06-01-2009

All of the cars here are very clean. This may be due to the frequent rain showers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of fine for having a car that is too dirty. There are no SUVs and none of what we would call trucks. They just have these small old-looking truck-like machines that have the primary purpose of carting around large quantities of people in the back. They all have side railings to ameliorate this purpose. Public transportation is heavily pushed here; there are small billboards everywhere stating: "Please use public transportation." Taking the bus is much less of a hassle because it comes around so frequently. There is no need to plan for a stop, just wait a few minutes until the next bus comes around. It isn't free though so I may have spent a significant amount on the bus and MRT (subway) by the end of the semester.

I saw this in a bakery at the mall near the school; I thought it was very clever.
I had my first few classes yesterday. First was Dynamics & Control which I had with Sam and Steve, another RPI classmate. The professor was Chinese but had very good english, a lot better than most of the asian professors I have had at RPI. It was very much an introductory class; I certainly didn't learn anything and I don't really have a very good idea as to what the course is going to be about, but I think it should be good.

Then I had a lab; they apparently expect the exchange students to know everything about these things just by intuition. I had no idea where my lab was and when I finally found it I had no idea what I was expected to do. Luckily some of the locals helped me out but I think I should have been given a bit of a heads up.

When waiting for an event to start, say a show, concert, lecture, or dinner, I am accustomed to hearing a steady murmur of crowd noise. I am familiar with this noise. I was a bit surprised though to find that in my two lectures I had yesterday this noise continued from when I entered the lecture theater to when I left. It seemed very obnoxious to me but the professor didn't even seem to notice.

All tutorials and some labs are not given the first week of school so today I only have a lab. Hopefully I won't have a horrible time figuring out where to go and what I need to do.