It’s already spring, but it snowed rather heavily this morning suddenly. It was quite different from the snow I’ve experienced so far… it was more like snow flakes rather than bits of ice.

Here’s another dose of wisdom (aka meaningless observations) from mrbiao.

In UBC, student union organized events don’t ask for volunteers, they pay students to help out at $9 an hour! That’s awesome. Not like el cheapo NUS who wants students to work free for everything if possible.

Why, just look at the recent job advertisement from ASTAR in NUS – offering a measly $7.50 an hour for undergrads and degree holders for a part-time job (and that’s for jobs like research assistant, etc)?! Hey hey, are degree holders and undergrads only worth that much? The stupid argument that “we are providing work experience for students” just doesn’t cut it. It’s just a weak excuse to save money… at the students’ disadvantage.

Also, there are hundreds of job opportunities to work on campus here in UBC – they have a statement like “If you have time to spare, we have jobs for you”. Pay usually ranges from $8 to $15 an hour (for lowest end service line jobs), excluding tips for service jobs. That’s A LOT of money… I’m sure the pay is higher for jobs that require more skills. Compare this to Singapore where people working in fast food outlets earn just enough for a food court meal an hour.

Here you can earn enough for 2 to 3 decent meals an hour even for the lowest paying jobs. This is called proper job. This is called humane. Singapore is really inhumane. No minimum wage. First world country with third world wages.

In case readers are wondering if I survived the high fever… yea, I’m still alive, coughing my lungs out.

Well, more stuff to rant about.

Having done nearly half a dozen projects with local students here, I’ve come to realize a very big difference between them and my counterparts (including myself) back in NUS. The majority of students here seem to feel less compelled to score, compared to NUS students. They tend to do projects and approach coursework more for the sake of interest (or disinterest) rather than duty (or grades).

This is both good and bad. The positive side is that since they approach their studies for the sake of interest, they tend to be less stressed out than people (read: NUS students) who study for the sake of scoring or for a degree. They also tend to participate more (which makes sense because one would participate more in a class that is interesting), compared to back in NUS where participation is mostly propelled by need (for participation marks) rather than by keenness to participate.

The negative side is that they tend to be less focused in their work – all the teams I am working with have a common problem – they tend to want to do things that seem interesting to them, things that they like – they genuinely want to do the project in a certain way because they feel that would be interesting… but that might not necessarily be the most efficient or effective way to do it. By less focused I mean less focused on the end result – of grades. Whereas in NUS we usually see students working towards the most efficient/effective ways of completing a project so as to get maximum grades possible… which means we hit on the nail more accurately.

Not saying that doing projects for the sake of scoring is healthy… but think of it this way – when we go out into the corporate world, projects are always guided by end results and objectives – we can’t just do things a certain way because we like or prefer it that way, unless we’re the bosses.

This is so funny

I’m down with a cold with fever and sorethroat… possibly due to my trip to the Rockies and also a rainy/windy day yesterday.

I dragged myself out of bed to go to the doctor’s… I’m covered with a compulsory student insurance, but when I got to the student clinic on campus, I was told I needed an appointment to see a doctor (even for cases like flu, fever, etc?!). I was advised to go over to another walk-in clinic nearby where my insurance card is accepted… so I did. When I got there, it was 4.30pm. The clinic opens till 6pm, but I was told that they were not taking in any more patients for the day?! This will never happen in Singapore, where clinics will register all patients till the closing hour.

So I walked back to the hospital where the student clinic was located… I was told I could go back tomorrow morning and they would slot in an “urgent appointment” for me, or I could go to the hospital’s urgent care center… which I did. To my horror, they wanted $700 for me to be seen by a doctor and they wouldn’t accept my insurance card. What kind of a public hospital is that?!

Having no other choice, I walked back home, took my own medication and went to bed.

Time seems to fly by these days… my exams will be here and gone in just a few weeks’ time… and then it’ll be time for the Big Trip. Here’s the plan, more or less confirmed:
Day 0 -   Vancouver - Toronto Overnight FLIGHT

Day 1 -    Toronto (Day Tour to Niagara Falls)

Day 2 -    Toronto - Montreal

Day 3 -    Montreal (Day Tour to Quebec City)

Day 4 -    Montreal

Day 5 -    Montreal - NYC by Amtrak

Day 6 -    NYC

Day 7 -    NYC

Day 8 -    NYC

Day 9 -   NYC

Day 10 -   NYC - Las Vegas

Day 11 -   Las Vegas

Day 12 -   Las Vegas (Grand Canyon Day Tour)

Day 13 -   Las Vegas - San Diego

Day 14 -   San Diego

Day 15 -   San Diego (Day Tour to Tijuana, Mexico)

Day 16 -   San Diego - Los Angeles

Day 17 -   LA/Hollywood

Day 18 -  LA/Hollywood

Day 19 -  San Francisco

Day 20 -  San Francisco

Day 21 -   San Francisco (Napa Valley Wine Tour)

Days 22 - 24 - Yosemite National Park Tour

Day 25 -   Back to San Francisco - Onward to Seattle

Day 26 -   Seattle

Day 27 -   Seattle - Vancouver by Amtrak

Day 28 -  Departure Flight Home!

I know this is probably not a very big deal to people with deeper pockets especially since I’ll be staying mostly in hostels and eating cheap but to me it’s a really huge trip already… how I manage to squeeze all these into my remaining budget seems quite amazing to myself… but we’ll see if I can actually manage to actually stick to the budget.

It took me weeks to plan this… I hope everything will turn out fine.

I went on a trip to the Canadian Rockies over Easter weekend with some Singaporean friends. The scenery was really breathtaking and unrivalled by every other place that I’ve visited in my life so far. No wonder it is listed as one of BBC’s 50 Places to See Before You Die… words cannot do justice to it.

We booked our tour from a Korean tour operator because it offered the lowest prices in town… we were lucky to get an English-speaking guide because they had enough English speaking guests for this tour. The tour guide was quite knowledgeable and we also had a very funny bus driver.

The weather in the Rockies is very unpredictable - we can have sunshine and clear skies and then ten minutes later it becomes a dark and gloomy winterland with heavy snowfall. The coldest temperature we had was about - 10 deg Celsius with wind chill.

The negative part was that we spent too much time on the road traveling… too little time actually sightseeing. Can’t be helped because that’s the nature of bus tours. I would really love to go back for a second visit in future and I’ll probably fly to Calgary then to save precious time.

Here are some photos…

View of the South Okanagan area from the bus…

A beautiful river in the Rockies (too bad it was mostly frozen)…

View from the top of Sulphur Mountain (~2200 meters)

A frozen lake somewhere in the Rockies…

Wildlife sightings!

Mount Robson, the highest mountain in the Rockies at 3900+ meters…

Canadian Railway… a permanent exhibit to commemorate The Last Spike - when the last nail was driven into the railway track marking the completion of the Trans Canadian Railway

Another photo from the bus…

Lake Louise… simply breathtaking (but frozen over)… one can walk on the lake itself… the next time I want to go back in summer to see the (non-frozen) lake.

Columbia Icefields - it was cold and snowing hard… so wintery that the sun became a small speck of light.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to the Rockies! So excited about the trip, but also worried about all the work and chores I have to catch up on when I return…

Dumpling rice noodle soup…

Cherry blossoms are blooming all over Vancouver…

One of my professors was on leave for today and the last class because his wife just gave birth. His course is probably the slackest course I’ve ever taken in university and it’s so… awesome.

It’s a fourth year elective course, and rightly should be more grueling. It’s actually even easier than a first year NUS course – no exams, weekly quizzes testing memorization, and a 12% assignment that can be finished in one single class between 2 persons!

In NUS one got to work very hard to earn 12%! Probably a project spanning several weeks. I don’t understand why they have to be so demanding. In NUS they are not trying to nurture talent – they are just contributing to the gross national unhappiness index by stressing out students. Don’t they understand that pushing us so hard can have the opposite effect by making us disillusioned with education?

I was amused by the news about a consulting firm in Singapore launching a campaign to search for the happiest Singaporean.

The judging criteria is:

The “chosen one” will be judged on their smile, ability to bring happiness to others and how he or she remains positive. A strong sense of belonging and community is also a prerequisite.

Seriously, judging based on smiles is so superficial. You can have a hideous looking person who has a horrible, physical smile but can still be the happiest person in the world. And how can happiness be quantified anyway? It’s a really subjective issue.

This is nothing more than a marketing stunt… but really, it’ll be interesting and educating for many Singaporeans if they are able to find a genuinely happy person who doesn’t get his happiness from material comforts. I bet there are many people out there, but just that this is a trait seldom found in Singaporeans.

*** Edit: The organiser of this event has posted his response to my article, click on comments to read ***

I agree that bringing happiness to others and a strong sense of community are important – it highlights the fact that we need to move from a ‘me’ to ‘we’ paradigm to be able to attain happiness.

However, most Singaporeans are still not enlightened:

Some of the attributes cited by people Channel NewsAsia spoke to include “being successful”, “money”, “security and love”, and “family support and friends”.

That’s why it comes as no surprise that Singapore ranks pretty low on happiness as “a recent survey found that nine in 10 Singaporeans are stressed out”

I’m kind of pissed because my roommate is playing Guitar Hero in the dead of the night – 4.30am to be exact – singing and stomping the floor very loudly, for the past 2 nights. If he keeps this up I’m going to talk to him about it. I think he’s disturbing the guy in the room directly below him too.