The Big Shots Commencement

Yup, my commencement was this morning - the first day of the entire series - and I've only found out moments ago why we physics honours students (as well as students from food sciences and quantitative finance from science faculty) were shoved together with a bunch of political science graduate and dentistry people. An odd collection of majors; but it was to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the three faculties, and we were kinda of token representative. And it certainly helps that the physics cohort is rather small; a nifty 30+ people that would extend the ceremony by no more than five minutes.

Being the first day, I got the *ahem* honour to shake hands with the president, who is presiding over today's ceremony. But is it just me, or was his congratulations when I collected my hollow tube rather tired (after all, we physics majors got queued right to the end of all the graduates that day)? After all, it's must've been hazardous to the jaw muscles to say "congratulations" for over 500 times. Some graduates stayed to chit-chat for few seconds; maybe they have some political science tidbits for him?

But it turned out, to my surprise, he was not the only big shot there (or from a political science viewpoint, there was a bigger shot there). Lee Hsien Loong's son, from the FASS, was graduating on the same day as well, so the big man himself came down. Whoa, the Head of State and Head of Parliament together... No wonder there were rows of helpers standing by, waiting to gallop into action if the slightest needs arise.

Things turn out alright however... No mega-terrorists, no assassins and no Magnetos. Except for one glitch: a typo in my graduate attendance card: the ceremony was at 1100, and the invitation cards and information leaflets put admission at 1000 - 1040. But all the graduate's attendance card (or as far as I can tell) had it saying 0900 - 0940 (which is the time for other morning ceremonies). For me, I deduced that there was a typo, but apparently, there were some who turned up an hour early just to find the door shut.

Well, I suppose something must go wrong... it might as well be this.