16th Apr 2022
Got through the first week of the nursing course. This is just the condensed diploma course, wonder how people get through the condensed degree course. There was already a presentation by Thursday, albeit ungraded.
Didn't get an i7 laptop despite that being the recommended minimum requirement by the school's IT department. I am typing this on one with an i7 processor but its battery is long dead and doesn't last long enough to even boot up if not plugged in, so this kinda stops me from buying a new laptop, yet this one will not work for school.
So in school I use a crappy one with a Celeron N4020, barely good enough for basic work, but so far it's fine. Seriously wondering when it's going to give me headaches. Regardless, the plan is to either replace the battery on this better battery-less laptop or wait for better deals during the next IT show in June.
Gf is trying to get me to convert as expected, and the reasons for agreeing to attending the Easter service and presentation are twofold: first, because it's the first time she'd invited me to her church; second, because as a future nurse, it is a good idea to have a better understanding of the various local religions in order to relate to my patients on a deeper level.
After the show, during a walk, we had a talk, asked her to consider and accept the possibility that I may never convert, and that I may not always join her for service and church events.
The show was an incredible contrast to the Christmas Mass I attended at the Vatican. The former was chock full of psychological or hynotic effects I had only read and heard about, like lots of modern music and audience participation, and repeating simple words and ideas to drive suggestions into the minds of the listeners, eg "fear", "failure", and "you will find salvation in the love of God". On the other side was the Catholic mass that was somber, tranquil, classically beautiful, although I couldn't recall what they were saying. One could tell that it was designed in a time when people only had a much more rudimentary understanding of human psychology - no surprise the Catholics are losing market share globally, tbh.
Ultimately, the believers were tearing by the end of both, which were truly works of art in their own rights, aiming for the same objectives, and I respect these religions for it. We must understand the limits of current science, that there are too many mental conditions we cannot help with even with therapy for those who can afford it, eg childhood trauma. Religion provides answers where people want those that modern science has yet to be able to provide, therefore there will always be a place for it in any society, and we must accept and embrace this fact. Anyway this is based on the assumption that there will always be unanswered questions in science no matter how much we find out - as soon as a fact is established, new questions revolving it will emerge.
15th May 2022
Wow it's been a month! So the relationship lasted two months. Sad but it is how it is. I was her first, and she couldn't be honest about herself till a month in, and the accumulation of several issues eventually led me to feel that she wasn't ready to adapt to life with a partner, while she probably feels I am clingy in the sense that I like meet her once a week or more and be physically close to her as much as possible.
In any case, not too much of an impact.
School is enough of a distraction. I feel that it has been challenging adapting to this life and the way of thinking that they are trying to instill in us. Fortunately, I have been more comfortable playing the manager of my project group and the rest of the group doesn't seem to mind too much. Direct contribution to the projects will be my weakness in my peer evaluation for sure, so hopefully the rest of what I do helps.
Was hesitant about dating my classmates earlier but yesterday, a close friend raised a good point - we are only going to be here for two years, any drama from a bad breakup will only last till then unlike among colleagues. Also helps that half the school year will be spent in hospitals and no one knows if we will be in the same ones.
So at this point, I can tell that one of my female classmate seems rather hesitant to talk directly to me, maybe she's shy. Another may be interested in me but also possible she's the really friendly sort. The latter went quickly to the topics of love life and age in our first conversation, and afterwards when I had a little difficulty finding a seat in a lab class, offered me a place next to her at the same time a group mate offered a seat, at which point I decided to stay with my group in case of any group project discussion/question. Maybe she's just really nice as mentioned.
Also getting a new PC. Since my previous PC died due to display issue, I'd been on this Dell Aspire15 but recently it's also been giving me BSODs and reverted to the integrated graphics instead of the 1050Ti.
Unexpectedly found two separate sellers offering Ryzen 5900X CPUs for 600SGD, so bought one from each, will sell one if both are legit. Beyond this and the RAM, all components of this new desktop setup will be crap, including the Sapphire Pulse 6500XT and a 50SGD mid-tower casing. All in all the PC will cost just under 1500SGD, a bargain-hunting feat in my eyes which I do feel proud of, if everything works as planned.
The CPUs are from Amazon US and Shopee, so the odds that they're fake are low enough for me to take the risk, though they really are too good to be true given that they're typically sold for over 800SGD here. Have a feeling it won't be too difficult to let go of too, if one needs to be sold.
17th May 2022
Did I really just survive a day on an hour of sleep?
Actually was intending to get two hours of sleep but couldn't fall asleep immediately so estimated that I only slept for an hour and a half at most, since I woke up way before my alarm.
29th May 2022
About to be the eighth week tomorrow.
Two whole months! Soon, they will let us know which hospital we will be sent to for our upcoming clinical attachments that happen for the second term of every semester. I am curious.
Struggling to handle the academic part but luckily, much of the modules involve presentations, and my very rusty Toastmaster skills have been polished repeatedly since the second week. I am still not great but at least I'm not running out of things to say halfway through and it's still enough to impress my tutors.
Found a way to deal with unripe or sour fruits - yogurt. Bought some large mangoes at three for $10 but since it's been a long time that I have had mangoes at home, forgot to check whether they're ripe.
Cut into one, totally unripe. Even crunchy, half of it. Left it in the fridge overnight and the next day, while wondering what I can do before the exposed flesh grows mould, recalled the tub of unsweetened yogurt that wasn't getting a lot of us since it was intended to go with the dates I had bought during Ramadan to offset the extreme sweetness.
Unripe mango turned out to be perfectly ok with yogurt, but might need some sugar to make it more unpleasant, but regardless, even unsweetened is fine since the creamy yogurt covers up whatever sourness it had.
Next time, I can cut the pitted dates into bits and mix it with any other unripe fruits in the yogurt!
5th June 2022
Feeling stupid because after getting a new monitor and keyboard (test setup of motherboard with other components shutdown by itself after a few seconds, while keyboard was so old there wasn't the old round socket in the new motherboard), I realised that it lacked a CPU cooler and casing fans.
When I bought my old desktops from the shops that assembled for you, I don't recall having to choose them, maybe because they were always automatically included, so after trying to boot it up twice with the new monitor and keyboard, the first seemed fine until it said "CPU temperature error" and shut down, while the second never went that far, I had to google it. Took a while but came to the conclusion that yes, it was totally important. Fuck.
So fortunately Amazon gave me $8 credit for my credit card spend on other PC parts earlier, and that immediately went to the cooler which is arriving in a few days. Still going to have to buy about 3-5 120mm case fans, so that's going to cost about $50+. This set up is about to hit S$1600, excluding the $130 24" monitor and $10 keyboard.
So glad I still have the liquidity for this.
Tried a Kisi and Saperavi yesterday. The kisi needs more time to breathe, it was all nose and nothing on the tongue, but it tasted better after half an hour in the glass but was too warm, so the plan is to get another one but this time it will be decanted. The Saperavi was similar to other European reds except it was light yet full-bodied, and given this bottle was just an average one according the Vivino, I can see why Stalin loved it. The good ones must be really good.
And no romance in my life, no time no energy. Trying but yeah, no time, no energy.
Not sure what to do with my old small form factor PC. The graphics card is probably dead because the screen stayed dark with the new monitor at the first boot, but after connecting the monitor to the motherboard directly, it booted up fine. Device manager gave me worse news than what is going on in my laptop - my laptop at least showed the existence of the 1050ti even if it couldn't use it, but my old desktop didn't even detect its rtx750.
I might keep it around for diagnostics, let it run on integrated graphics permanently. Having another desktop would have been such a great help when I had issues with this PC back then. But also could have thought of connecting the monitor to the motherboard, so... oh well.
Project group politics is a worse issue than academic difficulties. How do you deal with someone who becomes extremely defensive when it comes to any criticism, deflects every single one directed at him, would literally sulk in a corner, and is a grown man? Hope I find out soon, might come up again the future. It's not like I can sack people anymore.
