Thursday, November 22, 2007
I am becoming a drama series addict! Catching the latest drama series in HK on crunchyroll! LOL!
Anyway, for those who still reads this blog, go check out this drama series which is about dancing, called 'Steps' (舞动全城). Reminds me of the dancing theme for orientation and the upcoming international dance festival.
Not too bad, I give it 3.5 stars out of 5. Go check it out... it is in cantonese though.
Read, You Must...5:27 AM
Thursday, November 08, 2007
21:46pm
Just came back from class outing, even though it hasn't officially end. They are still scooping the ice cream somewhere in clarke quay.
Damn, I shouldn't have went home with my parents!!!!!! It's such a rare occasion (yea.. 11 people is a lot) and I'm "retreating" at this time. I felt like going back to clarke quay when I was on my way home.
Then I walked into my house, switched on the TV and my laptop. There is nothing nice to watch, no emails to clear, no invitation to play starcraft online, it is as if there is no reason for me to be back home this early. Sigh. It seems that I missed out lots of the good stuff this time.
I think what clemence told me a few months back, before the London trip, is really true. It's not what movie you're watching, it's not the price you have to pay for the dinner (not even the height of the chair! HAHAHA) but it's about the company you have. Sounds a bit philosophical here, but true isn't it? I mean, when you are about to die, you won't wish for your money, your nice clothes, your posh cars to be with you, but rather, you want your close friends, your relatives to be by your side! I think that really shows what we treasure the most.
Damn... I don't even know why am I typing this out when I should be there enjoying my ice cream...
Read, You Must...5:49 AM
Sunday, October 21, 2007
I forgot to talk about something in my last post! I know I might sound like a retard with poor memory, but I think it was significant for me to blog it here. (though I don't know how many people will be reading this...)
As I was saying about how I got rejected in many ways last week when I was doing my CIP, there is this one rejection which I was rather happy about. So I was going around and asking for donations, then I approached this couple. I actually felt quite bad interrupting them, as they were enjoying the presence of each other. But in the name of charity, I still went up to them. And guess what? They showed me their clutched-hands with the sticker/flag on it! They were smiling at each other and you must be wondering, do you have to do such mushy stuff when I'm asking you for 10, 20 cents? But then again, I feel happy for them, coz they looked really close and it is the first time that I feel happy about being rejected while asking for donations during flag day.
Human relationships... such an interesting thing to observe.
Read, You Must...8:29 AM
Monday, October 15, 2007
went out for CIP on saturday and yes, it's flag day (again). yea, how boring can life be.
Hi!...
Hi!...
Would you like to...
Would you like to...
Would you like to don...
Would you like to donate to...
Would you like to donate to Boy's Town?
Hi! Would you like to donate to Boy's Town?
(20 cents)
Thank you! Have a nice day!... HEY! your sticker!
The interesting thing about doing flag day is having the chance to observe people! people of different age groups, social class, backgrounds, ethnicity etc. I'm not an aspiring antropologist, but observing people can be really funny at times, if you discount all the persuasion and the sweat. You get rejected in so many ways!! Some people will choose to make a big detour, some will say no, some will be saying, "no change", some will just brush pass you. But the most ironic rejection that I've got was people nodding their heads! So does nodding your head means you recognise that the society needs help, but you are not going to do anything about it? not even 10 cents?! I'll pity those volunteers who are going to do flag day to collect money for them 20, 30 years down the road because they didn't donate 10 cents someone who needed their help!
flag day aside, I had a very good chance talking to Trent on saturday during our lunch break. We talked a lot about the school, sapphires, council and SJI!!! I truly realise how difficult it is for capable individuals to come up with an ingenious plan! Everybody's opinion is so insightful or their suggestions are so innovative that we are limited by our own ingenuity. There is so much that we can do, but we are always limited by one thing or the other. To a certain extent, I think people live to make get caught in catch 22 situations, i.e. there is no such thing as informed choices.
Read, You Must...12:14 AM
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
PW sucks man... its boring and a waste of resources. i don't see how "creativity and innovative" individuals can be nurtured out of this when we have presentations have to be standardized and every group has to use the same laptop and all the lousy fonts and effects of Microsoft 2002.
saying that the whole school is going to do PW with that software is no excuse! the whole world is turning to vista and office 2007, so why should we follow microsoft 2002? since the whole point of PW is to be creative (like real), why can't you people just give some space for creativity?
shall move onto something else.
looking back in the past few years or so, i realised that being nice and caring to people around you can be quite tough. when u try to be nice, people around you will become suspicious of you, sparking interest and suggesting reasons why u are nice in the first place. is there some ulterior motive?
tried to be nice to some people around me and i realised that there will be two most probable outcomes and two not-so-probable but you surely want those two.(probability... right.)
ONE: they stay away from you. "this person must have some ulterior motive, so better stay away" in the case of opposite sex, "this guy likes me. EW! stay away". well... u still say "hi" to each other when u see him/her on the bus, its not an end to a friendship anyway. but at least, you know your limits.
TWO: it gets harder and harder to be nice, caring and blahblahblah. coz u took it to the "next level", you fall harder each time you make a mistake. you try harder to climb back up again (and make up for your mistake)! well, that's good, you cherish this relationship (any relationship, no particular ones) and worked hard to solve the problems that comes along with it. but there is a limit to how nice you can be:( . beyond this limit, either you or the other person/people will "explode" on you because of the slightest misunderstanding you can never imagine. and that will be back to square one. what a vicious cycle!
THREE: YAY! BFF. I love you and you love me, let's stay this way and marry each other if we don't marry anyone else. this is great! but the probability is not that high.
FOUR (the highly unlikely one, but you surely want it): well, this only works on THAT one person of your life. so spend some time working on it and be more patient this time round. (learning from the mistakes you made from the other two cases of course)
Read, You Must...7:07 AM
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO promos are offcially over!!!
I'm having mixed emotions about this liberation from mugging. Definitely, I'm happy coz I'm offcially cured from the MMS (Mega Mugging Syndromme) after a horrific month of mugging from end of class till 9pm in the library. (not to mention the artic-conditioned library during the late hours) I also get to do what I want and perhaps sleep a little bit more. Most importantly, more time with family and my grandma who flew over from HK in August, only to watch me mug my ass off everyday.
End of promos also means the pressure buildup of the dreaded PW. The thought of it just spoils the entire mood. In addition, I will have to get back to my research attahcment two weeks from now and do something to try to bag a silver or about award in SSEF next year. 20 days from today, we are getting back our results and I hope that I won't get the same result as my CTs, which is totally terrifying. But then and again, you gotta have a taste of failure before knowing the sweetness of success.
(Quoted from Varun)
Have a semi-screwed-up feeling after I handed in my last paper, which was totally horrible!!! The Bio structure questions are freakin' long and the essays were tedious. For maths, I forsee that I will lose 15 marks because of careless. For chem, I forsee that I will get 10/20 for MCQ. For econs .... I don't know. Just pia the essay for the whole of 1 hour and 30 mins not knowing what crap I'm.. crapping.
I shall not write about my expectations this time round. The last time I wrote my GREAT expectations here (an intentional pun which the lit ppl will know), the value of "standard deviation" was positive infinity.
Now let's move on to other interesting stuff/observations that I made for the past month or so.
LONDON!
Still reminicisng the days in London when I could wake up at 8am everyday and only attend two lectures with a 2 hour lunch break! Quoting from Jem, "Life's great". However, the moment I set foot on Singaporean soil, I got the MMS and lost contact with the friends I made over there. Perhaps I should start working on this.
Talking about friends, I realised that I haven't been keeping in contact with some of my non-school friends. People like Jerome (As long as the imposter Jason is not appearing on this tagboard, it shows that Jerome hasn't been here for quite some time). Thethy from China, Jess from Cech Republic, Venus from HK, Wilson, Arthur and Ivan from Australia. Okay, the list shall stop here...
Back to london, I shall post my LIYSF photos asap. Try not to be jealous okay! haha.
Appearing Offline
I observed that quite a fair bit of people like to appear offline. I'm wondering why these people appear offline for the sake of appearing offline? Might as well don't come online at all if you don't want to be disturbed, right?
Studying partners
I find studying "partners" (erm.. or friends) are extremely crucial. SOMEBODY should know why "partners" are important. wait.. I mean partner, no 'S'.
When you are sitting in front of Andrew Cheong, you are looking at a straight A's student and you are definitely feeling the pressure when you listen to him talking about how many people died in the Tangshan earthquake.
If you are sitting in front of Andre, you are saved from the evil clutches of every single maths question that NJ maths teachers can throw to you because he is practically the human calculator with an Intel Triple core processor microchip in his brain that functions at lightspeeds.
When you are sitting next to Jiafang and co., you will feel that you are the most mechanistic person in the whole wide world as they lead the NJ Liberation Front (new party) and stand up for the Arts at all costs! And if you are sitting next to Jamie Chin, please protect your notes at all costs as she will just go high and start drawing on your notes. What's worse is that she writes german, a language which you don't understand at all (though most probably it is not going to be any form of complement). You will also feel that you are most boring person on Earth while you watch them highlighting their history and literature texts using highlighters with colours across the entire spectrum of light. BUT, you will feel how fortunate you are when watch them swallow the entire set of history notes and all their Great expectations into their brains while all you need to do is punch values into calculators. So please do give SOME applause and look as if you are very impressed.
When you are with the "Bros", you will you are bloody studious because they were playing DOTA 2 hours before their paper.
When you are with Elaine (Siew), you will learn about every single drama series from channel VV55 down to the smallest detail. In addition, elaine will include her very own commentary and her thoughts about every single character. call this value-added service at no extra charge as elaine siew derives a lot of satisfaction when she narates to you the entire episode. Though she has some talent in analysing characters, she chose not to take lit, a subject which requires people to analyse dunno-how-many characters.
But whoever it is you are studying with, whether it is mutually distracting each other or putting heads together to solve a maths problem, we are still working hard for our straight A's which seems more like a holy grail at the very instant when I handed up my papers.
So much fun blogging about people here! Little observations that make life a little bit more interesting and fun.
Colours
I was strolling outside the library one of the nights and saw all those people who got colours for their respective CCA achievements. First of all, I feel happy for them, especially for the people whom I know. It’s good to see all their efforts and hard work being recognized by the school with such an occasion. Get to see all the proud presidents/captains going up the stage and talked about their stories of success.
But some bitterness and envy came along as I realized that my CCA hasn’t been performing for the pass 11 years! The last time NJ badminton got colours (if there were any) was way back in 1996! And like what ms oon said, the next time badminton get colours will be the year where NJ produces a president scholar. (HAHA!) Not that im pessimistic, but I don’t see NJ badminton going anywhere near top four in the years to come. Then I asked myself, I have been in this CCA for three years, what can I do or contribute to make all these years worthwhile? I have no idea.
The ironic thing is that all the CCA groups, from Western Dance to Chinese Orchestra, which fought with us over the usage of the hall, won something. This makes badminton very “zhor dang”, a waste of space. These people get “scolded” by us when they cross into our courts, and yet, they are the ones getting something. We sounded like some bossy people who really thought that the hall was built for the purpose of badminton. (I still remembered that time when we declined to allow WD to practice in the hall for their Aristal because we were having our nationals.)
To a certain extent, Colours very much reflected how much the school supports each CCA. All the CCAs that got colours were the performance arts groups and a handful of sports CCAs. Where has all the diversity went to? We kept on saying that we are a school with many diverse options offered, but yet, we see the school supporting a few sports CCAs! Funding has been the major topic since dunno-when, and every year, the small CCAs are still struggling to manage their finances in one way or another. During the recent FGD with VP Admin, I asked him about how funding for each CCA is decided and which CCA would be given priorities? He subtly admitted that to a certain extent, meritocracy will be employed here. Gosh! This is will become some sort of real world situation where the poor gets poorer and he rich gets richer - how good CCAs will be given the resources to maintain competitive in there respective fields while the not-so-good ones will have to fight over the “scraps” left behind by the achieving CCAs. I guess this is the point where meritocracy just spins out of control?
just some little thoughts... shall go back to mugging for chemistry spa now.
Read, You Must...6:45 AM
Thursday, August 16, 2007
dreams - shattered.
reality - cruel.
Life sucks after coming back to Singapore. Worked like a cow (or worse than one) for the past week and only manage to pick up by that little bit of work. Worse still, tutors are not willing to give make-up classes.
some tutors (I shall not say who) even openly commented that going overseas for exchange is no good, wasting my time. who's to blame? ask MOE then. when I was in London, 99% of the people there are having their holidays and treating LIYSF as a summer programme. Only we, the singaporeans, were busy with work and have tests when we come back. (I just realised that Mc Claurins are tested for the the maths test on tuesday - SHIT...)
I feel damn stupid in classes. Went into chem make-up lecture today and realised that there is an energetics quiz. I thought I would be able to pull through it. I thought it was easy.but in the end, my answers are not what everyone got. Even cat, who just revised like an hour ago, got the answers.... ~sad~
then I lost Silvia's bio olympiad file and somebody has to rub in and obviously trying to point out that I'm a totally irresponsible person and did not even bother to look for it. hello? there are classes okay! and given the sorry state which I (stupidly) put myself into, I do have many other things to attend to...
I'm crossing my fingers for tomorrow's mock spa for chem and bio. I'm totally unprepared. My readings for the make-up prac were totally wrong even though I did the experiment 4 times. I have no idea why.
I think the only people who empathise on my situation is my PW group (which happens to be the slackest thing among all other work such as integration and market structures). THANK YOU!
Somebody save me.... please?
Read, You Must...8:37 AM