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!