Update

I co-taught my first lesson today. It's a pretty simple game meant to teach kids the concept of probability. It went ok. I had hoped to handle the entire lesson, but in the end I handled only 50% of it, which was quite disappointing because I thought I was well-prepared for the lesson. Teaching isn't my strongest interest nor is it my strongest skill. But I did find genuine pleasure seeing kids so young pick up the game so quickly. It was nice too to see how even the naughty kids eventually became engrossed in the game. "Teacher teacher, move like this can anot?" "Teacher teacher, see I my beads are so near the top already". I'll be handling more classes soon; hopefully in the near future I will get to create and carry out my very own lesson.

In an unprecedented move, I went down to a Philosophy Social Event held by the Philosophy Interest Group in NUS. Why the unprecedented move? One simple reason: I'm in my final year of undergraduate study. It strikes me that I don't know many of my peers. So: go to socialising event. Already it has yielded significant dividends. Through the Social Event I found out that there's a nice Peranakan restaurant within walking distance from NUS that serves lunch buffets. I tried it once, and I must say they have very delicious bakwan kepiting soup, and their pandan rice is more fragnant than above-average nasi lemak ones. We form many misconceptions of others when we don't know them well enough, and vice versa. This is why even a small exchange can sometimes go a long way in understanding others and being understood in return. I found out that 2 females whom I thought were lesbians were actually of a more normal orientation. And I met someone who is actually interested in probability - really really rare for a local philosophy student, as far as I can see.

Myself, I wish I've got more time to research and write my thesis. I've been going through some complex scientific theories dumbed down for philosophers - things that have got to do with space and time. There came a point where I realised that I can't do that, not for now. I probably could have if NUS had offered an Advanced Metaphysics course, a Philosophy of Spacetime course, or if I had been a more diligent student a year ago. None of those obtains, so I can't now. What exactly does Philosophy got to do with Physics, one might ask. A professor of mine spent a year on sabbatical leave studying special relativity. He intends to write a book arguing how special relativity shows that our consciousness is located in a single point in space. Neat stuff.

I'm still trying to find something less scientific. 3 years of studying Philosophy and one of the greatest lessons I've learned is also one of the simplest: good Philosophy is done slowly and simply. Don't think too much, or you'll get fuzzy in thought and argumentation. Start small, so to speak - the sophistication will emerge naturally thereafter. That lesson still isn't fully ingrained in me yet. Perhaps it would take 4 years and a thesis to fully appreciate it. Time's the issue here, in more than one sense of the word.