever since I last wrote on the blog. In the mornings, the coldest so far was 12 degrees celsius.
Tml will be the start of week 3 for me! haha..i've just started school when the term is ending for most of you. I'm sure everyone is very busy now..hang in there and jiayou!! For me, things are starting to get busy. I'm probably the craziest person on the entire campus because I'm doing 6 modules when a normal student takes 3 modules. Was talking to one of my suite mates the other day and she was shocked to hear that I'm doing 6 because she said she is dying even from doing 3 only. But also partly because she is in the school sports team so she spends quite a bit of time training and working out with her teammates. I'm surviving and am enjoying going for classes. very insane. But I admit that I'm inherently crazy.
Lessons are quite good. Except for 2 modules, which are very strange. For this econs module that I'm doing on money and banking, the professor is quite eccentric. He seldom removes his sunglasses even in class. And once, he only brought a permanent marker and he just spat into the whiteboard duster to clean his writing on the board. yikes!! we couldn't believe ourselves when he did that. So far, he has entertained us during his lectures about his theories on the causes of the current financial meltdown (which is interesting until he repeats himself more than thrice) and he detailed the historical precedence to explain why he thinks Ben Bernanke (Fed Reserve Chairman)'s current monetary policy is the cause of the entire meltdown and that if he had not done what he did the crisis would not have been that extensive. it is actually quite interesting to listen to him and he is a character. But, we haven't touched on our course materials yet. AND, he says that the 2 schools of thought in economics - Keynesian and classical monetarists are garbage - the only difference is that the latter is more garbage than the former. He thinks his version is the real and most accurate version. And he is teaching us that. Seriously, I have no idea how useful his version is.
And because my professors are overwhelmingly males, they love to include economic theories into managing marriages. 2 of my professors said that the only way for a marriage to be maintained is for guys to tell their wives that their (wives) comparative advantage lies in cleaning and housework while the husband's comparative advantage lies in whatever is done in the bedroom and hence, the wife should be the one doing the cleaning while the husband drinks beer and watch tv and takes over later at night!! goodness...we need some gender equality. But apparently, female professors are still a rarity in the Econs department at UCLA..unfortunately.
Outside of class, there was something more 'exciting'. A few days ago, there was an incident of armed robbery and 2 attempted armed robberies just outside the main campus. And it occurred during the evening and the robber had a gun. So scary. It was a bit more comforting to see police cars patrolling even within the campus. One other NUS exchange student lives off campus and he was walking back to his residence once when he suddenly heard a gunshot and a police car immediately turned towards the source of the sound. Scary. Thankfully, the robber was alleged caught a few days later.
I now feel more settled here in LA but it still is different and not home. really miss everyone (still). I must say I am constantly impressed with how they manage to mutilate and recreate different non-American cuisines like broccoli with peanut sauce. But all thanks to them, the strange foods become source of jokes among us. And the peanut butter here tastes different, not as creamy and peanut butter-like. They probably removed most of the fat. They love like 2% fat milk or fat free milk and fat free cream cheese. Missing my whole cream milk. There was this time I took whole cream milk and people were staring at me. Funny how they consume so much fats by having burgers and fries for almost every meal each day and they cut down on their fat intake in things like milk. The american idiosyncracies.
And we were soo excited to hear that there's a sushi bar here only to find that their sushi bar serves only 2 types of sushi every day! bleah...we were so disappointed. Though the desserts here are really good. Tried the brownies here once and it's so warm and gooey and chocolatey. So good!!! The range of choices of desserts and the quality of desserts here are soo much larger and higher than the main courses. No wonder at least 60% of americans are overweight!
The funniest thing I've seen is how Americans dash to the lifts after a fire drill. My friend and I turned to each other and said ' apparently kiasuness isn't peculiar to Singaporeans only'. And, people here actually tear pages out of books because they don't have enough money in their cards to photocopy them!!! haha...
Anyways, enough from me. Going for dinner. Hope everyone is having a great day and a great week ahead!! take care!:)
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 7:29 AM
