My first week was actually quite uneventful. UNTIL FRIDAY AFTER SCHOOL. That's when things (which were not going so well already) completely spiralled out of control.

And I'm supposed to be doing my French homework now. Something about utilising pronouns. I hate grammar.

But before I start, what about Medical, Matriculation and Orientation?

MEDICAL

Okay I admit I took my time to get to the health and wellness centre. I figured I'd still be quite early if I turned up an hour after the place opened.

Unfortunately I ended up running late AND getting lost on the shuttle bus (as usual), so by the time I burst through the doors of the centre, the place was FULL of people.

The booklet said it would take less than an hour; I was there for more than THREE. :P First I had to fill in forms and declare that "I AM NOT PREGNANT" (I was wondering if I wrote 'yes', would it mean 'yes I am pregnant', and if I wrote 'no', would it mean 'no I am pregnant'? Then I remembered the lady told us to just sign on the line!).

Then I had to get my height and weight measured! And I gained over 1 kg!!! .........But I also apparently grew 2 cm so I'm still underweight. Well I suppose that makes me officially 5'7 anyway. :P

After which there were VERY long waits for the next few stations, especially the medical checkup. I got seriously bored of Oprah while waiting for my number to be called. I kept thinking, if I had brought my GBA I could've finished another Fire Emblem chapter!

The most ironic thing was that the medical checkup was over in less than 5 minutes. :P

Then I made a mad dash for the X-ray place because I was afraid the people there would be going for lunch. Thank goodness the lunch hour there is one hour later than at the centre.

The X-ray thing took quite a long time too, with queues for changing into the robe and getting X-rayed. Then there was waiting for the nurse's all-clear, and queuing to change out of the robe.

After which I was FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and went home to sleep. Well actually I went home to eat. I was already starving before the X-ray. :P

MATRICULATION

By this time I was sick of dragging myself to NUS every other day, so I got through it as fast as possible. I also observed (once again) that everyone seemed to have at least one friend matriculating with them. :P

After the loooooong wait to hand in my stupid forms and collect my matriculation card, I collected my EZ-link card and proceeded to hurry through the whole Matriculation Fair. Which on hindsight was a bad decision 'cos I missed out on a lot of things. :P

ORIENTATION

The next two days I had orientation talks about module bidding and all the majors, etc. from 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. on both days.

I was actually stupid enough to stay till 4.30 p.m. on both days (although I missed the Social Work and Sociology talk on the first day and the counselling talk on the second day 'cos I went for lunch).

Then a few days later I found WEBCASTS for both days' talks on the FASS website. *growls*

The real Orientation Week started the next day, and by now you should already know how my O-week (or lack of it!) went. Hahahaha.

BUT I want to use this opportunity to thank YAN QING for "saving" me on Tuesday. If not for her I would've died somewhere in Bedok, and my collection tin* would've been MUCH lighter. Mwahahahaha.

*Speaking of which, I've never collected so much for a flag day before. But I was pretty broke that week because I donated at least $6 to my tin AND spent a bomb on lunch and transport. :P

AND of course, not forgetting my nice tour guides, ANA..........and my sister (wherever in the US she may be now). Thanks to them, I know how to get to the canteen (which is of course very important or I may starve to death just wandering aimlessly around), what the good food there is, where to print stuff, where the heck the Forum is, and how to walk in from Heng Mui Keng Terrace. :) However, it'll take me some time to discover other shortcuts. In the meantime I'm just happy to find my class.* :P

*Speaking of which, I miss those HUGE desks in SP. I hate swivelly tables in seminar rooms. Actually I don't like seminar rooms. The doorknobs are annoying. And being with so little people is soooooooo intimidating.

AND FINALLY

So.......about my Friday.

After declaring that I have previous French knowledge (however minimal now), I got called up on Wednesday to sit for the placement test on Friday morning.

As expected, I grumbled about it to everyone, then grudgingly woke up an hour earlier and arrived at the VERY secluded seminar room.

There were less than ten people taking the test, which was six pages long. I thought the first five or so questions were manageable. Then....it....got....impossible. First I tried making logical choices, then I began ticking randomly. Towards the end I completely gave up. I read the essay question on the last page ("Describe what you did in January, in past tense if possible") and immediately handed in the paper.

Then I went happily off to my first offical French lecture, which was very fun and we learnt how to greet people and how to pronounce the French alphabet.

Then I happily went home to start balloting for my tutorials, having finally decided on all my slots the previous night.

So I went online, and there was a new email waiting for me: "Placement test result"

Awww, I thought. Are they really going to tell me that I FAILED?

*click*

"Dear Jessica,

Our lecturer has placed you eligible for French 2 after reviewing your placement test result."

My reaction can only be described as WTF?!!!!!!!!!!!

I (of course) immediately started ranting to everyone possible. Starting with my sister, since she was online. Then my mother, who wasn't at home. Then...........you get the idea.

I finally calmed down after I realised that French 2 uses the same textbook as French 1. I had just bought it the previous day so getting another book and selling the current one would've been sooooooo tedious.

So in the end I was forced to drop French 1, the module that I spent SO MANY BID POINTS ON AND HAD GOTTEN A REALLY GOOD TIMESLOT, and take up the LATEST French 2 timeslot (because I had clashes with the other two classes).

The biggest change was that instead of having Monday free and one French lecture on Friday, I now had Friday free and one French lecture on Monday - at 6-8 p.m., of all things.

And that also meant I had to REPLAN ALL MY TUTORIAL SLOTS. I realised it was even harder to plan with French 2, and ended up with a very tight timetable.

Lastly, I had to turn up for school on Monday when I had been looking forward to a rest day. I felt soooooooooooo cheated. :P

I reached class right on time, though, and was surprised to see so few people compared to French 1. Everyone was staring at me as if I was in the wrong class, since obviously I hadn't been at the briefing last week. :P

The lecture, in short, was quite nightmarish. We started off immediately by introducing ourselves to the person beside us. Most of the time I was trying to gauge how much everyone had learnt in French 1. I got a heart attack when I realised they had already learnt the past participle, which I hadn't. And then of course I had a hard time catching everything the lecturer said.

So I was very relieved when it was time to go. Now I'm staring at my textbook exercise and thinking how this feels like Chinese homework. In other words, I have almost no idea what's going on.

Well okay, Chinese was worse. :P

Jessica wrote home at 12:47 am

I just came back from staying over at Sam's! Well okay, not just. :P

After LOTS of delays (everything from a sluggish printer to getting caught in a traffic jam to having the stupid bus break down), I arrived at Sam's house drenched and shivering - like 2 hours late. :P

And of course I didn't have time to dry before we set off in the wind and the rain for the airport. :P

We spent a long time having dinner at Popeye's (because I spent a long time eating!) before we decided to walk to T2's MacDonald's for dinner. On the way there we tried to take pictures but Sam's camera batteries went flat, so we had to walk back to search for batteries.

The batteries were too expensive, and YQ suddenly announced that T3 actually has a MacDonald's, so we went there instead. :P I had my green tea McFlurry while the other two had CHEAPO VANILLA CONES!!! :P

THEN YQ had to go home (:P). We walked back to the MRT, where Sam's camera batteries decided they had a biiiiiiiiiit of energy left, took our photos, then returned to the bus depot.

We all got off at Sam's stop, sent YQ off, then Sam and I went upstairs and dallied for some time (mostly listening to music) before deciding to have our baths.

After bathtime was (finally) PLAYTIME!!!

...But it was getting really late and Sam had to go to school the next day, so we only managed one round of Mario Party 8 (we won!), changed some Miis, and (for me) practised some of the Mario Party minigames.

Then it was time to sleeeeeeeeeep. I actually managed to wake up quite early, and had time to laze around and wash up before Sam returned and we went to MacDonald's for takeaway. Unfortunately it took longer than expected cos there were tons of schoolkids who had just been released from school. :P

We walked back and had lunch, and then it was PLAYTIME again!

We played Mario Party 8 for quite some time - we almost quit a few rounds into the game because our opponents got 3 stars in quick succession, but in the end they didn't get anymore and we beat them! - before switching to House of the Dead 2.

Guess what? We made LOTS of progress in HOTD2! Not only did we beat the fourth boss (the one with the HUGE saw and small head), we actually beat him without taking a single hit! Then we reached the next level and defeated both Judgment and Hierophant (again) before we reached the fifth boss (Magician), where our game sadly ended. :P

Then we moved on to Wii Fit, where I unlocked Advanced Step (and stumbled and tripped through it) and Advanced Hoop (is that the name? Anyway, all that shaking really hurt!) and didn't do particularly well for all the other games. :P

After which it was past 6 p.m. and I had to start my loooooooong journey back home. :(

To conclude, I have no idea what the point of this post is. I will get to the Medical, Matriculation, Orientation thingy some other day. Very tired now. :P

Jessica wrote home at 11:16 pm

I've been meaning to update for quite some time, but I was too lazy and busy playing Fire Emblem. :P In the end I decided on Eliwood Hard Mode, which was...hard. Hahaha. Okay, hard in the sense that there were SO MANY DAMN REINFORCEMENTS. Other than that it wasn't too bad.

Then the moment I finished my game I was like, "EH I WANT TO PLAY AGAIN!!!"

So I did. Played Hector Normal Mode. And therefore I just wasted a fortnight not doing anything worthwhile. Hahahahahahaha.

BUT before wasting that fortnight, I cleared out my wardrobe and rearranged everything according to colour!

Ahem. As you may have noticed, I separated my nice chiffon flowery blousies (okay, just chiffon blouses...it just so happens most of them are flowery) from the rest and placed them on the left.

Man was that such hard work. I don't know how many hours I spent on it. I also sliiiiightly rearranged the folded up stuff in my other cupboard and took out some old clothes.

And I STILL HAVE NO SPACE LEFT!!!

Sigh.

In other news, I spent the whole of July drinking Chillers at Gloria Jeans because they had the one-month-only $3 offer at VivoCity. Now that it's August I am feeling very sad indeed.

Oh yeah and I have been meeting YQ for lunch/dinner a few times too. BECAUSE SAM IS ALWAYS BUSY. In fact on Friday we were walking past the art museum and talking about taking a picture with SAM 'cos the real one wasn't available. :P

Aaaaaaaaaand I've got other things to say but I can't remember them now, for some strange reason. I will most likely change my blog design within the next week (now I'm getting really sick of the purple and small fonts...yes, I guarantee you the new font will be a lot bigger; I tweaked the font size) and update about whatever I'm supposed to say that I can't remember now.

Okay maybe not the last part. I don't think I'll ever remember. My memory is getting very bad...

...........All right fine, I admit. I've been taking so long to change the design and updating so infrequently because I don't want anyone who's NOT supposed to be reading my blog, reading it. I thought of changing my blog address but I'm not the sort who keeps changing addresses every year or something. And I've had this blog for 5 years and I like my blog name. Obviously. :P I also thought of making the blog invite-only, but that would just make it very troublesome for everyone. Then I decided to place a password, but.......

Argh, well the main point is that I don't seem to have any other choice. Sooooooo, this blog stays.

Jessica wrote home at 1:30 am