st forum

I always start my day with the Straits Times Online forum. As depressed, twisty and damaged I am, I always feel alot better after reading the forum. If only life was one big ST forum.

Today, in addition to said emotional states, I didn't get any sleep the whole night, started to work too early in the morning, got drenched twice and one of my clients whom I am particularly attached to requires major surgery. Not a good day.

But this letter is a classic:

University lecturers who upload class notes at 11th hour inconvenience students

I WOULD like to share my experience of the use of e-mail to relay important information. What I encountered is not widespread but it is not an isolated case.

I have a friend who studies in a local university that requires the lecturer to upload class notes and assignments for students. This is a good idea as it reduces not only time but also paper the lecturer would need to photocopy. And most times, there would be extra copies that might go to waste.

However, of late, I have learnt that certain lecturers upload their notes at the 11th hour, that is, at night when the class is first thing the next morning. Although most students have computers at home, some do not have printers. They therefore have to race to school to print their notes before class.

On another occasion, the lecturer sent an e-mail message to my friend that a lesson was scheduled the next day (a last-minute addition to the fixed timetable). The message also asked my friend to tell the other students. Fortunately, my friend knew some of the students and managed to tell them. I am interested to know what would have happened if my friend did not check his e-mail that day. Would the lecturer have marked them all absent?

Although I am not a student in this university, I felt the frustration as if I were in my friend's shoes. I am disappointed we are paying for people who are so unprofessional.

Teo Cheng Nam

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I'm really ashamed of myself leh.

Here I am worrying about my non-existent love life, moping about my this month's pay with increment and backpay that is late, trying to figure out how to make a blerdy mysql webby already, and being concerned for my second favorite client's life.

But here we have Mr Teo who is able to transcend such earthly woes and forge his transcendental concerns through the unforgiving fires of public discourse.

I'm really ashamed.

So ashamed I'm inspired to write in also. Here:

"Universities have a part to play in fighting global warming"

I would like to share my experience when I was a student at a top local university at Kent Ridge Crescent.

Every room and lecture theatre is air-conditioned, and freezingly so. I spent lectures and tutorials shivering even with a jacket and a heat pack in the form of my laptop charger. I think if you look around the lecture theatre, it is a common phenomenon [if you don't count of the hot hunks and chicks of course who are by definition hot and therefore can get by in a skimpy singlet or bra]. I suspect this is also a phenomenon experienced in other universities.

I wonder how much of the earth's valuable resources and yong siew toh's money the school is wasting for the singular purpose of freezing the rooms.

Everyday in the papers, we come across the very real and increasing threat of global warming. Even though I am probably not going to be around when that happens, I feel gaea's pain. Ouch.

I hope the universities in Singapore can work together and play their part in fighting this threat.

I suggest opening all the doors at the universities of all the rooms, libraries, offices, lecture theatres and so on and so forth. We can let some of the cold air out to cool the environment down so that the coldness is not just wasted on freezing students.

Chen Lingshen