First day of school

Today was the first day of school. I am the lone ranger in GMC, but somehow I didn't feel very scared because french people are very nice people.:P

I went over for my first lecture and guess what? I met some people I knew there! Woooohoo! I met my friend's roommate, another exchange student from mexico, and this guy whom I helped find modules for his module mapping. He is coming to nus next sem.

Lecture wasn't as bad as i thought it would be, though I was the only ching chong chinese there. No other asians in my lecture + lab today.

I couldn't understand half of what the lecturer said, but I could figure out things from the examples and the notes. :D aweeeesome. Unfortunately, I have forgotten many things I've learnt in sg, like dot product, cross product. I also couldn't understand many terms and signs that they use here.

I had my first lab in the noon. I was late because I couldn't find the place. A nice cambodian dude tried to help me out but he didn't succeed. After walking around the building for sometime, I finally found the lab.

I partnered 2 frenchies who were incredibly incredibly nice. I felt so horrible because I really couldn't do anything and I didn't understand anything. The experiment was strain test (pull Al beam till it ruptures), and it should have been easy because I have seen it before.

unfortunately, I was rendered useless because I couldn't understand the french technical terms. My 2 mates did most of the work, while I tried to help out by copying stuff and calculating simple stuff. I don't remember ever meeting exchange students in nus who are as useless as me during labs.

My groupmate, a french dude, asked me whether I knew Lagrange multipliers, which I learnt but forgot. I tell you, these french people in grand ecoles are super smart la. They were converting Nmm to MPa in like 2 seconds while I was still calculating "er... 1Nm = 101kpa...."


experiment apparatus.
Lab was 4 hours 20 minutes, longer than the 3 hours in nus. Their equipment is also quite good here. Their venir calipers is electronic, unlike ours where we have to squint our eyes to read measurements.

Oh and if you think our NUS engineering time table is horrible, wait till you see theirs. It's scary, I tell you. They have classes from 8am - 6pm everyday except on Thursdays, where they get half day. In fact, they freaking take 8 modules per sem, while I am taking 4 only here. Nowonder they make TGVs and we make MRTs. :P

***
Short track back. My friend told me that the NEL trains in sg are made by the french, and MRT trains are made by the Japanese. Hmmmmm. what do we make?