Best of two worlds? Perhaps
That is the statement that I believe resonates deeply with my life and studies here in S’pore. On the macro scale we can see how LKY’s social Darwinism policies for the country (and vestiges of British colonialism) have both Oriental and Western influences at play. Can’t really say if kiasuism meets individuality is all bad or all good for now so I’ll reserve judgement for now.
On the educational front, NUS’s Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Science jointly offered the Engineering Science degree which I’m doing right now. In retrospect, it’s a bit foolish considering the Hell I’m currently in. One problem is when they tried to meld the British and American system, it’s a hell of a problem for those of us that likes projects only or exams only (as shown by how we all bickered over the marking breakdowns for our modules). Since they want their graduates to know everything, it’s double trouble for us since they want to make us ‘engineer-scientists’. The caveat: we’re almost finished with Mechanics and coming to Waves (which means our mid term test might be equivalent to Mechanics module finals!), Advanced Calculus Project on Hermite Polynomials is a headache (anybody, just anybody who dabbled with it either in Mathematics, Quantum Physics or Statistics talk to me!!!!). Organic chem? Our lecturer is like the Energiser bunny in coming up with Chem notes and questions, but thankfully she knows when to give us the week off. 
Maybe HKUST really stands for HK University of Stress and Timeout after all. Another fun part was listening to our Computing lecturer describing how his professors grew horns and turned into devils when the time came for grading assignments in his days at KTH (Sweden). Moral of the story? Just make sure your wonderful users NEVER EVER GET THE CHANCE TO INPUT STUFF LIKE ‘- monkey’ or ‘10^30’ or ‘1,000!’ into your programme!!!!
Studies aside, the facilities here are undoubtedly excellent. Not that it was unexpected though. It’s a slightly worse deal for my residence room though (which has a cell-like quality to it), and my cluster mates are not perfect (accents makes it harder to understand things, and my wonderful Swedish mate drank a wee bit too much and caused a bit of a fuss in the wee hrs of the morning). However, the blessing in disguise is I don’t have to devote my time to hall activities which as you can imagine, the lazy pig in me cackles with joy (which helps offset the >50hrs of coursework weekly). Is it a weird manifestation of relativity, where essentially space got traded for time? What else? We get our own ESP conference room cum computer lab cum lecture room cum tutorial room cum exam room cum student lounge cum mini-library. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now. Hehe, ‘integrated’ is the exact word to describe ESP, IMO. Can’t wait till we relocate to the future Residence College, but that’s in 2010. 
There’s a problem of us having classes at FoE, but some of the lecturers at FoS, so that’s the worse of two worlds. Everything is not in the same place!
Now, for a bit of USP (University Scholars Programme). I had my own misgivings about the whole thing at first but it turned out to be quite interesting, for now. I didn’t get to take the module I wanted (Danger and Security), but I ended up somewhere nice still (Questioning Evolution and Progress). Just reached Unit 2, so can’t critique LKY and S’pore’s policies just yet. In the meantime, Units 1 and 2 are very very interesting. Unit 1 has Darwin, Nordau, Galton and Lankester while Unit 2 has Lawrence, Hardy, a touch of Austen, maybe Nieztsche and a few others. As you can see, the keyword’s ‘multi-disciplinary’ since it examines Darwinism in biology, society, literature and eventually politics. Much to learn, but it was fun too! And so, a nice twist is that I’m dabbling in a study of Victorian society and S’porean politics taught by a Brit here in S’pore. Typical rojak isn’t it?
Best of all, I think I have my lecture notes problem solved. Last time, I had to print them in the USP Multimedia Lab using a cash card. That solved my queuing problem (heh heh heh, I don’t need to be a sucker to print them at Central Library), but not my cash problem. I’m happy to announce that it’s solved. ESP gave us a laser printer to use! Thank goodness! 
There’s just this little problem of no printing paper, but I know of someplace where they keep stacks of printing paper in plain sight. So, free paper + free printer = blissful joy + more $$$! Muahahahahaha!!!! I hear you people going … , but then silence is golden isn’t it? 
