I recently visited the NUS Bukit Timah Campus. I was there for a whole day meeting. As I walked around in between breaks, I saw the beautiful internal courtyard. This one in the photo is what they call the Upper Quadrangle. It was a picture like it was somewhere else other than in Singapore. Big open space, surrounded by oldish buildings, with absolutely nothing else visible on the skyline. There aren’t many tall buildings in that area, so that isn’t anything else to see in the distant from where I stood.

The view from where I stood was very unlike that of what you’d expect to see in Singapore. As it was also NUS vacation time, there was hardly anyone else around on the campus. At 10am in the morning, everything was practically still. It must be quite nice to be working there. It’s near town, MRT is not too far away, so it is quite conveniently located.

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I’ve been joking about this beer garden in NUS for some time, even before construction actually started. After many months of waiting, this timber deck overlooking the valley behind Kent Ridge was finally ready. When it was officially completed… surprise, surprise, a variety of beer was served in its opening event.

It really has quite a nice view of the trees on the slope of Kent Ridge. But knowing the weather in Singapore, and the general dislike of the hot humid outdoors of most Singaporeans, it won’t be surprising that there will be little use of this beer garden. At least not in the day anyway.

I was surprised that our students were so shy to come out for this event. They had to be encouraged to join the festivities. Perhaps it’s the heat. Free food and free beer aren’t enough attractions.

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It’s funny that I should have something to post about the NUS Rag and Flag this year, because I was not actually involved in any way. But something prompted me to write about it. Behind all the glamourous front of Rag and Flag, there is something about student behaviour that comes to light. No, it is not something dark and sinister. It’s their recklessness, indifference, and lack of civic-mindedness that I feel is unbecoming of undergraduates.

Rag and Flag is a significant event in the undergraduate calendar, and it certainly is the culmination of all their orientation activities. Sometimes you’d think it is okay to let down your hair a little, let them have some fun. But there is always the tricky thing of finding the right balance.

Take for example the noise levels. If you are going to be engaged in noisy activities, take it outdoors, particularly if it is going to go on for an extended period of time. However, for the want of free air-conditioning I suppose, some orientation groups conduct their activities inside the common areas of enclosed spaces, where many other people are working. Not just staff members who need to work, but also other research students whose calendars work differently from typical undergraduates.

The repeated reminders to lower their noise levels fell on deaf ears. I was telling my colleagues, how do you expect to contain their excitement. The nature of the activities is such that the noise is unavoidable. What is basically wanted is for the students to get out of the building.

How about safety? I saw how a fire exit door was being obstructed by tons of float building paraphernalia. This was a group trying to seek shelter from scorching sun. Sure, find a shade somewhere to work, that’s perfectly alright. But have they thought about the repercussions of blocking a fire exit door? That it is also against the law? Oh, and if they didn’t know it, surely after repeated reminders by staff members, they should surely have understood? But no, again everything just fell on deaf ears. I saw another case where a fire engine access road was obstructed (although in this instance I don’t know if they had been granted special permission to obstruct the fire engine access for their activities…).

I have not yet seen the aftermath of this year’s Rag and Flag. But in previous years, the rubbish has always been a problem. One day, it is float building paraphernalia. The next day, it is rubbish for someone else to clear.

There was one incident that I want to share. I was involved in an A&A project (i.e. renovations in layman terms). The contractor had a large dumpster to dispose of renovation debris. Really convenient, it was filled up with float building junk right after Rag day was done. The students probably cannot be bothered about it, but it does cost money to dispose of junk. The contractor complained. I tried to mediate and talked to the students in-charge of the group that built their float nearby. They denied responsibility. Okay, we weren’t about to start pulling out video surveillance and carry out forensics on rubbish. But we did have to work out some settlement with the contractor.

All these seem to reflect the mentality of a child who just wants to have the “fun” part, and expect someone else to deal with the “not fun” part. I expect this is not representative of the undergraduates in general, otherwise we would really be in trouble.

Enrolling into a university is a step toward adulthood. It is at this point that we expect undergraduates to start acting as responsible adults. Perhaps you could say orientation is too early a start. But I think there are certain things like fire safety that should never be compromised.

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This week is what’s known in NUS as Week 0. It’s freshmen orientation week. The week where everyone (students, that is) are still having fun. The campus, surprisingly, is not as crowded as I had anticipated it to be. We were able to find seats during lunch, even during the peak lunch hour. But there was one place that was unusually crowded, and that was one place that I had to visit.

It’s the University Health Centre. It was really crowded. There was a super long queue to get to the registration counter to get a queue number. You would have thought that the crowd might have something to do with medical check-ups for new students. But now, there was a separate queue for “pre-admission medical check-up”, and there were no one in it. I re-read the sign a few times to make sure I did not misunderstand where I was supposed to queue. Nope, I made no mistake. The super long queue was for seeing the doctor. Sigh.

It took me all of 25 minutes just to get a queue number. Such a terribly long wait. Even the queues at polyclinics seem to move faster. I don’t know why so many people were at the health centre.

Yet, places like the canteen, bus stops, etc were hardly any different from the holidays. Oh, there were many more students around, of course, but they’re mostly seen occupied with float building or other orientation activities.

A funny thing that they are doing at the bus stops: People holding up placards informing bus passengers to board from the front and alight from the rear. They seem to have been engaged by the internal shuttle bus service operators. I think they were trying to correct a behavioural problem in NUS where passengers alight from both the front and rear, and also board from both the front and the rear.

Perhaps NUS should just consider using trams or trolleys, where the vehicle has no walls. Anyone can hop on or hop off anywhere along the whole length of the vehicle. It would make getting on and getting off so much easier.

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A sign stuck on the tables at a NUS canteen reminds people that carelessness is costly. People are being reminded not to leave belongings unattended. Belongings such as wallets, bags, handphones and notebook computers. I thought to myself, it’s stupidity that is costly here. Why do people leave valuable belongings such as notebook computers unattended in NUS canteens?

This is the “table reservation methodology” practiced in NUS.

I’m irritated by the table reservation practice chosen by Shenton Way office workers, but they are much smarter. They leave tissue paper unattended at the tables.

This is one of those strange signs you see in the NUS campus.

Orientation activities are picking up again. Just yesterday, I got a little annoyed with one of the orientation programme. They were trying to play games inside the NUS PC Co-op. I wanted to buy something, and I was trying to search for it. Then there were this bunch of freshmen-to-be crowding the not-very-spacious shop space also hunting for items. I gather that they were tasked to find the prices of a variety of gadgets. I sought the help of the Co-op staff, but he too found himself hampered by the overwhelming numbers of freshmen-to-be.

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I’m sorry to make light of these grave matters, but a colleague put it this way and I thought it was quite an interesting take: too much stress in NTU, too much partying in NUS. This is about the two student deaths that occurred this same week. A student at NTU was said to have stabbed his professor apparently after having lost his scholarship due to deteriorating grades then subsequently falling to his death, and an exchange student at NUS  apparently passed away after having had too much to drink.

One is about stress, the other is about partying albeit only in his dorm room. It sounds like NUS is a fun place to be. Then again, exchange students are not your typical student. I tend to think of them as the “better” students who are taking a break. Just like professors have sabbaticals, the lucky students also have their overseas exchange programmes. Drinking at 5am in the morning? They must be very free. When I stayed in hostel, if I had been awake at 5am, it would have been because of rushing to meet project deadlines or something equally stressful.

This leads me to recall a recent news snippet I heard on our local morning radio programme about Beer Pong, a popular drinking game in US universities, about which a recent study from the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) stated had contributed to the spread of Herpes, Mono and other diseases. However, the CDC responded that they had not published such a study. (Yeah, but they did not deny carrying out such a study…)

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Times must be bad, so car dealers are even coming to NUS to sell cars. Or perhaps it isn’t so bad afterall, so much so that our dear students have become a lucrative market for car dealers to target. Well, it’s one of the more unusual bazaars at NUS. There’re a couple of other booths, such as Automobile Association of Singapore, V-Kool, and one selling stickers. It’s a mini motoring fair.

Nescafe was there to give away their Nesfrappe. It’s the second time I’ve seen it at NUS. I like coffee, so that’s something nice. Particularly when served chilled on a hot afternoon.

Not surprisingly, there weren’t many people there to check out the cars.

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The last two days I’ve been attending class at the Singapore Management University’s downtown campus. It’s actually my first visit to the SMU campus, so during the breaks I went around exploring the place a little. I always thought it would be nice to be studying in such a central downtown location. All the shopping, movies, and other entertainment just a stone’s throw from studying.

My class was in the Administration Building. It drizzled and rained the last two days. We realized that while all the rest of the SMU buildings were interconnected by an underground concourse, the Administration Building was isolated. In fact, if it rains really heavily, it isn’t even possible to get from the MRT to any SMU buildings without getting drenched. The MRT is so near, yet so out of reach. At least not until the new Circle Line station opens. A Circle Line station opens into the underground concourse.

The SMU buildings look really nice on the outside, but they are not extravagant on the inside. The campus is still quite new, so everything does look nice and modern. I had half expected the place to be “posh”, because of the publicity over their Herman Miller Aeron chairs (which I did get to sit on). But no, they weren’t wasting taxpayers money.

They have plenty of escalators. My colleagues and I were just musing over the complete lack of escalators in NUS. Yes, NUS campus is so much bigger, but there is not a single escalator. In fact, you’d have thought that the Kent Ridge terrain that NUS sits on, where just about everywhere is a slope, would have deserved plenty of escalators. (I’m fine with no escalators, but one thing I wish is for NUS to make their lifts go faster. I wonder if they realize that the time wasted waiting for the lift over the lifespan of the lift might actually be much more costly than the money saved from installing a cheaper lift.)

I like their underground concourse: food court and retail shops. It is just like a scaled down City Link Mall. We’re talking about real retail… Kou Fu food court, Settler’s Cafe, that sort; Not like “The Frontier” canteen in NUS.

What was I doing at SMU? Well, IDA organized this Hadoop Training class. Considering that NUS and IHPC seem to make up most of the people in attendance, I wondered why the class was held at SMU. In fact, what has SMU got to do with Hadoop?

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I’ve been wanting to say this for the longest time. Since receiving this mass email this morning, I thought it might as well be now. SOME NUS STUDENTS ARE REALLY VERY STUPID! Does it make sense to leave a notebook out there in the open, walk away from it, and expect it to stay put exactly where you left it when you return 10 minutes later?

Yet, I keep seeing it happen over and over again. I was thinking, maybe nowadays notebooks are cheap, and students are getting rich. What is $2K? If a notebook gets lost, just buy another one! No? Then why do people keep leaving precious belongings unattended?

This is a snippet of the email sent out.

SECURITY ALERT – THEFT OF LAPTOPS

Campus Security has received reports of laptop thefts recently. This week, there were four cases which had occurred in NUS canteens during lunch hours. In these cases, the victims had left their laptop on the seat in the canteen while they went to buy food. When they returned, their laptops were already missing.

…

The mass email then went on to talk about reporting strangers to campus security or the police. I think this is very silly. You should catch the careless notebook owner, reprimand him and levy a fine on him. We are wasting the time and effort of our police, so that instead of concentrating on catching the likes of Mas Selamat, they are being distracted by missing notebooks.

Many years ago, notebook thefts were not so common. When it does happen, it could be a case of thieves smashing a car window to get at the notebook. Yes, maybe the owner shouldn’t have left the notebook in plain sight in the car. But it is a whole lot different nowadays. You have silly people doing things like:

• Leave notebook on canteen seat to “reserve” the place while owner goes to buy food. Hey, the the notebook is like tissue paper eh?
• Instead of packing up, owner leaves notebook at study area while he goes to toilet for a break.
• Owner uses notebook to reserve seats in lab, even if the seat is out-of-sight from where owner himself is seated.

This is just ridiculous eh? Are they brain dead?

Incidentally, this isn’t even the first time that such an email has been circulated to highlight the thefts of notebooks.

Of course, the thieves are still the bad people. It is illegal to steal. The thieves, when caught, should still be punished. But it doesn’t help any bit to tempt the thieves or would-be thieves into stealing.

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This week is IT Security Week at NUS, and so they have an IT Security Carnival held at the Forum. They have been running this for some years now, and I must commend the organizers for their excellent work all around. In my opinion, this is one of the more successful and meaningful event, and I’m not saying that just because IT security is one of my pet areas too.

On the one hand, the carnival is not unlike the many bazaars organized by the various student groups. But unlike the other bazaars, this one has a distinct theme and purpose, and the activities are aligned with the goals of the event. Okay, so what if Latin ballroom dancing has nothing to do with IT security, but it does serve to add another dimension to the event and draw in crowds. (It clearly did quite well filling the near empty floor left by the Deputy President’s opening address just prior to it.) There is a balance between activities that are designed to bring about increased IT security awareness, and others that simply add fun to the carnival atmosphere.

I think this is something sorely lacking in many student run bazaars that, in my opinion, have become strictly commercial affairs. I don’t understand why the university seems to be condoning such activities. If it were up to me, I’d charge commercial rental rates and demand profit-sharing.

Another peeve I have is with Munchie Monkey. This is a student-run cafe that serves Italian fare. They are helped out or supported by Spageddies. On the surface, it seems like a very nice arrangement. The students can learn a lot about operating a real business, everything from working the tables, collecting money, marketing, etc. Even if the food or service were to be slightly below standard, I’d still be quite supportive. But wait… they are closed for the long school vacation. Hmm. I think they are forgetting one lesson: You cannot simply close your business for a long vacation. In the real world, you’d still have to pay various overheads.

I may sound nasty expecting students to forgo their holidays to work. But hey, I’m not saying everyone has to work. They can work out some kind of rotation amongst themselves right? Maybe reduce the opening hours even? But not to simply shut down for the vacation! Working does involve some commitment and sacrifices.

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