Today's seminar is simply wonderful. Prof. Green is really a humorous presenter and he never failed to make everyone laugh. He started off by saying that it's actually quite silly for most industrial people to envision a future world making use of Hydrogen as the fuel since it is difficult to store it and dangerous to use it. You'll need a very thick metal container to store a few litres of liquid Hydrogen at 20K! Imagine using it as a fuel in the car, going to the "hydrogen" station to "pump" hydrogen; it's simply impractial. A better way will be to create hydrocarbon from cheap starting material like Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide (both can be obtained from the Water Gas Shift reaction. This process is known as Fischer Tropsch Catalysis. Prof. Green's Group was the first to make a homogenous Fischer Tropsch catalyst and he basically talked about the whole process of successes and failures in the seminar.

What is most interesting is the thing he mentioned to us before he ended the seminar. He talked about this new reaction known as Alkane Metathesis! Alkene (Olefin) Metathesis is well-known to the chemistry readers but hey, now he's talking about Alkane Metathesis - synthesizing a higher alkane from 2 lower alkanes in a controlled manner. There are 2 person currently working on it - Basset JM and Coperat F. I'm searching for some information on it now. :p It's a pretty exciting development in the area of organometallic chemistry.


An interesting incident happened after the seminar. Alice and I wanted to take photos outside the chemistry department (with the words and logo) and she approached a friendly lady to help us take. We later realized that she is actually a professor in the department. o_O Later on, Alice said something which made me pretty unhappy. I was telling her that I might be attending a seminar on 12th Oct since it's on organic synthesis and it happens to be before the Organic structural elucidation mid-term. She remarked that she can't be as relaxed as me in going for seminars as and when I like as since I'm an exchange student, I just have to pass a module. I was a little pissed as I don't think I am any less hardworking than in NUS. Not that I'm very hardworking back in Singapore but it's jsut that I'm as relaxed back then. I'm actually pretty slack back in NUS and I am actually working slightly harder here. Afterall I have to "maintain" NUS's world ranking of 18; can you imagine a student from a ranked 18th in the world scoring just an average score? What will people think of NUS? What is most important is that I have to prove myself that when I go to another university, I'll be as good as I am in chemistry (organic in particular) as in NUS. So what if I'm one of the top in Organic in NUS and end up medicore in HK? One of my aim of going for student exchange is to see whether I am really that good in organic chemistry (as what most of my peers and friends in NUS think). Other people's perception is one thing; I want to see for myself whether I am really that good. Readers who understand me will know that I'm not being competitive here; I just wanna experience the world of chemistry out there and see whether I am up to the challenge.

Had 2 tests earlier on in the day. The Material Science test was kinda trash; at least to me, it's rather easy. If I'm not able to get full marks, it'll only mean that I'm sloppy in my written answers. The test on Structural Elucidation in Organic Chemistry was even more crappy. Got 4 questions wrong and hence 80% of the marks. Those 4 questions, 2 careless, one which I think no one gets it right and another one which is debatable. The question which I think most people got it wrong is "How many times Nobel prizes were given to works on NMR? I picked "3" but the answer is "4" o_O. I don't think I can even answer how many times were Nobel Prizes given to Organic Chemistry.

Looking forward to go hiking this weekend and I'll be heading for another 2 seminars next week - one at Univeristy of HK and another one at the Chinese University of HK. I'll be reading a lot in the mean time; should be targeting at least 100 pages and 3 journal articles. I'm aiming to complete reading the classic article on MOT by Hoffmann as well; then I'll go and bug Prof. Wu again. :p

Had a pretty interesting Advanced Organic lecture today; had a short "debate" with Prof. Wu on one interesting phenomenon. He was teaching us on using Frontier Orbital Theory to account for reactivities of organic compounds and he asked us why is it that when we have an electron donating group like amine and oxide (the enolate type) directly bonded to an alkene, it will react with an alkyl halide whereas normal alkene won't react with alkyl halide. I answered that when there is an electron donating group bonded to an alkene, it's HOMO energy level will increase and it will lie closer to the C-X antibonding sigma orbital, thereby having a better overlap with it (less energy mismatch) and thus explains it's reactivity. I guess he didn't really get what I mean and he told the class that that is not the main reason. He explained saying that steric factor played a more important role here since when an alkene approaches an alkyl halide from the back (to do a SN2), it will kinda be difficult since the methyl group (in the case of methyl halide) will block it from approaching. However what I felt was that since C-X antibonding sigma orbital points in the opposite direction, there won't be much steric factor involved. He went on citing the example of proton extraction of methane via alkyl radical is easy but that methyl extraction of ethane is not easy; steric is the one involved. Hmm probably but I still feel that this can be explained via HOMO-LUMO gap as well; will not go into the details though.

Hmm anyway doesn't really matter since I've dropped him an email and waiting for his clarification.

I'll be going down to the University of Hong Kong for a Chemistry seminar tomorrow after class. The title of the seminar is "Towards homogenous Fischer-Tropsch catalysts" and the speaker is Prof. Malcolm Green from Oxford! He's a world renowned Prof. in the field of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry. Looking forward to this seminar. :)

Before that, I'll be having 2 tests ... stress ...

Kinda pissed off earlier on after the Advanced Organic Chemistry lecture. One of the China guy asked Prof. Wu a question but later the discussion ended in Chinese o_O I was a little lost; would have been more lost if not for the many hours of chemistry discussion (half English half Chinese) with Lao Cai and Fang Zhen when I was doing my UROPS and summer research in Prof. Lai's lab. Later on, the whole dicussion was in Chinese (which I don't know why) and worse still, Alice went to ask him a question in Chinese. Ahh ... not that I have anything against discussion in Chinese (I've done that many times, though it's always half past six) but this is suppose to be a proper lesson and if Prof. Wu takes it that everyone in the class understands chemistry terminology in Chinese, he might just conduct the lesson in Chinese from next lesson onwards since half of the students there are from China. Later on, Prof. Wu asked me why do I seem to know most of the stuff and I do not really know how to answer him as the fact is what he is teaching is filling up some of my gaps in theoretical organic chemistry and so I am able to comment and ask questions along the way as I am following his train of thoughts and lecture pace.

Last Sat, I brought 赵宇 and 书成 for a short HK tour despite the fact that the tropical cyclone is very near to HK :p We decided to go as it wasn't raining and the sky seemed ok. 尖沙嘴 was our first destination and the wind was really strong. We had several photos taken with out clothes and hair flying up (see photos below). We went to 深水步 after that as they wanna take a look at some computer stuff; walked to 太子 to buy some cookies and 书成 headed back to school as he booked a piano room for practising piano. 赵宇 and I headed for 太古 after that as I wanna bring him to a park there to get a good view of Kowloon. However when we reached the park, it rained heavily and we had to run back to the mall for if not, we'll be drenched! :( We headed back to school after that for dinner.

The last photo is interesting. We were at Quarry bay park and I took this photo demostrating the strength of the typhoon (look at the trees). What is so interesting is not about the powess of the typhoon but if you look at the photo closely, you can see a man jogging along the pavement. Hmm what an avid runner he is, going for a jog during such harsh weather condition.

Gotta go back to do my chemistry tutorials now. Inorganic tutorial tomorrow and the questions are pretty challenging. :)

Tropical cyclone is coming but it'll not hit HK direct. According to the latest report released by the HK observatory, it'll be closest to HK at noon tomorrow, around 350km away. Despite this, I can already feel the powess of the tropical cyclone. It was really windy today and such strong wind has not been felt in Singapore before.

Does anyone knows why does a MRT station needs the gas bromo-trifluoromethane? I found that every MTR (MRT in HK is known as MTR) station in HK contains this gas.

I've checked with 赵宇 (Frankie's room mate from 北京) and he told me that 溴 means bromine, 氟 means chlorine and the last 3 words mean methane. Piecing up the words it means "bromo-trifluoromethane". The worst thing is, it's toxic! o_O

I'm not feeling well as I'm down with a pretty bad flu; was sneezing and coughing for the whole of last night and today. Nonetheless, I still went for the Chemistry seminar at HK Baptist University this morning at 1130. The presentation is pretty interesting; it's about using camphor as chiral auxillaries in asymmetric synthesis. The prof. is from Taiwan National Tsing Hua University and he's the expert in this area in this region. His synthetic routes and proposed mechanisms were elegant and I enjoyed the presentation. The only drawback is that I am sick and so can't really concentrate. Sigh.

Anyway the long weekend that has just past was pretty adventurous. Sat and Sun, I went to 深圳 together with 书成, 赵宇, Yuin Yee and Daniel. Sat was mainly shopping at 东门 and we had dinner at 书成's place. We stayed over at his place before going for book hunt and 世界之窗 the next day.

The catch phrase for 世界之窗: "您给我一天，我给您一个世界!". Hmm 世界之窗 has been rather disappointing as it's not as real as I expected it to be. The picture painted by the web and media appeared too rosy.

Mon, I went to find Teck Loon as he came over to Macau and HK for a short tour. We had dim sum and spent some time walking along Nathan Road and 尖沙咀 area.

Ahh, sneezing again; better go and catch some sleep. zzz...

Felt quite sucky today. Had a Mass Spectrometry quiz on the module "Structure Elucidation in Organic Chemistry" and I didn't exactly fare well in it. 75% is my score and that's about the mean score.

Guess I was too complacent. I think I suck at MCQ quizzes; almost always get between 75% to 80% in almost all the MCQ quizzes that I have done in NUS. I think Zhijie will share my sentiment since we always get around the same score for MCQ too; can't help but feel that MCQ can't really test you well since there is this element of luck involve. There are 4 quizzes (5% each), 1 mid-term (35%) and 1 final (45%) for this module. HKUST runs MCQ quizes in a very unique way; every student will have a device call Personal Response System (PRS) and all we have to do is to aim at a senser and indicate our choice; guess there are a couple of people who cheated since it's pretty easy to cheat in such quizzes :(

Anyway I made 2 careless mistakes and almost everyone got those 2Q correct. Frankie made quite a lot of mistakes too; he was a little upset as he was aiming for A+ for this module. His strong point is in NMR and I told him we'll make a comeback in NMR. :p There are a couple of postgraduates taking this module and a few exchange students from China; the present cohort are also hardworking and some are really good. Hmm I'll need to start to be more serious in my work if not I'll let myself and my friends down.

Nothing very exciting happen for the past few days; I enjoyed most of the lessons especially advanced organic chemistry when I never fail to ask the lecturer questions every lecture :p

Today's Material Science lecture was pretty crappy as lecturer cracked some jokes. He mentioned that when he went to US to do graduate studies, during the initial phase, he did not dare to speak in English as his English was very poor; therefore he tried to communicate in as little words as possible. In one incident, he went to the bank and the person asked him for his name.

"What is your name?"

"Me"

"Yah, you, what is your name?"

"Me"

"I'm asking you what is your name!"

"Me"

... ...

In another incident, there is this prof whose surname is Hu (same pronounciation as the English word "who") One of his student was asked by the admin clerk in the department office on the person who gave him the permission to use the room.

"Who gave you permission to use the room?"

"Hu gave me the permission to use the room."

"Yes, I am asking you who gave you the permission to use it?!"

"Hu!"

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"Hu indeed gave me the permission to use it!"

... ...

I'll have 2 hours of lesson tomorrow and that's it; Friday is more relax for me. I'll be attending a chemistry seminar tomorrow at 4pm and I'm looking forward to it as it'll be the first seminar I attend in HKUST. Next Wednesday, I'll be attending another seminar at HK Baptist University at 1130am and I'll skip the noon lectures for it. Think it's worth it as the prof will be touching on asymmetric synthesis and it'll be a golden chance for me to explore other universities of HK; afterall coming for exchange is to explore and learn as much as we can. I am also looking forward to this weekend as I'll be going to 深圳 again on Sat and Sun. Daniel, Yuin Yee and I will be staying over at 书成's place as he offered to be the guest. I'll return on Sunday night and will be spending Monday with Teck Loon as he's coming over to HK for a holiday.

Heard some negative things about the system in HKUST from Frankie. He told me that in most circumstances, undergraduate taking graduate modules will be grade down relative to their postgraduate counterparts! What the heck! He took one graduate module on Bioanalytical methods last semester and although he did better than one of the postgraduate, he was given a C+ and the postgraduate A-; that was so unfair! As to the reason why they implemented this policy, he believed it was due to the fact that the department (or school) wanna discourage undergraduate from taking graduate modules. I am thinking along the line that if this policy is still valid, then I think getting A for advanced organic chemistry is not possible since they have such mentality and they are not flexible about it. For this module, 40% of the score is based on project (in which the prof. have 20% say on the marks; the remaining being peer assessment) and 60% on exams (in which the prof. have all the say since he'll be marking the papers). The situation seems pretty helpless now; nonetheless, I'm ready for the battle and will do my uttermost best for this module. Afterall organic chemistry is my ultimate passion in chemistry.

Thought of the day: Don't be complacent!

I love advanced Organic Chemistry!

Anyway had "Biochemistry of diseases" in the morning; Dr. Xia was done with Alzhemier's disease. It was really interesting and I actually went to zap the reference chapters from the reference book. Went for my first lecture of Ordinary Differential Equations after that (first lecture coz I've just gotten the module) and I was stunned by the first statement he made - Fundamental Theorem of Calculus! Wah, I hasn't taken any calculus course and it was "hardcore"! Following that, he showed us how to solve variable separable equations in a very fundamental way. Finally he showed us how to solve it the way I learnt in "A" level. Everything was pretty ok; the last and only Maths module that I have taken in NUS is Linear Algebra and that was 3 years ago. Looking forward to more Maths actually :p

I went to 饮茶 with Frankie, Philip, Shu Chen and Tommy at 2pm. The dim sum at 南北小厨 cost HK$8 for all items after 2pm so it's quite worth it :) After that, I went to ask Dr. Xia some questions I have on his modules and he cleared most of my doubt. Although I don't have biology background, I'm trying hard to comprehend this module; think I'm doing a pretty good job thus far :p

I had Math tutorial at 5pm but it's not worth mentioning coz it's pretty boring. Anyway dashed for Advanced Organic after that and I saw the 3 China guys discussing checking the answer to the MO diagram that Prof Wu asked us to draw last week. Hmm I did it, but in a pretty sloppy way; I thought that's pretty obvious?

Anyway, here are the topics that I'll be learning for this module:

1. Review of MO Theory
2. Conformation of simple organic molecule
3. Anomeric effect and related phenomena
4. Frontier MO theory and reactivities
5. Principles of Stereoselectivity
6.Diastereoselectivities of organic reactions
7. Radical cyclization reactions
8. Some concepts in physical organic chemistry
9. Substituent effect on bond dissociation energy
10. Pericyclic reactions
11. Mechanistic aspects of enantioselective reactions

I'll be looking forward to every lecture!

I love exploring on my own :)

Went out alone yesterday after having lunch with Yuin Yee and Daniel. I took MTR to Jordan with the intention of getting a detailed map of the 郊野公园 and also the street directory of HK. You may be thinking that I am crazy but I simply like the idea of knowing my exact location since the tourist map doesn't have the map of my school area; in addition, I can explore on my own with a detailed map of HK. Alas, the store has already closed as I reached there a little late, around 2+pm I guess.

I headed for 中环 via MTR as I will like to go to 山顶 again. This time round, I am not so dumb to take the peak tram which will cost me $30! I bumped around and found a green minibus up 山顶. It costs $7.40 per trip, which is quite reasonable. After a rather windy and bumpy ride, I reached my destination and I headed for Lugard Road which will begin the hiking path known as the HK trail. It will be 50km long! I didn't complete it of course as time is running quite late; I'll need to reach there early in the morning in order to complete the trail. Anyway, I walked for around 4km; at a junction, instead of continuing the HK trail, I walked along Hatton Road and reached back my starting point (kinda loop). Found a small waterfall there and I realized that HK is getting more foggy :(

I took the green minibus back to 中环 and initially, I wanna travel to 西贡 to eat. However, curious me saw this sign board which writes "escalator to mid-level" and I kinda remembered from what I have read that this escalator will take us to half way up the peak. Hmm so I walked there and see if it's true. Along the way I took some photos of the streets of 中环 and realized that it's a little different from Kowloon. I took the "escalator to mid-level" up and realized that it's actually holds the Guiness World Records as the world's longest covered escalator. I realized later that I have actually past through many interesting attractions and eateries which include 蓝桂芳, SoHo and Hollywood road.

At the end of the day, I went to 北角 for dinner.

Initially I thought that 北角 will have some big mall since its English name is North Point but then I realized (to my surprise) that it's very much like Jordan and 油麻地 area.

I'll be doing my readings today; a lot of work left undone :p

Nothing very facinating happened for the past 2 days. The 2 Chemistry lectures I had on Thursday were ok; most of the materials I knew already. I am actually looking forward to the materials in the later part of the semester. Material Science lecture was as boring as ever but at least this time round, he managed to explain the difference between HCP and FCC really well by using models that he made out of styrofoam balls. :) Chatted with Frankie and Tommy for quite a while after lecture and I went to bath before heading for dinner with them.

Yesterday, I had "Biochemistry of Diseases" in the morning and we learnt the causes and symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease. Hmm pretty interesting but I doubt I'll do well in this module as I felt that there are a lot of things to remember. Had Material Science tutorial at 2pm in a LT but I slept for 30mins :p It was pretty boring as the tutor basically went through what the lecturer has taught! I thought that tutorial should have tutorial questions right? Why did it become a mini lecture?

I looked for Prof. Wu after that to ask him some MO questions. Basically I just confirmed some Mathematics with him since the first 2 lectures on "Advanced Organic Chemistry" is on MO and he talked quite a bit of Mathematics in it. We had a short chat after that and he asked me who I am working for before I came. I told him Prof. Lai YH and he said he knew him a few years back in Tokyo; he knew Prof. Xu GQ too. Well it felt quite good that profs. overseas know your profs. in NUS as it kinda show that they are pretty internationally recognized in their field. He continued telling me about some of his research and I realized that he does Pauson-Khand as well. Hmm then I told him about Zhijie doing it and we discussed quite a bit. Before I left, he said something like "I'm sure you have no problem in this course". I was like o_O Huh? I came to ask you some basic Math and you came up with this conclusion? Well I didn't say that of course; I am looking forward to learn more things from him; I'll read more as well so that I can ask him more questions. :p

At night, Frankie brought us to KTV as Daniel expressed his interest in singing on Monday. I was eating the buffet dinner most of the time as I can't sing. Daniel and Frankie can really sing and so they were singing most of the time throughout the 3 hours. I didn't exactly enjoy myself though but anyway it's only once as I won't be joining them again in the future.

Hmm not sure what I'm gonna do today. Felt quite bored; I'll probably head for town or stay in hostel to do my readings. One thing for sure is that I'll spend at least 1 day to do my reading this weekend (either today or tomorrow, though I prefer tomorrow). I need to read more as I've gotta plan for my honours year project and also for the courses over here. I don't wanna let my friends in Singapore and NUS down. Ahh people here seem to have high expectation of me as well and they seems to be quick to judge me as a good chemistry student. o_O

Well, the exchange-in students were invited for a lunch with the chemistry head yesterday afternoon at around 12pm and it was a pretty decent meal. Due to the fact that 11 out of the 12 exchange-in students are from the Mainland, he has to speak in mandarin and the conversation were revolving around why HK university education is only 3 years, how HKUST stands in the world and how the Chemistry department stands in the world. Basically, HK has 7 years of secondary education - 3 years of lower secondary, 2 years of upper secondary and 2 years of pre-university. It was mentioned that the final year of pre-university is equivalent to freshmen courses in many university. Actually, I don't really think so as their freshmen course here is about the same as those in NUS and everywhere. Anyway he mentioned that the education system in HK will change and by 2012, it will become 6 years of secondary education and 4 years of college which will be similar to most colleges in the world.

Anyway I realized that some of the Profs whom I knew in Singapore knew the head as well; they include Prof. Xu Guo Qin who was in the same graduate class in Princeton as him, Prof. Lee Soo Ying and Prof. Andy Hor. In the middle of the conversation, he was asking whether the audience knew why most bright Mainland students didn't shine very well in top American colleges. He said that the main reason is because they took chemistry not because of passion. If one take a subject out of passion, one will do very well in the area because he/she will be self-motivated. I agree with him as that's the way I felt and also the things that I'm trying to tell some of my friends in Singapore. I finally understood what Angeline meant when she said about me have the "spark" in the eyes; now I witnessed how the "spark" was like because I sawe it in Alice. It is the first time when I mentioned things like "Sharpless epoxidation", "Felkin Ann model", "Corey macrolactonization", "Olefin Metathesis", "Ritter reaction" etc that someone actually know what I am talking about and is able to continue the conversation. It's not about being smart, but rather how much one reads in the subject and most importantly, the spirit to learn and appreciates it. That is why when I teach, my main aim is not to teach my students textbook knowledge but rather to inculcate this deep passion in learning in them; with this passion in learning, they will be able to achieve success in their life as they'll become active learners and will pick up and criticize knowledge from various sources.

Following lunch, I had a short chat with him with regards to the Teaching Assistant issue (or tutor as he out it) and he said that the professor (Prof. Haynes) taking fundamentals of organic chemistry may need help and he asked me to drop him an email. Prof. Haynes replied my email saying that he'll like to meet me on Friday to discuss the details. Hmm I wonder whether it's my email or is it the authority of the head that cause the issue to be resolve so fast. Anyway another prof from another freshmen organic courses replied as well and he rejected my offer, saying that all Teaching Assistant are postgraduates and have undergone training to teach. Well, I respected his decision and won't be probing further (afterall Prof. Haynes agreed to my request) but if I were to reply, I would have said something along the line that teaching cannot be taught and it comes from the heart. In a way, it's the flair that counts.

In the late afternoon, I met up with Alice, Frankie and their friends for a short badminton session. I was kinda recruited into the Chemistry badminton team as they said that they need players to play for Chemistry. Honestly, I am not very good and I don't know why they wanted me; I may be able to play a pretty decent game socially but when it comes to competition, it's a totally different world.

Rushed for Advanced Organic Chemistry after that. The lecturer continued to talk about MOT and this time round, he taught us HMO and some calculation on getting the energy levels of the orbitals in acyclic and cyclic polyenes. It's still some form of revision to me but some concepts are reinforced. Prof. Wu was a pretty good lecturer and he taught with passion. I kinda enjoyed his lecture and I hope as time goes by, the module will get more and more challenging.

Hmm hasn't be writing for quite some time as I was busy with module registration stuff and trying to get used to campus life in HK.

It can be quite lonely over here as there are only 3 Singaporeans in campus - Daniel, Yuin Yee and I. We are of different major and we hardly see one another except for the occasional lunch and dinner (I do have a common module with each of them so it's some form of consolation). Fortunately, we stayed in the same hall and in a way we can look after one another or at least, you'll know that there is a Singaporean friend a few floors away. Mundane things like asking fr directions and ordering food can be quite troublesome (stress at times) as they do not exactly understand English or Mandarin. So most of the time, I have to end up pointing to the menu instead. As mentioned in the earlier entry, I am lucky to know some HK chemistry friends; for Yuin Yee and Daniel, they don't know anyone from their cohort yet and I guess attending lectures can be really lonely for them. Well for me, it's not that rosy after all as my HK friends do have their clique and they are used to speaking to one another in cantonese. It's difficult for me to join in their conversation and appreciate their joke since I can't understand a thing. Thus I am pretty lonely at times too. In addition, they have family and friends in HK and they can't keep me company all the time. Going out alone will be tricky as transportation and eating out in HK can be pretty steep and thus I've decided to stay in campus during weekdays.

I'll give a short account of what I have done for the past few days.

Friday 020905. As mentioned in the earlier post, I had "Biochemistry of Diseases" and the lecture was pretty okay except for the students making a lot of noise during lecture. Yuin Yee and I were very pissed off as we were not able to catch what the lecturer said. For lunch, Frankie brought me to 饮茶 with his Chemistry clique in campus. They were going to celebrate the birthday of a gal in the clique and so he asked me to come along and at the same time, introduce more Chemistry friends to me. At that moment I realized that HK people really know how to enjoy life - imagine that in NUS, will I ever get a chance to 饮茶 with my friends in campus? Also the restaurants and canteen housed mostly round tables - this is important as everyone will be able to communicate with one another unlike in rectangular tables in which we can hardly communicate with the people on the next table.

I went out with Frankie at around 3pm and we headed for 旺角 where he introduced me to a shop which sell laser pointer (I wanted to buy the one with the green light :p). After that we went to the arcade for a while before he met his gf and sent her home. I went to collect my sunglass and dine on my own after that.

Saturday 030905. I spent my night time in campus resting as Yuin Yee, Richard (Daniel's room mate, an exchange student from University of Waterloo) and I will be going to 深圳 the next day. Yuin Yee, Alice and I had lunch together and it was 饮茶 again. Following that, Alice brought me to a beach "below" our campus through a pretty long (and steep!) walk. Yuin Yee didn't come along as she returned home at around 3am the night before. Guess what? There is actually a waterfall below my campus! Shortly after we reached there, it rained cats and dogs and we had to run back to our campus; it took us close to 20 mins and by the time we reachedd campus, we were soaked! Alice went back to her lab and I returned to my hostel to bath. At around 4pm, she brought me to a mall near 太古 (the place where she lives) and we walked to a park beside the sea. It gave a spectacular view of Kowloon and I'll love to visit it again.

Sunday 040905. Yuin Yee, Richard and I went to 深圳 today and it took around 1 hour from campus; a pretty fast trip. We took bus 11 to 彩虹 MTR station and took MTR to 九龙塘. We changed to KCR train and it took us straight to a station at the border of HK and 深圳 call 罗湖. We cleared some immigration points and reached 深圳 at around 9.30am. For the whole day, nothing very exciting happened as we were just walking around shopping. I went on my separate ways from Yuin Yee and Richard initially as I wanted to buy books :p On the whole, I bought a long sleeve t-shirt, a tie, a t-shirt, books and some fruits from this trip.

Monday 050905. I was quite pissed right after lunch as I realized that one of my dream module "CHEM531 Advanced Inorganic Chemistry" will not be offered due to very low enrolment. Worse still, I can't take the Maths module on Differential Equation as well as the lecturer felt that I am over-qualified. What the heck! In the end, I will be taking the Maths module on differential equation that Daniel is doing and hopefully I can be enrolled into it eventually (there are no vacancies left). At 6pm, I had "CHEM511 Advanced Organic Chemistry" and it was really hardcore! Love the module so much, haha. Think my organic will improve after this trip. Anyway it's not easy to get "A" in HK as most of their modules go by the absolute score. A score of 80 may even end you up with a B+ instead. Hmm gotta work hard and not to disappoint my friends and NUS :p. If I screw up in this module, it means that my organic is not that great after all. I guess the students taking this module are really good - 3 from China, 3 postgraduates from this school, Alice and I.

Tuesday 060905. Nothing much happened today. The lessons were the same as those last Thursday except without the Advanced Inorganic since it was cancelled due to poor enrolment. Again the Material Science lecture was really boring o_O

Hmm as for today, I'll be having "Biochemistry of Diseases" in 30mins time. Later on it'll be lunch with the head of Chemistry! What happens is that the head actually invited all exchange-in students for lunch at the restaurant in campus (南北小厨). Hmm wonder what it'll be like. Evening will be having advanced organic chemistry again; that's the lesson that I am looking forward to the most. :)

The revisit to Ocean Park after 8 years invokes a series of nostalgic feelings which is beyond the description of words. We had dim sum on the morning of 31st Aug and headed to Ocean Park straight after that. I bought a student year long ticket as I will most likely be visiting it again for the next 4 months - love to watch the dolphins, sea seals, sea lions dearly etc. We had our fair share of trills (mine train nad similar entertainment), nature (birds viewing, sea side scenaries), animals (dolphins, seals and sea lions, sharks, jelly fishes etc) and the hit of the period - some Hawaiian performances. We had a really fun day; the only bad thing is that we are all so tired that we have to "drag" ourselves back to hostel after that.
Following that, I got to know a Chemistry guy call Frankie. He's a local and is currently in year III now. I knew him through a 深圳 friend name 书成 whom I gotta know in the orientation. He's really friendly and warm and I'm glad to know him. We chatted till 2 am that night :p

School began yesterday. I had 4 classes - Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry, Introduction to Material Science & Selection, Structural Elucidation in Organic Chemistry and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry in the chronological order. Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry was pretty fun as the lecturer can teach well. I enjoyed the lecture and I guess it'll be pretty "hardcore" since he'll be covering quite a bit of stuff. Yeah, this is what I'm looking for. The Material Science module was super boring; the lecturer can't teach well and I was alseep half the time. Hmm but I'll take it nevertheless since it'll my dream to take a Material Science based module. Structural Elucidation is gonna be pretty "hardcore" as well since he'll be covering quite a bit of stuff, although I know the bulk of the stuff already. Nonetheless, I learnt something new today - about how I can decipher the MS peaks of compounds in a more professional manner. Through Frankie, I gotta know this gal call Alice who is really passionate about organic chemistry. She has just returned from a year long exchange from the University of Waterloo and she has taken courses like "Advanced Organometallics" and "Total Synthesis" over there. Hmm think she'll be a worthy oponent :p

The day ends with the lecture on "Advanced Inorgnaic Chemistry". This is the most "hardcore" of all since he'll be teaching stuff like MO Theory, Group Theory etc. I'm really interested in such stuff as to dwell more deeply into organic, I've to know more about in these fundamental concepts. However sad to say, there is a very high chance that the module will be cancelled because of poor enrolment rate!!!!!! There are only 3 students registered for this course! 2 graduate students and me. Another undergraduate named Gary who is one of the top students over there wanna take the course but he gotta wait for some approval. Worse still, one of the graduate student wanna drop the course (think he finds it too "hardcore"). So even if Gary comes in, there'll only be 3 of us (the minimum enrolmentis 5). Alice expresses interest in auditing the course nad hopefull there'll be another graduate student who will take this module. If not, my trip to HK will be wasted! Anyway, the course on "Advanced Organic Chemistry" will be on, so it's not so bad after all.

I'll be having "Biochemistry of Diseases" later and that's it for the day! Anyway I'll be going down Kowloon to collect my sunglasses and then walk around a little. I think Frankie will be coming along with me. :)