The Forerunner Times

"A life journal by Nathan J. Elias, called under God's grace to be His forerunner and restorer for His glory."

What do you think will happen if you get two most entertaining lecturers in your campus at once in one term?

That.

Anyway, in James Cook University, the consensus among us students say that the two most entertaining lecturers here are Mr. Samuel Lee and Mr. Frankie Yee. They will make you laugh all day as their lectures are interesting, entertaining, full of jokes and so much fun to the point that you will not want to miss any of their classes! And amazingly, this term I got both of them at once. So imagine how my days are now this term, everytime I go for a class, that day I will return home with a sore jaw because of too much laughing.

This week, Frankie was telling us about the macroenvironmental analysis, in which he analysed several countries where the students came from, like India, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Myanmar. We also had a little discussion about the Thai Coup. It was hilarious and extremely fun, as other than looking at stats such as GDP, Inflation Rate etc we also talked about birth rate stats in Singapore which in turn led to “which country is the most sexually active” discussion, haha. Won’t tell you the answer, though, you’ll have to find it yourself.

On the other hand Samuel was giving us a personality test and the results was damn right. Am I so talkative? Haha, I guess so. The way he described the four personality types was cool. Eagle, peacock, dove and owl. I’m a 25% eagle, 50% peacock and 25% dove type. Eagle is the dominant and goal-oriented type, Peacock is the social and talkative type, Dove is the silent, complacent and compromising type while Owl is the thinker and analytical type. Why are those birds related to those types? Sit down, relax and think a bit, and you’ll get the answer soon enough. Hmm I think I will ask him to give me a copy of this test later, it’s so interesting I want to try it on some friends.

With all these so much fun, let’s just hope that I don’t laugh too much to the point that my face becomes like Smithey above.

Well, I need all the fun I can get now, because next term it is going to be a bad term. They decided to cut down the next term from six weeks to five weeks, so that we can have our exams for next term before the Christmas holiday, not after. That way, we won’t have to think about exams and study during our holiday. But to make that happen, some things have to be sacrificed. Other than cutting the next term down to five weeks, they also chose to omit the break after this term. Usually after two terms (four months), we will have a one week term break, but because of this decision, we will have three terms (six months) before our term break later during Christmas!

Since I have decided to stay here for Christmas and New Year to be with my new friends from KP, I will have to return to Indonesia during my one-week Study Break before the exam in the first week of November. It will be a bit tough and uneasy holiday, but since my subjects in this term all use case studies for the exam, there is not much theory and text to read and remember actually. All of them boils down to analysis and thinking, not memorizing. Let’s hope that my holiday will go well and I can withstand the next term onslaught and still participate for the Christmas events.