New semester starts!

Apart from just some few negative experience I wrote in the last post, I am still a cheerful and happy person.

Last month I really talked with lots of people. I hung out with lots of friends, and almost never eat alone. I just want to share some time with people. I am happy about it at 2 points: I feel comfortable and nature talking with people, and I feel they also comfortable / fun talking with me. Though clearly I need to improve my speaking skills a lot, at least now I have totally overcome the initial fear of starting a conversation, speaking to public and the like. Talking with people becomes so nature to me (though the more I talk, the more I face my speaking weakness. Sometimes I felt very bad about it. Only if I was so influent in English, sigh~~). Suddenly some of my friends started to ask things like: "why do you know so many people?" Ha ha. It's like some friends asked me "why do you always smile?"

I went out to explore Singapore and NUS a few times with a friend. They were quite fun and memorable experiences. [Don't want to go into detail but this paragraph is here because it's important].

I also took the chance that school hadn't started to learn swimming. Initially I went swimming alone. I didn't know how to swim so I tried to teach myself in the smaller pool. Looking back it was a long path. (OK I might not be a fast learner here but I'm sure I was a diligent one). I managed to swim across the pool in the week before the term started. Some of my closer friends also came back to Singapore so I asked them to go with me. It was really a good decision to invite them to go along. I learned a couple of things about swimming, and had some good times. Funnily, when I started to share about swimming, many friends showed interest in going swimming with me (well, 5 at least). Some went there the first time because of that. Guess sometimes people need reason / companion to start this kind of thing. It's good that sometimes I can start doing something new out of interest without feeling fear of others' judgments or views. I would love to write more about my swimming experience. However, to sum up in 1 sentence, I think learning anything is quite similar to each other: controlling fear and reluctant -> work hard -> when you reach your limit, you will feel want to give up, but hold on a little longer, you will be able to extend your limit. (The only bad thing about swimming is that I can't wear my glasses, and without them I can see up to nothing..)

I have a good feeling that this semester I will learn a lot of new things. I got that feeling right from the first lecture of CS2106 -- Introduction to Operating System. I felt that this semester would entice my interest for Computer Science again. It totally changed my module plan. I was stuck with the module plan I set up in the summer, because I couldn't secure some modules as planned. It was quite a safe plan, allow me to have free time to do extra stuff. Felt terrible when I need to change the plan. (Sometimes my mind wasn't very flexible). However, I changed my perspective after the Cs2106 lecture, and bid for several modules I didn't planned for before, but thought that they might be interesting, like CS3243 - AI, or CS3246 - Hypermedia & WWW. Now as I appealed successfully for CS3429 - Element of UI design, I might have to drop 1 of the 2. Today I feel even more assured that this semester will do something good to my interest.

Along from that, Tembusu College has started having activities. Friends here are quite easy going and open. We are to create a big new thing; I'm excited.

I might join NES / S@S too. Is it too much of work? Oh wait, 1101S tutoring is hellalot of work but the more work I have, the better I will be at managing time, hopefully.

One more thing, last week I jumped into a book about Buddhism, "Ego, Attachment and Liberation" so I grabbed it and read a couple of things about Buddhism. Interestingly, many things I thought about were quite similar to ideas in Buddhism. For example, attachments vs baggages. Certainly they aren't something healthy for our mind. Ego is a big problem too. The definition of ego in Buddhism is larger than my awareness of it though. Still, to be happy it's important to throw away both ego and attachment. I agree that we need to throw away expectation, throw away ourselves. Honestly, I thought about these points for a long time before but didn't find a good way to put them into words. Doing is harder than saying, though. I still try to keep my ego & attachment in check.

First week of school started with lots of worries and tiredness. However, a bit of cooling down helped me changed my perspective and changed my attitude toward the new semester. Hopefully everything will work out awesome.