Compromise, Ideal,and Perfect

This is 2 years in review.

I will probably focus more on school stuff, over hall stuff, or even family and relationship stuff, because there isn't the time to talk about those, but you may see some cross-overs here and there. Because life's like that. Nothing's mutually exclusive.

That's a really interesting thought to think about. When I started school, like many people before me, I had this mentality that I was going to focus on school and then just pick up the other parts of my life during the holidays. Everything seemed to be planned out nicely; I would focus on just getting schoolwork done, then either go on holidays to unwind or commit to Orientation camp committee during the 3-month summer break so that I could remain in hall, which is what I really needed to just even be on track to finish schoolwork on time. That sounded like a solid plan.

But what they don't tell you is that you will end up picking up pieces.

Time passes by very quickly when you're in a studio. It feels like every moment is dragged on when you're inside, but as soon as you leave, you see people moving on without you. Every time vacation rolls around and then I find out X and Y have done this and A is going to retire or whatever. It shakes me at the core to fully comprehend that people are moving on, and they are moving on whether I'm in their lives or not.

2 years in, and I still haven't found this elusive thing called "work-life balance"

I made the "mistake" of committing to the wrong thing in my first year. Like I said, I compartmentalized my life into school time, followed by hall time, followed by NS and overseas time, followed by orientation camp time and then back to school. The problem with that is that other people "socialise" throughout this entire period, but I've managed to break them up into chunks, often with too much intensity and not spread out enough. My family went through a brief period of bad times during my year 1 and it was the first time I broke down as a result of stress. I just huddled with my dog at the stairs and cried for a good while, and then once more a day later when my parents probed me after realizing something was wrong. I'm not really ashamed that I broke down even though I don't really discuss it with people outside my circle of trust. (that circle is extremely small.) Suffice it to say, it wasn't one big reason, like a close family member passing away, but a series of small events that converged at the same time and the fact that they happened almost successively (or at least the time that I was informed of them). I remember the exact reason I broke down the first time was because after a hard 3 days at the studio, I thought I would be able to rest my mind and body, only to realize that there were in fact more problems at home that I just hadn't been aware of. It's like something snatching away your chair just before you sat down when you've been walking for miles and miles. It makes you feel totally helpless and just stunned that you couldn't even rest properly.

Then I made the mistake of forgetting I need to rest in year 2. I remember talking with my supervisor at my part-time job about my availability over the next few months, and it slowly drifted toward the direction of how I handled my time. I have never been this exhausted over such an extended period of time and yet this is the semester where I have slept the most throughout. It is true that I have actually done more deeds this sem than any other, possibly in my life, but I have come to the conclusion that I do not have the stamina, both physical and mental, to keep going at this pace. When I was 18, I roomed with this RJC kid during an inter-JC conference. I peeked at his desktop and it happened to be his monthly schedule and it is packed with colours. This is the first time I've resorted to using google calendar, and when I look back at the stuff I've done, my mind takes a mental sigh of relief and panic at the same time, because it's still intimidating today.

I hope it's not too late to "repair" my relationships with peers. Both in school, hall and outside. Too many friendships have ended in "we just drifted away" and I thank whatever god or gods that are watching over me that I remember to take the time to appreciate my circle of trust. Those 3 misfits are the only people I have poured out to more than anyone else and I owe them so much more than they owe me. The strange thing about all 3 is that those friendships are built almost exclusively as we were leaving each other's presences. They were built as we left school, rather than when we were in it. Maybe it's the absence that reminds us of each others' importance. I don't have the same level of trust with anyone in hall currently, and it's definitely not something that you can force.


I've done all in this sem that I can think of. I've made the most of the opportunities that hall has presented me at this current time. I've tried working for actual money when just a mere 12 months ago, I thought it would have been impossible. I've picked myself up after a terrible interim crit to make something of it, and become sufficiently proud of it to include it in my RIBA portfolio. And I couldn't have done this without my peers and mentors. But all of these remain very professional relationships. I won't ever forget the help and guidance they have rendered me, but they are, at its core, a relationship of necessity. I'm not going to walk into someone's room and spill out my guts in the middle of the night because I don't have that type of friend here on campus. And vice versa, nobody's going to come into my room with anything other than work-related stuff to discuss. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that it's a thing that's missing in my life and I can't judge that which I have no experience in.

~

I started this post thinking that I would write about the inadequacy of architectural education. Now, I seem to just be lamenting the losses that I never knew I signed up for when I accepted this course.

I don't know how much I regret, or if I do regret anything at all. I just seem to be at this crossroads where I don't really know what is the right thing to do moving forward.

Storytelling

At one point in time, I used to think my life was boring because I never really had any stories to tell. Any interesting ones anyway. That was a point in my life where i went out very little and didn't have many outgoing friends, so i simply assumed that I didn't have stories was simply because i didn't experience enough of life, and that those among my group of peers who did in fact have really interesting stories to tell either went out of their way to experience life or had life thrust upon them.

And then i went to the army. Any Singaporean who has ever been conscripted, even as a clerk would have their fair share of interesting slices of life to share. And i did. I experienced a whole lot more than i would if i had continued and went on to the university instead. If i went on studying, i would always have this mindset that life is a series of semesters where you get one piece of paper in order to qualify for the next piece of paper to eventually qualify to put something onto that paper called resume and get a job. If i never went to the army, i would never really understand that sometimes you have to reach out and grab the things that you want in life because the System is not simply going to arrange your schedule for you.

But i digress. I went to the army, and i experienced life. I had some pretty interesting things happen to me that i could probably tell other people about. But for the life of me, i still don't really have an interesting story to tell. And my army life is plenty interesting, for one thing, I almost shot my friend in the arm, with a live round. And i got to fire the only Artillery piece that can be fired in Singapore, and freaking dropped the bomb in too early. I also go tmy friends into trouble quite a few times, biggest of which getting me a nickname, which i shall not put here.

And yet, i still can't hold someone's attention long enough to tell my story. I eventually figured out my problem. I cannot tell a story in front of anyone without thinking (or planning) first.

You see, i have a friend, who happens to be my Platoon Sergeant. He has the uncanny ability to speak and hold attention even though most of what he says is not very coherent. In fact he speaks very typical Singlish and he doesn't have the type of impact one would associate with a leader when he tells stories. He is only loud when he is trying to get your attention, which he never really tries to do when he is speaking to a group of say 10 people. And yet for the life of me, i can't figure out why he is so good at commanding attention of the room.

And I've heard quite a few of his stories which are in fact really mundane when you think about it, because most of us like to talk about what happened over the weekend when we book out. At first, it seemed like lots of interesting things happened to him in particular but as time went by, his stories are really all pretty mundane. Which is very curious because he hold your attention long enough to finish telling you a boring story without you realizing its' a boring story until it is over. It is quite peculiar.

After my interview with SMU, I realized that i had a particularly average incident that happened to me during my time as a student councillor, which could be spun into a pretty cool sounding story, which would have helped my interview at that time. Unfortunately, i only realized at the end. Instead I chose to go with one (during the actual interview) that had particular emotional value to me and to us at that time, and because i had such poor storytelling skills, i fudged up the story to the point where i couldn't really figure out what my point was.

If I do have such poor storytelling skills, I sincerely question any of you would really reach this sentence without skipping a few paragraphs.

little time

within this short span of 12-ish hours. i must

pay off sleep debt for the past 25-ish hours of waiting for live firing with micro naps in between

try and get as healthy as possible after being out in the rain for 1.5 hours and before tekong field camp

choose what to appeal for and what to accept for uni

prepare my clothes and make sure they are dry and relatively clean, which is dirty by most civilian standards

and have a good enough lunch and dinner so i wont crave anything during 4 days outfield, even though i still will.

---

anyway, planning to accept architecture from NUS and trying to appeal for either aerospace eng or psychology. haven't really decided which yet. probably going to put aerospace this year and if i fail, go for it again nxt year with psych as 2nd choice.

also, the srjc sc investiture is on july 20th, so if any past councillors read this, try and make it there, anyway, we should try and keep a close connection with the school and our old teachers who helped us out so much, it would only be unreasonable to forget them once we leave school.

i'm trying to write an email (just like old times) to convince as many people to go as possible and if even better, go there a few days earlier to give them some tips and advice on what their next 2 years will be like. something like a presentation and open table kind of thing. i don't think mrs tay would have any objections so i think the hardest thing to do is to convince ex-councilors can make it

anyway, unusally optimistic about helping out others. the lack of sleep must be doing something to me.

so umm yeah

(btw i can't rotate them properly)

so umm i kind of got into architecture. i got the letter on 12th while i was away for field camp, my dad sent me the sms.

some of you guys may know that i wasn't selected for the interview. i actually thought i sucked too hard at the aptitude test itself. because i did suck. all i did was take the cardboard, fold into 3 parts and then fold up into a pyramid prism thing. so yeah, i did what a kindergartener would have done, and i got in WITHOUT an interview. seriously wtf school of architecture. oh yeah i cut a hole at the top so i guess that separates me from the rest, i guess????

if u were there at the exam hall, you would see throughout the entire hall was filled with much better peices of work than mine, i was just like, better start preparing for the next choice.


oh and i also got the letter from ntu, which accepted me into mechanical engineering, which honestly sounds like a better choice for me now. i don't know.

my priorty now is still to become an air force officer first and foremost, if that can be done, i wouldn't need to get into architecture.

also, at the college day thing, i told some of my teachers how i flunked my test in architecture. so they proceeded to tell me bad stuff about architecture like its going to take quite a long time of studying before you can become an architect and stuff like that, which was ironically left out when i asked them for advice. this goes to show, people like to tell you what they think you like to hear. so if you want to know what they really feel, tell them the opposite, like if you're marrying this particular girl, tell them you're breaking up so they will give you their honest feedback.

also, just came back from field camp with possibly throat infection because my throats going out and i have coughing

yesterday

finally booked out of sispec, or as it is now called scs. damn bloody far, at least can book in at night nt so bad.

so far, everybody is fitter than me, so crossing over is going to be harder than i thought.

yesterday, went to school to get some prize. in SR, it's a pretty big honor to be invited back on college day to receive a prize. in my bunk, it's a prize half of those who did A levels would get.

it's ironic, because when you're in the school, people getting one or 2 or 3 As would be screaming their heads off and getting congratulated left right center. but when you go out into the working world, you'll be competing with people who upon receiving scores like you would break down on the spot. just look at the Uni application crowd, one look across the board, in this case using my bunk as a representative of the A levels students, and you know that the score you're getting, however happy you may be to get it, is only average. so in SR, peope get overwhelmingly excited to get what is only an average mark outside.

i'm not bashing SR, the school that has given me so much and yet i keep forgetting to donate to the endowment fund every time i go. i actually drew extra money from the atm before i went so i could donate, but bloody hell, forgot again.

many times i think i have taken too much from the school and given back too little. sometimes, i think about going back to help them out before A levels, but always gt NS. often, i think about going about and giving a speech about how to prepare better for A levels. occasionally, i think about speaking to the next batch of councilors because we didn't get much face time with the ones directly taking over from us.

what i'm trying to say is that, i'm proud to have been from SRJC, because when i go to serve my nation, i see a lot of scholar retards, a lot of those got brain dunno how to use, and then i really appreciate the opportunities that my school, both SRJC and HIHS NPCC, gave me to lead, then i really understand what it's like to talk to people who don't really listen.

i'm proud to say that we were the batch who pushed the PW As from 7% to almost 70%, that we were the ones who pushed mean A levels from 65 to 70 points. But above all, i'm most proud to say that although we won during the Nike Human Race, we were the only ones who stayed back to pick up rubbish, because this is the kind of thing that you don't learn in the classroom, this is the kind of thing you pick up from the atmosphere, the culture, the seniors and the teachers around you, and this is the kind of thing that makes you stand out from the Raffles, Hwa Chong, Saint Andrews crowd in the world.

Al was the valedictorian for our batch, which was unsurprising. her speech was long but it was still interesting. it's quite surprising that she got such a low score for her psle, but it's just like her to work so hard to become valedictorian. she should become a teacher, totally.

i've been on this computer writing this post on and off for the past few hours, checking out youtube and facebook in the meantime, so i can't really remember what i wanted to say at first. so that's it for now.

and about the things i said at the start. i'm still really proud of Srjc, and if you're from there, don't be offended, and if you're not, don't get the wrong idea, it's still easily the best school with the best teachers and the best culture. easily the best teachers

How to Overcomplicate your life

Step 1: Have x number of choices where x is a positive integer and 0 < x < 2

why not having only ONE choice is bad: basically out of every single course in every single university, i have managed to isolate my preferred choices down to 3, Architecture, Engineering, Psychology (in FASS). This doesn't look complicated until you add in Step 2

Step 2: Get External Opinion

Why other people's opinion is bad: when you think about it, getting advice and suggestions from others should be a good thing, that way you get different points of views and a broader perspective. isn't that how democracy was born (Note: it probably isn't) It does sound good, until these points of view clash with one another or even your own.

All my life i've been thinking i was a science person. that's the way my brain functions, when i look at a situation, i figure out how it came to be at this state, how something may or may not happen due to the current "forces" at work, not how people should have been more tactful so as to not hurt his feelings.

den my results come out as my science subjects being the worst, which is actually pretty normal considering most of my other papers. den i ask for advice from other people, teachers friends seniors etc, and they say i'm more of a language and arts person, den immediately and i say immediately because i actually saw this in the middle of the jungle under a basha (tent) and said WTF out loud. i asked even more people and they gave me the same response, so now i'm screwed because on one hand i don't doubt that they may be right, and yet i also cannot let go of the fact that i'm really not much of a science person.

but of course all this is nothing compared to if you did Step 3

Step 3: Future Prospects

future prospects adds in 2 elements of chaos that would drive any manger insane, the unguaranteed possibility of a great "payout", in the form of a secure job or paid fees via scholarships, as well as the fact that getting one is going to screw up something else that you've already been working for.

In Tekong, I expressed interest in signing on in the airforce as either a pilot or an officer who controls big guns. Don't sound off any alarms yet, it's just interest, i haven't signed any contract or any thing yet, they need to evaluate my capabilities before they make the decision. and besides there's a 90% chance that i will not become a pilot, not because i suck that hard, it's just the "rejection" rate of applicants.

the good thing about signing on is that it fulfills one of my 2 criteria for a job, it cannot be an office job. the other thing is that i can apply for the saf scholarships which would lift a huge burden off my parents.

unfortunately, that also means that i can only take either engineering or psychology degrees. which would be bad if i already accepted to architecture course by then.

that also means i have a hard time applying for scholarships that apply to architecture or even other courses should i be accepted to the university itself

and that's not even considering overseas universities.

headache.

Hello, Happy New Year

This is what i said to every teacher i met yesterday, along with merry christmas and gong xi fa cai


Got back A level Results today, like everybody i was scared, but bo bian, cuz i want to act man, so cannot act out. so the principal started giving his talk about how some subjects have a certain percentages of passes and A+Bs, which for some reason everybody cheered, even though it had no meaning per se, i.e comparing with last year's results or predicted MSG.

but the one thing that was very impressive was the fact that people with a minimum 3 H2, GP and H1 Content Subject Passes, increased by 10% from 63% to 73%, which is incredibly amazing considering the kind of people that come here and what he's has done with the school and students themselves during a short span of 2 years.

another thing impressive was that 2s10 is in the top classes with an average msg of 76 or 79, i can't really remember, 76 is the more likelier choice. this is the only point i started cheering

so the principal started going through names of 80 pointers and above. Edmund's name was on the second page, but his score was easily predicted, since he tops the school regularly. Then came a few people i knew but didn't really care about, then came Tricia's name, which also wasn't a big surprise, cuz her L1R5 meant she should have been in a different school. then as soon as the next page came theodora's name, where everbody was just as stunned as her to see her name, but still congratulations on job well done. Xiying's name also came up on the screen and i was quite stunned she did better than edmund

for the next part it may be a little difficult to explain on paper, on the 7th-ish page was wei hin's name which was the second from the bottom, so i lagged a bit cuz him and i were sitting beside each other and sitting down at a corner, with a bad angle at the screen. so i saw everybody started turning around to cheer and congratulate wei hin, i just looked up and scanned the page for his name and score and i also turned around and did the same. but then i glanced something familiar at the screen below his name, i saw sim, then i open my eyes big big, i saw bing then i open my eyes even bigger i saw han, so i sit up very straight to find my english name glennard, i wanted to throw my hands up in the air at that moment, but i made sure it was me first, so i looked at the cca and it was the student council. i did a fist pump and let my back slowly return back to the floor before putting my hand on my heart and trying to slow it down. along the way i can hear people congratulating me, including wen hui turning around and saying wah lau. then after me came people like wen jie who cried like crazy and Al who got the top among the council, and samuel and sam for getting special mentions, both for different reasons.

later went to the concourse to actually get the paper, waited for a few people to get their paper, when my turn came, ms Guo said this to me: "you really surprised a lot of people with your results." Awesomesauce. my results breakdown is GP A, H2 Math and Econs A and H2 Physics and H1 Chem C. so i got ACAAC, pronounced A-kak.

saw a few of my friends, they both did relatively well, enough to get into local university. when to find some teachers to thank them, like Ms Ni and Ms R and Ms Guo and Mrs Lim. Mrs Lim in particular told me how you get A 1 ar, damn surprising you know. i wanted to find my council teachers but i couldn't find them and i was running out of time cuz my dad was waiting at the gate. so i have to go next time.

this is the more in depth breakdown of my grades. i have both of my sciences getting C while my Econs and GP got A, which is going to be a problem if i apply to engineering, but considering the type of people they allow in, i shouldn't have too much competition, except for maybe aerospace engineering. surprisingly, my grades are actually quite suited for FASS, but my father is incredibly against it because it doesn't have much of a future in singapore. but if i were to somehow get into fass, the only thing that appeals to me both intellectually and job wise, would be psychology, which by my father's definition means talking to siao nang everyday. Ms Ni says i'm suited for sociology for some reason. i dunno why.

Remember When

i promised to write some stuff about the multiplayer in cod modern warfare 2. right now, the connection is so bad i can't get a decent game without spasming, both me and the game character.

although i did in fact played it for a few hours (days) before the connection went out the window, i doubt anyone really cares about how i felt about the game.

Why?

because firstly, none of my readers (that's the person sitting in the chair looking at the computer screen) own an xbox 360 or any console, so is unlikely to buy one and hence cannot enjoy the games that i am about to offer them. but if you actually do, drop me an sms.

secondly, if you were going to buy this game already then my words won't sway you. ever. otherwise i couldn't really care

but on to more important topics, ASSASSIN'S CREED 2



If you've always wanted to visit italy or venice, but is too cheap or afraid of planes, this game is the closest you'll get to being there. it's probably even better than being high. the scenery is just so amazing. but i have to warn you though. when i started playing in the first 10 minutes, the ridiculously fugly models of people just totally freaked me out, i was going to yell at the television screen and demand my money back, until i actually went into florence and saw the "real" people there.

it's really ironic how people in the real world look less real and more disgusting than in the Animus.

the gameplay has really stepped up, although greater depth is needed for it to really shine. combat has a lot more variety with new weapons and the ability to disarm your opponents. i found myself regularly disarming them, stabbing them and then dropping their weapon just to disarm another one. the free running parts are still incredibly fun, although it's hard to find a way down after going up, especially without interrupting the flow of the movement.

the storyline is lot more beefed up, Ezio has a much greater personality than Altair, although he seems to be a little too eager to help out people he just met. the sci-fi part is a little too abstract i think, so it won't be easy to tie it up at the end. but i still have to give props to the guy whoi came up with the idea for the glyphs and the "truth". if you play the game, you'll hear this quite often "nothing is true, everything is permitted" so the glyph has you do puzzles regarding many moments in history where many great people that we hold as "pioneers" like Thomas Edison, were actually just using the Piece of Eden and manipulating the view of the public, which is very conspiracy theory-ey and puts people like john wilkes booth as the "hero" or the "assassin" who "safeguard the evolution of humanity". it's really interesting to think about how the victors write history and the fact that the assassin's work in the shadows.

the soundtrack composed for the game is also incredible, albeit a little too "soft". but i think it's the kind of thing that really adds to the atmosphere rather than being a great standalone piece. regardless, it's still "feels" great to just play the game. although at the end, there's really not much to do once you completed it.

and speaking of completing it, now i just finished what i already planned for my next 11 days. wth am i going to do at home now.


this was actually going to be another post but i got bored and lazy after that day and the subsequent ones. here's a story i'll probably tell my grandkids or at least anyone interested enough to hear.

so me and edmund went to the starbucks in sengkang to study for chem. we saw a few SR people there like xiying, but they sat separately since it was a really small place. so we study and study and study. then around the afternoon, this guy just comes out of nowhere and says hey i need to use my laptop and there's an electrical point there. this is a place for everybody so you should move to the other seat so i can use it. there actually was a smaller seat that we used to put out paper and books and periodic tables and stuff, so we' out of sheer kindness and goodwill' decide to let him have a place there so he could use it. we cleared up the papers and edmund sat on the small chair, it was more like a stool cushion. so this guy just took out his laptop and just plugged in and just charged and went on to read his papers. he wasn't even using the goddamned laptop. i wanted to say something, but figured i have just as little right to sit there, figured i shut up. i got pissed off after a while and decided to ask xiying to pretend to come in as if we were waiting for her all along. so she comes along and we ask him, nicely, mind you, to please move to another seat so that our friend can sit because we were waiting for her. who would have thought that he actually raised his voice and said this is the community space and i can sit wherever i want. so i said hey if you and your family were sitting together, i wouldn't come in and just break you guys up because i needed to sit there. he just kept interrupting me and said i don't want to talk about it, i don't want to talk about it. of course i got fucking pissed. so xiying, just decided to leave. he lowered his voice saying that, you can ask your friend to sit at that seat, which is occupied by a bag. edmund just used his logic and said don't want to talk about this everytime he opened his mouth. so he diam diam sit there do his stuff. when he was about to leave, he started to pack his stuff and as he went, this is what i said (shouted across starbucks) to him "Bye Bye Uncle! Merry Christmas! Cross the road be more careful hor!. it took him a few seconds before he came back, all the way around the winding shop to where i was sitting, and said,

"what are you trying to say" .

then edmund just pointed to his stack of newspaper that he didn't put back

so all i said was be careful since there was a rain.

you trying to be "zhuai" isit you want to guai lan with me isit. i careful anot also none of you business

i'm just trying to be polite

you so kaypo go and ask everybody what they drink for coffee la

ok la, i will i waiting for you to go nia

then he just turns around to another guy who was drinking and said, eh this boy want to know what you drinking

orh orh i drinking "some coffee"

so i pretended to write down.

u trying to be zhuai isit, no respect for your senior isit, tell me your school and number

ok la, i wrote down on a piece of paper my school, the website and my name along with that i'm a jc 2 councillor, just for kicks

u trying to be zhuai with me isit,

so the guy next to him, who is just a stranger, tries to calm him down and say eh they just children la don't need to uptight la

u dunno him ar, no respect. eh where is the number

how i noe the number, i only got the website

nevermind i will send to letter to your prinicipal to complain ar

edmund is still pointing to the newspaper, eh you never put back

now he pai seh, i going to put back la, i going to toilet first.

ok, den put back la.

den he pai seh, go back and put the newspaper and walk away.

so the stranger turns around and talks to us, you don't need liddat talk back to him one

so we explained what happened

he said, aiya this kind of people is liddat one la and goes back to drinking his coffee.

and the worst part was, HE DIN EVEN BUY ANY COFFEE TO BEGIN WITH.

hahas, i actaully wrote a "warning" letter to the school to warn about the complain( and make really stupid jokes about him) , but it got bounced by some administrative manager or something.



i only have one last paper left, next monday, its the physics mcq. had the physics paper 3 today, got a lot of really small details that i couldn't remember like resonance or the fact that angular frequency is 2 pi f. i actually rememebred that with 3 minutes to the end, but i din have enough time to change all the answers, since they were continuation of the first. i doubt i'll get an A, so i'm kinda scared to look up the internet for answers. my parents still haven;t really absorbed the news that i actually can repeat my J2 year so they think that this is do-or-die. i feel kinda pathetic having to use retaining as a safety net. damn.

i also need to cut my hair soon and get some ns stuff. in about 2 weeks, i will be another botak going to the army and learning broken english

A level math

paper 1 was done a few days ago, i did it sick and coughing

i actually gt the flu the day before the paper, then the days it self i got a combination of both flu and sore throat, then i took medicine, now my flu's gone, but i developed coughing. now i have coughing, sore throat and a build up of phlegm, and not to mention a sore right eye, which feels like i got punched in the eye, but i actually didn't, unless somebody hypnotized me and made me sleep walk into an ongoing bar fight.

anyway, on to what you actually care about



my math results.

in case you were wondering where i got the answers, TA-DA, wonder no more. i just googled for answers and out it came, pretty nifty huh.

also, i wrote down all my answers, just the final answers, of my paper 1 so that i could check and gauge roughly how much i could have gotten.

the magic number here is 57

upon 100

which is like i said just a rough gauge, lots of things that i can't really take into consideration like error carried forward, which would affect about 2 qns which is about 8 marks ( meaning if they were generous i should get about 5 marks out of 8), also a lot of "exact values" type answers, which i could be marked down for because i always take the physics way out and just write all the numbers in 3 sig fig. that will affect roughly 4 marks i think, and lastly some show and proofing type qns which i couldn't really add to my answer sheet, which should also be around 4-ish marks.

and not forgetting moderation which is essentially the "My-head-is-a-lemon-your-argument-is-invalid" method of avoiding arguing with parents over marks.



oh yeah i went there.

anyway, i'm not putting my hopes up to high and can safely (or naively) believe that i can get within 60-70, which is the B range. also, that means that if i can get my paper 2 to be above 80, i can almost definitely get an A. that is if i'm not dreaming.

GP also passed sometime ago. i did qns 7, thanks for asking. to those not taking the paper, it's actually "how far should religion influence political decisions?" i can almost hear all of the millions and millions of GASPS going "he didn't do the science question?!?" i was actually thinking of which of the 2 to do, and because they were actually side by side, being qns 7 and 8. i just decided to start thining of ideas for both at the same time. qns 7 was just lucky to be the number that is higher that 8. Qns 8 must be thinking "Curse you, number 7 for being one less than me!!!!"

content wise, i don't think there should be a major problem, should be just largely nit-picking at words that i should not have used but used anyway, things that make the red alert in the marker's head go off, like the word "still" or "always" and stupid things like that.

the comprehension was a lot tougher though. the stupid author decided to talk about something stupid like work and play, which made it s much harder to paraphrase since all the words that have the same meaning are already used by him, like leisure, and activity.

still have a lot more papers to go, probably the least confidence i have is in economics, because i will probably do-or-die with chemistry, you know, just like o levels.

also, if any of you sharp-eyed freaks have noticed, i actually have a double eyelid in one eye and a single eyelid in the other. Thanks, flu disease, you just disfigured my face, now anyone who sees me will turn into stone. I hope you're happy.

Career Choice

yesterday was actually the NS forum, which was kind of cool because at least 2 out of 5 teachers have vocations that are classified, which makes it sound so much more cool than it probably is.

anyway, i actually wrote this now, because i didn't have much thought about it except, the song at the end was so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTGdi1w-Cs, here for you to hear.

ya so, i thought about today as i was going home. it's basically the same few things since my o levels, but with a few additions here and there. but i'm gonna start the story from sec 4 so you can follow on.

so the time now is 2007, before o levels. during this period, i remember telling my friends, eh, you know ar, i never study i kanna c6, i go and study, come out fail. that's why better not to study. which was really ridiculous, because that was i sincerely believed, everytime i tried to study, i ended up getting worse. so my friends were used to seeing me not study. so i had this friend, eugene who also doesn't study, but he probably does at home, that's why he got better than me. anyway, we always go down play soccer with unity (another class) and normal acad people. so as the exams drew nearer, we played that much harder, in fact the closer it was, the more we would play. maybe we were trying to destress, maybe we were venting our anger. but it didn't really matter. what mattered was we played, and i never really improved much.

so the night study starts in our school, and it was getting to 6, and i was just sitting around at one of the canteen tables, i was telling my friends
if i pass, i'm going on to a jc. and definitely not sr, because i'd rather go to a poly than end up there. and then after i get through jc, im gonna go be an engineer, maybe sign on to the army or something.
if i just borderline, i'll most probably go to poly, but i'm definitely not going to take p engineering there, because i don't wanna end up as some uni guy's ka kia. i will maybe take up optometry and take over my father if i get to a poly.
if i flat out fail, i'll go to ite or some training thing and learn to be a bartender. only because i love to throw bottles.

a few of my close friends in secondary school have heard of this story, so they usually end up surprised i ended up in sr.

anyway, i got my o levels back, and i got l1r5 of 15. at first i was like, oh, fuck. pretty much. but most i got b3 with the shocker being bio with a c5. i mean i didn't expect to get a1 for it, but you know not that bad la. so i remember i went home, i talked to my parents i cried a little, or a lot, i can't really remember how much. but i remember my mum telling me, in a soft ocnsoling voice, what do you expect me to feel, i mean i can't say i didn't expect it, i mean this is how you do it. except in chinese. so, at that point i felt even more fucked. but i got over it. and then i went to sr.

i remember telling some of my friends hey the best thing that happened to me in pae was picking h1 bio because im never gonna h1 bio ever again, EVAR.

anyway, throughout this 2 years in interim adulthood, i picked up a few interests that i never really explored in the past. one was architecture, which was really similar to engineering, except it had more to do with design. i mean i'd love to design, but i'm just not talented enough. but i'd give architecture a run for its money. the problem is, i actually heard from a cousin who just graduated from NUS, i think, i cant really remember. anyway, he says architects are always in high demand in singapore because there is only one class of them in singapore each year, which got me really interested. if i actually did do this, i would have embarked on a path similar to my dad, because he also went to optometry when it was a diploma only subject, and only one at that time had the classes, (i think). optometry was special in that there is no degree of optometry in singapore, just a diploma. anyway, back to me. the problem is, according from my cousin, you need to go in for a COMPULSORY interview, which is not a problem (mostly), with a portfolio. WTF, when you think about it honestly, people go into architecture class because they DON'T have any experience and hence have no previous designs. but apparently they want to see it so as to weed out those who do not have "the passion" so now i'm stuck. because i can't ever reliably put architecture as a plan A, it alwasy need a reliable plan B.

also, this year, i picked up magic, which was really fun, but i don't really have any interest in performance, because i suck on stage and can't smile for my life. however, i am actually interested in croupier position, which is basically the guy who deals cards in a casino. unfortunately, the IR hiring fair is now over and at that time i wasn't 21 yet and i couldn't send in my application. Damn it, because they were offering to pay for their training courses too.

another thing. i have always been interested in signing on to the army, even though people like to say, no you're wasting your life. i think i like army life because it's never really boring. if there's one job i hate, it's office jobs. i want to do something outside. but the thing is the only thing that's realistically keeping me from signing on is my fitness. never once in my life have i ever said to myself, i am finally fit. i may have been healthy at some point, but never fit, ever. so i'm kinda hesistant about signing on. i mean no point signing on if i'm just gonna be some guy there. at least be an officer or at the very least a specialist. i don't mind going in to be an engineer or something because i have an interest in that field. i just hope i can get into ocs.

also another thing that's been on my mind about the army. i don't really know whether i want to maintain a low profile there or just try to chiong all the way. there's benefits to both so i can't really decide. i want to maintain a low profile because i am not a very social person and i want to avoid as much punishment as possible. unfortunately, from my life lessons in npcc, i realised that it's never good to be invisible, because you don't wanna regret going in and not getting the opportunity that you wanted. so you know, lazy vs getting kicked in the ass and not getting rewarded.

also another sidetrack, some of you guys may know that i screwed up my aptitude test, which means, i have a much lower chance than everyone else to get into sispec or ocs, which is really depressing.

anyway, back to the main topic. as of late, i'm becoming interested in being a teacher, particuarly a gp teacher. my mum thinks i shouldn't because i'm quite an asshole to my brother. who knows, maybe that helps. anyway, i don't wanna be a maths or physics teacher because they seem to be the most boring departments (no offense to teachers). but the problem (there's always a goddamn problem) is i won't take literature or english language as my degree. if i were to take the plunge and be a teacher, i'll most probably be in philosophy or psychology. while both are interesting to study, they don't make the most stable of jobs. jialat.


now you see that most of my career choices are screwed up. things i want to be would most probably not go my way and things that are, would probably be underwhelming.


so help! i need somebody, help! not just anybody, help! you know i need someone, hhhheeeeelllllpppp!

by the beatles, my anti-drug.

also, something for you to take home. i don't want to leave srjc with a large network but no friends. i'm sure you do too.

some guy

WHAT UP BITCHES !!

awake, yet? still trying out the greeting thing, anyway, back to stuff that doesn't matters.

the dude you see above is douglas, and he came to our school and talked to us, which was cool. he comes off as a really semi domesticated culturised japanese, which i have no idea what that means. but he's singaporean, very singaporean. he's most probably brought up in a chinese environment, since he can just spew off couplets ( repeat after me Cheng Yu !!) like just off the cuffs. i probably just misused the phrase off the cuffs. anyway, he comes to our school, talks about his life at this company called apex-pal, which honestly is a really retarded name for a company, no matter how small that is. i mean, can you imagine a bunch of directors and bigwigs sitting at a table going, hmm, glennard pte ltd, no, glennard incorporated, no, glennard he's so awesome enterprise, no, and then little douglas meekly whispers, apex-pal? and then the directors going WHOOOOO!!!!! WE GOT IT!! like a frat party.

just wondering if you could imagine that.

anyway, what astonishes me (ok, exaggeration) was that he just took chances and things just worked out for him. i suspect that there was more going on in the shadows, but really, "i just chose vitamin E because i was introduced to it" Come on. and all 4 of his sons nams start with do and have 3 syllables, like dominic, donovan and some other name i can't remember.

also, he came off as this guy who was really committed to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. he was like "VALUES SYSTEM !!!" and then pointing out his index finger at the student who asked a question, and then rainbows came out and a unicorn jumped over the table. ok i was kidding that din happen.

but still, he was very committed and he talked about how he got 4 jobs within the 3 months after a levels and before ns. which when you think about it is quite amazing. he had a job in a power plant in the morning, a teaching stint for 10 weeks (2 and a half months for you all who suck at math), a job at a bakery and another doing market research (ie dumbass surveys). all of these jobs are time-consuming and tiring and still he held on to them for 3 months, which is kinda amazing. even more amazing was that during ns itself, he managed to pack 8 2-hour tuition lessons into those weekends, letting him rack up 5-6k per month, completely pwning his ns (officer, that is) pay of 1k.

as i heard about him talk about his jobs and also people asking for internships (is it just me, or is it becoming a recurring question?), i was thinking about going to a job agency and telling the clerk, get me the craziest job that i have the qualification for. which is awesome, because i have no idea what the hell i'm gonna do. imagine like, suddenly, the clerk calls you and says, "we have an opening for a parachute tester, would you li---- HELL,YES!!"

hahas.




also, breaking news, i have been singing get back by the beatles wrongly for the past week,
...
and i just found out about it
like jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he nanananananana
amd then that for about 3,4 more lines then, GET BACK, GET BACK, which is essentially the chorus, and that was awesome to sing, out loud, when people seem to be staring at me, is that a chinese dude, what's in his bag?



YOU'LL NEVER KNOW!!



and you know, the douglas i was talking about, he's the CEO of Sakae Sushi.

I need a new greeting

I need a greeting, especially since im' gonna do this everyday.

like hello internet, but that's already taken

anyway, spent the last hour doing some work, actually the hour before my dinner. but before you go out and say " Nil, you awesomely slacking compatriot, are you mugging IN THE CLOSET?!?" actually, i did my work over feeling guilty over (yes i used over twice in the same sentence) not doing anything constructive over the long weekend, which is 3/2 times longer than most weekends. heck, its' not even revision, it's just work i would have otherwise done in class today, had there been class today. officially i have spent at least a week not revising any work. the first week of school, i just had absolutely no mood whatsoever to do any kind of "real" work. maybe it was because the beatles rock band is coming, which i now own and is AWESOME, or that nobody is really around in school anymore, which makes not knowing how to do your work all the more irritating.

i'll be honest, i have to study around other people, because firstly i suck, and secondly, i suck and i end up pestering other people on how to do simple questions. so certain people get really annoyed when i do that, but it's not the majority so i still have a vast pool of resources to tap into (Muhahaha, people who are not annoyed).

so yeah, studying by yourself, no matter where you are is incredibly unfruitful (i'm not sure if that is a word), so i avoid it. but you can only avoid your work for so long before it finally catches up with you. and now i end up doing papers from at least 2 weeks since the teachers gone through them, so that when i ask my friends, they have some clue what i'm talking about.

we got our prelim results over the past friday. everyone in our class got our ranking points calculated wrongly. and more importantly, our scores and subsequently, our class average, should jump by around 5 points more. this is really weird because our class was the only one affected by the wrong calculation (i could be wrong but the other classes don't seem to be complaining), so when the principal showed the top classes, we might have beaten some of them. and by we i mean, elizabeth jason and the other freaks who actually study. anyway, our class average is around 50ish, which is not that bad until you remember, this score is after all the moderation(s). i'm not sure if i can call this "hypocritical" but you keep bashing us about not studying more and not working hard enough and not paying more attention to the question and yet, still give us extra points that we don't even deserve. How Dare You!?!?.

correct me if i'm wrong but any sort of moderation should be done using a bell curve (ask your local neighbourhood math tutor). our form or moderation just involves adding 5 or in the case of physics 7 more marks on top of what you already had. This, number 1, makes everybody equally better, which means relatively, there hasn't been any change whatsoever, so we aren't pulling the people at the rock bottom up so they don't feel insecure, but everyone, so we all feel better about ourselves. Number 2, why the need for this? we aren't going to be using this for any sort of assessment in the future and more importantly, this gives us the facade (pronounced far-car-dee) of being smart enough to pass our A levels, when we know we can't.

moderation like this is like going to the archery olympics and the referee saying that, since retard number 1 is going up against superman, i'll move the target closer for retard number 1 so he won't feel bad if he loses. what the hell? if exams were meant to make people feel adequate about their intelligence, might as well use primary school papers.

i'm not bashing on people who did poorly in exams, because i know and genuinely believe that they worked hard, sometimes, we are just that unlucky. but i felt that jumping one grade for everyone is necessary. especially since i felt the i deserved my original score because i am that unfocused. and even more so after i've come to terms with how retarded i was (at that one specific paper).

anyway before you start shouting "Nil, you cheeky backstabbing monkey, does that mean you did very well for this prelims" heck no. allow me to rephrase myself. HECK NO. officially i got a 50, which for my non-jc friends, is upon 90, which means i am passing. well, non-jc friends. not really, because on average, people need upwards of 70 to get into a local university. furthermore, that was after moderation. if based on my actual results, i should have gotten a 30 + 10 for PW. essentially meaning that i got 2 E and 3 S, you go and do the calculations yourself, but that essentially means fucked up, if this happens again in A levels. and this realization is made so much worse when you realize that other people are getting upwards of 70, and they did the same paper as you.

you're so screwed.

Jun Hols: An Epilogue

Today is the last day of the june holidays
if we want to be incredibly precise, i did an infinite times more work than i had in previous holidays. if you understand any basic math, you would realise that that is only possible if i did nothing in the past and i actually DID something this time. i actually did do 2 practices on my own, not that it is actually a homework assignment, i just needed to brush up on some maths and remembered that the topics where i suck at, i lost the entire tutorial booklet. so i ended up doing what i was good at, relatively because i suck at everything else, if i merely write more than 3 lines, its considered good.

so this holidays i made an attempt to do some kind of work. unfortunately, cambridge does not accept attempts. feeling really guilty over this. every night before i go to sleep, i keep telling myself tomorrow, first thing in the morning, i'm gonna finish blah blah blah before i switch on the computer. and never has that actually happened, except the 2 times. to the future me, whom i know will read this. The moment something good happens, don't break the flow, don't say, i'm gonna take a break and then come back the next day. the breaks never gonna end. ever. EVAR!!!


ok. wow


writing that did not make me feel any better. at all.

i decided to break my 4 weeks of holidays to review them more carefully.
week 1: 1/6 to 7/6
this is probably the week with the most promise of actually doing anything, because we had to come back for 2 or 3 days for tutorials and lectures. I did not sleep, i think. i rushed mass effect with the hopes of finally starting on actual work, which i promptly did after i finished. i was proud of myself for that. but sadly the streak only lasted for 2 days, i went back to gaming.

week 2 : 8/6 to 14/6
this was probably marked by the start of my downward spiral. i discovered bob.com.sg, which was an singapore xbox forum. so i went on to the marketplace, bought a second hand game, prototype, at slightly cheaper than retail, then hoping to sell it quickly back so to minimise losses. i did, and in my rush, i had already forgotten about school. i also bought 2 months worth of online time at around $17, which further fueled my descent.

week 3: 15/6 to 22/6
the descent basically continued, i woke up, played, ate or skipped lunch, play somemore, dinner, play, sleep. at this point, the only things going through my mind was very basic, i wanted to get to the end of my game, and not end up late where i meeting my next seller to deal. i got fallout 3 and too human, on 21st.

week 4: 23/6 to today, 29/6
technically i went to penang from 22nd to the 24th. it was a great trip, ate great food. visited my grandma, who is slowly getting hard of hearing and seeing. visited my aunt who just suffered a stroke. they shaved her head, and now she has 2 big scars on her forehead. one of her doctors doesn't even speak english or chinese or any other language they understand, he just speaks malay. and there's some kind of drama going on in my extended family, my aunts' immediate family members, that i don't know about, and my mom's not telling me. funny how a tragedy brings out the best in us. and before you say you busybody, not you or your mom business go and mess up. it actually is my mom's business, because it involves and my mom and her husband, my dad paying for her sister, my aunt's hospital bills. so yeah, it involvoes my mom.

penang food is really great, any random stall you pick out in the street is going to taste awesomer(ya, i went there) than any stall in your vicinity, even those kind where you have to go out of your way to locate, because the shop owner decided to park his shop at some weirdass location, penang has about 1 stall per coffee shop of those quality of food. so you kind just about imagine the kind of food even penang-ians consider good, and the best part is i tasted them before.


so i came back on the 25th, got jet lagged and rested up, on the 26th, gt a headache and my left eye started twitching. after that i don't really have an excuse for not doing work. this is also the time i started to feel guilty and reflected. i started to think, among other things, that is the a levels path, the way i want to. don't ask me, i haven't yet come to any meaningful conclusion.

i also kept skipping lunch throughout the holidays, not because i was overwhelmed with work, my maid just sucks at cooking plus i wake up late so i end up eating lunch at 3 and dinner with my parents at 9, which apparently is not healthy. so to avoid scolding, i skip lunch and eat dinner at 7. but now my stomach doesn't feel so good. i'm probably just a few years away from getting some kind of gastric related illness like my father.


the season 5 finale of house was awesome!!!

i actually thought episode 23 was the last episode, but it was the second last, so the cliffhanger ended with one major character sexing up another. which i guess was ok for a season finale because then you have something to build on for the next season. then i went to surf around and only then did i realised there was another episode after that. i felt stupid. so i couldn't wait, and i torrented as quickly as i could. so there's a tale of how stupid i was. but anyway THE SEASON FINALE OF HOUSE WAS AWESOME!!!


www.lightamillioncandles.com

Alternative mediums

I saw a great video "lecturer" if you can call him that. Daniel Floyd, *Character Animator (in training)* . He did a few great pieces regarding video games which make quite a few good arguments to push video games as an art form. While most (3 out of 4) of his videos typically have more relevance for media students or game developers, his one piece make a lot of sense to me, us or basically all students.



he talks about tangential learning, first introduced to me by Randy Pausch, lecturer of The Last Lecture, as he calls "head fakes".

tangential learning or Self-motivated learning is a much greater way of learning because, for the teachers and parents, it results in greater absorption of the knowledge, meaning when you understood differentiation, you can remember it longer than a week if you did it through tangential learning.

but what is it exactly, lets' use an example to illustrate. say you watched a movie about da vinci, called the Da Vinci Code (subtle right), and you got really interested and you googled da vinci, just for the heck of it. you could have just learnt about the vitruvian man and his other great works, and probably a bit about the renaissance in Italy or the history of the bible and all that. now you must be wondering, hey man not everyone does that, but just think about it, if only 10% of the audience googled, 57,600 people would have benefitted, and thats only counting the people who bought the book itself.

a lot of times, alternative mediums of learning are being overlooked simply because it wasn't direct. Turns out, according to scientific research, indirect learning is better. sometimes, i feel quite disappointed that such alternative means are not being used in the classroom more often. the suits always say that we are trying to expand your horizons by teaching outside the classroom" you mean it never occurred to anyone that the location doesn't make as big an impact as the cost suggests. i enjoyed the video lectures that are used in our GP lectures, not because the teacher is boring, but because they help people remember facts better.

if you watched the video, which some of you may while some of you won't, i'm not surprised, i myself am tired of looking at videos of korean boy bands and girl bands dancing and lip synching in my friends blogs also. anyway, i do reccomend watching them, great wealth of information in delightful animated format.

i am a fan of animation, and comedy. thats why i found this video to be so appealing. because i enjoyed being fed new information in a refreshing context. if you have any idea what kind of person i am, you would realize that i don't study for the sake of a piece of paper. i study because i want to know more about the rest of the world. that's why i don't mug, per se.

i'm not asking the gp teachers to go nuts and attend animation courses,(though i wouldn't mind spending MOE's money on something useful) but you may be wondering what other ways of transfering information is there besides the awesome animated shorts.

well, there's debate. i find it quite sad that this isn't used much this year, i really enjoyed them last year in miss ni's classes, even though they are more like presentations. i think underestimating debates is quite a big mistake. first of all researching for the materials and argueing, you already have one layer of information in the students' heads already, and for those who are arguing for the opposition, because you have to argue, you actually have to listen and you can't switch off and hibernate. and then there's the rebuttals and coounter and counter counters and ........ but you say, its too much stuff for one person, and if i set them up in groups, people slack off. well, its not really too much for one person, if you help the group split it up or "facilitate" the delegation of work, without giving away any answers. so everyone actually needs to work, and if need be the teacher can decide who to be the next to argue so people again cannot slack off.


and then there's the problem of people not doing work at home. well, torture is always an option. hahas. i really really understand this problem because i am guilty. heck i am so guilty that . well, its not a pretty solution, but there's the stress on CA marks or that seeing parents after prelims or something like that, should CA marks not work. i think a very good solution would be to use an interesting topic to start with. and strangely, you don't need an inherently interesting topic to start with. it doesn't need to be something likely debating the use of abortion or even something more local like whether Direct School Admission is good for Singapore. Heck it could be as boring as the canteen aunties. it simply needs to be "packaged" as something interesting like debating the need for staff and workers vs the alternatives (eg robots or vending machines). we are the Internet generation, the Japan-ised generation, we want instant gratification and nice packaging at that. we don't want big words and retarded statistics. ever.


and then there's the problem that it doesn't help you directly. well, content is most obvious. but the researching itself allows students to exercise the skills in considering all levels or PERMS or SPERM or whatever MREPS. As for presenting and arguing itself, students can be "reminded" to organize their arguments and present using AREEC or they are disqualified and punished to write an essay or something like that. if getting good grades for MYE meant less work, i would have gotten an A, trust me.


i know that teaching is a tough job. and i know that you guys out there are or know a lot of great teachers. its a stressful job as well. i'm just offering a simple manner to help you help us. hell, criticise this as much as you want for all i care, but let me know. i'd rather get insulted but improved, than insult you back and not benefit from anything. i hereby extend an invitation to anyone to criticise my plans in my tagbox.

i should be studying for economics, but this is actual economics at work, affecting workers all around me.
i finally know what subprime mortgages mean

http://www.crisisofcredit.com/




help them light a candle
www.lightamillioncandles.com

post 151

woohoo post 151


been a bad week
but trying to keep positive
succeeded a little bit until like about 10 seconds ago
when i read my tagbox

i write like a few posts a month for the last month, a few tags start trickling in
then the moment i start to point fingers, everyone starts to get defensive and say hey man frog in well, myopic, short sighted, biased, self centered.

that kind of comments

and ya i have had my share of really really nasty comments
every year
except 08, which was lucky

controversy generates publicity. in 7 days i generated like 34 hits or less whereas it took me around a month to get the same. its kind of unfair
it sort of satisfies the attention whore in me. just so you know

anyway, i am going to read their responses, so i don't end up being so myopic, you know. must learn from mistake. THINK FLEXIBLY.

and now i'm back

caixin doesnt have a blog so i can't like say much, and weijie did not grace me with a blog reply, so i aso cannot say much, and most importantly, my friend Eugene who is not from SR wants you guys to forgive me, strange


ok, so i need sort of like a response to respond to such responses to me responding to them, taking a goddamn photo.

wow

what a responsibility. and to be absolutely clear, i treat them as my friends, if they no longer do so after seeing what i write, i can't really blame them. but i write this way because i am blunt. stubborn maybe, but i'm definitely not trying to make any enemies here.

unlike 2 years ago


so caixin and weijie comes from 2 different perspectives.
lets' address weijie first because it is like easier. what i understand is that, if i work hard enough to achieve what i want, and enough glory has been bestowed upon me, i need not pick up litter, or some minute things like that. that view is what my mother has been trying to tell me all these years, and she's not wrong. the only reason we work hard is so that we need not do crap work. but the your focus of working hard is not to improve, it becomes to get out of this shithole, which to me is the wrong attitude. (again understand that from it is from this train of thought, not necessarily your own personality or mentality, wei jie.) so ya it kind of is wrong not to help. pele and zidane both made tremendous contributions to social situations in their own country, despite their success because they remembered that it was their country and their families and their people who supported them and gave them what it took to succeed on an international stage.

then theres the what makes me so certain they didnt help. i'm not, everything i understand comes from what i perceive, so if i had not perceived that you help, naturally i would have had the general understanding that you did not, UNTIL someone tells me otherwise, (does that make sense? it sounds kind of ok in my head) if i didnt see a tree get struck by lightning and that's why it's on fire, i would have thought some punks or dry weather, UNTIL someone told me otherwise, in a condescending manner or not.

and there kind of is nothing wrong with the photo, now that i think about it. i think

and then comes the frog in the well. Aren't we all. the only way not to be one is to know exactly what is going on with everyone in the world, so tell me, do you know what i do for council everyday, also no right, so that kind of makes you and me equal, (except that you didn't judge me or just that i don't know of it.) so now we're officially not equal. i'm the frog who made a noise, but you're the one who didn't

so thats' about it for weijie's comments, now for caixin.

he said they did, so now i know, kind of. and it kind of wasn't possible to help me because i was not in need of help, kind of, they were. " don't base you assumptions on me" "*base it on yourself" kind of did not make sense to me. what i think it means is that i shouldn't base my"assumptions" on other people, probably the stuff about pride and stuff, which still doesn't make sense.if gp teaches one thing, its that never ASSUME, and theres no absolute in this world.

so i cleared it up with caixin, he says that if i assume something and once it offends someone, its called accusing. which i now am guilty of. but that knid of wasn't the point of what i wrote. what i wanted to say was that when people work hard to attain glory, they will forget about the "little people", which based on my assumption is correct, but it is a biased view because i did not make sure that they were absolutely not helping them before i implied that they did not help others.
so that was kind of the falw he pointed out. i hate losing an argument

but the loser bodoh thing was absolutely true, because i absolutely heard it with my absolute ears. absolutely

when i talk negatively about myself, i think room for improvement, people think emo kia. when i talk negatively about people in general, people think i gt too much time. when i talke negatively about certain people specifically, they think im finger pointing and start to become defensive. all people are like that. me you bush obama track team councillors teachers principals staff canteen aunties. everyone.

in hindsight if i had not "finger pointed" maybe people would not have responded. if i had used the word sportsman or competitors people may just skip on through them and pass it by. but that was not the point. theres not point in being politically correct if you are just saying things that people already know. i have a unique style of writing and speaking in that i want to use words that provoke thought, make people think, make them reflect on why the world sucks and whether or not it is really their fault.

I live in an unfair world because everyone in that unfair world is being unfair to someone else. including me. that is why i remain pessimistic about everything and it generally hasn't let me down. or up, or whatever. i cannot understand the rationalization for being optimistic, like its ok you'll score that A next time or at least you tried your best. know that you tried your best merely gives you an upper limit. if you know you tried your best but failed, are you supposed to feel good, because i wouldn't. i would say this is not my best, i could have worked even harder and gotten that gold. trying your best becomes like an excuse rather than an encouragement.

oh ya and theres the mysterious Eugene who is supposedly in poly now and doesnt know much about my sr life. i just spoke to the only eugene i know and he just thinks sr people english powerful. so i don't know what your trying to do, but i unknowingly scolded my friend because i thought it was him. so congratulations.

go there now
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NOW

number 150

p0st number 15o

sr olympics was yesterday
gd job to all the organizers
now they know how hard our job is
hahas

all i did tt day was watch people run and then play upwords with michael desheng and sihao

but 2 things happened that day that really made me think

firstly, cheerleaders
no doubt, everyone was talking about them, i was telling a few of my friends we wont be seeing them anymore next year.
they did quite a "sexy" (close to being slutty) dances. and i was sitting next to my friend adam, who was once a cheerleader and i told him, that's not cheerleading, thats dance. he agreed. firstly, you had to give them credit for taking iniative to things like that, purely voluntary. so with that out of the way, they did mostly dances to pop or hip hop music dancing with their asses. there was 1 move where they just, in slow motion pointed their ass into the air swayed their asses across for like 5 seconds. so obviously, a problem in conservative singapore. lots of girls i talked to immediately mentioned slutty out right, no arguments there.

but then again,


it made me think, who or what made such "slutty" moves slutty in a negative sense. im not trying to defend it. it was stupid to do it in a school environment, it would have been better in a bar or something. what i'm pondering about, and inviting you to think about as well, is why is putting yourself out there, and attracting the opposite sex, such a taboo and looked down upon kind of behaviour. people tend to retort by saying, it cheapens them. but think about it, it is the person or persons who see them cheapening them, rather than they cheapening themselves. the difference is that their actions are the guilty party, but the people who perceive it and jump to conclusions. thats' my philosophical viewpoint at least, if you can call it that.

if i can speak for all guys, (which i probably can depending on how much u think of me as a guy) i would say that i am not very disturbed by this, but some will probably find it very attractive. For me particularly, i feel that it was a change of pace, not the best one, but changes should be appreciated for they are refreshing,( i don't know how much sense that made, but anyway) to me those girls are putting themselves out there and flaunting what they have, i would see them as the ones guys and lesbians target first in a bar, bang them and leave. and i think its going to be on a regular basis. i'm not saying that i may never meet someone like that and have them as a potential life partner, but who knows.

after that much talk about cheerleaders.
lets talk about something else. afthe sr olympics, i went looking for some friends to have lunch as we had a meeting later. so i went down to look for them. naturally or instinctively, i had this compelling urge to help them, even though i didn't want to help them. so i went to clear out the torch holding thing which had a lot of oil and hot water. thats not really the point. the point is that many competitors passed by us and the "official" helpers, those organizers and their volunteers, very very few volunteered to lend a hand. and more strikingly, because they were all wearing the same attire, the track team did not offer to help. so what i saw was them walking around the pe office with their medals and their jackets and their pride just walking around and posing outside for a group photo at the field. it really strikes a chord because you,(or just me) got this really strong vibe that they are the ones who are going to win but they dont spare a thought for those who helped them there, those who gave them the stage to do what they do best. this little line floated into my head that day. "in life there a winners and workers. winners put in all their effort and they either win or lose. workers put in all their effort and they either get recognised or forgotten." its quite sad. on top i heard one of them jeering at some mc or something for "loser bodoh", i cant really recall what it was about, but i remembered he was talking about the runners for sure.

life isn't fair, this adage is only true when you are the one at the disadvantage. no one who benefitted from unfairness ever complained. that is the ultimate problem. we know that life isn't fair only when we have problems, because we are self absorbed. we only know the problems that we ourselves face and we turn a blind eye when other people are suffering so we can benefit from them. Selfishness only leads to injustice. it's really quite a sad truth.


post number 150

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random updates

been really tired lately
homework's been piling up
plus i bought burnout paradise which is fun
really fun

anyway
lots of file checks
so that means i nid to actually do the work
plus all the subjects have extra enrichment and special attention and all tt
so like don't be surprised to stay back til 8 pm with a teacher who's there to look at u do work

naha hasnt given me back my cards
and mr yong's training is killing my arms
just very tired

tts all i have to write for now
i had thought about quite a bit for the last 2 days but i can't remember

yay!

exclamation mark


yay somebody tagged

woohoo

anyway, today was um
ok
bearable rather


nothing much happened today
tried to stay awake during class
failed miserably
hahas

had my napfa yesterday
failed everything that people usually fail
got a pathetic 190 cm for standing broad jump
did 1 pull up
it was more like half but it din matter
exceeded 16 minutes for the 2.4 run
in fact i almost failed my sit and reach
first time gt 39
den gt a 41 next time
all because i was wearing shoes
shouldnt have listened to the teacher
my shuttle run was 9.something either a 9.4 or 9.8 i cant really remember
all i could remember was running very loudly and stamping it trying to stop

so tts my week, nothing interesting



www.lightamillioncandles.com
more people must tag!

Orientation 09

fun
tiring
3 months of work for 4 days
worth giving freshman a good impression


anyway today is the last day, i was stuck with ava duty, which meant i din handle any technical stuff, just look after the ava people and give them instructions
so that meant i couldn't hang out with scavenger hunt people
thats sad

anyway, the finale went quite well, but it was only after close to 3 hours of rehearsals before we got to that level, if it was like last year, everything would have been screwed up.

i saw a girl at the beauty pageant which immediately caught my attention, she had a very outgoing and fun kind of look, that was an amazing look for her, but i wouldnt be surprised if she had a boyfriend, i mean anyone who looked like that is bound to attract attention.

i also saw a lesbian couple kissing, when neither of them looked butch. i was looking through the bus window at the station opposite so it might have been a guy, might have been


anyway, the teachers were the people who did the most for the orientation so props to them.



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Lessons On A Bike

Never wear long pants, especially the uniform kind on a bike

orientation has been going on for today
i gt first aid duty, even though im not a first aider
first day forgot to borrow bike so had to take bus, dam waste money
so borrowed the bike on the second day
now my butt very sore from going uphill and downhill so many times

on the orientation, the response from the freshman were quite good, they were quite responsive, only maybe 1 out of 8 were not that high
i stayed at pounggol park the longest, cuz its the furthest and i lazy go back, hahas
i think theres a lot of potential to really make them go even higher, but i seem to be the only one caring,
i dunno, maybe because i'm that kind of person


anyway, a few days ago i was looking around facebook and i saw a photo of my old primary school classmate, which is very shocking cuz it changed a lot. the photo was like 1 guy standing 2 guys sitting on the floor, at first i look at the guy standing den i tot it wasnt him, den i looked at the 2 sitting down, and realized that since they completely dont look like him, the guy who was standing, ie the one i saw first, had to be him. i was so shocked that he changed i showed it to my other pri6 friend yang. he was also just as shocked as me
so we were wondering, if they saw us now after so many years, would they see a big difference,
i don't think my face changed much, maybe just thinner a bit?

orientation still ahs 2 more days, lets hope it goes uphill from here