SPMS Orientation
The jellyfish is back!
Perhaps it would not do justice to the organisers if I were to skip posting about the SPMS Orientation week, which is supposedly more special as there were planned games, unlike other faculties...?
So here it goes! Posting about the 1st 2 official days of my life in NTU, which were mainly talks and activities to welcome freshmen. =D
===========
Day 1 (5/8/2013)
An auspicious start of the 4-year uni life begins with a heavy thunderstorm, perfect temperature for sleeping. The welcome activities were planned to begin at 10am, checking the time to be slightly past 9am, I collected my matriculation package and rested a bit at the Koufu canteen.
What I thought the matriculation package to be: Goodies, welcome gifts, some toys and brochures, a big bag of 'Welcome to NTU' stuff, matriculation card, etc...
What the actual package contains: matriculation card, clicker device in a very small blue box. -_- That was disappointing.
1000
In the SPMS LT, we were introduced to our SPMS Buddies. The buddies do not mean 2 random freshmen assigned to a particular freshmen, but rather 2 senior students in charge of a whole orientation group. The senior students are the buddies, meant to guide, teach, and let the freshmen feel more involved and settle into the new environment quickly. I was assigned to OG group M8, sub M8B, with buddies Ying Ta and Cheryl.
1030
The usual ice-breaking, where everyone introduced themselves, and also say about something which people don't know about you. There were the usual play computer games, watch Korean dramas (unusually high number for girls), sports... I didn't think of anything interesting, so I recycled my 'i dont like to run, but i dont mind walking' info. I swear that there were some cold haha... -.-
That's better than a guy who is from some Indo country? He started off with his name, and then: "DO YOU KNOW..... (some gibberish words in a rap speed which nobody caught).
Tutorial room: Er.... O.O
Activity 1: OG photo
Cameraman: I take a picture of you all uh.
YT: Everybody! Look at the camera, and pretend to look very happy! :D
(Group chuckles -> achievement unlocked)
Cameraman: Smile!
CRJ: I take a picture of you! Taking a picture of me!
Activity 2: Find your names
The whole group is given 3 minutes to find papers with the different names, inside the non-obvious parts of the tutorial rooms, including power plug outlets, underneath tables and chairs, behind 'trapdoors', etc. The one behind the movable wall is awesome, half the names must be inside! I found my by chance, it was on a random table! :)
Everybody got theirs under 3 minutes. Quest cleared!
Activity 3: Guess the number
2 teams of 12 people would write a number from 1 to 100 on their piece of paper, unseen by the other team. The teams have 20 tries each to guess the numbers on the other team. If the other team members has / have the number that is being called out, elimination occurs.
The team with the most number of people left wins!
There's something about spies in the group, which I didn't get to notice as I was eliminated quite early. Perhaps 22 is an easy number to guess. Those who were eliminated gathered around a table to hear YT talk about his experiences and aiming for a 3rd class honours. That is when I got to know this guy called WenJie (not Warren), who so happens come from PJ, 09S10. He seems to have seen me before, but the inverse didn't work out. Ah, I'm never good with remembering things anyway. =/
1145
Polar snacks for everybody! By then, half the people were eliminated, and the rate gets surprisingly higher after the presence of food. I got myself a chocolate muffin with tuna bun box. Very delicious, I didn't know Polar have tuna buns...
1300
The NTU welcome ceremony is held at the Nanyang auditorium, but since the whole freshmen cohort is of a rather large size, SPMS, NBS and some engineering faculty were scheduled for the 5th Aug afternoon slot. NY Audi looks much nicer than any well-designed halls / concert theater / LTs I have ever seen. There are plants at the front of the stage, and it looks like the whole 2-level auditorium can seat about 2000 people. o.o
I sat with some random people, no idea who they are. In order of sequence, this is what happened.
- Everybody WhatsApp-ing about how sian the waiting is
- The professors arrive, and everybody stands to welcome their arrival, a real professor attire
- The introduction of heads from different schools
- A professor provost giving a very long speech, something about broad education, interest and 5C.
- The NTU Student Union (NTUSU) president gave a speech and was kinda irritated when there was no reply towards his 'Hello!'
- Code of honour
Every freshmen is supposed to pledge the code of honour along with the NTUSU president. To do this, each student is supposed to wear the academic robe (placed at the seats) and take the oath. I can guarantee more than of the people simply had no idea on how to wear that (including myself). I got a S size robe and it's kinda unpleasant to wear that. I forgot what's the code of honour, it must be something to do with upholding NTU's name and being a good student.
- Performance
2 random guys from 'District 12' came up to end the ceremony on a lighter note. 1 pianist and 1 singer, they introduced themselves as members of a group of 7, other random info, and asked for the audience groups.
D12: "Who's from NBS?"
NBS acknowledges
D12: "Nice! Anybody from engineering?"
The engineering people acknowledges
D12: "Cool!"
SPMS people: What about us??? Wah biased sia!"
They did a cover of the following 2 songs~
--
--
The covers are nice, even though I have no idea why they chose the Bruno Mars song (sad one). That sort of rounds up the ceremony at 1340hrs.
After getting a NTU welcome ceremony paper bag, me and WenJie lepak around the ice-cream booth, while I chat with WY and realise that a lot of T2 people are in NBS. More chat with Jeffery and Ronald, before exchanging the orientation slip with a collection of i-pad mini white paper. Wonder if that i-pad is going to be really useful. =/
~~~~~~~~~
1510hrs: SPMS talks
The start of all the random talks...
Not before the SPMS head came up in a much casual attire, and sort of condemned district 12 for not asking SPMS' presence during the welcome ceremony. Everybody likes that. =P SPMS took up a large proportion of the audience during the ceremony, perhaps it is a big school? o.o
Library talks - Getting to know your library and having your questions answered!
SPMS club - Are you interested in writing exam paper solutions? Apparently there's a forum with the answers.
Pagent thingy: Zouk has some pagent event that invites all SPMS people go. Since I'm not interested in clubbing, there goes the event.
Counselling: Out of every 10 people, 4 confide in friends, 3 turn to their families, 2 take up smoking, 1 does not know what to do.
Safety in the school has gotta be the most simple but yet epic talk. The boring safety rules did not appeal to anyone, until the part where a science has been blown up due to wrong addition of chemicals. Everybody was like 'WOAH COOL!' XD
~~~
1630hrs: MAS talks
The MAS talks were conducted in LT23. The MAS head is a China guy, which nobody could really understand what he was saying, until he said in Chinese "now you all are NTU students, should be very happy!" That, almost everybody understood, clapped and cheered! :D
The Deputy head is an ang-moh, who is the Calculus I lecturer for the semester. A bit soft, but generally what he said is quite funny. Pursue your interest, take something interesting like tennis or calligraphy (Steve Jobs and the MAS head). The whole point of a uni education is to make sure the learning has depth, has breadth, and student do enough hard stuff. o.o
Forgot what's the next stop, but since it's a local speaking, everybody understood her. =)
1700: Go home lo! :D
=====================
Day 2 (6/8/2013)
Otherwise known as: OBI day! It's an extra activity organised just for SPMS students. Thus SPMS freshmen would have more chances to interact with one another! :) The sad thing is that out of 25 people in the M8 orientation group, only 10 turned up, making us the smallest group out of the whole MAS cohort. A small group means a very cosy group, so yeah. YT and Cheryl seem a bit disappointed, but they still made the group lively!
After a rather decent morning fill-up of choco pie, peanuts and water, we took a group photo before leaving for the activities. Can't find the photo anywhere, otherwise I would upload here for a memory (if looks nice la). Since our group is a rather small one, we combined with orientation group M10 for the day's walks and games.
Walk and activity 1: HSS paper plates
A quiet walk to HSS, with tour guide YT telling us about NBS and HSS, the places of our compulsory electives (humanities and business modules)... At first kinda sian that I have to accept the fact that uni life doesnt mark the end of a non-maths life, but that feeling got away for awhile as YT kena horned for walking on the road, until the car sibei impatient... =P
The 1st orientation game is the paper plate game: A rather similar one to last time DMC ROD camp, with some slight differences.
- 40 plates instead of 50
- No need to flip every plate upside down
- 5 tries instead of unlimited tries
Sounds unfair? Well, with the advancement of technology, everybody can check the questions with phones! There is a time limit though, ranging from 2:00 to 1:40 in decreasing order. This is what we did...
R1: Copy questions on phone
R2: Tryout 1 to 24
R3: Kena cut at 30
R4: Hit until about 33...
R5: CLEAR! (Time taken: 1:39)
My questions: Something mahjong tile, some dialect, a german word, some others which I have forgotten.
30 in Korean: 삼십. We were wrong on this in R3.
Seems to be more fun than a PQ! Everybody seems satisfied with the achievement. M10 didn't clear, but they got somewhere close... YT thought that we were too influenced by the 'stats' game, until we thought that there's a thinking factor to every game.
-----
Walk and activity 2: NY Audi bottles
At around 11, we proceeded to NY Audi for a closer look and for another activity, the tossing of water bottles. Not a really eventful one that requires critical thinking or frantic searching of information, its just a pure movement coordination between the group of 10. No rules, no objective. Throw all you want. =P
Starting we just passed rounds after rounds of bottles... until we got bored of picking them up countless number of times. I was paired between Wen Qi and Lee Cheng, both were not bad, at least I didn't bend down for a lot of times. =P The next level is more fun, after selecting the partner that is directly opposite, we threw the water bottles. The first few attempts were chaotic as almost everybody missed. This sort of attracted M10 and YT's attention.
Finally, we succeeded. Everybody clapped. stage CLEAR! :D
After the game, OGL Annabelle took the opportunity to introduce the TCM Acupucture service.
A: "I tell you all ah! SBS the acupuncture is damn good! The service very good, and it's very cheap! I go there like 5 to 6 times already! You all next time can go there also!"
YT: "Which means be guinea pig la. All the TCM students will be there to experiment out." =/
I think almost everybody laughed. =D
We took a 15 minutes break inside NY Audi before proceeding to the next location. Saw ZY, Keith and SY. They were proceeding for their auspicious welcome ceremony.
-----
Activity 3: The unexpected buffet lunch near TCT LT
"You all see what's that? Are you all hungry?" - YT
^^ - M8
Here's a bit of what I had, among the large layout:
Siew mai (nice!)
Fried fish (not bad)
Fried mee siam (nothing special about it)
Sausage wrapped with bacon (awesome!)
Mango cake (tastes quite sweet, I still think the food court mango cake is nicer)
Eclair (The best dessert among all)
They even had Cheng Teng, a refreshing cooling dessert for all. :D
Sitting together as an orientation group for lunch (at the staircase) is very heartwarming. As M8 is being reduced to a small group, it isn't that hard to sit together (because the staircase is compact) and have a fantastic buffet lunch. =P Well, if not the for the witch (as WenJie calls it).
Wild witch appears -> OGL kena summoned -> OBI day head kena summoned -> ???
Due to this unfortunate occurence, the planned game (Balancing Hula Hoops) was cancelled. After taking YT's left behind bag, we walked to the shuttle bus stop.
-----
Walk and activity 4: SRC & games
Wenqi introduced some common games for M8 to think about. Heng JL introduced some games during the class outing, otherwise I confirm blur. XD We played all the way from the shuttle bus stop, to inside the bus, all the way till SRC. Games played: MRT, finger number, clock.
Huanzhi had a slightly difficult time in understanding the games, but after Wenjie's slightly cui translation, HZ got it rather quickly. Good job! =D I didn't get the finger number game, even though its supposed to be the most obvious among all, I'm not alone though, 3 more girls didn't get the game too. 3 dishes 1 soup. Perfect! YT liked the games too, and he got the number game. T.T
While we're laughing, making noise and trying to help other people understand the nonsense behind the games, Annabelle is telling M10 about the different modules, routes and plans to make in the next 4 years in NTU. The new divide is really strong. The final year stuff sounds quite scary, projects, internships, and the combination of difficult subjects. Hope it isn't too bad as she sounds.
Apparently there's a 4th game in the SRC, which involves pulling people with strings. O.O Nobody played that. It's another game that's being abandoned. =/
Activity 5: Tour @ SPMS
At last, the proper tour and learning of important things in SPMS, starting off with Annabelle saying that there is a chance that the lift could be jammed up at random times. o.o
We proceeded to the com lab to view the different online systems such as STARS, STARS planner and some calender thingy which I didn't find. So NTU doesn't really plan everything nicely for students, its just that they planned out for the Y1 to prevent confusion. Students are still allowed to modify their timetable throughout the add/drop period (heh heh). XD
Random interesting facts / opinions from the OGLs:
1. SPMS students must take something from HSS. T.T
2. Plagarism level is about 20%.
3. Textbooks are rather useless.
4. Printing in com lab is very ma fan. o.o
5. Don't go to NUS websites to do NTU online activities. (Haha!)
Annabelle talked a bit about the STARS thingy, exchanging timetable, finding slots, auctions? Sounds complicated. After the com lab session, some proceeded to collect their clickers and Mat package (those who havent collected).
Activity 6: Mass games
One of my fears: balloons.
It's very difficult to blow things! Esp. the stupid green balloons which somehow doesn't inflate. Not sure if that's because the balloon is too cui, my blowing skill purely sucks or both. I didn't participate in the game, so just watched the people stomping other people's balloons... The mass game is actually meant for the whole SPMS cohort to play together, but somehow it got divided too much and ended up to be 4 orientation groups playing at once.
The other game involves playing scissors/paper/stone, with the winner pasting a sticker on any part of the loser's face.
Forfeit: The person with the highest number of stickers would have to do a forfeit!
E(no.of stickers per person) = 4
Surely someone would have more than 4 stickers! With that kind of calculation in mind, a few of us pasted all 4 stickers on our own faces, and looked at the rest play the games. =P Some got LOADS of stickers on their faces! XD The punishment was granted to 2 ladies, who sang a random child song.
Activity 7: The SPMS walkaround
SPMS LTs, tutorial rooms, photocopy rooms. Nothing very interesting, the only thing to note that its important to wear a jacket of hoodie if there's a need to stay inside for a long duration. At 4.30pm, the OGLs announced the end of the OBI day. It's not an official debrief, so with an abrupt ending, we exchanged contacts, and left the building. Whole lot thank OGLs! XD
Lepak at Koufu for awhile, with some comparing timetables... Everybody's timetable seems to be very different from one another. Perhaps after some rearrangement, it would look more similar. :D
~~~~~~~~~
That sorts of wraps up Day 2. I am not the kind who is enthusiastic to go for camps and stuff, but since it has already been organised and I had actually answered yes to going for this day, its best not to skip it, cos people put in effort into this. =)
Not sure if most people just came for the iPad on the previous day, but one thing is for sure, I don't regret coming for the OBI day! :D
=========
Sidenote: Sia la after 1 month then finish the post.
Perhaps it would not do justice to the organisers if I were to skip posting about the SPMS Orientation week, which is supposedly more special as there were planned games, unlike other faculties...?
So here it goes! Posting about the 1st 2 official days of my life in NTU, which were mainly talks and activities to welcome freshmen. =D
===========
Day 1 (5/8/2013)
An auspicious start of the 4-year uni life begins with a heavy thunderstorm, perfect temperature for sleeping. The welcome activities were planned to begin at 10am, checking the time to be slightly past 9am, I collected my matriculation package and rested a bit at the Koufu canteen.
What I thought the matriculation package to be: Goodies, welcome gifts, some toys and brochures, a big bag of 'Welcome to NTU' stuff, matriculation card, etc...
What the actual package contains: matriculation card, clicker device in a very small blue box. -_- That was disappointing.
1000
In the SPMS LT, we were introduced to our SPMS Buddies. The buddies do not mean 2 random freshmen assigned to a particular freshmen, but rather 2 senior students in charge of a whole orientation group. The senior students are the buddies, meant to guide, teach, and let the freshmen feel more involved and settle into the new environment quickly. I was assigned to OG group M8, sub M8B, with buddies Ying Ta and Cheryl.
1030
The usual ice-breaking, where everyone introduced themselves, and also say about something which people don't know about you. There were the usual play computer games, watch Korean dramas (unusually high number for girls), sports... I didn't think of anything interesting, so I recycled my 'i dont like to run, but i dont mind walking' info. I swear that there were some cold haha... -.-
That's better than a guy who is from some Indo country? He started off with his name, and then: "DO YOU KNOW..... (some gibberish words in a rap speed which nobody caught).
Tutorial room: Er.... O.O
Activity 1: OG photo
Cameraman: I take a picture of you all uh.
YT: Everybody! Look at the camera, and pretend to look very happy! :D
(Group chuckles -> achievement unlocked)
Cameraman: Smile!
CRJ: I take a picture of you! Taking a picture of me!
Activity 2: Find your names
The whole group is given 3 minutes to find papers with the different names, inside the non-obvious parts of the tutorial rooms, including power plug outlets, underneath tables and chairs, behind 'trapdoors', etc. The one behind the movable wall is awesome, half the names must be inside! I found my by chance, it was on a random table! :)
Everybody got theirs under 3 minutes. Quest cleared!
Activity 3: Guess the number
2 teams of 12 people would write a number from 1 to 100 on their piece of paper, unseen by the other team. The teams have 20 tries each to guess the numbers on the other team. If the other team members has / have the number that is being called out, elimination occurs.
The team with the most number of people left wins!
There's something about spies in the group, which I didn't get to notice as I was eliminated quite early. Perhaps 22 is an easy number to guess. Those who were eliminated gathered around a table to hear YT talk about his experiences and aiming for a 3rd class honours. That is when I got to know this guy called WenJie (not Warren), who so happens come from PJ, 09S10. He seems to have seen me before, but the inverse didn't work out. Ah, I'm never good with remembering things anyway. =/
1145
Polar snacks for everybody! By then, half the people were eliminated, and the rate gets surprisingly higher after the presence of food. I got myself a chocolate muffin with tuna bun box. Very delicious, I didn't know Polar have tuna buns...
1300
The NTU welcome ceremony is held at the Nanyang auditorium, but since the whole freshmen cohort is of a rather large size, SPMS, NBS and some engineering faculty were scheduled for the 5th Aug afternoon slot. NY Audi looks much nicer than any well-designed halls / concert theater / LTs I have ever seen. There are plants at the front of the stage, and it looks like the whole 2-level auditorium can seat about 2000 people. o.o
I sat with some random people, no idea who they are. In order of sequence, this is what happened.
- Everybody WhatsApp-ing about how sian the waiting is
- The professors arrive, and everybody stands to welcome their arrival, a real professor attire
- The introduction of heads from different schools
- A professor provost giving a very long speech, something about broad education, interest and 5C.
- The NTU Student Union (NTUSU) president gave a speech and was kinda irritated when there was no reply towards his 'Hello!'
- Code of honour
Every freshmen is supposed to pledge the code of honour along with the NTUSU president. To do this, each student is supposed to wear the academic robe (placed at the seats) and take the oath. I can guarantee more than of the people simply had no idea on how to wear that (including myself). I got a S size robe and it's kinda unpleasant to wear that. I forgot what's the code of honour, it must be something to do with upholding NTU's name and being a good student.
- Performance
2 random guys from 'District 12' came up to end the ceremony on a lighter note. 1 pianist and 1 singer, they introduced themselves as members of a group of 7, other random info, and asked for the audience groups.
D12: "Who's from NBS?"
NBS acknowledges
D12: "Nice! Anybody from engineering?"
The engineering people acknowledges
D12: "Cool!"
SPMS people: What about us??? Wah biased sia!"
They did a cover of the following 2 songs~
--
--
The covers are nice, even though I have no idea why they chose the Bruno Mars song (sad one). That sort of rounds up the ceremony at 1340hrs.
After getting a NTU welcome ceremony paper bag, me and WenJie lepak around the ice-cream booth, while I chat with WY and realise that a lot of T2 people are in NBS. More chat with Jeffery and Ronald, before exchanging the orientation slip with a collection of i-pad mini white paper. Wonder if that i-pad is going to be really useful. =/
~~~~~~~~~
1510hrs: SPMS talks
The start of all the random talks...
Not before the SPMS head came up in a much casual attire, and sort of condemned district 12 for not asking SPMS' presence during the welcome ceremony. Everybody likes that. =P SPMS took up a large proportion of the audience during the ceremony, perhaps it is a big school? o.o
Library talks - Getting to know your library and having your questions answered!
SPMS club - Are you interested in writing exam paper solutions? Apparently there's a forum with the answers.
Pagent thingy: Zouk has some pagent event that invites all SPMS people go. Since I'm not interested in clubbing, there goes the event.
Counselling: Out of every 10 people, 4 confide in friends, 3 turn to their families, 2 take up smoking, 1 does not know what to do.
Safety in the school has gotta be the most simple but yet epic talk. The boring safety rules did not appeal to anyone, until the part where a science has been blown up due to wrong addition of chemicals. Everybody was like 'WOAH COOL!' XD
~~~
1630hrs: MAS talks
The MAS talks were conducted in LT23. The MAS head is a China guy, which nobody could really understand what he was saying, until he said in Chinese "now you all are NTU students, should be very happy!" That, almost everybody understood, clapped and cheered! :D
The Deputy head is an ang-moh, who is the Calculus I lecturer for the semester. A bit soft, but generally what he said is quite funny. Pursue your interest, take something interesting like tennis or calligraphy (Steve Jobs and the MAS head). The whole point of a uni education is to make sure the learning has depth, has breadth, and student do enough hard stuff. o.o
Forgot what's the next stop, but since it's a local speaking, everybody understood her. =)
1700: Go home lo! :D
=====================
Day 2 (6/8/2013)
Otherwise known as: OBI day! It's an extra activity organised just for SPMS students. Thus SPMS freshmen would have more chances to interact with one another! :) The sad thing is that out of 25 people in the M8 orientation group, only 10 turned up, making us the smallest group out of the whole MAS cohort. A small group means a very cosy group, so yeah. YT and Cheryl seem a bit disappointed, but they still made the group lively!
After a rather decent morning fill-up of choco pie, peanuts and water, we took a group photo before leaving for the activities. Can't find the photo anywhere, otherwise I would upload here for a memory (if looks nice la). Since our group is a rather small one, we combined with orientation group M10 for the day's walks and games.
Walk and activity 1: HSS paper plates
A quiet walk to HSS, with tour guide YT telling us about NBS and HSS, the places of our compulsory electives (humanities and business modules)... At first kinda sian that I have to accept the fact that uni life doesnt mark the end of a non-maths life, but that feeling got away for awhile as YT kena horned for walking on the road, until the car sibei impatient... =P
The 1st orientation game is the paper plate game: A rather similar one to last time DMC ROD camp, with some slight differences.
- 40 plates instead of 50
- No need to flip every plate upside down
- 5 tries instead of unlimited tries
Sounds unfair? Well, with the advancement of technology, everybody can check the questions with phones! There is a time limit though, ranging from 2:00 to 1:40 in decreasing order. This is what we did...
R1: Copy questions on phone
R2: Tryout 1 to 24
R3: Kena cut at 30
R4: Hit until about 33...
R5: CLEAR! (Time taken: 1:39)
My questions: Something mahjong tile, some dialect, a german word, some others which I have forgotten.
30 in Korean: 삼십. We were wrong on this in R3.
Seems to be more fun than a PQ! Everybody seems satisfied with the achievement. M10 didn't clear, but they got somewhere close... YT thought that we were too influenced by the 'stats' game, until we thought that there's a thinking factor to every game.
-----
Walk and activity 2: NY Audi bottles
At around 11, we proceeded to NY Audi for a closer look and for another activity, the tossing of water bottles. Not a really eventful one that requires critical thinking or frantic searching of information, its just a pure movement coordination between the group of 10. No rules, no objective. Throw all you want. =P
Starting we just passed rounds after rounds of bottles... until we got bored of picking them up countless number of times. I was paired between Wen Qi and Lee Cheng, both were not bad, at least I didn't bend down for a lot of times. =P The next level is more fun, after selecting the partner that is directly opposite, we threw the water bottles. The first few attempts were chaotic as almost everybody missed. This sort of attracted M10 and YT's attention.
Finally, we succeeded. Everybody clapped. stage CLEAR! :D
After the game, OGL Annabelle took the opportunity to introduce the TCM Acupucture service.
A: "I tell you all ah! SBS the acupuncture is damn good! The service very good, and it's very cheap! I go there like 5 to 6 times already! You all next time can go there also!"
YT: "Which means be guinea pig la. All the TCM students will be there to experiment out." =/
I think almost everybody laughed. =D
We took a 15 minutes break inside NY Audi before proceeding to the next location. Saw ZY, Keith and SY. They were proceeding for their auspicious welcome ceremony.
-----
Activity 3: The unexpected buffet lunch near TCT LT
"You all see what's that? Are you all hungry?" - YT
^^ - M8
Here's a bit of what I had, among the large layout:
Siew mai (nice!)
Fried fish (not bad)
Fried mee siam (nothing special about it)
Sausage wrapped with bacon (awesome!)
Mango cake (tastes quite sweet, I still think the food court mango cake is nicer)
Eclair (The best dessert among all)
They even had Cheng Teng, a refreshing cooling dessert for all. :D
Sitting together as an orientation group for lunch (at the staircase) is very heartwarming. As M8 is being reduced to a small group, it isn't that hard to sit together (because the staircase is compact) and have a fantastic buffet lunch. =P Well, if not the for the witch (as WenJie calls it).
Wild witch appears -> OGL kena summoned -> OBI day head kena summoned -> ???
Due to this unfortunate occurence, the planned game (Balancing Hula Hoops) was cancelled. After taking YT's left behind bag, we walked to the shuttle bus stop.
-----
Walk and activity 4: SRC & games
Wenqi introduced some common games for M8 to think about. Heng JL introduced some games during the class outing, otherwise I confirm blur. XD We played all the way from the shuttle bus stop, to inside the bus, all the way till SRC. Games played: MRT, finger number, clock.
Huanzhi had a slightly difficult time in understanding the games, but after Wenjie's slightly cui translation, HZ got it rather quickly. Good job! =D I didn't get the finger number game, even though its supposed to be the most obvious among all, I'm not alone though, 3 more girls didn't get the game too. 3 dishes 1 soup. Perfect! YT liked the games too, and he got the number game. T.T
While we're laughing, making noise and trying to help other people understand the nonsense behind the games, Annabelle is telling M10 about the different modules, routes and plans to make in the next 4 years in NTU. The new divide is really strong. The final year stuff sounds quite scary, projects, internships, and the combination of difficult subjects. Hope it isn't too bad as she sounds.
Apparently there's a 4th game in the SRC, which involves pulling people with strings. O.O Nobody played that. It's another game that's being abandoned. =/
Activity 5: Tour @ SPMS
At last, the proper tour and learning of important things in SPMS, starting off with Annabelle saying that there is a chance that the lift could be jammed up at random times. o.o
We proceeded to the com lab to view the different online systems such as STARS, STARS planner and some calender thingy which I didn't find. So NTU doesn't really plan everything nicely for students, its just that they planned out for the Y1 to prevent confusion. Students are still allowed to modify their timetable throughout the add/drop period (heh heh). XD
Random interesting facts / opinions from the OGLs:
1. SPMS students must take something from HSS. T.T
2. Plagarism level is about 20%.
3. Textbooks are rather useless.
4. Printing in com lab is very ma fan. o.o
5. Don't go to NUS websites to do NTU online activities. (Haha!)
Annabelle talked a bit about the STARS thingy, exchanging timetable, finding slots, auctions? Sounds complicated. After the com lab session, some proceeded to collect their clickers and Mat package (those who havent collected).
Activity 6: Mass games
One of my fears: balloons.
It's very difficult to blow things! Esp. the stupid green balloons which somehow doesn't inflate. Not sure if that's because the balloon is too cui, my blowing skill purely sucks or both. I didn't participate in the game, so just watched the people stomping other people's balloons... The mass game is actually meant for the whole SPMS cohort to play together, but somehow it got divided too much and ended up to be 4 orientation groups playing at once.
The other game involves playing scissors/paper/stone, with the winner pasting a sticker on any part of the loser's face.
Forfeit: The person with the highest number of stickers would have to do a forfeit!
E(no.of stickers per person) = 4
Surely someone would have more than 4 stickers! With that kind of calculation in mind, a few of us pasted all 4 stickers on our own faces, and looked at the rest play the games. =P Some got LOADS of stickers on their faces! XD The punishment was granted to 2 ladies, who sang a random child song.
Activity 7: The SPMS walkaround
SPMS LTs, tutorial rooms, photocopy rooms. Nothing very interesting, the only thing to note that its important to wear a jacket of hoodie if there's a need to stay inside for a long duration. At 4.30pm, the OGLs announced the end of the OBI day. It's not an official debrief, so with an abrupt ending, we exchanged contacts, and left the building. Whole lot thank OGLs! XD
Lepak at Koufu for awhile, with some comparing timetables... Everybody's timetable seems to be very different from one another. Perhaps after some rearrangement, it would look more similar. :D
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That sorts of wraps up Day 2. I am not the kind who is enthusiastic to go for camps and stuff, but since it has already been organised and I had actually answered yes to going for this day, its best not to skip it, cos people put in effort into this. =)
Not sure if most people just came for the iPad on the previous day, but one thing is for sure, I don't regret coming for the OBI day! :D
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Sidenote: Sia la after 1 month then finish the post.
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