ENGINE OVERHEATING, CORE BREACH IS IMMINENT
If you feel I'm not writing often enough, it's going to get a lot worse soon. I've been quite overwhelmed with coursework. I'm spending far more than 70 hrs a wk (that's more than 10 hrs a day, every day) on studying and staying home to do assignments every weekend. I just finished 2 assignments last night, and just as I thought it was time to catch up on my breath (and take the week slow so that one can enjoy his own birthday), I realize that mid-terms are next week!!
On top of that, I may be offered some on-campus employment. So I may soon have even less free time (as if I have any now). The pay sucks, but hey, anything that helps pay the rent is better than nothing. I guess this once again verifies the old adage that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys and half-starving graduate students.
This article is very likely the last you'll get from me for a while.
That's why I'm making it a little longer
than usual.
NEW STARBASE
Here's some personal good news. Our quality of life would soon go up significantly. We've been offered campus family housing. It's a very cosy 800 sq-ft, 2-storey townhouse, 2 bedrooms, with a common (ie, shared) lawn and it's in a nice peaceful location (right next to a small "reserve", which is actually just a patch of wild bushes!). Best of all, it's abt $50 less per month than our current private apartment (which means more money for food).
I have a comforting thought. I'm a half-starving graduate student with a dependent and no income, living entirely off savings and counting every penny, yet I'll soon have a higher material quality of life than most people in Singapore. I think I'm even better off than many of those living in, say, the Sin Min terrace-housing area, who are among the richest people in S'pore.
So maybe things ain't so bad after all.
NOBEL FEVER
UCSB has just won its first Nobel Prize. :) It's the Nobel
prize for Chemistry awarded to Prof Kohn, a prominent physics researcher
in UCSB. In fact, he's so prominent that he has a building in campus
named after him even before he won the Noble Prize.
BOOT CAMP
In one of my previous mails, I described UCSB as an "academic marines bootcamp". I learned that I was closer to the truth than I thought. The campus WAS previously a marines base, and part of the graduate housing complex used to be housing for marine officers.
Over the months, I've discovered that UCSB is a far better institution than it has been given credit for. For example, it tops the country in material science and some fields of physics. And one report rates it the #2 public research university in the USA (after UC Berkeley). When the Internet started in '69 (it was called the Arpanet back then), there were only 4 nodes, and UCSB was one of them. In other words, despite the fact that UCSB accepted me, it's a very good university.
Like all other graduate students here, I've been working very hard. And many people are working a lot harder than me! My feeling is that college education is a lot heavier in the US than in S'pore. Back in S'pore, many of my classmates complained of being over-worked, yet they still had time for games, social activities and relationships. Here, many undergrads and grads alike don't even have enough sleep. All my friends who went to college in the US complained about how heavy college for them was. Now I understand. Whoa....
One of the things I learned about attending school is how important it is for classes to be taught by experts who have a passion about the subject they were teaching. That passion is not only inspiring, it gives teachers the ability to give very good overviews (and in-depth views) of their subjects and engage in very meaningful discussions with thinking, critical students.
One of the saddest aspect of my undergrad education was that there were some cases where lecturers were ordered to teach (upper-division) courses they had neither expertise nor interests in. My experience is that there is nothing you can learn from these teachers that you cannot learn by yourself. It hurts both the students and the poor teacher. Fortunately, that happened in only a minority of cases I've come across and most lecturers got to teach what they wanted and most were pretty good.
Despite an imminent burn-out of my warp drives, I have no regrets coming
here so far. I think the education I'm getting is great value for
money. I've learned a lot about my craft over the past few weeks,
I've also grown mentally, emotionally and spiritually (even physically,
with all that daily biking!).
UPRISING
Last week, some UCSB students, together with students in the other UC campuses, staged a walkout in protest of talk by one member of the UC Regents (basically, the board of governors of the UC system) to cut ethnic studies programs. The walkout lasted 2 days (engineering students didn't seem to participate. We all attended classes, worked hard and forefitted our sleep as usual). It was accompanied by mass demonstrations and was openly supported by some members of staff and faculty.
On the second day of the walkout, student representatives staged a sit-in outside the Chancellor's office to press their demands.
Guess what the Chancellor did? He invited them in and had a cordial negotaition session with them till 2am. He (understandably) could not agree to all their demands, but among other things, he pledged to fork out $30,000 of his own money for outreach programs to attract minority students. Everybody came out of this happy.
I was impressed, of course. Peaceful demonstrations, no violence, no police crackdowns (heck, there was no police presence to start with), no beating-up and mass arbritrary arrest of students, no swearing or exchange of un-gentlemenly words, nothing. Just a group of people peacefully making a point and the top guy gentlemenly enough to talk to them.
Steam gets released, demands get heard, some good things were promised,
and nobody got hurt. This must be one of those things that made America
great. Impressive indeed.
THE ARMPIT OF PARADISE
My friend, Al, with his usual good wit and wonderful ability to share
his wisdom nicely wrapped in humor, once told me (in reference to cities)
that even the most beautiful bodies have armpits. :) Indeed, every
city has its bad parts, even here in paradise. And, Isla Vista, where
we're staying probably fits the bill. It's probably the noisest and
most crowded place in this area. It's so well known as a party location
that till recently, thousands of people as far away as LA flocked here
each year for the Halloween party. Thousands of teenagers got drunk,
beat each other, raped women and so on. 5 years
ago, the police administered their tough, and I feel, proper "Zero
tolerance" response. They blockaded roads in IV, cracked down on
the drinking, and arrested drunkards and troublemakers without warning.
Last year, IV was finally safe enough for children during Halloween.
You guys would probably respond, quite rightly, that hey, that doesn't sound anything like paradise. You're right, but it's not as bad as it first seems. For a start, it's only a small area 1/2 mile by 1 mile. Whatever problems I may have with it, I cycle 5 minutes north and I'm back to nice open space. The town is safe by most standard, it's quiet most of the time (so far, I've only had problems on Friday nights), and it's crowded only by US standards. By Singapore standards (ie, my assessment of the town the first day I came in), it's not anywhere near as crowded as the average HDB settlement.
Anyway, whatever it is, we're moving out soon. :)