Ode to a soldier
And when he goes to heaven,
to Saint Peter he will tell,
"Just another soldier reporting Sir,
I've served my time in hell."
TIME Magazine
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Friday, December 26, 2003
The time of the year...
Another festive season was upon us. And it came and went. Like the rest of them.
Spent christmas eve watching ROTK, felt it was TTT was better as ROTK in my opinion had uneven pacing, there was no real climax, but the final parts when gollum and frodo were fighting over the ring was magnificent. ANd yah, woke up at 0830 hours, much to my dismay, as the show starts at 9. The circumstances in which this happened was very much laughable, to the point I was laughing ironically, much to my dad's ire as he had to send me to junction 8 anyway. There, I still had to wait for esther who was later than me, and we entered the show 15 minutes late, only to be greeted with a scene of a snowflake landing on a reindeer. Which led me to question the people behind me if we had entered brother bear instead of ROTK, but I was mistaken, and as we took our seats the movie promptly started. Thank the advertisors for wanting to gain more exposure by putting more ads on this popular movie. (Shelob was not scary at all, yet my jacket arm got the full brunt of it)
After that, spent some time hogging the class booth at xmas fun until crystal told me (kindly) to stop hogging it. Then went to blast a bit of TC3, before finally meeting up with the new J1s for lunch, listening to them talk crap.
Relaxed at home for a while, before going for the usual xmas eve dinner.
Christmas day. Woke up at 11, jolly. Went over to mama's house for the usual xmas fare of mee siam. Delicious as usual, although my appetite wasn't really on form. Opened presents, got only a $25 borders book card and some money. As you grow older the presents you get become lesser and smaller, not that I would complain. Call it part of the maturing process.
Went to great world city with neil to play TC2, loss to him by 2 credits and at least 90000 points. Crap. Didn't help that the gun I was using had a jammed trigger. Went back and slept, the late nights are doing me in.
Sighz, last night the xmas lights were beckoning me as I looked at them from my window, causing me to have a profound sense of loneliness in this world.
I remember Christmas at the old grange road, where the tree was really taller, my grandparents in better health, presents aplenty for all those small children and we would pester the adults to let us open the presnts as soon as possible. Now, the little one has grown up, the old tree has been discarded in favour of one shorter than me, presents have become smaller and lesser exponentially, and I have grown to tire of xmas.
Maybe, just maybe, there's some more left in this weary soul of mine...
Another festive season was upon us. And it came and went. Like the rest of them.
Spent christmas eve watching ROTK, felt it was TTT was better as ROTK in my opinion had uneven pacing, there was no real climax, but the final parts when gollum and frodo were fighting over the ring was magnificent. ANd yah, woke up at 0830 hours, much to my dismay, as the show starts at 9. The circumstances in which this happened was very much laughable, to the point I was laughing ironically, much to my dad's ire as he had to send me to junction 8 anyway. There, I still had to wait for esther who was later than me, and we entered the show 15 minutes late, only to be greeted with a scene of a snowflake landing on a reindeer. Which led me to question the people behind me if we had entered brother bear instead of ROTK, but I was mistaken, and as we took our seats the movie promptly started. Thank the advertisors for wanting to gain more exposure by putting more ads on this popular movie. (Shelob was not scary at all, yet my jacket arm got the full brunt of it)
After that, spent some time hogging the class booth at xmas fun until crystal told me (kindly) to stop hogging it. Then went to blast a bit of TC3, before finally meeting up with the new J1s for lunch, listening to them talk crap.
Relaxed at home for a while, before going for the usual xmas eve dinner.
Christmas day. Woke up at 11, jolly. Went over to mama's house for the usual xmas fare of mee siam. Delicious as usual, although my appetite wasn't really on form. Opened presents, got only a $25 borders book card and some money. As you grow older the presents you get become lesser and smaller, not that I would complain. Call it part of the maturing process.
Went to great world city with neil to play TC2, loss to him by 2 credits and at least 90000 points. Crap. Didn't help that the gun I was using had a jammed trigger. Went back and slept, the late nights are doing me in.
Sighz, last night the xmas lights were beckoning me as I looked at them from my window, causing me to have a profound sense of loneliness in this world.
I remember Christmas at the old grange road, where the tree was really taller, my grandparents in better health, presents aplenty for all those small children and we would pester the adults to let us open the presnts as soon as possible. Now, the little one has grown up, the old tree has been discarded in favour of one shorter than me, presents have become smaller and lesser exponentially, and I have grown to tire of xmas.
Maybe, just maybe, there's some more left in this weary soul of mine...
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Musings
Some stuff I dug up from my hard drive.
The sigh of the times
Ng Zhao Yang 1SO3E
As I prepared to write this article, I was wondering, what topics really pertain to us JC students anyway? In terms of wants and needs, we are more or less fulfilled, our parents provide us with everything, food, clothes, money etc. Compared with the people in poorer countries, we are far more well-off and comfortable. As a result, the desperation of poverty and living in squalid conditions do not strike a chord with us pampered youths. Therefore I struck out writing about poverty and suffering.
Moving on, I resolved to write about politics and comment on the current affairs. However, I realised that these too do not really seem to be something JC students are preoccupied with. They are more interested about why appeasement failed and why Hitler committed military hari-kiri when he delayed Operation Barbarossa, rather than in the dull rhetorical and jingoistic speeches of George W. Bush pushing for war. Make no mistake about it, we students seem to be more interested in what is coming out for the next test than bother about the world. Even if something were to interest us, it would have to be college gossip, about who is going out with whom and who was just dumped by the guy in 1SO7Z. As a result, I drew a big fat line and went down my list again.
I thought about writing about the failing Singapore economy, but decided not to. Despite the economic slowdown, with war cries resounding everywhere by the government to tighten our belts and roll up our socks, we youths seem to be immune to such buffeting winds of change. A deluge of RJC students fills Holland Village every night, each spending a small fortune on food and drinks. Not that I condemn such acts, but their lavishness almost disguises the fact that Singapore is in a recession. We are either totally oblivious, or downright ignorant. The intricacies of penny-pinching and saving for a rainy day have been washed out.
With politics and the economy struck out, I moved on to the social aspect of life. There seemed to be a deluge of topics for me to write about, but I stopped short of doing so. Does anyone of us care about parents placing children in 24-hour care centres? What about whether the Sengkang LRT will function smoothly? These topics are as dry as firewood, and we view them as the other people’s problems, or worse, potential GP questions. Only then they will grudgingly force some points of futile argument in their heads just in case their GP teachers scold them for not keeping up with the current affairs.
By now, my list was down to its bare bones and filled with unsightly red cancel marks. The remaining topics were fashion, sports, music, entertainment etc. To my dismay, I found out that these topics were covered widely in commercial teen magazines, such as Teenage or Seventeen, which is far more value for money than my magazine. Faced with such great competition, and knowing that it was a hopeless battle as I knew nuts about how to choosing the right shirt to go with this pants, I crushed the piece of paper in my possession into a ball of paper.
Essay undone, my faith shakened, I walked to the living room to read the papers. Amid all the tabloids, the gossip, the looming clouds of war, a lone article stood out. A student, our age, was now somewhere in Cambodia, helping needy children in a village to build a school.
Sometimes the process is more important then the end result.
Some stuff I dug up from my hard drive.
The sigh of the times
Ng Zhao Yang 1SO3E
As I prepared to write this article, I was wondering, what topics really pertain to us JC students anyway? In terms of wants and needs, we are more or less fulfilled, our parents provide us with everything, food, clothes, money etc. Compared with the people in poorer countries, we are far more well-off and comfortable. As a result, the desperation of poverty and living in squalid conditions do not strike a chord with us pampered youths. Therefore I struck out writing about poverty and suffering.
Moving on, I resolved to write about politics and comment on the current affairs. However, I realised that these too do not really seem to be something JC students are preoccupied with. They are more interested about why appeasement failed and why Hitler committed military hari-kiri when he delayed Operation Barbarossa, rather than in the dull rhetorical and jingoistic speeches of George W. Bush pushing for war. Make no mistake about it, we students seem to be more interested in what is coming out for the next test than bother about the world. Even if something were to interest us, it would have to be college gossip, about who is going out with whom and who was just dumped by the guy in 1SO7Z. As a result, I drew a big fat line and went down my list again.
I thought about writing about the failing Singapore economy, but decided not to. Despite the economic slowdown, with war cries resounding everywhere by the government to tighten our belts and roll up our socks, we youths seem to be immune to such buffeting winds of change. A deluge of RJC students fills Holland Village every night, each spending a small fortune on food and drinks. Not that I condemn such acts, but their lavishness almost disguises the fact that Singapore is in a recession. We are either totally oblivious, or downright ignorant. The intricacies of penny-pinching and saving for a rainy day have been washed out.
With politics and the economy struck out, I moved on to the social aspect of life. There seemed to be a deluge of topics for me to write about, but I stopped short of doing so. Does anyone of us care about parents placing children in 24-hour care centres? What about whether the Sengkang LRT will function smoothly? These topics are as dry as firewood, and we view them as the other people’s problems, or worse, potential GP questions. Only then they will grudgingly force some points of futile argument in their heads just in case their GP teachers scold them for not keeping up with the current affairs.
By now, my list was down to its bare bones and filled with unsightly red cancel marks. The remaining topics were fashion, sports, music, entertainment etc. To my dismay, I found out that these topics were covered widely in commercial teen magazines, such as Teenage or Seventeen, which is far more value for money than my magazine. Faced with such great competition, and knowing that it was a hopeless battle as I knew nuts about how to choosing the right shirt to go with this pants, I crushed the piece of paper in my possession into a ball of paper.
Essay undone, my faith shakened, I walked to the living room to read the papers. Amid all the tabloids, the gossip, the looming clouds of war, a lone article stood out. A student, our age, was now somewhere in Cambodia, helping needy children in a village to build a school.
Sometimes the process is more important then the end result.
Monday, December 22, 2003
The story ends...
*Spoilers galore. You have been warned.*
Just completed FFX today. Watched the great ending, again felt the same profound feeling of sadness I never fail to feel everytime I watch it. An interesting note is that, in the japanese version, after yuna runs through tidus and gets up again, she says thank you, but in the international version she says i love you. In my opinion, there is no need to spell it out, a thank you would have more impact than i love you as their love is so strongly implied there is no need to proclaim it.
The ending got me thinking a bit. I realised, that all the 7 characters are flawed in one way or another. Which sort of contradicts the usual invincible hero stereotype.
Tidus is a headstrong guy who hates his father, who was a crybaby when young. All throughout the story, he was not working towards saving the world, he was trying to save yuna from being sacrificed for the final summoning. He couldn't care less about the yevon teachings or all the nonsense, he only wanted to protect yuna as a guardian.
Yuna, I always found irritating as she was always saying spastic things like help me etc, but as the game got on I understand the reason for her behaviour. Living up to her father's name, having her faith in yevon shattered, then finding out that sin is jecht would caused anyone to crumble, more so an apprentice summoner of only 17, whose world is only in a small island before she set off on her pilgramage. She also did rely on Lulu too much, but as the game got on she did become stronger, but she suffered the ultimate loss in the end. The irony is not lost on me, that tidus, in order to save yuna, ended up sacrificing himself instead.
Kimahri is a ronso outcast, because of his broken horn. It can be said that he being an outcast from the ronso tribe caused him to protect yuna with great zeal, as in a sense, it was the only purpose he had.
Auron, the disgraced warrior monk, the unsent, has the most luggage. The guilt of sending braska and jecht to their deaths as he had no guts to do anything haunts him, now all he wants is to fufil jecht's wishes. His desire to do so is so strong that he becomes an unsent. When it all ends, he tells the rest, "it's your world now." showing that he thinks that he is just a living ghost, and when he completed his pact with jecht, he leaves, finally at peace. But before that, he had to endure 10 years of reculsive living, tormmented with his guilt.
Lulu, her fiery character can be attributed to many factors, the death of chappu, the death of the 1st summoner she guarded. She seems to block out all emotions, choosing to blame everything on wakka, and was distrustful of tidus at first as she was very protective of yuna. It can be infered that she si now very afraid of losing people close to her due to the events mentioned above.
Wakka, well he maybe cheery and such, but deep down he has this inferiority complex, maybe cultivated after years and years of losing in blitzball. Also, he is so devout that he refuses to acknowledge the failings and the lies of yevon until much later.
Rikku, apart from the obvious flaw as she is terrified of lightning, is very much a girl who wants to make people see past the fact that she is al bhed, and the stigma that comes with it. The fact that she is an al bhed causes her to feel like an outcast, and a loathing for the "yevonites" as she puts it, shows.
In summary, it seems that a rag-tag army of misfits and infidels saved the world.
All the character traits were an integral part of making this game enjoyable, which seriously could be made into a movie.
Huh, non-ffx fans would be advised against reading this.
Anyway, till next time.
*Spoilers galore. You have been warned.*
Just completed FFX today. Watched the great ending, again felt the same profound feeling of sadness I never fail to feel everytime I watch it. An interesting note is that, in the japanese version, after yuna runs through tidus and gets up again, she says thank you, but in the international version she says i love you. In my opinion, there is no need to spell it out, a thank you would have more impact than i love you as their love is so strongly implied there is no need to proclaim it.
The ending got me thinking a bit. I realised, that all the 7 characters are flawed in one way or another. Which sort of contradicts the usual invincible hero stereotype.
Tidus is a headstrong guy who hates his father, who was a crybaby when young. All throughout the story, he was not working towards saving the world, he was trying to save yuna from being sacrificed for the final summoning. He couldn't care less about the yevon teachings or all the nonsense, he only wanted to protect yuna as a guardian.
Yuna, I always found irritating as she was always saying spastic things like help me etc, but as the game got on I understand the reason for her behaviour. Living up to her father's name, having her faith in yevon shattered, then finding out that sin is jecht would caused anyone to crumble, more so an apprentice summoner of only 17, whose world is only in a small island before she set off on her pilgramage. She also did rely on Lulu too much, but as the game got on she did become stronger, but she suffered the ultimate loss in the end. The irony is not lost on me, that tidus, in order to save yuna, ended up sacrificing himself instead.
Kimahri is a ronso outcast, because of his broken horn. It can be said that he being an outcast from the ronso tribe caused him to protect yuna with great zeal, as in a sense, it was the only purpose he had.
Auron, the disgraced warrior monk, the unsent, has the most luggage. The guilt of sending braska and jecht to their deaths as he had no guts to do anything haunts him, now all he wants is to fufil jecht's wishes. His desire to do so is so strong that he becomes an unsent. When it all ends, he tells the rest, "it's your world now." showing that he thinks that he is just a living ghost, and when he completed his pact with jecht, he leaves, finally at peace. But before that, he had to endure 10 years of reculsive living, tormmented with his guilt.
Lulu, her fiery character can be attributed to many factors, the death of chappu, the death of the 1st summoner she guarded. She seems to block out all emotions, choosing to blame everything on wakka, and was distrustful of tidus at first as she was very protective of yuna. It can be infered that she si now very afraid of losing people close to her due to the events mentioned above.
Wakka, well he maybe cheery and such, but deep down he has this inferiority complex, maybe cultivated after years and years of losing in blitzball. Also, he is so devout that he refuses to acknowledge the failings and the lies of yevon until much later.
Rikku, apart from the obvious flaw as she is terrified of lightning, is very much a girl who wants to make people see past the fact that she is al bhed, and the stigma that comes with it. The fact that she is an al bhed causes her to feel like an outcast, and a loathing for the "yevonites" as she puts it, shows.
In summary, it seems that a rag-tag army of misfits and infidels saved the world.
All the character traits were an integral part of making this game enjoyable, which seriously could be made into a movie.
Huh, non-ffx fans would be advised against reading this.
Anyway, till next time.
I know it's selfish, but this is my story!
Just a few more days to christmas, then to the new year.
Time really flies, to re-use an old cliche.
I think I shall leave the melancholy out of this psot, romantism is dead, pragmantism replaces it, time that has past cannot be reclaimed, stupid things done cannot be undone, bridges burnt cannot be mended, in short, I chose my own path. It wasn't pretty, at times it was helplessly hopeless, at times it was blindingly euphoric. I'm glad the good times outnumbered the bad, but every unhappy experience was just another lesson to learn, costly or not, I drew something from my myriad of encounters.
2004. A new year dawns on us, yet the future is as murky as it can get. Who thought, at the brink of 2003, that a disease would send us all into a panic, to the extent schools will be closed and people adhored all human contact?
Whatever comes next year, I'll be there to face it.
The A's, coupled with my natural desire for not studying and penchant for just scrapping through. No S papers, meaning unlikely any scholarship, the incentive to work hard is greater, yet that is far from the truth.
Orientation. Those who know me, you know what I am like. There is this part of me which needs to change, and badly, and through this I'll get the opportunity to try and change.
There are plenty more I feel apprehensive about, but I'll take things 1 at a time.
I refuse to use the word hope.
To hope is to say to a higher being, "here's my life, plot its chart for me."
That is a very irresponsible way of living to me.
We are all masters of our own fate.
Hope is just the denial of reality.
I choose my own path.
Just a few more days to christmas, then to the new year.
Time really flies, to re-use an old cliche.
I think I shall leave the melancholy out of this psot, romantism is dead, pragmantism replaces it, time that has past cannot be reclaimed, stupid things done cannot be undone, bridges burnt cannot be mended, in short, I chose my own path. It wasn't pretty, at times it was helplessly hopeless, at times it was blindingly euphoric. I'm glad the good times outnumbered the bad, but every unhappy experience was just another lesson to learn, costly or not, I drew something from my myriad of encounters.
2004. A new year dawns on us, yet the future is as murky as it can get. Who thought, at the brink of 2003, that a disease would send us all into a panic, to the extent schools will be closed and people adhored all human contact?
Whatever comes next year, I'll be there to face it.
The A's, coupled with my natural desire for not studying and penchant for just scrapping through. No S papers, meaning unlikely any scholarship, the incentive to work hard is greater, yet that is far from the truth.
Orientation. Those who know me, you know what I am like. There is this part of me which needs to change, and badly, and through this I'll get the opportunity to try and change.
There are plenty more I feel apprehensive about, but I'll take things 1 at a time.
I refuse to use the word hope.
To hope is to say to a higher being, "here's my life, plot its chart for me."
That is a very irresponsible way of living to me.
We are all masters of our own fate.
Hope is just the denial of reality.
I choose my own path.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Life for rent, takers anyone?
I'm back from Thailand, loyal readers of my blog, which has withered down to a small number.
I must say I was quite unhappy with the standard of the tour, but after asking my mum what is the purpose of us having a holiday, I can't really complain much. She said it doesn't matter where we go, as long we go as a family, so I guess how lousy the tour guide was, we fulfilled the purpose, and the trip was a success after all.
Bought a lot of stuff, i think 6 pairs of pants, 8 shirts, 1 windbreaker, 1 pair of shoes. For the first time in my life I was quite enthusiatic about shopping, but this was like a "shopping window" for me, otherwise back in s'pore I would never buy anything. Got my Ruud Van Nistelrooy jersey, a genuine fake.
Experienced parasailing and jetskiing, riding in a very bumpy boat, think ubin boat ride, 3 times faster, sea 4 times choppier. Saw mogilan as well, had a nice chat with him during lunch.
Was a bit pissed about the fact all the hotels i went to had no paper for me to write on, in the end, this is the watered down version of my thoughts in my mind during those 5 days.
Will post some pictures once I find someone kind enough to host them.
Till you read again.
I'm back from Thailand, loyal readers of my blog, which has withered down to a small number.
I must say I was quite unhappy with the standard of the tour, but after asking my mum what is the purpose of us having a holiday, I can't really complain much. She said it doesn't matter where we go, as long we go as a family, so I guess how lousy the tour guide was, we fulfilled the purpose, and the trip was a success after all.
Bought a lot of stuff, i think 6 pairs of pants, 8 shirts, 1 windbreaker, 1 pair of shoes. For the first time in my life I was quite enthusiatic about shopping, but this was like a "shopping window" for me, otherwise back in s'pore I would never buy anything. Got my Ruud Van Nistelrooy jersey, a genuine fake.
Experienced parasailing and jetskiing, riding in a very bumpy boat, think ubin boat ride, 3 times faster, sea 4 times choppier. Saw mogilan as well, had a nice chat with him during lunch.
Was a bit pissed about the fact all the hotels i went to had no paper for me to write on, in the end, this is the watered down version of my thoughts in my mind during those 5 days.
Will post some pictures once I find someone kind enough to host them.
Till you read again.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
This is my story.
Tidus: Yuna, I have to go.
Yuna nods "no".
Tidus: I'm sorry I couldn't show you Zanarkand. Goodbye!
Tidus is about to jump off the airship.
Wakka: Hey!
Rikku: We're gonna see you again...?
Yuna runs after Tidus.
Kimahri: Yuna!
Yuna tried to hold on to Tidus, but she went through and fell down. Tidus is disappearing. Yuna gets up.
Yuna: I love you.
Tidus gave Yuna a hug although she can't feel him. Then Tidus is about to jump and the group started waving goodbye. Tidus jumps off the airship, and we see Jecht, Auron, and Braska. Jecht reunites with Tidus. Later in Luca, Yuna tried the whistle blow with fingers, but it is no use, as we know Tidus is gone.
Tidus: Yuna, I have to go.
Yuna nods "no".
Tidus: I'm sorry I couldn't show you Zanarkand. Goodbye!
Tidus is about to jump off the airship.
Wakka: Hey!
Rikku: We're gonna see you again...?
Yuna runs after Tidus.
Kimahri: Yuna!
Yuna tried to hold on to Tidus, but she went through and fell down. Tidus is disappearing. Yuna gets up.
Yuna: I love you.
Tidus gave Yuna a hug although she can't feel him. Then Tidus is about to jump and the group started waving goodbye. Tidus jumps off the airship, and we see Jecht, Auron, and Braska. Jecht reunites with Tidus. Later in Luca, Yuna tried the whistle blow with fingers, but it is no use, as we know Tidus is gone.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Theory of existence
Sorry for my long hiatus, my loyal readers (if there are any), just didn't feel the desire to blog. Each day seems a carbon copy of another, activities are fun no doubt, but as I go on I find I have lesser and lesser time for myself and ultimately away from the maddening crowd.
Ever felt this feeling before? You feel lonely even if you're in a middle of a crowded street. People stream pass you, cars honk, shopping malls lights flare, a hundred thousand voices resonate, yet all you want to hide in some corner, where you can live your own life and not worry about others.
I admit sometimes I have these moments. Where I want to run away from the sea of familiar yet unfamiliar faces around me, run away from all my responsibilities, commitments, basically leaving this world. Akin to death I guess. A living ghost.
Today was one of those days.
I dont know why must I be placed in such a situation. Aren't we all friends, working towards a common goal? Sure, our views differ, but at the end of the day we are still friends right?
Maybe I'm living in this utopic world where friends stay together forever and trade old war stories 10 years from now when we come together with our wives and children. Maybe I'm blind to the fact that such a world is impossible.
The worse part was the fact I have to choose sides. How can I? Both are my friends after all, how does one choose between good friends?
Argh, it is unfair.
Now all I'm doing is just running away, something I swore never to do again, ever since those dark sec 1 days.
But now, it seems like it starting again...
Sorry for my long hiatus, my loyal readers (if there are any), just didn't feel the desire to blog. Each day seems a carbon copy of another, activities are fun no doubt, but as I go on I find I have lesser and lesser time for myself and ultimately away from the maddening crowd.
Ever felt this feeling before? You feel lonely even if you're in a middle of a crowded street. People stream pass you, cars honk, shopping malls lights flare, a hundred thousand voices resonate, yet all you want to hide in some corner, where you can live your own life and not worry about others.
I admit sometimes I have these moments. Where I want to run away from the sea of familiar yet unfamiliar faces around me, run away from all my responsibilities, commitments, basically leaving this world. Akin to death I guess. A living ghost.
Today was one of those days.
I dont know why must I be placed in such a situation. Aren't we all friends, working towards a common goal? Sure, our views differ, but at the end of the day we are still friends right?
Maybe I'm living in this utopic world where friends stay together forever and trade old war stories 10 years from now when we come together with our wives and children. Maybe I'm blind to the fact that such a world is impossible.
The worse part was the fact I have to choose sides. How can I? Both are my friends after all, how does one choose between good friends?
Argh, it is unfair.
Now all I'm doing is just running away, something I swore never to do again, ever since those dark sec 1 days.
But now, it seems like it starting again...
Friday, December 05, 2003
This is the end. There is no more.
GTC 2003.
With its closure, a chapter of life closes.
It seemed just like yesterday I was in that horseshoe doing the push ups.
I don't think any of the trainees or the Guys TM saw me cry.
It has been a rollercoaster ride of a year.
To the ventures, we leave the group in your hands.
Make all of us proud.
My only regret, is joining late.
01 Raffles.
Forever.
GTC 2003.
With its closure, a chapter of life closes.
It seemed just like yesterday I was in that horseshoe doing the push ups.
I don't think any of the trainees or the Guys TM saw me cry.
It has been a rollercoaster ride of a year.
To the ventures, we leave the group in your hands.
Make all of us proud.
My only regret, is joining late.
01 Raffles.
Forever.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
A circle has only one side
Life is good. Seriously. I have learnt to be more contended nowadays.
Turned in my best performance today at training, beating andrew, amanda, joshua, edwin, 5-3, 5-1, 5-2, 5-1 and drew peiyi 4-4. But the price paid was not my soul to the devil but a blister on my 2nd finger.
O-prep is coming along fine, did the flag with yang qian, I only got the paint as I was really afraid of messing the thing up.
FFX2 is damm fun. Apart from the fact it is damm girly, it incoporates the FFT missions style quite nicely with the traditional FF style. The real time fighting is hard at first, but once you get used to it it's rather ok.
I'm sorry for being short here, just that I think blogging about things i cannot talk about is rather dangerous. I'll just leave it as that.
Over and out.
Life is good. Seriously. I have learnt to be more contended nowadays.
Turned in my best performance today at training, beating andrew, amanda, joshua, edwin, 5-3, 5-1, 5-2, 5-1 and drew peiyi 4-4. But the price paid was not my soul to the devil but a blister on my 2nd finger.
O-prep is coming along fine, did the flag with yang qian, I only got the paint as I was really afraid of messing the thing up.
FFX2 is damm fun. Apart from the fact it is damm girly, it incoporates the FFT missions style quite nicely with the traditional FF style. The real time fighting is hard at first, but once you get used to it it's rather ok.
I'm sorry for being short here, just that I think blogging about things i cannot talk about is rather dangerous. I'll just leave it as that.
Over and out.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Flickering Lights
Weren't they here last year, the flowers of long ago lore,
Standing silently in that desolate field,
Letting the evening breeze tug them along,
Emotionless sentries of forgotten secrets.
The vast stretch of them,
Whiter than winter's snow,
Populating, thriving in that fertile triangle,
With grey, foreboding slabs of rock for company.
Peaceful it was in the day,
Tranquil it is at night.
Not a sound, save for the sounds of nature,
Of flora and fauna.
Those white sentries are gone now,
the stone slabs cease to intimidate another.
Now all that remains,
Are those who live
Six feet under.
I wrote something
Weren't they here last year, the flowers of long ago lore,
Standing silently in that desolate field,
Letting the evening breeze tug them along,
Emotionless sentries of forgotten secrets.
The vast stretch of them,
Whiter than winter's snow,
Populating, thriving in that fertile triangle,
With grey, foreboding slabs of rock for company.
Peaceful it was in the day,
Tranquil it is at night.
Not a sound, save for the sounds of nature,
Of flora and fauna.
Those white sentries are gone now,
the stone slabs cease to intimidate another.
Now all that remains,
Are those who live
Six feet under.
I wrote something
Saturday, November 22, 2003
Hands clasped
Jonny Wilkinson does that all the time before he takes any penalty, and with that look of concentration, he dispatches the rugby ball effortlessly through the tall posts (most of the time anyway).
What a great day for sport. England wins the rugby world cup, with wilkinson scoring 3/4 of the points. I wonder if there is such thing as negative rugby, but nevertheless it was a great final, one of the best we would ever watch.
Another sporting success was Man Utd overcoming a plucky blackburn side 2-1. Although Man Utd took a 2-0 lead, blackburn must have thought, "since we're going to lose, might as well go at them" and they nearly got a draw. Man Utd were not at their best, but still a win is a win and I will not complain.
Bought FFX-2, just a bit of filler before FF12 comes.
Holidays have not been feeling like them, been running here to there to everywhere the past 6 days, tommorrow is a rest day before it starts all over again. I need to study for SAT, and I also still need to do some studying.
And the great plan needs to be implemented...
I'm reaching the end of my 01 life. A great sense of sadness will descend on me when I officially call an end to my scouting career. 01 has given me so much. It gave me a second chance when I got myself thrown out by swimming. It gave me great friends, the Guys TM, great memories, experiences. Interviewing the ventures, even those who didn't intend to come back had nothing but good comments about their 4 years. Sure, sometimes it was tough, and there were many a time I felt like hecking scouts, like at the end of sec 3 when job shadowing robbed me of an exco place. Yeah, but fortunately I still put my head down and went about my job, and well, I can't say I have been the best VVC, but I tried my best, I know that.
My only biggest regret is that sec 1 year in the wilderness being bitter and purposeless.
Oh well, 4 years is still invaluable.
Hell, I may be super biased here, but I still think 01 is the best CCA in RI.
But hey, 100 people can't be wrong right?
Jonny Wilkinson does that all the time before he takes any penalty, and with that look of concentration, he dispatches the rugby ball effortlessly through the tall posts (most of the time anyway).
What a great day for sport. England wins the rugby world cup, with wilkinson scoring 3/4 of the points. I wonder if there is such thing as negative rugby, but nevertheless it was a great final, one of the best we would ever watch.
Another sporting success was Man Utd overcoming a plucky blackburn side 2-1. Although Man Utd took a 2-0 lead, blackburn must have thought, "since we're going to lose, might as well go at them" and they nearly got a draw. Man Utd were not at their best, but still a win is a win and I will not complain.
Bought FFX-2, just a bit of filler before FF12 comes.
Holidays have not been feeling like them, been running here to there to everywhere the past 6 days, tommorrow is a rest day before it starts all over again. I need to study for SAT, and I also still need to do some studying.
And the great plan needs to be implemented...
I'm reaching the end of my 01 life. A great sense of sadness will descend on me when I officially call an end to my scouting career. 01 has given me so much. It gave me a second chance when I got myself thrown out by swimming. It gave me great friends, the Guys TM, great memories, experiences. Interviewing the ventures, even those who didn't intend to come back had nothing but good comments about their 4 years. Sure, sometimes it was tough, and there were many a time I felt like hecking scouts, like at the end of sec 3 when job shadowing robbed me of an exco place. Yeah, but fortunately I still put my head down and went about my job, and well, I can't say I have been the best VVC, but I tried my best, I know that.
My only biggest regret is that sec 1 year in the wilderness being bitter and purposeless.
Oh well, 4 years is still invaluable.
Hell, I may be super biased here, but I still think 01 is the best CCA in RI.
But hey, 100 people can't be wrong right?
Friday, November 21, 2003
Somewhere I Belong
It has been a long time since I have been here to write things, better make some use of this blog.
THis whole week has been hectic, what with o-team preperation, job-shadowing and reccee. O-prep is fun but tiring, the dance looks good, even someone like me who has two left feet and feels inferior everytime jay does his stuff can do it. Slowly feeling my way around, still need to know the people there better. Good teamwork stems from good camederie.
Job-shadowing was a farce, all I did was to enter late, thanks to me missing the bustop and ending up at national stadium instead of beach road, then proceeded to listen to a lawyer who obviously did not prepare what she wanted to say. She kept talking in circles, so some of us used questions to focus the talk. In the end, I felt I was in NUS receiving a lecture, and I learnt only a few things more, nothing else. Still, anyone interested to go to a court to watch a court case? I wish to do so but hopefully not alone.
Reccee was fun, edwin and I had fun moving from one palce to another using the NEL, going to funny places like the s'pore insitute of science. Wanted to get a bear for vivien when we reached sengkang but the new stock had not come in. Disturbed adrian, eugen chiam and hanyan a bit, then left for lunch and i went home to slack.
Thoughts for the week so far:
- Sometimes closure is all we guys need
- I am going to hike to school on tues just as a practice for GTC
- I haven't studied for SAT
- This whole week is packed
- Try not to jeopardise your friend's happiness
- Too much knoledge can kill you
- I have been sleeping at 12-1 for the past week
- I have been telling myself to sleep early for the past week
- Training is good
- The Dutch crushed the scots 6-0, ruud is too good
- I still want to write something
- Family is going to thailand for vacation
- FF12!!!!!!!
Hopefully I can squeeze out some time and motivation to do homework, write something, just anything, and do all my miscellenous tasks before school starts.
Still holding on, I won't let you down.
It has been a long time since I have been here to write things, better make some use of this blog.
THis whole week has been hectic, what with o-team preperation, job-shadowing and reccee. O-prep is fun but tiring, the dance looks good, even someone like me who has two left feet and feels inferior everytime jay does his stuff can do it. Slowly feeling my way around, still need to know the people there better. Good teamwork stems from good camederie.
Job-shadowing was a farce, all I did was to enter late, thanks to me missing the bustop and ending up at national stadium instead of beach road, then proceeded to listen to a lawyer who obviously did not prepare what she wanted to say. She kept talking in circles, so some of us used questions to focus the talk. In the end, I felt I was in NUS receiving a lecture, and I learnt only a few things more, nothing else. Still, anyone interested to go to a court to watch a court case? I wish to do so but hopefully not alone.
Reccee was fun, edwin and I had fun moving from one palce to another using the NEL, going to funny places like the s'pore insitute of science. Wanted to get a bear for vivien when we reached sengkang but the new stock had not come in. Disturbed adrian, eugen chiam and hanyan a bit, then left for lunch and i went home to slack.
Thoughts for the week so far:
- Sometimes closure is all we guys need
- I am going to hike to school on tues just as a practice for GTC
- I haven't studied for SAT
- This whole week is packed
- Try not to jeopardise your friend's happiness
- Too much knoledge can kill you
- I have been sleeping at 12-1 for the past week
- I have been telling myself to sleep early for the past week
- Training is good
- The Dutch crushed the scots 6-0, ruud is too good
- I still want to write something
- Family is going to thailand for vacation
- FF12!!!!!!!
Hopefully I can squeeze out some time and motivation to do homework, write something, just anything, and do all my miscellenous tasks before school starts.
Still holding on, I won't let you down.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Ubin Paradise
Sunday, the day I normally sleep in late and then frantically try to complete all my homework is now converted to a day of miscellenous activites. Today was a different sort of sunday, I dragged myself out of bed to meet up with the Guys TM to ro reccee pulau ubin, our spiritual second home.
Edwina nd I were early, thanks to the fact dad drove me to changi village. I love the quaint little suburb, where the food is delicious and everything seems much slower. The others finally came, and the first thing we did was to sample the food.
I had some wanton noodles, then we went to convienience stores to stock up on sustenance for our long journey. Jimmy was the classic joker, twirling a mentos stick in his had saying "mentos, the fresh-oops." as he dropped his stick. Then we finally boarded the ferry. (Ferry trip costs $2)
We proceeded to rent (in hindsight, very lousy) bicycles from a shop near the jetty. My seat was too small and it caused me a great deal of miscomfort. Add that to the fact that I chose my clothes unwisely it made for a potentially uncomfortable journey, which I coped with by adjusting my bum every 5 minutes.
The clouds were always amassing, and it threatened to rain every now and then. Mogilan was busy chasing cats and hyperthreading (whatever that means), LaU and ed were the cameramen, muru and jimmy were taking the map. I stumbled many a time, fearing a trip to my eternal rest, and resulted in most of them choosing to scream bloody murder for stopping in the middle of the road.
We did the usual routes, and every turn yielded a memory, like albert's attempt to crack an egg, the sandflies, the snady chicken curry caused by LaU, the prawn sign, the stoner's rock, the advance parties, the hut where gimyong slept against during lunch in sec 3, edwin's encounter with the scropion and many others.
After a few hours of biking, our butts got real sore and we left the island for greener pastures, namely home for me and LAN for the others.
To call ubin our 2nd spiritual home, I think it is more or less true.
A new week awaits me.
Sunday, the day I normally sleep in late and then frantically try to complete all my homework is now converted to a day of miscellenous activites. Today was a different sort of sunday, I dragged myself out of bed to meet up with the Guys TM to ro reccee pulau ubin, our spiritual second home.
Edwina nd I were early, thanks to the fact dad drove me to changi village. I love the quaint little suburb, where the food is delicious and everything seems much slower. The others finally came, and the first thing we did was to sample the food.
I had some wanton noodles, then we went to convienience stores to stock up on sustenance for our long journey. Jimmy was the classic joker, twirling a mentos stick in his had saying "mentos, the fresh-oops." as he dropped his stick. Then we finally boarded the ferry. (Ferry trip costs $2)
We proceeded to rent (in hindsight, very lousy) bicycles from a shop near the jetty. My seat was too small and it caused me a great deal of miscomfort. Add that to the fact that I chose my clothes unwisely it made for a potentially uncomfortable journey, which I coped with by adjusting my bum every 5 minutes.
The clouds were always amassing, and it threatened to rain every now and then. Mogilan was busy chasing cats and hyperthreading (whatever that means), LaU and ed were the cameramen, muru and jimmy were taking the map. I stumbled many a time, fearing a trip to my eternal rest, and resulted in most of them choosing to scream bloody murder for stopping in the middle of the road.
We did the usual routes, and every turn yielded a memory, like albert's attempt to crack an egg, the sandflies, the snady chicken curry caused by LaU, the prawn sign, the stoner's rock, the advance parties, the hut where gimyong slept against during lunch in sec 3, edwin's encounter with the scropion and many others.
After a few hours of biking, our butts got real sore and we left the island for greener pastures, namely home for me and LAN for the others.
To call ubin our 2nd spiritual home, I think it is more or less true.
A new week awaits me.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Where this road unknown will take me...
The S paper results are out, and yeah, I didn't make it. No Ng Zhao Yang in caps on that list of names, indicating my failure in being able to pursue economics at S level.
I can still remember last year during GTC a morose cong han was telling us not to screw up our J1 year and take only 1 S paper, but now I've gone and trumped it by being a normal student.
It sure sounds like whining, when there is a significant number of students who are in the same situation as me. But then, life still goes on, I guess I just have to concentrate on my 4 core subjects then and siphon money off my parents for my further education.
It is times like these I wonder if I am really cut out in this system of ABCDEOFs where one off-day can send you tumbling into academic hell. Bertram is really the brightest in the household in terms of grades, so I guess it balances out his eldest brother's incompentence to beat systems.
I was right to scoff at suggestions that BBBC can take 2 s papers. Besides, I knew if I wanted to to take any S paper, I would take the subject I can pick up the textbook and not fall asleep in 5 minutes. Since econs was the only subject which had no draining effects on me, I chose it, but after scanning through the list, I know now that econs is really a hot choice. Well at least I tried.
What lies ahead for me? I hate to say it, but as much as I proclaim 20 years from now results don't mean a shit, we live for the moment and well frankly I feel like a second class student. I came here to fight with the elite and I failed.
But then, I'm not one to dwell too much on pass failures. I have failed too many times to know that brooding over them won't make things better, you will just wallow in self-pity and feel decidedly lousy. I deserve the marks I get, and I will live with the decisions I make.
I shall make sure my 4 core subjects are solid as a rock come prelims next year, and whatever free time will be used to read up on law. This path may be harder to take, but if it leads me to where I want to go, I hope I see you too, my friends, at the finishing line.
The S paper results are out, and yeah, I didn't make it. No Ng Zhao Yang in caps on that list of names, indicating my failure in being able to pursue economics at S level.
I can still remember last year during GTC a morose cong han was telling us not to screw up our J1 year and take only 1 S paper, but now I've gone and trumped it by being a normal student.
It sure sounds like whining, when there is a significant number of students who are in the same situation as me. But then, life still goes on, I guess I just have to concentrate on my 4 core subjects then and siphon money off my parents for my further education.
It is times like these I wonder if I am really cut out in this system of ABCDEOFs where one off-day can send you tumbling into academic hell. Bertram is really the brightest in the household in terms of grades, so I guess it balances out his eldest brother's incompentence to beat systems.
I was right to scoff at suggestions that BBBC can take 2 s papers. Besides, I knew if I wanted to to take any S paper, I would take the subject I can pick up the textbook and not fall asleep in 5 minutes. Since econs was the only subject which had no draining effects on me, I chose it, but after scanning through the list, I know now that econs is really a hot choice. Well at least I tried.
What lies ahead for me? I hate to say it, but as much as I proclaim 20 years from now results don't mean a shit, we live for the moment and well frankly I feel like a second class student. I came here to fight with the elite and I failed.
But then, I'm not one to dwell too much on pass failures. I have failed too many times to know that brooding over them won't make things better, you will just wallow in self-pity and feel decidedly lousy. I deserve the marks I get, and I will live with the decisions I make.
I shall make sure my 4 core subjects are solid as a rock come prelims next year, and whatever free time will be used to read up on law. This path may be harder to take, but if it leads me to where I want to go, I hope I see you too, my friends, at the finishing line.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Everything and anything
Just a slight warning. Below is pure unadulterated crap. Read at your own risk.
Every once in a while, I feel like slamming some faceless organisation for their incompentence in certain areas. Today, I like to talk about Disney.
I'm sure Uncle Walt is now turning uneasily in his grave, as Disney is now floundering in the debt, with their amusement parks earning less and less, and the american dream it actively exported of never never land is crumbling thanks to bush. Recently, while channel surfing, I came across a Disney special proclaiming to the world that the lion king special edition dvd is being released, with digital remastering and new versions of the songs. Which made me wonder, why all the effort for a dvd? Then it hit me. The lion king was the last disney movie to actually make a profit. The later movies like atlantis, treasure planet and the assorted sugary stuff they came up with failed. Even with a change in direction, with more dark and intense tones in their movies failed to right the sinking ship eg. Titan A.E.
Well, I guess disney had it coming, it failed to see the change in consumer tastes, but they have started to wise up and change marketing strategies, the linking up pixar was a very good idea, finding nemo won over some detractors, and by releasing its characters for squaresoft to do kingdom hearts with was a great idea, even if it meant that mickey mouse was the final boss (horror of horrors. a final boss who is not even scary.)
They may be hope for disney yet.
On a seperate note, metro was fun, albeit to a lesser extent this time, cos the number of people were pathetically little. Sold very few bears, and the interesting part was I had to babysit a toddler, who ran all over the store while the mother filled up the contest form. She lend me across the lingerie section, and all the while i was trying to coax her back to her mom with the bear.
Next 2 days are dedicated to scouts, so I guess sleep is in order. Shall talk about my trip to ubin on sun when it passes.
Just a slight warning. Below is pure unadulterated crap. Read at your own risk.
Every once in a while, I feel like slamming some faceless organisation for their incompentence in certain areas. Today, I like to talk about Disney.
I'm sure Uncle Walt is now turning uneasily in his grave, as Disney is now floundering in the debt, with their amusement parks earning less and less, and the american dream it actively exported of never never land is crumbling thanks to bush. Recently, while channel surfing, I came across a Disney special proclaiming to the world that the lion king special edition dvd is being released, with digital remastering and new versions of the songs. Which made me wonder, why all the effort for a dvd? Then it hit me. The lion king was the last disney movie to actually make a profit. The later movies like atlantis, treasure planet and the assorted sugary stuff they came up with failed. Even with a change in direction, with more dark and intense tones in their movies failed to right the sinking ship eg. Titan A.E.
Well, I guess disney had it coming, it failed to see the change in consumer tastes, but they have started to wise up and change marketing strategies, the linking up pixar was a very good idea, finding nemo won over some detractors, and by releasing its characters for squaresoft to do kingdom hearts with was a great idea, even if it meant that mickey mouse was the final boss (horror of horrors. a final boss who is not even scary.)
They may be hope for disney yet.
On a seperate note, metro was fun, albeit to a lesser extent this time, cos the number of people were pathetically little. Sold very few bears, and the interesting part was I had to babysit a toddler, who ran all over the store while the mother filled up the contest form. She lend me across the lingerie section, and all the while i was trying to coax her back to her mom with the bear.
Next 2 days are dedicated to scouts, so I guess sleep is in order. Shall talk about my trip to ubin on sun when it passes.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Two guys, a McPepper and 2 hours to kill
Like the title suggests, edwin and I had an intellectual discussion in macs over the fairer sex. He asked me why there are 2 different genders. I told him for procreation and diversity.
What a great way to waste 2 hours just talking cock about the fun scout times we had, and the weird opinions that edwin has about the opposite sex which I shall refrain from saying here. Something about asking where the toilets are.
Been a hectic few days, what with PW ending its reign of terror, o-prep banner painting which alina got me painted red and everyone thought I was bleeding, presentation which I sputtered through the first part before finding my rhythm and ending it off well. Boon Seer lit up the presentation with her antics as usual. Boon Kwan had me choking on water when he did the impersonation of the host of TAR by saying "the first team to arrive will win the race". It was good to see jason back and healthy, and as usual sing yong and keng piang were goofing off by changing the name of the tape I passed to esther.
Neil brought the PS2 to my house again, but somehow all desire to play it was sort of drained out of me when I picked up the controller. Good thing I guess, makes me concentrate on my activities.
Got trashed during training. Sighz. Will work harder.
Another long day awaits. Need my sleep.
Till next time.
Like the title suggests, edwin and I had an intellectual discussion in macs over the fairer sex. He asked me why there are 2 different genders. I told him for procreation and diversity.
What a great way to waste 2 hours just talking cock about the fun scout times we had, and the weird opinions that edwin has about the opposite sex which I shall refrain from saying here. Something about asking where the toilets are.
Been a hectic few days, what with PW ending its reign of terror, o-prep banner painting which alina got me painted red and everyone thought I was bleeding, presentation which I sputtered through the first part before finding my rhythm and ending it off well. Boon Seer lit up the presentation with her antics as usual. Boon Kwan had me choking on water when he did the impersonation of the host of TAR by saying "the first team to arrive will win the race". It was good to see jason back and healthy, and as usual sing yong and keng piang were goofing off by changing the name of the tape I passed to esther.
Neil brought the PS2 to my house again, but somehow all desire to play it was sort of drained out of me when I picked up the controller. Good thing I guess, makes me concentrate on my activities.
Got trashed during training. Sighz. Will work harder.
Another long day awaits. Need my sleep.
Till next time.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Narvas
Someone who knows sanskrit please help me translate that. That is the title of the song that is played during the credits of revolutions.
The revolutions soundtrack is great, on par with the reloaded soundtrack. Don Davis is a very talented composer. And I finally found the track they played during neo's fight with smith at the subway in the first movie. Neodammerung is also nice, played during the "super burly brawl" ie the mid air face-off between neo and smith.
Oh yah, and mogilan stop stealing my revolutions inspired nicks.
The movie may have been disappointing, at least to me, but the soundtrack makes up for it. By aside from these two tracks I have yet to find 1 I like as well. I liked all 8 scores from the reloaded soundtrack.
Ok, just a slight update on things.
Thursday, last day of school, mucked PW around for a while and then we were finally released to go to lido and catch revolutions. I was very anxious to get there early and get tickets, because alina said she overheard someone saying lido, cineleisure and PS all sold out. I was intending to catch a later show in that case, so I could go home first then return later.
In the end, after short 7 ride (finally convinced the class once that 7 is faster than 111) we reached lido. I held my breath and entered and saw... practically no one. So much for sold out. Most of the morning shows were rather empty, but in the end we settled for a 1245 showing and had lunch.
Oh yah winston, sing yong, sharon, esther and zhong wei took turns to use up my discman's batteries, so I didn't have a chance to listen to my own discman. Cheek keong, winston and myself went to borders to browse a bit, and winston was hovering around the self-help section for all the wrong reasons.
We returned to watch the movie. There was a mini-drama just before the movie started as esther forgot to bring her GPF along, and had to rush out to get it, much to winston's relief.
Well, you know my thoughts about the movie, so let's move on. I left them after the movie, and went home to play a bit of MZ2, trying to gain all the EX skills now. Was ruminating about the ending for sometime.
The next day, Friday, didn't start off too well. I had a dream of someone telling me that my handphone's ringtone, the RI/RJ ringtone is incomplete. I said yah that's true. However, when I finally woke up with a jolt, because I remembered that I had to be in school at 8 and it was already 820. And on my handphone was 1 missed call, and it was by mrs toh.
Again my ringtone was part of a lucid dream. It happened a lot of times with the to zanarkand ringtone as my dad used to call me to wake me up if he is sending my brothers to school in the morning. FFX inspired dreams were common during those times.
Anyways, muttered a string of curses at myself while changing, and went downstairs to call mrs toh. Surprisingly, she sounded much too cheerful and accepted my explanation, while warning me no to do it again. In any case, I went over to school to help lindy with the november issue layout. It was frustrating to work with the ancient, and hopelessly slow computers. Had to restrain myself from pounding the machines to bits (and thus starting the second Renaissance, if you catch my drift) Finally did as much as I could, then had to leave for the optician.
HAd soem lunch at ghim moh, before proceeding to chinatown station. Terence saw me in my home clothes and asked me "pa tuo ah? (going on a date?)".
Sheesh, just because I wear my home clothes doesn't mean I am going on a date. Having said that, it is probably because of the fact I hardly go out. Hmmz....
Anyway, reaching chinatown, found the optician after some difficulty, and asked him to check my spectacles for me. the left lenses has weird patches on them, like oil was smeared on them. No amount of rubbing could remove it. I was ready to choose a new frame for my glasses when the optician said,
"Ok, 2 days later collect your glasses."
"Huh? No need to change frame?"
"No need. Did you bring your spare glasses or contacts?"
Well, I think you sorta know what was the answer. In the end, I had to take the NEL line to dhoby ghaut, change to NS line, then walk hoem from orchard. With my 900 degree eyesight. Having said that, when my glasses are off, I rely less on sight and more on other senses, so it sort of compensates and I got home safely, after which my mum chided me for being reckless. Well, I retorted, I'm home in 1 piece right? She had no answer to that.
Saturday, worn school uniform to meet the guys TM at orchard for a while, before disppearing to sengkang via the NEL. Metro CIP was ok, something like stationary jobweek and the donors stand to gain more from it. All I did was repeat,
"Good morning/afternoon ma'm/sir, would you like to make a donation to help disadvantaged children in vietnam? any amount will do. If you donate you are entitled to a free christmas bear and $300 worth of vouchers which you can use i metro."
or something along those lines. I must say it was a rather interesting experience, with brenda's clock-watching, the lousy selection of food at compass point (i had to eat macs, and you know my stance on fast food/cardboard), punch cards for in and out and ling ling pressing the wrong buttons.
I can spilt the donors to 4 types. 1, the look away even though I'm talking to them type, 2, the look at me and smile apologetically and say no type, 3, the at first not so interested to donate type, but in the end after some hard sell they will donate, and 4, the very enthusiatic types who come up to you directly and donate.
To all potential donors, please fall under types 2-4, if you don't want to donate just say so, some courtesy would be fine. I would always say thank you loudly to them who walk away just to shame them.
Among donors there are types as well, the cheapskate, which gives only a rather small amount for the things they get in return, the normal types, which donate moderate amounts, and the very generous, who give like $50, and the kind ones which do not want anything in return. There was one pregnant lady who gave $50 in 5 $10 dollars notes.
I found out the best way to "attack" the people is target those with young children by enticing them with the bear. Apparently, according to 1 customer, the bears were sold out in paragon, and she had to come all the way here just to get a bear. I find that hard to believe a bit, since we only started yesterday.
My shift ended at 4, alvin came to take over, and I made my way hoem alone as brenda and ling ling stayed back to shop at metro. Got a bear for vivien before I left.
Bored to death at home, in truth, completed all my games, and the allure of replaying MZ2 is waning. Neil is bringing the playstation over on monday, which is good, finally some real games.
Need to set aside some time to do homework, before I forget everything and O-team devours my free time.
Life today (saturday) had an interview with anthony horowitz. Go read his alex rider series. Great stuff. ANd now I know he is mad. He actually climbed a crane just to research the starting of book 2, where alex uses a crane to fish up a boat with drug makers inside it, intending to drop it it he police compound. It hleps that he punctuates his books with great one-liners, like when the boat hook snapped and the boat dropped into the home minister's office, the person who found him in the crane's seat sputtered,"Do you have any idea what you just did?"
I love this punchline. The main character, alex just shrugged and said, "I was just working on the crime figures. And I figured there has been a drop."
Ok enough rambling. Contacts are killing my eyes. Will redo my blog soon, as the end has been reached already.
And yah, the issue over the concerts have to resolved...
The feeling in my eyes must be how dinobot felt when he blasted the golden disk in "code of hero", one of the best episodes in american animation which is sadly in very bad state now. Beaten to near destruction, he still summoned enough energy to blast the disc to pieces using his eye lasers, and thus sacrificing himself.
In my opinion he just went all the way just to go out ina blaze of glory to redeem himself for switching sides earlier in the season. In any case, it was a powerful episode, which unfortuantely many people do not watch. So far I only knwo that boon kwan, mogilan and DC have watched beast wars. Sad but true.
It is late, I shall now rest my pen, and continue the next time.
(Bad translation, Iknow)
Someone who knows sanskrit please help me translate that. That is the title of the song that is played during the credits of revolutions.
The revolutions soundtrack is great, on par with the reloaded soundtrack. Don Davis is a very talented composer. And I finally found the track they played during neo's fight with smith at the subway in the first movie. Neodammerung is also nice, played during the "super burly brawl" ie the mid air face-off between neo and smith.
Oh yah, and mogilan stop stealing my revolutions inspired nicks.
The movie may have been disappointing, at least to me, but the soundtrack makes up for it. By aside from these two tracks I have yet to find 1 I like as well. I liked all 8 scores from the reloaded soundtrack.
Ok, just a slight update on things.
Thursday, last day of school, mucked PW around for a while and then we were finally released to go to lido and catch revolutions. I was very anxious to get there early and get tickets, because alina said she overheard someone saying lido, cineleisure and PS all sold out. I was intending to catch a later show in that case, so I could go home first then return later.
In the end, after short 7 ride (finally convinced the class once that 7 is faster than 111) we reached lido. I held my breath and entered and saw... practically no one. So much for sold out. Most of the morning shows were rather empty, but in the end we settled for a 1245 showing and had lunch.
Oh yah winston, sing yong, sharon, esther and zhong wei took turns to use up my discman's batteries, so I didn't have a chance to listen to my own discman. Cheek keong, winston and myself went to borders to browse a bit, and winston was hovering around the self-help section for all the wrong reasons.
We returned to watch the movie. There was a mini-drama just before the movie started as esther forgot to bring her GPF along, and had to rush out to get it, much to winston's relief.
Well, you know my thoughts about the movie, so let's move on. I left them after the movie, and went home to play a bit of MZ2, trying to gain all the EX skills now. Was ruminating about the ending for sometime.
The next day, Friday, didn't start off too well. I had a dream of someone telling me that my handphone's ringtone, the RI/RJ ringtone is incomplete. I said yah that's true. However, when I finally woke up with a jolt, because I remembered that I had to be in school at 8 and it was already 820. And on my handphone was 1 missed call, and it was by mrs toh.
Again my ringtone was part of a lucid dream. It happened a lot of times with the to zanarkand ringtone as my dad used to call me to wake me up if he is sending my brothers to school in the morning. FFX inspired dreams were common during those times.
Anyways, muttered a string of curses at myself while changing, and went downstairs to call mrs toh. Surprisingly, she sounded much too cheerful and accepted my explanation, while warning me no to do it again. In any case, I went over to school to help lindy with the november issue layout. It was frustrating to work with the ancient, and hopelessly slow computers. Had to restrain myself from pounding the machines to bits (and thus starting the second Renaissance, if you catch my drift) Finally did as much as I could, then had to leave for the optician.
HAd soem lunch at ghim moh, before proceeding to chinatown station. Terence saw me in my home clothes and asked me "pa tuo ah? (going on a date?)".
Sheesh, just because I wear my home clothes doesn't mean I am going on a date. Having said that, it is probably because of the fact I hardly go out. Hmmz....
Anyway, reaching chinatown, found the optician after some difficulty, and asked him to check my spectacles for me. the left lenses has weird patches on them, like oil was smeared on them. No amount of rubbing could remove it. I was ready to choose a new frame for my glasses when the optician said,
"Ok, 2 days later collect your glasses."
"Huh? No need to change frame?"
"No need. Did you bring your spare glasses or contacts?"
Well, I think you sorta know what was the answer. In the end, I had to take the NEL line to dhoby ghaut, change to NS line, then walk hoem from orchard. With my 900 degree eyesight. Having said that, when my glasses are off, I rely less on sight and more on other senses, so it sort of compensates and I got home safely, after which my mum chided me for being reckless. Well, I retorted, I'm home in 1 piece right? She had no answer to that.
Saturday, worn school uniform to meet the guys TM at orchard for a while, before disppearing to sengkang via the NEL. Metro CIP was ok, something like stationary jobweek and the donors stand to gain more from it. All I did was repeat,
"Good morning/afternoon ma'm/sir, would you like to make a donation to help disadvantaged children in vietnam? any amount will do. If you donate you are entitled to a free christmas bear and $300 worth of vouchers which you can use i metro."
or something along those lines. I must say it was a rather interesting experience, with brenda's clock-watching, the lousy selection of food at compass point (i had to eat macs, and you know my stance on fast food/cardboard), punch cards for in and out and ling ling pressing the wrong buttons.
I can spilt the donors to 4 types. 1, the look away even though I'm talking to them type, 2, the look at me and smile apologetically and say no type, 3, the at first not so interested to donate type, but in the end after some hard sell they will donate, and 4, the very enthusiatic types who come up to you directly and donate.
To all potential donors, please fall under types 2-4, if you don't want to donate just say so, some courtesy would be fine. I would always say thank you loudly to them who walk away just to shame them.
Among donors there are types as well, the cheapskate, which gives only a rather small amount for the things they get in return, the normal types, which donate moderate amounts, and the very generous, who give like $50, and the kind ones which do not want anything in return. There was one pregnant lady who gave $50 in 5 $10 dollars notes.
I found out the best way to "attack" the people is target those with young children by enticing them with the bear. Apparently, according to 1 customer, the bears were sold out in paragon, and she had to come all the way here just to get a bear. I find that hard to believe a bit, since we only started yesterday.
My shift ended at 4, alvin came to take over, and I made my way hoem alone as brenda and ling ling stayed back to shop at metro. Got a bear for vivien before I left.
Bored to death at home, in truth, completed all my games, and the allure of replaying MZ2 is waning. Neil is bringing the playstation over on monday, which is good, finally some real games.
Need to set aside some time to do homework, before I forget everything and O-team devours my free time.
Life today (saturday) had an interview with anthony horowitz. Go read his alex rider series. Great stuff. ANd now I know he is mad. He actually climbed a crane just to research the starting of book 2, where alex uses a crane to fish up a boat with drug makers inside it, intending to drop it it he police compound. It hleps that he punctuates his books with great one-liners, like when the boat hook snapped and the boat dropped into the home minister's office, the person who found him in the crane's seat sputtered,"Do you have any idea what you just did?"
I love this punchline. The main character, alex just shrugged and said, "I was just working on the crime figures. And I figured there has been a drop."
Ok enough rambling. Contacts are killing my eyes. Will redo my blog soon, as the end has been reached already.
And yah, the issue over the concerts have to resolved...
The feeling in my eyes must be how dinobot felt when he blasted the golden disk in "code of hero", one of the best episodes in american animation which is sadly in very bad state now. Beaten to near destruction, he still summoned enough energy to blast the disc to pieces using his eye lasers, and thus sacrificing himself.
In my opinion he just went all the way just to go out ina blaze of glory to redeem himself for switching sides earlier in the season. In any case, it was a powerful episode, which unfortuantely many people do not watch. So far I only knwo that boon kwan, mogilan and DC have watched beast wars. Sad but true.
It is late, I shall now rest my pen, and continue the next time.
(Bad translation, Iknow)
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Dissecting me
First of all, for the record, I am disappointed with revolutions. No doubt they ended the trilogy, but it stinks of a cop-out to the loyal fans. Oh well, life goes on.
The following entry was inspired by Quanhan, and most of the credit goes to him for helping me to articulate what I want to say.
It has come to the time of the year that I wish to evaluate myself over my actions and behaviours.
I guess this schooling year has been a tough and mindset-changing year, primarily because I was thrust into unknown territory after leaving the safe enclave of RI. I stumbled through the year at first, feeling down once in a while, but after I got into the scheme of things, I gradually found my way.
In this testing year, I think I have improved in many ways of myself.
I wish not to elaborate on them, as I feel let bygones be bygones, and everyday I am still learning to be a better person.
When this year finally comes to pass, I will look back at the night we spent at brandon’s house, trashing it upside down, having a fun time during orientation, planning RIO, palawan, SUTC “fun”, SARS coming to mess everything up, annual camp, campfire which was a real real blast (and I was one of the stars of the show), pesta sukan, then finally promos. Of course, the year hasn’t really ended, and these holidays mark one of the more interesting routes I am about to embark on.
It has been a trying year with many us as well as downs, but that’s behind me. All that concern me are the lessons learnt from them and how I can apply them to the future activities and to avoid making the same mistakes.
Overall, I’m still the comic book, transformers, anime and rockman (megaman) fanboy. I am still the scout. I am still the flamboyant but irreverent writer. I am still what essential is me.
But then, wisdom is only gained through experiences, and I have had a lot of them this year.
First of all, for the record, I am disappointed with revolutions. No doubt they ended the trilogy, but it stinks of a cop-out to the loyal fans. Oh well, life goes on.
The following entry was inspired by Quanhan, and most of the credit goes to him for helping me to articulate what I want to say.
It has come to the time of the year that I wish to evaluate myself over my actions and behaviours.
I guess this schooling year has been a tough and mindset-changing year, primarily because I was thrust into unknown territory after leaving the safe enclave of RI. I stumbled through the year at first, feeling down once in a while, but after I got into the scheme of things, I gradually found my way.
In this testing year, I think I have improved in many ways of myself.
I wish not to elaborate on them, as I feel let bygones be bygones, and everyday I am still learning to be a better person.
When this year finally comes to pass, I will look back at the night we spent at brandon’s house, trashing it upside down, having a fun time during orientation, planning RIO, palawan, SUTC “fun”, SARS coming to mess everything up, annual camp, campfire which was a real real blast (and I was one of the stars of the show), pesta sukan, then finally promos. Of course, the year hasn’t really ended, and these holidays mark one of the more interesting routes I am about to embark on.
It has been a trying year with many us as well as downs, but that’s behind me. All that concern me are the lessons learnt from them and how I can apply them to the future activities and to avoid making the same mistakes.
Overall, I’m still the comic book, transformers, anime and rockman (megaman) fanboy. I am still the scout. I am still the flamboyant but irreverent writer. I am still what essential is me.
But then, wisdom is only gained through experiences, and I have had a lot of them this year.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Please, just let it be over...
School is really becoming a drag these few days. Thankfully tommorrow is the last day, and after that I shall have a short breather before plunging into my various activities.
Woke up early this morning to watch man u teach a footballing lesson to rangers by comprehensively defeating them 3-0. Forlan, van Nistelrooy and Keane were outstanding.
But as a result of that, I woke up late and had to rush in vain to school. Needless to say mrs toh wasn't very happy with me.
Been reading 7 habits of effective teenagers, a good read, despite my classmates claim self-help books are a waste of time. I tend to agree, but hell if i needed to apply those skills now, then I would have been suffering from PR breakdown for a long time already.
Looking forward to revolutions, I need to know if I was right in guessing the end.
For some destressing, go read the myriad of confessions in http://grouphug.us/ , some are really sad but good time-waster if you have some to waste.
Good luck to all those taking AO subjects, plus the sec 4s taking the O's.
Holidays are here, or are they....
School is really becoming a drag these few days. Thankfully tommorrow is the last day, and after that I shall have a short breather before plunging into my various activities.
Woke up early this morning to watch man u teach a footballing lesson to rangers by comprehensively defeating them 3-0. Forlan, van Nistelrooy and Keane were outstanding.
But as a result of that, I woke up late and had to rush in vain to school. Needless to say mrs toh wasn't very happy with me.
Been reading 7 habits of effective teenagers, a good read, despite my classmates claim self-help books are a waste of time. I tend to agree, but hell if i needed to apply those skills now, then I would have been suffering from PR breakdown for a long time already.
Looking forward to revolutions, I need to know if I was right in guessing the end.
For some destressing, go read the myriad of confessions in http://grouphug.us/ , some are really sad but good time-waster if you have some to waste.
Good luck to all those taking AO subjects, plus the sec 4s taking the O's.
Holidays are here, or are they....
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Wet behind my ears
Saturday was a hectic day. Got chauffeured to RJ by dad to attend a 6 man training session. Did a little PT, sparred with amanda and steph. Hit the exact spot on her thigh where she has a bruise, or so she claims. The clock struck ten, they had to go for the metro briefing, which I gave a miss to head towards RI with albert.
Had an intellecutal discussion with albert on 156, then we reached RI and saw... no J1s. A bit peeved, I whiled the time away playing carom. My skills are so rusty that I will get lockjaw immediately if I cut myself with them. Mogilan and LaU eventually came, and we proceeded to the junior block for photo-taking. After some minutes of organising, we got the photos done and we broke for lunch.
Or so I thought. Tried to go columbarium (sp?) for lunch, only to be turned away by the security guard. So I had to settle for toasted bread, and a bandung drink which was dispensed with no straw. Had to cut a holew ith the den's scissors to drink it.
1330, the SU reassembled, and we trooped off to the swimming pool, which we had to share with the RJ polo people. We had the competitive events first, and I had the first swim in one and a half years. I realised that I do enjoy swimming after all. Let's not go there. My love-hate relationship with swimming needs a entry by itself.
Eagle won the competitive events eventually, and my swimming was rusty as well. Played polo after that, still love the game, but got tired very easily. Pulled my left calf, and had to pull out for a while. The irony was, after that 4 other J1s had cramp as well. The evils of promos have yet to be shakened off. Thanks to all the J1s who helped in making splish splash a sucess, the first activity I help organise sicne orientation. Thanks to aaron for being a great help in co-planning.
Mogilan and LaU were lubbing the SU in water rugby, so much so Brandon had red marks on his chest. Oh yah, the guys were admiring the lifeguard's 8 pack. And we took a "combined schools' swim team photo" LaU, I want a copy.
We cleared the pool at around 4, but by then the dark clouds were looming. After grabbing our stuff from the den, we headed for home, but the heavens opened and water poured forth. We were all drenched, the flimsy limited urmbrellas we had were no match for the tempest. I had chosen a convveinient time to forget to bring my urmbrella. At the traffic crossing, once the green man came on, i made a mad dash for shelter. Alvin, the King of Kings, walked slowly in the rain with no shelter at all, soaking himself totally. And he also killed his phone in the process, which he fortunately fixed it by drying it under a fan for 3 hours.
We sought shelter at S-11, and we tried our best to dry ourselves and ordered food and hot drinks. I had a hot horlicks, most of the rest ahd ban mian which i was tempted to have as well, but remembered there was food waiting for me at home. Sipped my horlicks, then I dialled home asking for a ride, but instead got an unsympathetic and sacrastic reply from mum about wanting to drive my rain gear over for me to go home in them. Oh well, I guess I deserve it.
The rain stopped in the end, brought my soggy self home and rested. Watched a bit of football, saw Forlan score a nice volley, before bringing the curtain down a very tiring day.
Sunday was reasonably relaxed, woke up slightly earlier, 9 ( i normally wake up at 1030 due to my late nights) Played Megaman Zero 2, it is living up to its bill of "the game u want to just stomp on" for its insane difficulty.
PW group came over, they tasted my mum's food, and we just went through the dry run stuff. They left as soon as they came, and I went to play a bit of halo and WC3.
Dinner was leftover lasagne from lunch, and after it had to work on presentation.
Thought of the weekend: If you organise something, try to keep your sanity. No use losing it when you will be needing it more later.
Looking forward to revolutions.
Everything that has a beginning has an end.
Saturday was a hectic day. Got chauffeured to RJ by dad to attend a 6 man training session. Did a little PT, sparred with amanda and steph. Hit the exact spot on her thigh where she has a bruise, or so she claims. The clock struck ten, they had to go for the metro briefing, which I gave a miss to head towards RI with albert.
Had an intellecutal discussion with albert on 156, then we reached RI and saw... no J1s. A bit peeved, I whiled the time away playing carom. My skills are so rusty that I will get lockjaw immediately if I cut myself with them. Mogilan and LaU eventually came, and we proceeded to the junior block for photo-taking. After some minutes of organising, we got the photos done and we broke for lunch.
Or so I thought. Tried to go columbarium (sp?) for lunch, only to be turned away by the security guard. So I had to settle for toasted bread, and a bandung drink which was dispensed with no straw. Had to cut a holew ith the den's scissors to drink it.
1330, the SU reassembled, and we trooped off to the swimming pool, which we had to share with the RJ polo people. We had the competitive events first, and I had the first swim in one and a half years. I realised that I do enjoy swimming after all. Let's not go there. My love-hate relationship with swimming needs a entry by itself.
Eagle won the competitive events eventually, and my swimming was rusty as well. Played polo after that, still love the game, but got tired very easily. Pulled my left calf, and had to pull out for a while. The irony was, after that 4 other J1s had cramp as well. The evils of promos have yet to be shakened off. Thanks to all the J1s who helped in making splish splash a sucess, the first activity I help organise sicne orientation. Thanks to aaron for being a great help in co-planning.
Mogilan and LaU were lubbing the SU in water rugby, so much so Brandon had red marks on his chest. Oh yah, the guys were admiring the lifeguard's 8 pack. And we took a "combined schools' swim team photo" LaU, I want a copy.
We cleared the pool at around 4, but by then the dark clouds were looming. After grabbing our stuff from the den, we headed for home, but the heavens opened and water poured forth. We were all drenched, the flimsy limited urmbrellas we had were no match for the tempest. I had chosen a convveinient time to forget to bring my urmbrella. At the traffic crossing, once the green man came on, i made a mad dash for shelter. Alvin, the King of Kings, walked slowly in the rain with no shelter at all, soaking himself totally. And he also killed his phone in the process, which he fortunately fixed it by drying it under a fan for 3 hours.
We sought shelter at S-11, and we tried our best to dry ourselves and ordered food and hot drinks. I had a hot horlicks, most of the rest ahd ban mian which i was tempted to have as well, but remembered there was food waiting for me at home. Sipped my horlicks, then I dialled home asking for a ride, but instead got an unsympathetic and sacrastic reply from mum about wanting to drive my rain gear over for me to go home in them. Oh well, I guess I deserve it.
The rain stopped in the end, brought my soggy self home and rested. Watched a bit of football, saw Forlan score a nice volley, before bringing the curtain down a very tiring day.
Sunday was reasonably relaxed, woke up slightly earlier, 9 ( i normally wake up at 1030 due to my late nights) Played Megaman Zero 2, it is living up to its bill of "the game u want to just stomp on" for its insane difficulty.
PW group came over, they tasted my mum's food, and we just went through the dry run stuff. They left as soon as they came, and I went to play a bit of halo and WC3.
Dinner was leftover lasagne from lunch, and after it had to work on presentation.
Thought of the weekend: If you organise something, try to keep your sanity. No use losing it when you will be needing it more later.
Looking forward to revolutions.
Everything that has a beginning has an end.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Checkpoint
Just some stuff to blog about.
OH. Was kinda fun, but in the end I found the idea of dressing the school up in gaudy colours rather gives one the wrong impression of RJC. Still, it fufilled its purpose, and all the times I spent moving boards and tables and chairs were not wasted. Was going crazy by the end of it and started speaking like an indonesian maid to hanyan. Yeah thanks to all the people helping me, shiming hanyan gideon and many others.
Results. BBBC. No A for maths, B3 for GP, deserve it because i was cocky. Hope for S paper relies on econs only. I will not subject myself to academic torture doing a S paper of a subject I don't like. Even if it means taking only 1 S paper. Like mum said, they usually don't give scholarships for law. And for every ronald tong there are at least 30 shets, so I don't mind being a shet. I don't want to make myself so miserable just for a scholarship, not worth in my opinion.
All I want is just something I can never have.
But hey, I'm contended now, so yeah, let's leave the sadness when it's due.
Sleep beckons.
( This entry is a bit off i know. Must change it another day)
Just some stuff to blog about.
OH. Was kinda fun, but in the end I found the idea of dressing the school up in gaudy colours rather gives one the wrong impression of RJC. Still, it fufilled its purpose, and all the times I spent moving boards and tables and chairs were not wasted. Was going crazy by the end of it and started speaking like an indonesian maid to hanyan. Yeah thanks to all the people helping me, shiming hanyan gideon and many others.
Results. BBBC. No A for maths, B3 for GP, deserve it because i was cocky. Hope for S paper relies on econs only. I will not subject myself to academic torture doing a S paper of a subject I don't like. Even if it means taking only 1 S paper. Like mum said, they usually don't give scholarships for law. And for every ronald tong there are at least 30 shets, so I don't mind being a shet. I don't want to make myself so miserable just for a scholarship, not worth in my opinion.
All I want is just something I can never have.
But hey, I'm contended now, so yeah, let's leave the sadness when it's due.
Sleep beckons.
( This entry is a bit off i know. Must change it another day)
Thursday, October 30, 2003
The end of an era
Sighz. My disrespect for our dear education ministry deepens. They have managed to get rid of the best economics teacher in RJC. Although I only attended only 2 of his lectures, I feel like I lost a great deal. All the years fighting the red tape and bureacracy has taken its toll on him, and now he is calling it a day, maybe for good.
I only feel immense sadness, then anger. I guess it is mainly motivated by the fact that we lost a very good lecturer, but it is a summation of my feelings against the faceless ministry that governs our education. Before this turns into a rant against the education system, I better rein my self in.
I give Mr Reeves my regards. He has taught for 14 years, and deserves his reputation. And I admire his conviction. Many people want to leave but never do so as they do not have the conviction to give it all up, but he stuck to his guns and called it a day when he wanted.
Sighz. The best "epitaph" i can give him, is simply, if I knew these were his last 2 lectures, I wouldn't have attended them, so I would never know what I would miss.
Some teachers really rile me up, some teachers leave a lasting impression on me. You only meet a few of those, and you fope you meet more of them. I know I met one.
Sighz. My disrespect for our dear education ministry deepens. They have managed to get rid of the best economics teacher in RJC. Although I only attended only 2 of his lectures, I feel like I lost a great deal. All the years fighting the red tape and bureacracy has taken its toll on him, and now he is calling it a day, maybe for good.
I only feel immense sadness, then anger. I guess it is mainly motivated by the fact that we lost a very good lecturer, but it is a summation of my feelings against the faceless ministry that governs our education. Before this turns into a rant against the education system, I better rein my self in.
I give Mr Reeves my regards. He has taught for 14 years, and deserves his reputation. And I admire his conviction. Many people want to leave but never do so as they do not have the conviction to give it all up, but he stuck to his guns and called it a day when he wanted.
Sighz. The best "epitaph" i can give him, is simply, if I knew these were his last 2 lectures, I wouldn't have attended them, so I would never know what I would miss.
Some teachers really rile me up, some teachers leave a lasting impression on me. You only meet a few of those, and you fope you meet more of them. I know I met one.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Instead of giving it up, why not give it your all?
Sighz, was moving the old desk away and scratched the floor and incurred the wrath of my mum. She really gave me the "hairdryer" treatment. Sighz. Oh well, now I have to know to be more careful.
Finished FFTA. Now looking for another purpose in life. Haha.
Borrowed King of Torts from jonathan. Quite promising, hopefully I can finish it by friday.
Things are hotting up, slowly getting to overdrive mode.
Let's hope I don't burn out in the process.
Sighz, was moving the old desk away and scratched the floor and incurred the wrath of my mum. She really gave me the "hairdryer" treatment. Sighz. Oh well, now I have to know to be more careful.
Finished FFTA. Now looking for another purpose in life. Haha.
Borrowed King of Torts from jonathan. Quite promising, hopefully I can finish it by friday.
Things are hotting up, slowly getting to overdrive mode.
Let's hope I don't burn out in the process.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Well, not all things go your way...
Woke up early, had to see Dr Rajah. Hitched a ride from Dad to the clinic, and a beaming Dr Rajah checked me up. He said I was suffering from a tension induced headache, and told me to learn to relax and do not use the computer for too long. Slunk away quickly to avoid my grandparents who were marketing seeing me, as I do not want to feel the brunt of their nagging lest if they found I went tot eh doctor again. Mum grumbled that what Dr Rajah had said was what she had said and I ignored. I sheepishly agreed.
Lunch was dumplings, good stuff. Played a little FFTA, got all the totemas. Then I went out to Orchard Library hoping to grab a book, but nothing caught my eye and it was too crowded. In the end I was reading some funny econs book about Malthus talking cock to Ricardo. Went back home because I realised I didn't bring along my medicine, which I didn't take in the end.
Walked down to cuppage to join the guys for a by of LAN. was using Thomas Malthus as my nick, and as usual we were at it again, although this time less vulgar. Fabain kept on flashing me, his own teammate, which allowed Jun Seng the chance to kill 3 of us at 1 go. Damm smart. Adrian d*** shot me at point blank range but I still got him with a head shot with a desert eagle. Jun Seng headshoted himself with his own grenade. Go figure.
After LAN, we proceeded to Mogilan's house for his deepavali treat. It was raining cats and dogs, and it got heavier as we veered from HDB block to HDB block in the pouring tempest, wetting my prestos, lower parts of my pants, and my bag. Alvin tried to splash kenneth by stepping into a puddle, but only succeeded to splash fabian who was sharing the urmbrella with him.
After that soggy adventure, we made our way into mogilan's house, and proceeded to take turns on HALO on legendary difficulty. We played a bit, then had dinner.
Dinner was great, traditional indian fare, which was damm nice. Mogilan had to guide edwin on how to come to his house, an act that lasted 15 minutes. Murugan was lubbing the fish head upside down.
Halfway through dinner, nick and jun seng had to leave because they had to go and watch the mayday concert with *ahem*. Must find out details.
After dinner, we just talked cock, with LaU telling us his blind man story and his class videos, and I as usual being the one who was out-of-point and being GLed. Not that i'm not used to it.
Some of the stuff we said were rather contrevesial, so less said better. All in all it was fun to banter and GL each other, even if the target was always me and me only.
Left for home with a cup of ice cream in tow, thanks to mogilan's mother. I msut really thank them for their hospitality. Jay, alvin, murugan and I went home while the rest went to watch a movie. When we reached the train platform, we went up the escalator. Alvin was behind me. I turned in front to look for something, then when I turned back he was gone. Jay didn't know where he was as well. He smsed alvin, who said go ahead first, he had something to settle. We speculated that he wen to defacate, but he replied negative, and also said he would be in the next train that was coming. We hypothesized that he got on the wrong train, and I started laughing. We boarded our train, then on further prompting trhough sms, he revealed " he saw a chiobu and was stalking her", in his own words. Well, he is the King after all.
Went home to see Man United go dwon 3-1 to fulham at home. Damm pissed.
Typing this entry now, I feel much better, head's fine.
Tommorrow must get my new bookshelves up.
And monday is the moment of truth.
May I prosper in the face of danger.
Woke up early, had to see Dr Rajah. Hitched a ride from Dad to the clinic, and a beaming Dr Rajah checked me up. He said I was suffering from a tension induced headache, and told me to learn to relax and do not use the computer for too long. Slunk away quickly to avoid my grandparents who were marketing seeing me, as I do not want to feel the brunt of their nagging lest if they found I went tot eh doctor again. Mum grumbled that what Dr Rajah had said was what she had said and I ignored. I sheepishly agreed.
Lunch was dumplings, good stuff. Played a little FFTA, got all the totemas. Then I went out to Orchard Library hoping to grab a book, but nothing caught my eye and it was too crowded. In the end I was reading some funny econs book about Malthus talking cock to Ricardo. Went back home because I realised I didn't bring along my medicine, which I didn't take in the end.
Walked down to cuppage to join the guys for a by of LAN. was using Thomas Malthus as my nick, and as usual we were at it again, although this time less vulgar. Fabain kept on flashing me, his own teammate, which allowed Jun Seng the chance to kill 3 of us at 1 go. Damm smart. Adrian d*** shot me at point blank range but I still got him with a head shot with a desert eagle. Jun Seng headshoted himself with his own grenade. Go figure.
After LAN, we proceeded to Mogilan's house for his deepavali treat. It was raining cats and dogs, and it got heavier as we veered from HDB block to HDB block in the pouring tempest, wetting my prestos, lower parts of my pants, and my bag. Alvin tried to splash kenneth by stepping into a puddle, but only succeeded to splash fabian who was sharing the urmbrella with him.
After that soggy adventure, we made our way into mogilan's house, and proceeded to take turns on HALO on legendary difficulty. We played a bit, then had dinner.
Dinner was great, traditional indian fare, which was damm nice. Mogilan had to guide edwin on how to come to his house, an act that lasted 15 minutes. Murugan was lubbing the fish head upside down.
Halfway through dinner, nick and jun seng had to leave because they had to go and watch the mayday concert with *ahem*. Must find out details.
After dinner, we just talked cock, with LaU telling us his blind man story and his class videos, and I as usual being the one who was out-of-point and being GLed. Not that i'm not used to it.
Some of the stuff we said were rather contrevesial, so less said better. All in all it was fun to banter and GL each other, even if the target was always me and me only.
Left for home with a cup of ice cream in tow, thanks to mogilan's mother. I msut really thank them for their hospitality. Jay, alvin, murugan and I went home while the rest went to watch a movie. When we reached the train platform, we went up the escalator. Alvin was behind me. I turned in front to look for something, then when I turned back he was gone. Jay didn't know where he was as well. He smsed alvin, who said go ahead first, he had something to settle. We speculated that he wen to defacate, but he replied negative, and also said he would be in the next train that was coming. We hypothesized that he got on the wrong train, and I started laughing. We boarded our train, then on further prompting trhough sms, he revealed " he saw a chiobu and was stalking her", in his own words. Well, he is the King after all.
Went home to see Man United go dwon 3-1 to fulham at home. Damm pissed.
Typing this entry now, I feel much better, head's fine.
Tommorrow must get my new bookshelves up.
And monday is the moment of truth.
May I prosper in the face of danger.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Of what may happen
For starters, my head still hurts, after 6 days. Time to see the doctor. Sheesh. Must be the 6th time I visited him this year. Dr Rajah must love me a lot for the revenue i give him.
Deepavali, spent most of it asleep, nursing the stupid headache, shopping for groceries, having a large seafood lunch, getting knocked out by my father's qi. Was a real harrowing experience, like fainting while standing for founder's day. THe whole day was destroyed by my blasted head.
Open house was fun, but eugene complaing that some of the guides were looking at neighbourhood school people with incredulous stares as though they will never come to RJC. The ugly head of elitism has reared itself again. Had fun guiding a few people around, but was really feeling whacked after that, started to mutter nonsense to nick and adrian. Was acting like a poor indonesian maid to hanyan, much to her bemusement.
Been watching the ( pm show on channel 8 the last 2 days. For those who watch it, I'm not saying that it is good, just that everytime I see chen hanwei's character clashing with his siblings, I wonder if I'll grow up and become like him, having good intentions but never choosing the right way to express them. It is one of my greatest fears I'll grow up and become someone like that.
We all have a choice of the path we want to take, and I intend not to take that path...
For starters, my head still hurts, after 6 days. Time to see the doctor. Sheesh. Must be the 6th time I visited him this year. Dr Rajah must love me a lot for the revenue i give him.
Deepavali, spent most of it asleep, nursing the stupid headache, shopping for groceries, having a large seafood lunch, getting knocked out by my father's qi. Was a real harrowing experience, like fainting while standing for founder's day. THe whole day was destroyed by my blasted head.
Open house was fun, but eugene complaing that some of the guides were looking at neighbourhood school people with incredulous stares as though they will never come to RJC. The ugly head of elitism has reared itself again. Had fun guiding a few people around, but was really feeling whacked after that, started to mutter nonsense to nick and adrian. Was acting like a poor indonesian maid to hanyan, much to her bemusement.
Been watching the ( pm show on channel 8 the last 2 days. For those who watch it, I'm not saying that it is good, just that everytime I see chen hanwei's character clashing with his siblings, I wonder if I'll grow up and become like him, having good intentions but never choosing the right way to express them. It is one of my greatest fears I'll grow up and become someone like that.
We all have a choice of the path we want to take, and I intend not to take that path...
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
When we grow out of our childish shell...
For those people who actually come here, I apologise for my absence due to the addictive nature of FFTA. It sucks you in and spits you out only in the wee hours of the night. Then you realise you have to get ready for OH prep the next day and you rush to do it.
The last few days have been bad and good. I have this stupid lightning bolt of head pain, which zaps me once in a while. It hurt like hell on sunday, but it is slightly better only now. Haiz. This must happen after the exams.
OH prep is fun, working with hanyan and gideon brought its far share of laughs, especially wheeling boards here and there and watching them fall for hanyan, literally. I may consider a home mover as an alternative vocation and receiving so much training in these areas.
Monday's econs paper was fine, 2 questions which yangqi asked me in the morning came out, rather interestingly. Mucked around before going home to cut my hair, now it looks more decent.
Tuesday was more of the same, except PW really really sucks because the stupid people want it like an academic paper. With all the stupid bibliographies, paginations, citations and what nots, it is no wonder modern science is so screwed up now as the scientists spend too much time doing anal stuff like this. I mean, are you going to penalise me for exceeding the word limit by 34 words? How anal is that?
Today was fine, still moving tables etc, quite boring. But at least something quite good happened to me. Which I feel, in a twisted way, wished it did not happen.
Tommorrow is open house, a respite before i go and collect my results.
Sighz, I know I will not get any As. But just let me do well enough to live.
For those people who actually come here, I apologise for my absence due to the addictive nature of FFTA. It sucks you in and spits you out only in the wee hours of the night. Then you realise you have to get ready for OH prep the next day and you rush to do it.
The last few days have been bad and good. I have this stupid lightning bolt of head pain, which zaps me once in a while. It hurt like hell on sunday, but it is slightly better only now. Haiz. This must happen after the exams.
OH prep is fun, working with hanyan and gideon brought its far share of laughs, especially wheeling boards here and there and watching them fall for hanyan, literally. I may consider a home mover as an alternative vocation and receiving so much training in these areas.
Monday's econs paper was fine, 2 questions which yangqi asked me in the morning came out, rather interestingly. Mucked around before going home to cut my hair, now it looks more decent.
Tuesday was more of the same, except PW really really sucks because the stupid people want it like an academic paper. With all the stupid bibliographies, paginations, citations and what nots, it is no wonder modern science is so screwed up now as the scientists spend too much time doing anal stuff like this. I mean, are you going to penalise me for exceeding the word limit by 34 words? How anal is that?
Today was fine, still moving tables etc, quite boring. But at least something quite good happened to me. Which I feel, in a twisted way, wished it did not happen.
Tommorrow is open house, a respite before i go and collect my results.
Sighz, I know I will not get any As. But just let me do well enough to live.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
The End Is Nigh
Welcome back me.
It has been one nightmare after another, but somehow I managed to wake up. There's still 1 more paper on monday, but that is for monday.
I'll make this longer as I have been away for sometime.
Promos, well, only if someone up there loves me a lot will I do well. Otherwise it will be another session of "zhao yang can do much better, mrs Ng" which my mum will interpret it as I once again never put in my 100%. More on that quirk of mine another day.
Having some semblance of life back, been playing final fantasy tactics advance, very very addictive. Wanting to play megaman zero 2 as well.
Borrowed life for rent from don. Need more CDs now that kazaa is kaput.
My brother blew the other computer's power unit and thus he wants to invade this computer. Had to fight him off to use it.
RJ open house on thursday, something to look forward before the day of reckoning is upon us.
I think I don't want any S papers, they won't help me in my pursuit to be a lawyer.
Mum got me a guy's contact, if I'm interested I can go for real job-shadowing in a law firm. But she warns me this is the REAL thing, meaning he intends to make me swim in paperwork.
See if I can squeeze sometime out for that.
So many commitments, so little time.
That is for later.
Now for FFTA.
Have fun people.
Welcome back me.
It has been one nightmare after another, but somehow I managed to wake up. There's still 1 more paper on monday, but that is for monday.
I'll make this longer as I have been away for sometime.
Promos, well, only if someone up there loves me a lot will I do well. Otherwise it will be another session of "zhao yang can do much better, mrs Ng" which my mum will interpret it as I once again never put in my 100%. More on that quirk of mine another day.
Having some semblance of life back, been playing final fantasy tactics advance, very very addictive. Wanting to play megaman zero 2 as well.
Borrowed life for rent from don. Need more CDs now that kazaa is kaput.
My brother blew the other computer's power unit and thus he wants to invade this computer. Had to fight him off to use it.
RJ open house on thursday, something to look forward before the day of reckoning is upon us.
I think I don't want any S papers, they won't help me in my pursuit to be a lawyer.
Mum got me a guy's contact, if I'm interested I can go for real job-shadowing in a law firm. But she warns me this is the REAL thing, meaning he intends to make me swim in paperwork.
See if I can squeeze sometime out for that.
So many commitments, so little time.
That is for later.
Now for FFTA.
Have fun people.
Monday, October 13, 2003
Weight of expectation
I really wish there was never such a thing called exams. I am living a life devoid of all excitement.
Seeing file after file, TYS after TYS stacked up on my desk, the rockman exe episodes watched instead of studying, the feeling of hunger I always get at 12 am, which signals me to go get some food, the radio that kept me company for hours and hours into the dark of the night, the beer mug of a cup that I drink water from, the stress-induced stomachache I got from the mock maths paper which I got a pathetic 60 for, the scolding I got from my parent and grandparents for getting so stressed out and get that stomachache, the sheerness of the task of cramming all we were taught in 1 year in a few weeks.
And still the nightmare goes on.
But like all nightmares, you wake up from them.
Let's hope when I do wake up, it will be a much better existence than now.
I really wish there was never such a thing called exams. I am living a life devoid of all excitement.
Seeing file after file, TYS after TYS stacked up on my desk, the rockman exe episodes watched instead of studying, the feeling of hunger I always get at 12 am, which signals me to go get some food, the radio that kept me company for hours and hours into the dark of the night, the beer mug of a cup that I drink water from, the stress-induced stomachache I got from the mock maths paper which I got a pathetic 60 for, the scolding I got from my parent and grandparents for getting so stressed out and get that stomachache, the sheerness of the task of cramming all we were taught in 1 year in a few weeks.
And still the nightmare goes on.
But like all nightmares, you wake up from them.
Let's hope when I do wake up, it will be a much better existence than now.
Sunday, October 12, 2003
White Flag
I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
I'll tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?
I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused but nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
I'm not giving up yet, there ain't no white flag being raised. I'm going to nail you good promos, just you wait.
I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
I'll tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?
I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused but nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
I'm not giving up yet, there ain't no white flag being raised. I'm going to nail you good promos, just you wait.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
"I have...awakened"
You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.
What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
I am the One. I once lived in the world where the wool has been pulled over my eyes by teachers. They strap us down with horrible contraptions called exams, which suck our brain power and life force as sustanence for themselves. I am the one that shall lead the rebellion. I shall the be the first one to fail, so we will not be subjected to their tyranny. Join me, in our fight for our freedom, other repressed students out there.
Ok, stress getting to me. If any teacher saw this take it in good humor please. And don't mark me down for this.
Tommorrow's the day.
Let's do it.
You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.
What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
I am the One. I once lived in the world where the wool has been pulled over my eyes by teachers. They strap us down with horrible contraptions called exams, which suck our brain power and life force as sustanence for themselves. I am the one that shall lead the rebellion. I shall the be the first one to fail, so we will not be subjected to their tyranny. Join me, in our fight for our freedom, other repressed students out there.
Ok, stress getting to me. If any teacher saw this take it in good humor please. And don't mark me down for this.
Tommorrow's the day.
Let's do it.
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Failure is not an option
Promos coming...
I feel like a general in charge of a small army, waiting the enemy armada to descend upon us, as we shall vailiantly fight back.
But I know I can do it.
I must.
but for now, just to remind myself of stuff, here is a checklist for my after-promo activites (nick sorry for using your list)
holiday stuff after the promos (official):
- Open House
- Metro SIF at Seng Kang
- Group Traning Camp (venture route)
- Choosing Postholders meetings
- Anniversary Planning
- Scholastic Aptitude Test (argh, a necessary evil)
- O-team
- job shadowing
- studying? I can try...
holiday stuff after the promos (unofficial, aka the improve myself projects):
- family holiday
- learn networking and wire up the 3 computers and laptop
- learn some more home economics
- possibly add on a few more chapters of reverse darwinism
- Matrix: Revolutions (5/11)
- ROTK? I haven't even watch FOTR
- restart my futile attempts to play the guitar?
- do a music video? i need more clips first...
- watch more anime!
will add more as i remember.
but before I reach there I must study hard.
Good luck guys!
Promos coming...
I feel like a general in charge of a small army, waiting the enemy armada to descend upon us, as we shall vailiantly fight back.
But I know I can do it.
I must.
but for now, just to remind myself of stuff, here is a checklist for my after-promo activites (nick sorry for using your list)
holiday stuff after the promos (official):
- Open House
- Metro SIF at Seng Kang
- Group Traning Camp (venture route)
- Choosing Postholders meetings
- Anniversary Planning
- Scholastic Aptitude Test (argh, a necessary evil)
- O-team
- job shadowing
- studying? I can try...
holiday stuff after the promos (unofficial, aka the improve myself projects):
- family holiday
- learn networking and wire up the 3 computers and laptop
- learn some more home economics
- possibly add on a few more chapters of reverse darwinism
- Matrix: Revolutions (5/11)
- ROTK? I haven't even watch FOTR
- restart my futile attempts to play the guitar?
- do a music video? i need more clips first...
- watch more anime!
will add more as i remember.
but before I reach there I must study hard.
Good luck guys!
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Diary of a dragon prince
Ok I'm taking some time off mugging to crap here.
First, to rebut jun seng's maximum and minimum theory. I just do what I want, I may look funny but hell lah, most of you know I don't really care about appearances, especially mine.
Second, about the poor standard of english among jc students, I must say the survey overplayed the results. A few grammatical and spelling errors here and there a bad student does not make, rather I believe it is lack of proper exposure to the language. Which brings us back to the singlish debate as usual.
My stand is simple, use singlish only when you know how to speak proper english.
Which brings us to the speak chinese campaigh. I think it is a zai idea as it has motivated me to try and improve on my chinese (stop laughing adrian and nick) but my self-improving course will only start after promos.
Which reminds me. Go read the diary of the dragon prince on talkingcock. Very hilarious.
Which brings me back to why am I blogging when I need to study????
Ok I'm taking some time off mugging to crap here.
First, to rebut jun seng's maximum and minimum theory. I just do what I want, I may look funny but hell lah, most of you know I don't really care about appearances, especially mine.
Second, about the poor standard of english among jc students, I must say the survey overplayed the results. A few grammatical and spelling errors here and there a bad student does not make, rather I believe it is lack of proper exposure to the language. Which brings us back to the singlish debate as usual.
My stand is simple, use singlish only when you know how to speak proper english.
Which brings us to the speak chinese campaigh. I think it is a zai idea as it has motivated me to try and improve on my chinese (stop laughing adrian and nick) but my self-improving course will only start after promos.
Which reminds me. Go read the diary of the dragon prince on talkingcock. Very hilarious.
Which brings me back to why am I blogging when I need to study????
Wake up. School. Mug. Sleep. Repeat till end of promos
Argh... I was never a sit down and absorb knowledge sort, so I am really struggling to revise. My attention span is very short, so I really have to force myself to study. So I would be cooped up in my room, with only 933 and my books for company.
Paying the price for not being very consistent throughout the year, but a good thing I cleared bio, so cleared most doubts. Still need to revise maths.
10 more days. Time is really really short now. Trying to make use of every minute I got.
Which begs the question, what am I doing here, blogging at 1230 am?
Hang in there guys and girls, we get through this and then we will have the A level's to look forward too, in 8 months time, or SAT in 2 months time for me.
Mug mug mug. Sheesh. We spend too much of lives trying to abosrb knowledge you are unlikely to use in daily life, or in your future profession.
I can draw a tangent to a curve! Wow! Neat! Wonderful! But how is it relevant in our life? Like I am going to find the tangent of a MRT track or the car's steering wheel.
Haha, I should stop ranting.
Mug hard guys, and don't forget, in the immortal words of kenneth "lampa" teo, to go and have some fun once in a while. Otherwise, you will and most definately go mad.
Argh... I was never a sit down and absorb knowledge sort, so I am really struggling to revise. My attention span is very short, so I really have to force myself to study. So I would be cooped up in my room, with only 933 and my books for company.
Paying the price for not being very consistent throughout the year, but a good thing I cleared bio, so cleared most doubts. Still need to revise maths.
10 more days. Time is really really short now. Trying to make use of every minute I got.
Which begs the question, what am I doing here, blogging at 1230 am?
Hang in there guys and girls, we get through this and then we will have the A level's to look forward too, in 8 months time, or SAT in 2 months time for me.
Mug mug mug. Sheesh. We spend too much of lives trying to abosrb knowledge you are unlikely to use in daily life, or in your future profession.
I can draw a tangent to a curve! Wow! Neat! Wonderful! But how is it relevant in our life? Like I am going to find the tangent of a MRT track or the car's steering wheel.
Haha, I should stop ranting.
Mug hard guys, and don't forget, in the immortal words of kenneth "lampa" teo, to go and have some fun once in a while. Otherwise, you will and most definately go mad.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Individualistic aspirations
Taking a break from all the mugging. 16 days to go and I hope I am doing enough fast enough.
Everyday nowadays is more or less the same pattern, wake up, school, study, sleep. I feel more like a machine. Life has become very very boring, most of the time I am cooped up in my study room studying with only the radio for company.
Oh well, just slightly over 2 weeks the promos will start, and in 26 days later it will all be a memory. I just hope the reprecussions and fallout will not be disatrous.
Little tidbits about the my rather slow life.
Signed up for job shaodwing, fighting for the only space in a legal firm. Sucks. I really want to go. Another step to my dream.
Had o-team "meeting", all I can say it was not a veryhappy experience for me. But more of it another day, maybe I was just being macham. Didn't offend anyone, if you're thinking. Something more introspective.
Scratched my discman remote screen. Was going to happen sooner or later.
Nothing else.
Can't wait for all these to be over. Holidays will be packed no doubt but I prefer cca activities over studies anytime.
I guess I am always a person with a strong individualistic streak. It is hard for people to work with me, and hard for me to work with other people. That has to change. No man is an island, in the future when I work in society I would have no luxury of choosing project members to work with.
Guess that for a while. I may update sporadically, but with short entries.
Good luck people, all the best.
And to all the people out there, promos maybe important, but do spare a thought to people who contribute to the school as well. A simple good morning to the cleaning lady is nothing to us, but it sure helps to brighten up anyone's day.
Taking a break from all the mugging. 16 days to go and I hope I am doing enough fast enough.
Everyday nowadays is more or less the same pattern, wake up, school, study, sleep. I feel more like a machine. Life has become very very boring, most of the time I am cooped up in my study room studying with only the radio for company.
Oh well, just slightly over 2 weeks the promos will start, and in 26 days later it will all be a memory. I just hope the reprecussions and fallout will not be disatrous.
Little tidbits about the my rather slow life.
Signed up for job shaodwing, fighting for the only space in a legal firm. Sucks. I really want to go. Another step to my dream.
Had o-team "meeting", all I can say it was not a veryhappy experience for me. But more of it another day, maybe I was just being macham. Didn't offend anyone, if you're thinking. Something more introspective.
Scratched my discman remote screen. Was going to happen sooner or later.
Nothing else.
Can't wait for all these to be over. Holidays will be packed no doubt but I prefer cca activities over studies anytime.
I guess I am always a person with a strong individualistic streak. It is hard for people to work with me, and hard for me to work with other people. That has to change. No man is an island, in the future when I work in society I would have no luxury of choosing project members to work with.
Guess that for a while. I may update sporadically, but with short entries.
Good luck people, all the best.
And to all the people out there, promos maybe important, but do spare a thought to people who contribute to the school as well. A simple good morning to the cleaning lady is nothing to us, but it sure helps to brighten up anyone's day.
Taking a breather
Haha this pic is one of my favourites. It was taken without our knowledge by xinkai, and we only saw it when the patrol logs came out for that year.
It seems that I am arguing with albert over something, and jun seng looks agitated and wants to cut in, but is being restrained by nick, who has a cunning look on his face. Mogilan looks pissed at our argument and starts to turn away in disgust, while murugan is busy polishing the carrom board, not caring about our argument. LaU is the half a face in the background.
Happy mugging guys.
Haha this pic is one of my favourites. It was taken without our knowledge by xinkai, and we only saw it when the patrol logs came out for that year.
It seems that I am arguing with albert over something, and jun seng looks agitated and wants to cut in, but is being restrained by nick, who has a cunning look on his face. Mogilan looks pissed at our argument and starts to turn away in disgust, while murugan is busy polishing the carrom board, not caring about our argument. LaU is the half a face in the background.
Happy mugging guys.
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Killing a passerby to test a sword
I think this is the longest period I have been away from blogging. I think I can attribute that to my try to sleep early efforts.
Wednesday was the dialogue session, the less I say about it the better. Let's just say the way the "admin" does things does not really inspire much passion in me. Got so fed up over the loss of mugging time that I went to eat with esther in mcdonalds. Had to endure yangqi's gloating the next day over the the amount of work he did, which I didn't do as I went to sleep immediately, felt so tired.
Thursday, borrowed soper, good stuff, less wordy as compared to campbell, and more to the point. Didn't sleep in any of the lectures, and understood everything taught. A rare occurance in my school life. The stars were somehow aligned in my favour.
Friday, played soccer, our class played better than usual, but I missed 6 glit-edged chances and well, we lost. And next week we're playing 6D. Macham great.
Saturday, had med fac meeting, played frozen throne. Started to win games, but must fight the addiction to it. Studied respiration until I understood it.
The title came from one the rockman exe episodes I watched, rather interesting, want to know how to say it in japanese.
Yu Jian is damm nice.
I taught shiming how to download files from irc, and he got kicked in 5 mins for flooding.
PW sucks.
Ran out of random thoughts.
Another time.
I think this is the longest period I have been away from blogging. I think I can attribute that to my try to sleep early efforts.
Wednesday was the dialogue session, the less I say about it the better. Let's just say the way the "admin" does things does not really inspire much passion in me. Got so fed up over the loss of mugging time that I went to eat with esther in mcdonalds. Had to endure yangqi's gloating the next day over the the amount of work he did, which I didn't do as I went to sleep immediately, felt so tired.
Thursday, borrowed soper, good stuff, less wordy as compared to campbell, and more to the point. Didn't sleep in any of the lectures, and understood everything taught. A rare occurance in my school life. The stars were somehow aligned in my favour.
Friday, played soccer, our class played better than usual, but I missed 6 glit-edged chances and well, we lost. And next week we're playing 6D. Macham great.
Saturday, had med fac meeting, played frozen throne. Started to win games, but must fight the addiction to it. Studied respiration until I understood it.
The title came from one the rockman exe episodes I watched, rather interesting, want to know how to say it in japanese.
Yu Jian is damm nice.
I taught shiming how to download files from irc, and he got kicked in 5 mins for flooding.
PW sucks.
Ran out of random thoughts.
Another time.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
The Runaway Verdict
Another day, another 7-8 hours spent in school trying desperately to absorb what is being taught to us.
Started on bio revision, did 3 chapters.
Tommorrow there's still that forum which I can't escape from, sighz.
Oh well, for those who watched "Let him have it!" today for GP, here's a piece I wrote about how I would defend him if I were his lawyer. I'll try to amend it soon as I think there are many holes in it, so bear with me for a while.
How I would defend Derek Bentley
1) I would not let him testify at all. It is obvious that he is incapable of answering the prosecutor’s questions competently. After all, he is mentally handicapped and therefore could not protect himself from the loaded questions the prosecutor was asking. Not having him testify may cause the jury think he has something to hide as he is afraid of being cross-examined, but that can be easily countered by the fact the events can be easily told to the court through the testimony of Craig and Fairfox, the detective, and also by pointing to the fact that Derek is mentally unfit to take the stand. After all, in this case, the truth is the best defence for Derek.
2) I would mention the fact that Derek is epileptic. Strangely enough, this was never mentioned in court.
3) The prosecution case lies on the fact that he had coerced Craig into shooting, by saying “Let him have it.” However, the fact that the phrase has a double meaning, shows reasonable doubt. Furthermore, the later actions of Derek showed that he meant no harm to the police officers. This argument was unfortunately unable to hold as Derek had contradicted himself by saying he never said such words, which threw his credibility into question. This point also furthers proves why Derek should not testify.
4) I would point out that Derek did not possess the weapon that killed PC Miles. His actions later proved that he had no intention to kill.
5) I would argue that Derek is guilty of armed robbery, maybe even accessory to murder. But willful murder is hard to accept, especially he was not the one who fired the gun.
6) Lastly, I would (in The Practice speak) Plan B Craig. That is, arrow Craig for being the cause of Derek’s actions. I can prove that Craig bullied Derek into following his actions, and given that Derek had the intelligence of an 11-year-old, he acted as an 11-year-old would, not as an adult. The night of the murder, Craig had visited Derek. This showed that Craig was in a sense, leading Derek on, goading him to commit the crime. And like any 11-year-old facing taunts, Derek did not walk away like an adult, instead he tried to prove Craig wrong. Craig had deliberately made use of the fact that Derek had low IQ, thus manipulating him. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that Derek had been influenced to a certain extent by Craig, and the greater blame should rest on Craig, who was not repentant for his actions.
Oh yah, good luck to all sec 4s having prelims. I was there before and I know it sucks but it will be all over in like 2 more months.
Just one last final note, I shall quote a part in the Practice but I forgot who exactly said it. It goes,
"Why do you do what you do, letting guilty criminals get back on the street?"
"Because I live in the hope that I set more of the innocent free than the guilty."
Another day, another 7-8 hours spent in school trying desperately to absorb what is being taught to us.
Started on bio revision, did 3 chapters.
Tommorrow there's still that forum which I can't escape from, sighz.
Oh well, for those who watched "Let him have it!" today for GP, here's a piece I wrote about how I would defend him if I were his lawyer. I'll try to amend it soon as I think there are many holes in it, so bear with me for a while.
How I would defend Derek Bentley
1) I would not let him testify at all. It is obvious that he is incapable of answering the prosecutor’s questions competently. After all, he is mentally handicapped and therefore could not protect himself from the loaded questions the prosecutor was asking. Not having him testify may cause the jury think he has something to hide as he is afraid of being cross-examined, but that can be easily countered by the fact the events can be easily told to the court through the testimony of Craig and Fairfox, the detective, and also by pointing to the fact that Derek is mentally unfit to take the stand. After all, in this case, the truth is the best defence for Derek.
2) I would mention the fact that Derek is epileptic. Strangely enough, this was never mentioned in court.
3) The prosecution case lies on the fact that he had coerced Craig into shooting, by saying “Let him have it.” However, the fact that the phrase has a double meaning, shows reasonable doubt. Furthermore, the later actions of Derek showed that he meant no harm to the police officers. This argument was unfortunately unable to hold as Derek had contradicted himself by saying he never said such words, which threw his credibility into question. This point also furthers proves why Derek should not testify.
4) I would point out that Derek did not possess the weapon that killed PC Miles. His actions later proved that he had no intention to kill.
5) I would argue that Derek is guilty of armed robbery, maybe even accessory to murder. But willful murder is hard to accept, especially he was not the one who fired the gun.
6) Lastly, I would (in The Practice speak) Plan B Craig. That is, arrow Craig for being the cause of Derek’s actions. I can prove that Craig bullied Derek into following his actions, and given that Derek had the intelligence of an 11-year-old, he acted as an 11-year-old would, not as an adult. The night of the murder, Craig had visited Derek. This showed that Craig was in a sense, leading Derek on, goading him to commit the crime. And like any 11-year-old facing taunts, Derek did not walk away like an adult, instead he tried to prove Craig wrong. Craig had deliberately made use of the fact that Derek had low IQ, thus manipulating him. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that Derek had been influenced to a certain extent by Craig, and the greater blame should rest on Craig, who was not repentant for his actions.
Oh yah, good luck to all sec 4s having prelims. I was there before and I know it sucks but it will be all over in like 2 more months.
Just one last final note, I shall quote a part in the Practice but I forgot who exactly said it. It goes,
"Why do you do what you do, letting guilty criminals get back on the street?"
"Because I live in the hope that I set more of the innocent free than the guilty."
Monday, September 15, 2003
4 weeks to Normandy
I'm going to sleep at 11, an achievement of sorts for me.
Today was fine I guess, for a return to school, but I felt like I never left it. Sure most of you feel that way.
Table tennis was a riot, slept at the end of bio lec again, drew leaf cells for bio prac.
Oh I acquired a new disciple of sorts.
And like that another day passes. Strangely rnough it feels like any other day. I guess that is life for a hectic student. You get swarmed with work that you rarely have time to read a sci-fi thriller or legal mystery, write a short story or poem, play some sports, or even a simple game of cards with your siblings. And if we do do so, we are reprimanded for wasting time.
Sighz. Seriously we are all slaves to our busy schedules.
Argh, unless to complain. 4 weeks to the landing on Normandy, the opening of the 2nd front. Better buck up. Leave the introspection for after promos when I are sad enough to write something more coherent.
One should always make the time to enjoy the finer aspects of life, like the scenery at night at Harbourfront...
I'm going to sleep at 11, an achievement of sorts for me.
Today was fine I guess, for a return to school, but I felt like I never left it. Sure most of you feel that way.
Table tennis was a riot, slept at the end of bio lec again, drew leaf cells for bio prac.
Oh I acquired a new disciple of sorts.
And like that another day passes. Strangely rnough it feels like any other day. I guess that is life for a hectic student. You get swarmed with work that you rarely have time to read a sci-fi thriller or legal mystery, write a short story or poem, play some sports, or even a simple game of cards with your siblings. And if we do do so, we are reprimanded for wasting time.
Sighz. Seriously we are all slaves to our busy schedules.
Argh, unless to complain. 4 weeks to the landing on Normandy, the opening of the 2nd front. Better buck up. Leave the introspection for after promos when I are sad enough to write something more coherent.
One should always make the time to enjoy the finer aspects of life, like the scenery at night at Harbourfront...
Sunday, September 14, 2003
You are Peace.
You are at peace with your self and the world
around you. You have balance in your life and
exude tranquility from every pore of your body.
People are constantly asking you "what is
your secret?"
What Emotion Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Same as jay again... This is becoming too coincidental...
"The Second Coming"
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand."
"The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats.
I have never put this despite it being my signature. Here it is. A very nice poem.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand."
"The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats.
I have never put this despite it being my signature. Here it is. A very nice poem.
Procrastination is the greatest sin of a student.
And I would know. But I still let myself fall into its trap.
But how good it felt...Muhahaha...
Spent the whole of today downloading Rockman EXE, watching it, playing frozen throne etc.
Told myself I needed a break away from the incessant mugging, and therefore thought might as well rest the tired brain for a while.
Watched robots in disguise on channel i, after mog called me up to tell me.
Played frozen throne for the first time. Have been figthing the temptation to play it ever since brendan bought it, which is like 2 months. With the first click of the mouse, I was hooked, although I suck at it. Haha. Killed like 5 hours on it. Not consecutively though.
Read a bit of Prey as well. Very intriguing.
Watched Van the Man bag a brace to beat Charlton, Ronaldo was superb, setting Solskjaer up for a great chance which he fluffed somehow.
Oh yah, anyone with the "turn left, turn right" book can lend me? After promos that is. I want to brush up on my hapless chinese.
It's sunday already. Oh darn still have to scan the photos. And PW.
Sighz.
Cycle of laziness is complete.
And I would know. But I still let myself fall into its trap.
But how good it felt...Muhahaha...
Spent the whole of today downloading Rockman EXE, watching it, playing frozen throne etc.
Told myself I needed a break away from the incessant mugging, and therefore thought might as well rest the tired brain for a while.
Watched robots in disguise on channel i, after mog called me up to tell me.
Played frozen throne for the first time. Have been figthing the temptation to play it ever since brendan bought it, which is like 2 months. With the first click of the mouse, I was hooked, although I suck at it. Haha. Killed like 5 hours on it. Not consecutively though.
Read a bit of Prey as well. Very intriguing.
Watched Van the Man bag a brace to beat Charlton, Ronaldo was superb, setting Solskjaer up for a great chance which he fluffed somehow.
Oh yah, anyone with the "turn left, turn right" book can lend me? After promos that is. I want to brush up on my hapless chinese.
It's sunday already. Oh darn still have to scan the photos. And PW.
Sighz.
Cycle of laziness is complete.
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Friday, September 12, 2003
Normal service is resumed
Well, the good news is that the drilling has more or less died down. I think they destroyed all they could possibly destroy already.
Been spending the last few days studying, harder than I normally do I must admit. The last 2 days mugged with nick, in between bantering like we usually do.
About Evangelion, I believe that it is a form of art, and art has always been about opinion. I believe that Evangelion is good, and I believe I understadn its message. True, it has its fair share of detractors, but which artistic piece doesn't? I believe it is fruitless to argue whether Evangelion is good or not, as that is the opinion of the individual. I rather like to think of it as the show I watched that changed my outlook on life and kindled my interest in anime.
Oh come on, people stop posing as my neighbours. Not funny at all.
Haha, I don't even consider the last post as a poem, it doesn't even rhyme, it is too clunky to be a free verse. Just some drivel I churned out in my sleep deprived frenzy and listening to yes 9.33's incessant ads on turn left, turn right.
And as I always say, sad stuff bring out more emotion, easier to write, happy endings tend to alienate people unless they are under 10.
Oh yah, if you guys were listening to power 98 around 1625h today, you would have heard something very interesting...
Well, the good news is that the drilling has more or less died down. I think they destroyed all they could possibly destroy already.
Been spending the last few days studying, harder than I normally do I must admit. The last 2 days mugged with nick, in between bantering like we usually do.
About Evangelion, I believe that it is a form of art, and art has always been about opinion. I believe that Evangelion is good, and I believe I understadn its message. True, it has its fair share of detractors, but which artistic piece doesn't? I believe it is fruitless to argue whether Evangelion is good or not, as that is the opinion of the individual. I rather like to think of it as the show I watched that changed my outlook on life and kindled my interest in anime.
Oh come on, people stop posing as my neighbours. Not funny at all.
Haha, I don't even consider the last post as a poem, it doesn't even rhyme, it is too clunky to be a free verse. Just some drivel I churned out in my sleep deprived frenzy and listening to yes 9.33's incessant ads on turn left, turn right.
And as I always say, sad stuff bring out more emotion, easier to write, happy endings tend to alienate people unless they are under 10.
Oh yah, if you guys were listening to power 98 around 1625h today, you would have heard something very interesting...
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Turn left, turn right
Turn left, turn right.
You go my way, I go mine.
I may want to take the same turn with you.
But I don't know whether you will let me.
I don't know whether I have the courage to do so.
I don't know what lies ahead after that turn.
What if we turn away from each other, and never see each other again?
That very thought makes me cold all over.
Maybe I'm happy to be friends with you now.
Maybe someone else more worthy of you will take that path with you.
Maybe I am just destined to take a different road from you.
You are far too good for someone like me.
You always were independent, you don't need anyone.
And if you wish to take that road with him, go ahead.
At least I know you are safe in the hands of my best friend.
Turn left, turn right.
A lingering glance at your path.
Then a determined effort to look away.
One step, followed by another painful one.
Your silhouette gradually disappears.
I walk away, away from you, in the arms of my best friend.
Away from your happy ending.
Away from the emptiness I feel.
To that cold apartment of mine.
To my endless piles of work.
Back to those faceless four walls.
A wry smile.
Why would you want to walk a path with a loser?
I don't blame you.
I guess this is what I should be contended with.
The empty feeling of solitude.
Random bout of insanity.
Turn left, turn right.
You go my way, I go mine.
I may want to take the same turn with you.
But I don't know whether you will let me.
I don't know whether I have the courage to do so.
I don't know what lies ahead after that turn.
What if we turn away from each other, and never see each other again?
That very thought makes me cold all over.
Maybe I'm happy to be friends with you now.
Maybe someone else more worthy of you will take that path with you.
Maybe I am just destined to take a different road from you.
You are far too good for someone like me.
You always were independent, you don't need anyone.
And if you wish to take that road with him, go ahead.
At least I know you are safe in the hands of my best friend.
Turn left, turn right.
A lingering glance at your path.
Then a determined effort to look away.
One step, followed by another painful one.
Your silhouette gradually disappears.
I walk away, away from you, in the arms of my best friend.
Away from your happy ending.
Away from the emptiness I feel.
To that cold apartment of mine.
To my endless piles of work.
Back to those faceless four walls.
A wry smile.
Why would you want to walk a path with a loser?
I don't blame you.
I guess this is what I should be contended with.
The empty feeling of solitude.
Random bout of insanity.
Anime fantasy
Just only realised how much I missed watching anime, after reading LaU's new entry and going through IRC again.
I love anime. Compared to the substandard nonsense they come up in the US, save for some rare shows, they really rock. I don't proclaim to be an expert on anime, but I guess I do know enough stuff to talk about it.
Nowadays with commitments pulling me one way or another, it is hard for me to cough up some time to wrestle with people on IRC to download episodes and watch. Remember doing that the later half of my sec 4 year, like how I used to motivate myself to study so that I can watch the episode I just downloaded.
Actually, I think there are also bad apples in anime as well, and I had the misfortune to watch 1 of them. Let's not go there. The real good stuff and Neon Genesis Evangelion, the series which caused my outlook to life change totally, and stands as the best anime in the 20th century. Beat that. To any EVA detractors, I feel sorry for you people as you cannot appreciate Hideki Anno's vision. NGE was a bit dated, the nicer ones nowadays are Kiddy Grade and Rahxephon, both of which were shown on VV, both of which I never finished. Argh.
Anime like LaU said, can be too much of an escapism, as somehow or another this teenage boy always 17 will gain special powers, have to fight a mysterious enemy, fall in love with a girl, has a tone load of angst as he has issues with his father/mother/former partner etc. Eventually he defeats his enemies and saves the world.
However, having said that, there are more than meets the eye in these characters. They are not the atypical american cartoon heroes, noble, self-sacrificing the works. They are more "real", as they have their own fears and insecurities, and suffer from jealousy and selfishness. In a sense, I can empathise with them. And also another thing, the japanese really know how to make their heroes look really badass.
Oh yah, they also have an obessesion with elemental powers. For the record, I would like to have the power of water. Like Mikagami of flame of recca, you can control the 3 states of water, ice, water and vapour. With ice, you can create ice shields, ice shards, mirrors, ice surfaces that are slippery to walk on. With water, you can create water snakes, high pressure jet blasts, water decoys, creating images of yourself from water. With vapour, you can release a blinding cloud of steam, "feel" the movement of water vapour in the air to judge the movement of weapons, use the vapour in the end to slow down enemies by clinging on to them.
Thinking too much again. Still think Mikagami's Ensui is badass.
I hope to watch some stuff after promos, but what with pw, o-team, training, GTC, family trip, I doubt it.
For the want of more time.
Like an article I read in the Business Time, "we now live in a world of a time-based economy. The basic problem of scarcity of resources is now gradually being replaced by a scarcity of time."
Just only realised how much I missed watching anime, after reading LaU's new entry and going through IRC again.
I love anime. Compared to the substandard nonsense they come up in the US, save for some rare shows, they really rock. I don't proclaim to be an expert on anime, but I guess I do know enough stuff to talk about it.
Nowadays with commitments pulling me one way or another, it is hard for me to cough up some time to wrestle with people on IRC to download episodes and watch. Remember doing that the later half of my sec 4 year, like how I used to motivate myself to study so that I can watch the episode I just downloaded.
Actually, I think there are also bad apples in anime as well, and I had the misfortune to watch 1 of them. Let's not go there. The real good stuff and Neon Genesis Evangelion, the series which caused my outlook to life change totally, and stands as the best anime in the 20th century. Beat that. To any EVA detractors, I feel sorry for you people as you cannot appreciate Hideki Anno's vision. NGE was a bit dated, the nicer ones nowadays are Kiddy Grade and Rahxephon, both of which were shown on VV, both of which I never finished. Argh.
Anime like LaU said, can be too much of an escapism, as somehow or another this teenage boy always 17 will gain special powers, have to fight a mysterious enemy, fall in love with a girl, has a tone load of angst as he has issues with his father/mother/former partner etc. Eventually he defeats his enemies and saves the world.
However, having said that, there are more than meets the eye in these characters. They are not the atypical american cartoon heroes, noble, self-sacrificing the works. They are more "real", as they have their own fears and insecurities, and suffer from jealousy and selfishness. In a sense, I can empathise with them. And also another thing, the japanese really know how to make their heroes look really badass.
Oh yah, they also have an obessesion with elemental powers. For the record, I would like to have the power of water. Like Mikagami of flame of recca, you can control the 3 states of water, ice, water and vapour. With ice, you can create ice shields, ice shards, mirrors, ice surfaces that are slippery to walk on. With water, you can create water snakes, high pressure jet blasts, water decoys, creating images of yourself from water. With vapour, you can release a blinding cloud of steam, "feel" the movement of water vapour in the air to judge the movement of weapons, use the vapour in the end to slow down enemies by clinging on to them.
Thinking too much again. Still think Mikagami's Ensui is badass.
I hope to watch some stuff after promos, but what with pw, o-team, training, GTC, family trip, I doubt it.
For the want of more time.
Like an article I read in the Business Time, "we now live in a world of a time-based economy. The basic problem of scarcity of resources is now gradually being replaced by a scarcity of time."
Bringing the house down
The last 2 days the new neighbours of the level above me have been creating a racket with their renovating, the sound of the pneumatic drill practically fills my ears the whole day. And it is darn bloody ^%$#&((^& loud. It was so bad that I went downstairs next to the swimming pool to study. Argh, don't they know that it is the school holidays and poor children like me need a quiet environment to study? Bloody inconsiderate if you ask me. When I do renovate my house I'll at least have the courtesy to inform my neighbours 1 week beforehand that drilling will take place. Oh well, decided to go and study with yangqi in RJ. And a pretty girl better move in upstairs to make it worth my while, tolerating the noise....
Wish had more time a day, 24 hours is really too little. Want to read the backlot of time, newsweek and reader's digest. Also want to continue with Prey. The same time I have to study. Argh.
Had the fencing clinic today. A bit messed up as there were only 4 people to teach. Oh well. The o-nite meeting was ok I guess. Am in charge of fire with nick and christelle.
Fun thing of the day: being chased around the indoor gym by joanne over nick (hmmz...)
Have fun people, don't die while mugging.
I'll have to identify the body...
The last 2 days the new neighbours of the level above me have been creating a racket with their renovating, the sound of the pneumatic drill practically fills my ears the whole day. And it is darn bloody ^%$#&((^& loud. It was so bad that I went downstairs next to the swimming pool to study. Argh, don't they know that it is the school holidays and poor children like me need a quiet environment to study? Bloody inconsiderate if you ask me. When I do renovate my house I'll at least have the courtesy to inform my neighbours 1 week beforehand that drilling will take place. Oh well, decided to go and study with yangqi in RJ. And a pretty girl better move in upstairs to make it worth my while, tolerating the noise....
Wish had more time a day, 24 hours is really too little. Want to read the backlot of time, newsweek and reader's digest. Also want to continue with Prey. The same time I have to study. Argh.
Had the fencing clinic today. A bit messed up as there were only 4 people to teach. Oh well. The o-nite meeting was ok I guess. Am in charge of fire with nick and christelle.
Fun thing of the day: being chased around the indoor gym by joanne over nick (hmmz...)
Have fun people, don't die while mugging.
I'll have to identify the body...
Sunday, September 07, 2003
Revisionist sentiment
Saturday. For the first time in a long time I had a saturday morning off, and since mama stayed over I decided to go to the Tiong Bahru market with her. The last time I accompanied her was end of last year, and somehow I found the prospect of going to the market inviting. Not really sure why, maybe it is because when I was young I used to go there all the time, every outing to the market was an adventure in itself, with unknown treats for good behaviour, the sight of butchers cleaving meat, fishmongers descaling fish, vegetable-sellers bargaining with mama.
It was a really nice experience, as the market was as usual that hive of activity, and somehow I felt very at home in that area. I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb in the market, being the only visible teenager in the crowd of elderly people, housewives and little children. I guess a part of me enjoys the quaint feel of the wet market. Mama asked me about my work, I told her work is never-ending, but I have only one grandmother and grandfather, and I would rather spend some time with them.
Got home and sorted out the food. Realised that I haven't cooked for a damn long time. Owl can testify to my "good" cooking. Anyways, mucked around till lunch, then left for united square to get a hair cut. Got lost again. The stupid place has bad architecture. I am just quoting my mum who is an architect.
Studied chemical equilirium a bit, then got ready for night hike. Left home earlier to meet brandon and nick for an o-nite meeting, but turns out both were 20 mins late. Damn pissed. We had a rather fun but unfruitful meeting, I think, then we met up with the rest of the J1s and the SU, and started on the hike.
The route stretched from paya lebar mrt to marina park. It was a very scenic route, we were along many waterways, which supplied us with breeze. The city lights being reflected off the water surface was absolutely beautiful, and I mentally added the route to the places to visit when P18 is filled.
Reached end point, then slept rather badly till the next day. Killed the circulation in my right arm by sleeping on it. Anyways, we left the park early in the morning, and I went home and bathed, ate breakfast and slept again. Haha.
After lunch managed to drag dad to comex at suntec. After an arduous campaign to find a parking lot, we joined the human sardine can jam and looked around. I got myself a mp3 discman, costs 260 bucks, 40 less than adrian's, but that is because my discman is 0.05 cm thicker. Also got a new mouse to replace the faulty old one. My PW group was complaining of the right button every time they came over.
Mum bought Prey for me. It is darn interesting, will try to stagger reading and studying. No study plan as yet. Blooming wonderful.
At least the albatross of a silver discman will hang around my neck, as a reminder to work hard to keep my end of the bargain.
Random thought for the day: What this world needs is for us humans to screw up big time before we really make an improvement.
Saturday. For the first time in a long time I had a saturday morning off, and since mama stayed over I decided to go to the Tiong Bahru market with her. The last time I accompanied her was end of last year, and somehow I found the prospect of going to the market inviting. Not really sure why, maybe it is because when I was young I used to go there all the time, every outing to the market was an adventure in itself, with unknown treats for good behaviour, the sight of butchers cleaving meat, fishmongers descaling fish, vegetable-sellers bargaining with mama.
It was a really nice experience, as the market was as usual that hive of activity, and somehow I felt very at home in that area. I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb in the market, being the only visible teenager in the crowd of elderly people, housewives and little children. I guess a part of me enjoys the quaint feel of the wet market. Mama asked me about my work, I told her work is never-ending, but I have only one grandmother and grandfather, and I would rather spend some time with them.
Got home and sorted out the food. Realised that I haven't cooked for a damn long time. Owl can testify to my "good" cooking. Anyways, mucked around till lunch, then left for united square to get a hair cut. Got lost again. The stupid place has bad architecture. I am just quoting my mum who is an architect.
Studied chemical equilirium a bit, then got ready for night hike. Left home earlier to meet brandon and nick for an o-nite meeting, but turns out both were 20 mins late. Damn pissed. We had a rather fun but unfruitful meeting, I think, then we met up with the rest of the J1s and the SU, and started on the hike.
The route stretched from paya lebar mrt to marina park. It was a very scenic route, we were along many waterways, which supplied us with breeze. The city lights being reflected off the water surface was absolutely beautiful, and I mentally added the route to the places to visit when P18 is filled.
Reached end point, then slept rather badly till the next day. Killed the circulation in my right arm by sleeping on it. Anyways, we left the park early in the morning, and I went home and bathed, ate breakfast and slept again. Haha.
After lunch managed to drag dad to comex at suntec. After an arduous campaign to find a parking lot, we joined the human sardine can jam and looked around. I got myself a mp3 discman, costs 260 bucks, 40 less than adrian's, but that is because my discman is 0.05 cm thicker. Also got a new mouse to replace the faulty old one. My PW group was complaining of the right button every time they came over.
Mum bought Prey for me. It is darn interesting, will try to stagger reading and studying. No study plan as yet. Blooming wonderful.
At least the albatross of a silver discman will hang around my neck, as a reminder to work hard to keep my end of the bargain.
Random thought for the day: What this world needs is for us humans to screw up big time before we really make an improvement.
Friday, September 05, 2003
Just another day at the office, I guess
A fine day overall I guess. Our class were afflicted with the "last day of the term" madness, and I myself got affected.
The draggy chem practical converted to a tutorial was surprisingly tolerable, as I had got most of it correct and I didn't feel so lost as I normally do during chem tutorials. Ate 2 plates of the ghim moh ipon horfun for lunch. Sufficiency is lacking in most stalls these days. Sat in during a chinese lesson, found out that everyone really dies in chinese class, quite glad that I dropped. Not that I hate chinese, I love the language, but somehow 4 years of mugging the ci yu shou ce really killed my interest in it.
PE was soccer, the whole of our class against 3 PE teachers, and we still drew. Shows our ability. Played basketball again, but I played a stinker. Don't want to think about that.
Interesting thing that happened was the fact shiming challenged sharon to a bet of $10 to climb the vertical rope. After some coaching by me, she scaled the top and made a fool of shiming. It was really amusing to see shiming trying unsuccessfully to distract sharon as she neared the top as he saw that his $10 was flying away.
Random thought for the day. You can work like hell to help others, but if you do not take care of yourself, no one will take care of you. No one will protect your own interests, you have to do that yourself.
A fine day overall I guess. Our class were afflicted with the "last day of the term" madness, and I myself got affected.
The draggy chem practical converted to a tutorial was surprisingly tolerable, as I had got most of it correct and I didn't feel so lost as I normally do during chem tutorials. Ate 2 plates of the ghim moh ipon horfun for lunch. Sufficiency is lacking in most stalls these days. Sat in during a chinese lesson, found out that everyone really dies in chinese class, quite glad that I dropped. Not that I hate chinese, I love the language, but somehow 4 years of mugging the ci yu shou ce really killed my interest in it.
PE was soccer, the whole of our class against 3 PE teachers, and we still drew. Shows our ability. Played basketball again, but I played a stinker. Don't want to think about that.
Interesting thing that happened was the fact shiming challenged sharon to a bet of $10 to climb the vertical rope. After some coaching by me, she scaled the top and made a fool of shiming. It was really amusing to see shiming trying unsuccessfully to distract sharon as she neared the top as he saw that his $10 was flying away.
Random thought for the day. You can work like hell to help others, but if you do not take care of yourself, no one will take care of you. No one will protect your own interests, you have to do that yourself.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
Sounding off
Darn Kazaa. Screw RIAA.
Can't a guy rip off some super rich record company which is earning super-supernormal profits? I mean, it is bad enough that they shut down napster, now they are flooding Kazaa with screwed-up versions of songs. And to those stupid idiotic Kazaa users that keep the screwed-up file, delete it now! You are misleading a whole bunch of fellow music-lovers which do not feel that CDs are worth spending on!
Man, what kind of world is this? I refuse to pay for something that I got for free before.
End sacrasm.
Despite that above tirade, I don't really see the need to download stuff nowadays. The songs being played on the radio and really lousy, most of them are hip hop songs which I don't appreciate. Well, I guess one man's meat is another man's poison, but the fact that most of such songs sound vaguely familiar has not escaped my notice.
Sighz. Local television is in a sad state, local shows are crap, too many crappy shows that really insult people's intelligience eg. Bachelor, lousy imitations of western gameshows, family dramas that become atypical after a while eg. Holland V, the drivel of television they call reality TV, and most of all the frequently repeated lousy movies they term "blockbusters" eg. Rambo pick a number. Shows like the practice are given late timeslots, while they allocate mind-numbings shows like 30 seconds of fame on prime time. And the worst thing is they do not have quality children's programming.
I am so disgusted with local TV that I only watch football on cable, maybe news, or TAR if I have the time. Mediacorp is really guilty of the monopoly problem, no desire to improve as mediaworks is really a very lousy competitor.
It can be argued that as Singapore is a very small country, television broadcasting can be seen as a natural monopoly as if there are anymore companies the EOS enjoyed will really be too little. But still, that is no excuse to give poor quality broadcasting.
But really it is quite futile. Mediacock is governed by market forces, so as long as the majority of the population enjoy shows such as survivor, bachelor, fear factor and what not, they will continue to show it.
Sighz. Let it be said that I am not an elitist and view such shows as degrading. I agree that such shows are entertainment, and they serve their purpose. It is just that I believe prime time can be used by showing other shows.
Below was the letter I sent to Mediaworks over their misguided decision to remove Beast Wars from their programming. In the end, I received no response, shows a lot of their willingness to listen to the viewers.
On hindsight now it is not the best way to approach the situation, but I just hecked care and gave it the best I got.
I refer to your decision to remove the show "Beast Wars" from your TV schedule.
I feel that it is extremely unfair of the station just to remove the show just like that. No doubt, "Beast Wars" is a cartoon, but does it mean that just because it is a cartoon, the station can take liberties with it as most likely the audience would be too young to understand why it has suddenly disappeared?
It is safe to say that "Beast Wars" is a critically-acclaimed show. It is the second ever show to use state of the art CGI technology to produce a cartoon. Backed up by an interesting plot and characters, it has won many awards. I am sure that is why your station bought the rights to it in the first place.
However, I believe it is because of low viewership and that is why you removed it. I beg to differ. What viewership can you expect at 10 a.m on a Sunday morning? Please be realistic. Anyway, I don't think your choice of its replacement is very good either.
I believe that the reason for its low viewership is because of the fact the station has not done enough to publicise it. There are many Transformers fans out there who do not know of the fact that "Beast Wars" were being shown. I know of 6-7 of them. Maybe with more publicity, viewership will increase. Do not forget that Trasnformers is officially the most successful toyline ever. Hasbro, the company that owns Transformers are famous for that. The firm that animated "Beast Wars", Mainframe, gained international recognition immediately after the show was shown.
The station only needs to air 11 more episodes and that's the end of it.
I know of people who love this show. We Singaporean Transformer fans feel short-changed by the fact that in 1998-99 MediaCorp did not show the second and third season of Beast Wars. We were naturally elated to know that MediaWorks decided to show it. However, we are all now shattered to know that it has been removed. Interestingly, the series ended in America in December 1998. We, Singapore, will end the series, if it were to continue as per normal, at December 2001. 3 years. Doesn’t the station care about a potentially strong group of viewers, or is it just interested in raking in the numbers?
Once again, I do not see the rationale, purpose and motive behind removing Beast Wars. Ask around. Anyone who watched Transformers as a kid will love to watch this series. There is something alluring about transforming robots. The Transformer line started in 1984 to present day. There is a Transformer convention held every year in America. I bet that the station doesn’t know that. The station cannot just mess with something many people in the world hold dear to them.
You may just dismiss me as a fanatic, and send me a "polite" reply giving a lot of excuses. But the station knows what it has done. It has broken the hearts of many Transformers lovers in Singapore.
I won't be the only one. There would be more of us, Transformer fans. It is not a lot to ask for. Just 5.5 hours of your precious broadcasting time.
Damm, why am I so kaobeh today? Must be PW....
Darn Kazaa. Screw RIAA.
Can't a guy rip off some super rich record company which is earning super-supernormal profits? I mean, it is bad enough that they shut down napster, now they are flooding Kazaa with screwed-up versions of songs. And to those stupid idiotic Kazaa users that keep the screwed-up file, delete it now! You are misleading a whole bunch of fellow music-lovers which do not feel that CDs are worth spending on!
Man, what kind of world is this? I refuse to pay for something that I got for free before.
End sacrasm.
Despite that above tirade, I don't really see the need to download stuff nowadays. The songs being played on the radio and really lousy, most of them are hip hop songs which I don't appreciate. Well, I guess one man's meat is another man's poison, but the fact that most of such songs sound vaguely familiar has not escaped my notice.
Sighz. Local television is in a sad state, local shows are crap, too many crappy shows that really insult people's intelligience eg. Bachelor, lousy imitations of western gameshows, family dramas that become atypical after a while eg. Holland V, the drivel of television they call reality TV, and most of all the frequently repeated lousy movies they term "blockbusters" eg. Rambo pick a number. Shows like the practice are given late timeslots, while they allocate mind-numbings shows like 30 seconds of fame on prime time. And the worst thing is they do not have quality children's programming.
I am so disgusted with local TV that I only watch football on cable, maybe news, or TAR if I have the time. Mediacorp is really guilty of the monopoly problem, no desire to improve as mediaworks is really a very lousy competitor.
It can be argued that as Singapore is a very small country, television broadcasting can be seen as a natural monopoly as if there are anymore companies the EOS enjoyed will really be too little. But still, that is no excuse to give poor quality broadcasting.
But really it is quite futile. Mediacock is governed by market forces, so as long as the majority of the population enjoy shows such as survivor, bachelor, fear factor and what not, they will continue to show it.
Sighz. Let it be said that I am not an elitist and view such shows as degrading. I agree that such shows are entertainment, and they serve their purpose. It is just that I believe prime time can be used by showing other shows.
Below was the letter I sent to Mediaworks over their misguided decision to remove Beast Wars from their programming. In the end, I received no response, shows a lot of their willingness to listen to the viewers.
On hindsight now it is not the best way to approach the situation, but I just hecked care and gave it the best I got.
I refer to your decision to remove the show "Beast Wars" from your TV schedule.
I feel that it is extremely unfair of the station just to remove the show just like that. No doubt, "Beast Wars" is a cartoon, but does it mean that just because it is a cartoon, the station can take liberties with it as most likely the audience would be too young to understand why it has suddenly disappeared?
It is safe to say that "Beast Wars" is a critically-acclaimed show. It is the second ever show to use state of the art CGI technology to produce a cartoon. Backed up by an interesting plot and characters, it has won many awards. I am sure that is why your station bought the rights to it in the first place.
However, I believe it is because of low viewership and that is why you removed it. I beg to differ. What viewership can you expect at 10 a.m on a Sunday morning? Please be realistic. Anyway, I don't think your choice of its replacement is very good either.
I believe that the reason for its low viewership is because of the fact the station has not done enough to publicise it. There are many Transformers fans out there who do not know of the fact that "Beast Wars" were being shown. I know of 6-7 of them. Maybe with more publicity, viewership will increase. Do not forget that Trasnformers is officially the most successful toyline ever. Hasbro, the company that owns Transformers are famous for that. The firm that animated "Beast Wars", Mainframe, gained international recognition immediately after the show was shown.
The station only needs to air 11 more episodes and that's the end of it.
I know of people who love this show. We Singaporean Transformer fans feel short-changed by the fact that in 1998-99 MediaCorp did not show the second and third season of Beast Wars. We were naturally elated to know that MediaWorks decided to show it. However, we are all now shattered to know that it has been removed. Interestingly, the series ended in America in December 1998. We, Singapore, will end the series, if it were to continue as per normal, at December 2001. 3 years. Doesn’t the station care about a potentially strong group of viewers, or is it just interested in raking in the numbers?
Once again, I do not see the rationale, purpose and motive behind removing Beast Wars. Ask around. Anyone who watched Transformers as a kid will love to watch this series. There is something alluring about transforming robots. The Transformer line started in 1984 to present day. There is a Transformer convention held every year in America. I bet that the station doesn’t know that. The station cannot just mess with something many people in the world hold dear to them.
You may just dismiss me as a fanatic, and send me a "polite" reply giving a lot of excuses. But the station knows what it has done. It has broken the hearts of many Transformers lovers in Singapore.
I won't be the only one. There would be more of us, Transformer fans. It is not a lot to ask for. Just 5.5 hours of your precious broadcasting time.
Damm, why am I so kaobeh today? Must be PW....
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
I wonder which is a worst fate. Being with a person you do not love, or being unable to be with the person you love the most.
Either way, I'm sure one would feel really miserable.
Sheesh.
I wonder what would this world be without love.
No illogical decisions.
Just pure, mechanical, rational logic.
Everything would be simple, life would just be routine.
Interesting thought, ain't it?
A world without love.
The perfect dystopia.
To be ahead, you have to be ruthless, cunning, cold-hearted, ready to accept that the ends justify the means, and ultimately go against your innate goodness.
Like how a lawyer has to live with himself after he has helped a guilty person go free.
He can justify it by saying it is his job to do so.
I guess that is where I am aiming for.
A lawyer with malleable morals.
How strangely ironic.
I wonder which is a worst fate. Being with a person you do not love, or being unable to be with the person you love the most.
Either way, I'm sure one would feel really miserable.
Sheesh.
I wonder what would this world be without love.
No illogical decisions.
Just pure, mechanical, rational logic.
Everything would be simple, life would just be routine.
Interesting thought, ain't it?
A world without love.
The perfect dystopia.
To be ahead, you have to be ruthless, cunning, cold-hearted, ready to accept that the ends justify the means, and ultimately go against your innate goodness.
Like how a lawyer has to live with himself after he has helped a guilty person go free.
He can justify it by saying it is his job to do so.
I guess that is where I am aiming for.
A lawyer with malleable morals.
How strangely ironic.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Rain, rain, go away, little children like me want to play
It rained the whole darn day. I woke up at 0430 in the morning to close my room's window, but it was a bit late as the rain had already wet some of our books.
Rained so heavily in the morning that Dad had to drive me to school, and we waited for an eternity for the traffic jam to clear, before finally I could get to school.
Still a bit sick, but the running nose is gone, just the sore throat, which is not so bad now.
And thanks to jimmy, I am being machamed...
Some things should just remained closed, as I have already moved on. I do not want to be caught between the past and the present.
It rained the whole darn day. I woke up at 0430 in the morning to close my room's window, but it was a bit late as the rain had already wet some of our books.
Rained so heavily in the morning that Dad had to drive me to school, and we waited for an eternity for the traffic jam to clear, before finally I could get to school.
Still a bit sick, but the running nose is gone, just the sore throat, which is not so bad now.
And thanks to jimmy, I am being machamed...
Some things should just remained closed, as I have already moved on. I do not want to be caught between the past and the present.
Monday, September 01, 2003
Change in the weather
Am having a very bad bout of flu. Nose kept on running throughout today, felt damm weak and sleepy.
My PW group came over again today, and I tried my best to work... but in the end after they left, took a short nap as the medicine had made me very drowsy.
Thanks to my illness, wasn't able to be on the same wavelength with keng piang and alina, couldn't catch that weather joke and the one about nuts.
Argh, it is always one thing after another.
Didn't touch any work at all due to competiton and sickness, hopefully did enough beforehand.
Oh yah, about blogging, just to say it once and for all.
What I blog about is the me I cannot be because of society's rules.
Yeah, that is it.
Am having a very bad bout of flu. Nose kept on running throughout today, felt damm weak and sleepy.
My PW group came over again today, and I tried my best to work... but in the end after they left, took a short nap as the medicine had made me very drowsy.
Thanks to my illness, wasn't able to be on the same wavelength with keng piang and alina, couldn't catch that weather joke and the one about nuts.
Argh, it is always one thing after another.
Didn't touch any work at all due to competiton and sickness, hopefully did enough beforehand.
Oh yah, about blogging, just to say it once and for all.
What I blog about is the me I cannot be because of society's rules.
Yeah, that is it.
Nihil Sine Labor (Nothing without work)
Apparently, those words are hung in Sir Alex Ferguson's office. Well, somewhat sums up what I feel over the course of the last 3 days.
Friday was quite ok, despite the fact that I felt the walkathon was a bit weird, ended up talking with zhong hao over his boarding house ghost stories and how the adult in his house was more scared of the ghost than he was. He said it was "a waste" as he could not see a ghost. Well, personally I think ghosts look for you, and one naturally try to avoid them. At least for the most of us.
The concert was fun, with some good performances, like kelvin singing, which was quite good. Don't remember that part of him from cat high. Then, the image of my dear CT mrs toh in esther's school uniform shall be burnt in my retina for the rest of my life. All I know is that when she came on, my poor eyesight prevented me from recognising at first, then gradually the light shone through and I was dumbfounded. The next I remember I was lying back, screaming "oh no! oh my god!" while laughing like adrian.
After the concert, tried to hail a cab to RI with shiming and the yong twins. Well, we went up road to try and steal a cab. Enhui was rather nervous as he recognised the girls from downroad and was very apprehensive about stealing the cab. In the end, shiming got 1 and we sped away to RI under some hard glares.
Back in RI, was glad to see some of my teachers, and my old classmates. But felt rather tired and bored most of the time, in the end stoned in the scout den most of the time, watching LaU and brandon dance, before leaving for lunch. Saw DC, pong, shaorong, dr lee, wu yahui etc.
Went home, just crashed on my bed, slept for 2 hours before going for the play. To supplement what I said in my previous entry, i swear keng piang was acting as the guy wearing the green boxers, edward was being a "pillar" of strength for someone, and joshua only got home at 1. And yes, P18...
Next day, Saturday, training as usual. Felt a bit bogged down, played 5 bouts, beat steph 8-7, bingrui 7-5, after he took a 4-0 lead, joshua 10-9, lost to peiyi 5-7, yangqi by the same score as well. After training, went to macs and bought an ice-cream cone, then realised I was going to be late for my stupid seminar. Reached orchard mrt, and lo and behold, it was raining and I forgot my umbrella. Dad had to come and pick me up, but he had to negotiate a very bad traffic jam to reach me. To cut a long story short, when I finally got home my mum was not very happy with me.
Wolfed down some lunch, then bathed, before Dad drove me to SGH for the "Forum on approaches to safer contact lens wear". Yes, don't laugh. My mum signed me up for it, and when I protested, she threatened to never allow me to wear contacts again. Oh well, since she hardly insists on a certain thing, I guess I decided to humor her a bit to go for it. But it didn’t mean I wanted to go.
Got there at 1430 when it was supposed to start at 2. While there, I just read the booklet I was given, for about 10 minutes, then I dozed off, finally awaking at the Q&A session. That done and over with, I made my way to clementi sports hall again, to support the girls.
Joanne, amanda and stephanie were fencing fencing masters. Steph was anchor, and overall I felt that they all fought well, given that this was the first time competing. I think the final score was 24-45, around there. I was trying to get steph pissed off to make her fight better. It sort of worked as she got most of their team's points. At the end of it she wanted to buy us bananas for tomorrow. (Apparently according to peiyi, she was forced to do so) Also saw some rather interesting things, like a Caucasian team shouting like it was a football match everytime they scored, and when they won the game by a very close call the loser got so pissed that he slammed his epee down and stomped on it.
Left for dinner with my family, ate at the riverside jumbo seafood restaurant, then got home, was watching the merseyside derby, then went to sleep.
Sunday. This was it. At one point the night before I could not sleep, thinking about the competition. Woke up early, got myself ready and packed up. Adrian called up with a sos asking for long socks, as his wardrobe only consists of ankle-length socks. I gave him a ribbing for that as a payback for all the GLing I got for wearing very long socks.
Decided not to bog Dad down and take the bus there myself. But the bastard bus no. 7 took so long to come and move, that I only reached there at 0850. First thing I did was to empty my bladder. Then we warmed up, and suited up. Joanne was disturbing me with her increase in height thanks to some heels, plus the usual bantering
We got our match-ups, and somehow by faith or destiny, we drew yangqi, peiyi and kenneth teh. Another 2 RJC foil teams were against each other, and lloyd, andy and joshua had a walkover tanglin secondary.
Adrian won the 1st bout against yangqi easily, 5-1, to set the tone, and we never looked back. We won every bout, never losing the lead. I got kenneth teh and yangqi both 5-1, but was quite pissed that I lost 8 points to peiyi before eventually labouring to the end of the bout. In the end, it was 45-36, and we were through to the 2nd round. The other team was gracious in defeat, and yangqi had a good-natured laugh over it. Was quite disappointed that my flexible blade could not be used as it failed the weight test.
Halfway through the bout steph came and I demanded my bananas, which she did not bring. In the end, she went to NTUC to get bananas for all of us, including coach. I ate one to calm my nerves.
Saw rayner talking cock about beating some guy 5-0 and he lost to him by that score. Also saw lloyd's team got whacked by the 1st seeded team 45-15, and lloyd himself got beaten 5-0 in 21 seconds by some crazily good guy. And all the very good guys keep on flicking....
We were the last team to fight, so everyone from RJC came to support us. We were fighting the 2nd seeded team, and edwin told me later that one of them was his primary school classmate and he had a score to settle with him. Something about him stealing his gameboy cartridge.
Ultimately, we were unable to cope with their flicking and unorthodox fighting style, so we lost, 26-45. I got some good hits though, edwin was majestic in this match.
We took a photo together with the score board, which I found a bit guai lan. After our fight, we changed up, watched our only women's epee team lose 45-37, then we left for lunch by ourselves. Back home, studied for a while before succumbing to sleep.
Woke up and ate dinner, then watched I not stupid then watched man utd go down disappointingly against southampton.
Tomorrow, my project work group will make their 3rd sojourn to my house to do the 1st draft of the report which is due on Tuesday.
Well, in case you haven't noticed by now, I have been doing a lot of things, but 1 crucial thing.
Studying.
6 weeks to promos....
Apparently, those words are hung in Sir Alex Ferguson's office. Well, somewhat sums up what I feel over the course of the last 3 days.
Friday was quite ok, despite the fact that I felt the walkathon was a bit weird, ended up talking with zhong hao over his boarding house ghost stories and how the adult in his house was more scared of the ghost than he was. He said it was "a waste" as he could not see a ghost. Well, personally I think ghosts look for you, and one naturally try to avoid them. At least for the most of us.
The concert was fun, with some good performances, like kelvin singing, which was quite good. Don't remember that part of him from cat high. Then, the image of my dear CT mrs toh in esther's school uniform shall be burnt in my retina for the rest of my life. All I know is that when she came on, my poor eyesight prevented me from recognising at first, then gradually the light shone through and I was dumbfounded. The next I remember I was lying back, screaming "oh no! oh my god!" while laughing like adrian.
After the concert, tried to hail a cab to RI with shiming and the yong twins. Well, we went up road to try and steal a cab. Enhui was rather nervous as he recognised the girls from downroad and was very apprehensive about stealing the cab. In the end, shiming got 1 and we sped away to RI under some hard glares.
Back in RI, was glad to see some of my teachers, and my old classmates. But felt rather tired and bored most of the time, in the end stoned in the scout den most of the time, watching LaU and brandon dance, before leaving for lunch. Saw DC, pong, shaorong, dr lee, wu yahui etc.
Went home, just crashed on my bed, slept for 2 hours before going for the play. To supplement what I said in my previous entry, i swear keng piang was acting as the guy wearing the green boxers, edward was being a "pillar" of strength for someone, and joshua only got home at 1. And yes, P18...
Next day, Saturday, training as usual. Felt a bit bogged down, played 5 bouts, beat steph 8-7, bingrui 7-5, after he took a 4-0 lead, joshua 10-9, lost to peiyi 5-7, yangqi by the same score as well. After training, went to macs and bought an ice-cream cone, then realised I was going to be late for my stupid seminar. Reached orchard mrt, and lo and behold, it was raining and I forgot my umbrella. Dad had to come and pick me up, but he had to negotiate a very bad traffic jam to reach me. To cut a long story short, when I finally got home my mum was not very happy with me.
Wolfed down some lunch, then bathed, before Dad drove me to SGH for the "Forum on approaches to safer contact lens wear". Yes, don't laugh. My mum signed me up for it, and when I protested, she threatened to never allow me to wear contacts again. Oh well, since she hardly insists on a certain thing, I guess I decided to humor her a bit to go for it. But it didn’t mean I wanted to go.
Got there at 1430 when it was supposed to start at 2. While there, I just read the booklet I was given, for about 10 minutes, then I dozed off, finally awaking at the Q&A session. That done and over with, I made my way to clementi sports hall again, to support the girls.
Joanne, amanda and stephanie were fencing fencing masters. Steph was anchor, and overall I felt that they all fought well, given that this was the first time competing. I think the final score was 24-45, around there. I was trying to get steph pissed off to make her fight better. It sort of worked as she got most of their team's points. At the end of it she wanted to buy us bananas for tomorrow. (Apparently according to peiyi, she was forced to do so) Also saw some rather interesting things, like a Caucasian team shouting like it was a football match everytime they scored, and when they won the game by a very close call the loser got so pissed that he slammed his epee down and stomped on it.
Left for dinner with my family, ate at the riverside jumbo seafood restaurant, then got home, was watching the merseyside derby, then went to sleep.
Sunday. This was it. At one point the night before I could not sleep, thinking about the competition. Woke up early, got myself ready and packed up. Adrian called up with a sos asking for long socks, as his wardrobe only consists of ankle-length socks. I gave him a ribbing for that as a payback for all the GLing I got for wearing very long socks.
Decided not to bog Dad down and take the bus there myself. But the bastard bus no. 7 took so long to come and move, that I only reached there at 0850. First thing I did was to empty my bladder. Then we warmed up, and suited up. Joanne was disturbing me with her increase in height thanks to some heels, plus the usual bantering
We got our match-ups, and somehow by faith or destiny, we drew yangqi, peiyi and kenneth teh. Another 2 RJC foil teams were against each other, and lloyd, andy and joshua had a walkover tanglin secondary.
Adrian won the 1st bout against yangqi easily, 5-1, to set the tone, and we never looked back. We won every bout, never losing the lead. I got kenneth teh and yangqi both 5-1, but was quite pissed that I lost 8 points to peiyi before eventually labouring to the end of the bout. In the end, it was 45-36, and we were through to the 2nd round. The other team was gracious in defeat, and yangqi had a good-natured laugh over it. Was quite disappointed that my flexible blade could not be used as it failed the weight test.
Halfway through the bout steph came and I demanded my bananas, which she did not bring. In the end, she went to NTUC to get bananas for all of us, including coach. I ate one to calm my nerves.
Saw rayner talking cock about beating some guy 5-0 and he lost to him by that score. Also saw lloyd's team got whacked by the 1st seeded team 45-15, and lloyd himself got beaten 5-0 in 21 seconds by some crazily good guy. And all the very good guys keep on flicking....
We were the last team to fight, so everyone from RJC came to support us. We were fighting the 2nd seeded team, and edwin told me later that one of them was his primary school classmate and he had a score to settle with him. Something about him stealing his gameboy cartridge.
Ultimately, we were unable to cope with their flicking and unorthodox fighting style, so we lost, 26-45. I got some good hits though, edwin was majestic in this match.
We took a photo together with the score board, which I found a bit guai lan. After our fight, we changed up, watched our only women's epee team lose 45-37, then we left for lunch by ourselves. Back home, studied for a while before succumbing to sleep.
Woke up and ate dinner, then watched I not stupid then watched man utd go down disappointingly against southampton.
Tomorrow, my project work group will make their 3rd sojourn to my house to do the 1st draft of the report which is due on Tuesday.
Well, in case you haven't noticed by now, I have been doing a lot of things, but 1 crucial thing.
Studying.
6 weeks to promos....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)