Yu Xuan here, it is a beautiful Sunday morning with tons of deadlines on my back as I am writing this. To procrastinate while I am having Nujabes beats playing on my other tab, let me share some memories that I had during the time I had in XMUM. This is gonna be a long one since I really can talk a lot like an old man whenever they start with the phrase of “back in my day”.
Reviving the dinosaurs
It’s Halloween, my group of friends from SWE department decided to wear some Teletubbies and dinosaurs costumes and walk around the campus, we are not doing it for coursework nor to advertise any sort of events, we are doing it purely just because we think it would be funny. And this picture below you can see we stand in a line on the road right beside D5 and LY3 where we would bow to every car that passes through that road.
A new lecturer in quantum mechanics
In 2024 there was this one lecturer who showed up in our quantum mechanics II class unannounced, interrupted the class, and literally stand on top of a chair without saying a word, not even a good afternoon to professor Paterak as he was still teaching on the board! It doesn’t take more than 10 seconds for everyone in our classroom to recognize that it is the very model of the well known David J. Griffiths’ quantum mechanics textbook. Shocked, we all have the honor of taking a picture with it.
with that, we have a special session with our esteemed guest lecturer who came show us how quantum mechanics is really done. It is still in office and you can meet this honorable lecturer at the A2 building during office hours, and during night time, it likes to take a midnight walk around the Tan Kah Kee statue area in front of A3 building.
but then, it must’ve been that we are too bad in solving linear algebras, or simply because we are not good enough for such a distinguished lecturer to be even spending its time on. Deemed us unworthy of its time, 5 minutes later it decided that spending its afternoon having a nap in its office is better than teaching us quantum mechanics, and left the room.
Coffee
This picture was taken before studying became overrated in this campus, where now you see people studying while hoarding the public places by leaving their belongings while physically away (just walk to A3 right now and you will see what I mean), where they act like nerds and their brain would completely shut down if you were to ask what are their hobbies. It was the October of 2022, when my pal Ian and I went to the lakefront cafe to sit down and waste our afternoon away by playing board games and solving some questions. Lakefront cafe wasn’t so popular back then after physical classes were resumed, thus they would be having this discount promo for a second cup of beverage. It wasn’t in this picture but Ian had a shot of espresso before this so with the remaining 4 cups of coffee, I down 3 of them. Addiction always starts with overconsumption, but for mine it is different. Most of the time you would be hearing people would be needing a cup of caffeine to stay awake, or they would like to sleep a bit later to finish up their assignments. For me it is different, I drink coffee not because I have assignments to rush, nor do I have to pull up an all nighter, I drink because caffeine is the only legal drug in beverage form that I can consume for the caffeine to make me happier because, let me be honest, in this campus where they or the community service groups you see every semester try to emphasize on “work-life balance” while doing the exactly opposite by creating this sort of overworking environment, student life can be depressing, and coffee makes me happy. (For legal purposes, Toh Yu Xuan neither supports nor encourage to do drugs)
Badminton at the most random spot at the most random time.
It is not clear in this picture, because it was LITERALLY TAKEN around 2 or 3 am in the morning. My friends and I were camping at B1’s 103 and 104 room. Back in those days before it turned into ECA office and International Student Department Office, it used to be study rooms that were opened for 24 hours (yes, even during midnights). We were inside there watching some memes and youtube videos where suddenly one of us asked when are we gonna play badminton together.
“Let’s do it now”
“Yea sure, lemme go back to my room to take my racket.”
And that’s how it happened, sometimes the most random nonsense doesn’t even need that much explanations or considerations, 2am badminton session at the B1 hallway. The security guard came to us but this thing is so stupid that even he doesn’t know what we were doing so we ended up keep on playing until sunrise.
No hair theorem
In my last long semester in 09/2024, I have basically achieved everything I could have ever wanted from this university, let it be grades, uni life, friendships, dramas, achievements, gossips of how this boy left the girl or how that girl found a better man, I have everything I came for this uni for, and all I am waiting back then is just for the graduation announcement to hit my inbox just so I can move on with my life. There is nothing left for me to do other than preparing application submissions to graduate schools and job applications to the HRs, so I decided to shave my head bald, because I mean what else am I gonna do?
At the back it is Aleister, my friend, speechless about this aura maxxing hairstyle of mine, maybe he is just jealous. The whole uni who knew me back then was shocked, even professor Teo from the MAT department as I walked into her manifold class.
Prof Teo: “宇轩啊，你受到了什么刺激？(Yu Xuan, what set you off?) ”
Me: “Quantum mechanics”
And there are a lot more stuff, but the rest are quite personal and involving the private life of others, and I would not be sharing them here. And yea, I should get back to deal with my deadlines, a happy Sunday to you all.