Friday Five

I had the most difficult time trying to get online last night and as a result Friday's posting has been delayed. Well ... better late than never.

I’m really looking forward for the upcoming three day weekend. For one it gives me the chance to recharge again after the horrendous week at work and also it gives me a chance to catch up on my DVDs. I got a bunch of them that arrived this past week that I have not even had the chance to preview. I’m also planning to do some window shopping for a gift for my mother this weekend. She celebrated her birthday last Tuesday but we didn’t do anything to mark it as she was traveling in Kota Kinabalu. Maybe I’ll take her out to a nice dinner with the family next weekend. I have my heart set on trying out Saloma Bistro although I have to check where it is exactly since I’ve never actually been there. As for her gift, I’m torn between getting her a simple diamond bracelet since she never owned diamonds before or some of those expensive silk materials for her to make some baju kurung for herself as she always seem to be making them for other people. I guess I’ll have to see which gift I can afford tomorrow.

This week’s questions and my answers from Friday Five this week is listed below.

1. Are you going to school this year?
No although some times I wish I were since they were the best times of my life.

2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?
I graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996. I guess that in 3 years time it would be a decade since I had to study for an exam. That feels so old.

3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?
In secondary school it was Biology because somehow it came easy to me. I always managed to get the best marks in exams with little effort.
There was a class that I took in collage called Literary Forms: Cartoons and Comic Books in Popular American Culture which I took as an elective my senior year at UW. We got to spend the whole semester watching cartoons and reading comic books and still call it research.

4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
I have to say that it was Additional Mathematics in secondary school. For those who never had to go through Add Maths hell, you should be thankful. It’s basically a survey subject that included calculus, statistic, game theory and differential equations. We had to take it for the final 2 years of secondary school if you’re enrolled in the Science stream. I later found out that most of the things they thought in that subject are actually close to US college level calculus.

In college it was my Introduction to Algorithm class that I had to take in order to have enough of the necessary credits to major in Computer Science. I absolutely hated that class since I couldn’t make heads or tails of the material and all the other people in my class that year were Bill Gates wannabe geniuses at it. By the time I got around to take that class, I couldn’t drop it since it was the last class I need for the major declaration so I had to suffer through it. I got my worst grade, a low C, in my transcript from this class which effectively screwed up my final GPA.


5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
My favorite teacher in secondary was my Biology teacher. She quickly noticed my interest in Biology and encouraged me to expand my knowledge by giving me books to read and special projects to complete. Of course I got ragged on by my classmates for being the teacher’s pet but I was actually happy to do it for her since she was one of the few teachers that I met who would actively participate in their student’s interest. She was of course devastated when I told her that I was not going to study medicine when I went to college since she said I had potential in the medical profession. It took me a while to convince her that being able to operate on a frog doesn’t mean that I could do it on a human.

I had a wonderful English Literature professor my freshman year in college who was not only a bit kooky but also great fun to be with. She was the one who first introduced me to a lot of American writers that I have never heard about. We both share the same obsession with Asimov and S.E. Hinton and would talk for hours after class about their work. She was also gracious enough to open her home and family to me which made my freshman year a bit more comfortable. We lost touch with each other some time back when she moved to teach in Florida and I am always grateful that I got a chance to be her student.