The Computer is Back

Ah at last after 2 whole weeks of absence the computer is safely back in my arms again. It cost US$453 to fix but I'm glad it works. Hopefully it lasts until end-May.

Nothing much happened really, over the last week. Except a slight boo-boo on my part. The dinner that I helped to organise with Yizhao (the Assistant Director, Scholarship Programmes and Policies, PSC) and the rest of the NYC scholars went quite well. I had a lobster bisque for starters, roast duck with orange sauce for main course, and a really dense chocolate cake for dessert. And the ambience of that place was really nice and warm, with the tinkling ivories just next to us and the very amiable French proprietor who sat down with us to tell us about how he and his adoptive mother came to New York and how they set up the restaurant that has lasted till now.

But as with most good times in my life, it came with a twist. I had misread the email that Grace had sent out, thinking that the budget was USD60 per head. It turned out to be SGD60 per head. Which is a difference of about USD20 per person. At first I was quite confident that it was USD60 and when Yizhao called me the next morning I told him I was quite sure, but I'd go back to check. Meanwhile, I was telling Shuxiang and Nat that it was most likely going to be USD. But of course I went back to check Grace's first email and it was indeed SGD60 (although of course in the email it was S$60 so my mind added a "U" before the "S"). My heart dropped. And I arranged to meet up with Yizhao to pay him the additional USD200 that we owed him collectively. I wrote to the rest telling them since it was my fault, they could decide whether to pay me or not. I really felt very stupid and bad for arranging such a lavish dinner. *sigh* I should have read the emails more carefully. Terrible way to learn an expensive lesson. But you will notice that now I do not use the $ sign but type USD or SGD instead. Mum will surely tell me that this is how careless I've become, yada yada. *sigh* I hate to admit it but she's right.

Oh and I took my first written exam in Columbia on Friday. It was quite easy really. It was open book and my instructor had already told us which cases to focus on (about 10 or so) and the facts in the questions were quite similar to the facts in the cases so there wasn't much distinguishing to do -- but quite a bit of analogising. It's pass/fail anyway and I'm so glad that I got Hoi as my instructor. Truly God's blessing. Cos he's been an associate here for 3 years now and he knows that the purpose of this fact-pattern exam was to get the Civil law-trained people used to the idea of writing fact-pattern essays so that when finals come round in December they wouldn't feel so lost. It's a great idea, I think, rather than let them sink or swim during the exams later, cos we're all taking the same exams as the JDs who have taken tons of US law exams and speak English as their first language (well most of them anyway -- there're quite a few PRCs and South Koreans). So anyway, Hoi's the only associate out of the 4 (the whole LL.M class is split into 4 sections) who gave us a narrow scope to study and he was really nice in setting nice questions for us. I hear that other sections had to choose 2 out of 3 questions, and were tested on private law stuff as well -- so they had a much wider scope (basically the whole syllabus) to study. Ah well I think it's certainly possible to pass this class.