a mundane update

oh well. the week's not turning as hell-ish as i thought it would be. i got the survey out for my geography paper. the whole survey thing is just going through the motions for me. it's like i already kind of know where this will take me to because of prior knowledge either from stuff i studied before or just plain knowledge picked up by being a youth myself and from the papers and from being a normally functioning human being. by the way, i am exploring the impact of globalisation on local youth culture.

anyway, it's so enlightening when all the time you have been reading an article, you only can see from one point of view -- but on a third or fourth reading, after a gentle rebuke from a teacher, you begin to see a whole new perspective of the same reading. i am talking about noam chomsky's necessary illusions. i had interpreted it as chomsky being so pessimistic about the whole notion of the non-plausibility of the existence of an independent press. but i totally missed the part of how he said he was going to explore the paper on the apparent validity of the claim that there is a problem with democracy. ah well. lost?

in other news, i found out some interesting facts about the usp thing i am on in university. usp was an inititative started in 2001, when existing elitist programmes combined. it was first headed by a professor from brown university, on secondment at nus. he brought with him relatively cutting edge staff and with his academic clout, he managed to get a lot of funds in as well. he was dean of usp until last year. from what i heard today, he left at the end of his tenure because he found it was no longer worth his while staying. people at the top of nus found his presence too threatening to the homogenuity of the nus environments(read: scared kenna dethrone by ang-mo) so they made it difficult for him to co-exist. i mean who in the right frame of mind would want to come here and work in a difficult environment where it is of so much more stauture and prestige -- and more importantly, his efforts are appreciated back at good old brown university. then after he left, a hong kong maths prof took over. he's now no more dean by the way -- because after that american dean left, the status of usp got downgraded from a faculty to a department, so the head of usp now is now known as director. for good measure i'd say. so that nobody gets upstaged. so that things remain status quo. comfortable. comfort zone. till you zone off into your own lala land that is.

oh well. which brings me to my next point about how nus wants to americanise its system without sacrificing their old school capitalistic mentality. it's like wanting the shell without the meat in it. they say the head always represent the system. no offence to prof pang. but really he is as much a cog in the machine as much as i and you are.

but then again, even if there are revolutionary changes in the way nus is structured, are the local student population ready for it? i rather write papers than to take tests and exams, but i know most of my peers would rather die than to do so. i rather have class sizes small like on usp where my expository writing class is no bigger than 12. but people i know would just shut up in class content to let the tutor do the talking in my soci class.

and don't get me started on the quality of the faculty in nus. i noticed the general level of arrogance some of the asian lecturers maintain. it appears to me they are more concerned with their research because it would bring them fame in the academia circles. but haven't it occurred to them that being taught by an acclaimed geographer matters little for your reputation if you continue to smash freshman undergraduate in their faces when they ask you a simple question about how we want to be spoonfed with your holier than thou defintions of what it means to learn independently. goodness me. harvard of the east? my foot!

ok. enough ranting for the day. now back to my paper on the possibilities of an independent press in the american subconscious.