Clearing Leave

My mind is empty, I have no useless thoughts to write about, and I just posted a youtube video a few posts ago.

But having only one post this month just doesn't seem right. So for the sake of just putting something down, I am going to write about the things I wanna do while clearing my leave.

Yes, I am clearing my leave now, expending all 4.5 days of my leave carried forward from last year before they expire on 1st of May. What this means is that for more than a week, I don't need to go to the lab (and face the sometimes-I-just-wanna-scream-at-you Z) . So during this free time, initially I wanted to:

- Read a book. Anyway book. Actually I had some books in pdf version in my laptop, but reading from a screen is different from reading an actual book. I had picked up a couple if titles from the library (ah! visiting the library, something I had wanted to do for a long time. Now I did it, I should do it more often....)

- Kick-start my fitness plan. Battling an ever-expanding waistline, a ballooning weight, plus the need to (at least) pass the IPPT, this is a must-do. There is no try....

- Skate at ECP. Just did it! Met up with some nice ppl from the net, skate for the whole afternoon last Sat. Nice experience. I can really write a post about this, so maybe I will do it after the next session this coming Sat...

- Swim. Yes, I want to swim. I had not swim for ages. I want to dip in a pool of water and move around in it, while my mind is fill with calm.. or simply, nothing.

- Kayaking. (Might take a bit of work.....)

- Finish my 10-years-in-the-making cross stitch project!

- Finish the third part of my Epic!

There's another one about tidying up my room and another about reading up on organic chemistry and spectroscopy (for my work...). There's also one about going shopping and another one about meeting up with friends.

Then suddenly, it just struck me: I only have a week, I can't possibly accomplish all the things I listed above. So what this means is that most likely, some of the stuff above will get left out, and I will feel a bit disappointed about that.

Oh well, that's life. So many things to do, but so little time.....

Something Interesting...

As a self-diagnosed megalomaniac, occasionally I will visit the website of various overseas universities to satisfy my fantasy of studying abroad.

Yes, I know to some of you out there, I did mention about studying abroad. However, there are two reason that I am staying put in Sg: the EDB bond and, more importantly, family responsibility. (So, yes, Andrew, I know you were not blaming me that time. I dun feel that way at all. Instead, I was feeling pity. For myself, of cos)

So anyway, I was going through a couple of universities in Canada, the first of which being the University of Victoria. What I really like about their graduate admission section is that they have this webpage which list the minimum requirements from other countries. So under Singapore, it reads: upper 2nd class on Bachelor.

So ok, I thought, I don't qualify. Then I noticed, just above the requirements for Singapore, it reads: Sierra Leone - upper 2nd class on Bachelor; just below the requirements for Singapore, it reads: South Africa - upper 2nd class on Bachelor.

Then when I scanned further, I found that other countries that have minimum requirement of 'upper 2nd class on Bachelor' includes: UK, Australia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, just to name a few.

When I popped over to the website for the University of British Columbia, the minimum academic requirements (scroll all the way down) there for overseas degrees are similar to University of Victoria.

So all these led me to 2 possibilities, either 1) an UK degree, a Singapore degree, a Zimbabwe degree, etc are all of the same standard, or 2) they are not the same, which means the University applies different minimum requirement standard to degrees from different countries.

So, to end this post, I could just say I might as well try my luck and apply anyway. However, since this is my blog, I'm gonna end by sprouting the nonsense that if I know about this minimum requirements thing long ago, I would had been better off taking my degree in Sierra Leone or Zimbabwe instead of NUS.