April 30, 2007

• What’s that buzzing noise?

  Surprisingly, today’s ENGG1804 lecture was actually fun. Well, at least the first part was fun.

  Somehow, the lecturer with the Canadian accent doesn’t sound as cool as he used to. I think I’m getting used to his voice. (This is weird – as I get used to the maths lecturer’s accent, I don’t find it as annoying as I used to, but as I get used to this engineering lecturer’s accent it doesn’t sound as nice.) The lecture was about sensors, and it started off on the topic of human senses, which of course included hearing range. It was mentioned that as people age, they gradually lose their ability to hear higher frequencies. At that time, I heard a buzzing noise coming from somewhere high up and behind me, so I asked the lecturer “speaking of hearing ranges, what’s that buzzing noise?”. He said it was probably the lights, and proceeded to adjust them to get rid of the noise. Someone else decided to ask him “can you hear it?”, and he said “no, I’m too old” (and this is the younger one of the two lecturers) . The whole class laughed. Oops. It must’ve been awkward for him. xD Later on, he talked about active and passive sensors, so I decided to take out my lasertemp and ask him which one it is. I pointed it at him as if it was a gun, so the whole class laughed again.

  The tutorial wasn’t too bad either. The first part was a talk about communication, which included information about proper writing. The lecturer emphasised the difference between “it’s” and “its”. This is the kind of the thing that I usually pick on! We were also told to avoid circumlocution. This is just so natural for me. It was good that I was in the group that did this in the first half before going to the library tutorial though, because it would be so ironic if I had the communication talk in the half of the tutorial that clashed with my linguistics lecture. In fact, if I was in the group to have that in the second half, then I’d rather skip it and go to the linguistics lecture instead. Then again, they took attendance so I probably couldn’t really have done that. I’m sure that the tutor asked for my friends’ names when marking them off the roll, but he knew my name, although he said it to me just to make sure. I must be really easy to recognise. It’s probably for all the wrong reasons, but I don’t care. xD He also came to answer my question just when I looked at him. Tutors are generally good at noticing eye contact. I can usually get them to come over and answer my questions just by looking at them. This reminds me of the time when Jenny said that a waiter at a certain café insisted on telling her friends not to wave at him and instead to signal for him to come over by “eye contact”. That might work in a class, but in a café? I don’t think so!

  • 4:35 am
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