First week of school

The first week of school has started and ended. It has been eventful, in total, and I got a feeling that I would be very busy in the semester. Already, there looks to be 2 programming labs to submit in 2 week's time and a very difficult assignment (math...) to work on.

I've been roaming about the school, exploring the routes to classes and whatnot. I realised this place, though much smaller than NUS, is actually pretty nice looking compared to the old buildings of NUS. Well... NUS is of a different charm, much like the, I don't know, 70's or 80's of Singapore, with most buildings looking like they do, and not to mention the presence of so many tall, big trees. I've always liked the area beside the central library where there are several huge raintrees. It feels calming.

But I digress. Yes, EPFL, EPFL... The buildings may look normal on the outside, but I think the insides are really nice-looking. They have a lot of windows, for one, and the interior seem to give me the feel of being very cosy. You see, the buildings themselves are not huge, like some of NUS are, but instead, they have buildings linked together like with bridges and walkways, and in the lobby, they have couches placed (colourful ones, not those brown or beige ones that SoC has) and vending machines. This is the impression of the Informatique school that I have been in. I don't know if other schools are the same, so I can't tell.

Did I mention that the stuff here is expensive? Haha... I had dinner in school yesterday and I bought a lasagne. At first I didn't know what it was, it looked like just a dish with cheese on top, but I took it anyway. Then I realised it was lasagne. I think that was my first time eating a lasagne. It was 9 CHF, simply said. I think I hid my surprise well when I paid (there wasn't any price tag anywhere!!)

Anyway, it was pretty good. It had LOADs of cheese... Look at the pic below, only the middle part's pasta and a little tomato sauce can be seen 'cos the rest of the pasta was hidden in the cheese. The cheese was good, don't get me wrong. It was delicious. But after a while, the idea of eating more of it just turns you off, you get what I mean? Too much for me, I think. In terms of price and quantity. When I left, I felt a little need to barf...
Should I bore you with the modules that I am taking? They are all computing modules. Sadly, those interesting modules that I wanted to take are, how do I put it? Not available.
I wanted to take Business Plan for IT, which was a project-based module that teaches how to present you IT product and sell them. Unfortunately, I can't map it to the NUS module 'cos it was of a different "track". Oh, and also, there isn't any professor for the class so the poor people waited for 1 and a half hours for the professor before someone comes in to tell them that the professor who was supposed to be in charge had left the country so there was no one to teach and that meant no classes.

The other module that I wanted to take was Human computer Interaction, also another master course. Well, this case was interesting. Halfway through the lecture, during the mid lesson break, the professor told us that only master students specialising in software engineering could take the course. So I told her that I was an exchange student and my coordinator told me that I could take master courses and that I had done a module on software engineering before I came. Anyway, to cut the long story short, I nearly got kicked out of class. Haha... But then I asked nicely if I could stay and listen to the rest of the lecture (it was really interesting), so I only left when the lecture finished. In all cases, I think the ending would be me not being able to take the module since I may not have enough knowledge in the field for the professor.

Ah man, I was hoping that I could take that course instead of that really BORING course on Operating System. Seems like I need to take it now. Damn....

My other modules would be Probability and statistics (if the module mapping is successful), Graph Theory Applications (a really boring and truly difficult module) and Digital Photography. Oh, don't let the name fool you, Digital Photography is a computing course, not the arts one, so that means I have to do programming for it. Don't ask me how, just take my word on it...

Anyway, to end off, here are some pictures of the school.