Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Ultra long first postFirst proper post... Am I really ready for another blog again?
Some of you asked me why I made a private blog as opposed to a regular one. Well, I have always seen a blog as a ranting tool, a space for somebody to speak those unspoken thoughts and conversation, instead of bearing them and muttering to oneself in random spaces of time. And since I intend to use this blog chiefly as a ranting space, I see no reason to open it to the public. I am not special, I do not need others to look at my life as if it is another novel or story. But I do wish to share my unspoken to my closer friends.
'Closer' is loosely defined here. If you feel bewildered that I consider you closer, its probable that you have had a far greater impact on me than you think. Once again I thank you.
Hmmm if you are feeling bored already, I'm giving a contents page of this post :p. since I just received my Chinese test paper (76.5/110, .5 more for the bloody A) I shall be ranting on the Chinese syllabus. I am also going to finally be able to talk about the RICO concert (weeeee), followed by a ranting on DMP scheduling and then a little post on the CCO concert.
zzz It doesn't seem like ultra long to me now.
Rant. Bitch. Whine.
I bet most sec 4s know what am I talking about. Bloody zong1 he2 tian2 kong4 and suo1 duan2 chang2 wen1. But the really the whole system seems quite pointless to me. The government always tell us that we need to learn Chinese to communicate with Chinese businessmen in the future, since China is a developing economy, blah blah blah. We need to learn to appreciate our own culture, blah blah blah. It is our mother tongue, blah blah blah. Therefore, all we learn during lessons is how to write letters and newspaper report.
I must be missing a point somewhere.
By learning the exact forms of a letter, I can communicate with Chinese nationals better?? With better clarity? By learning how to write a newspaper article reflection, I can learn about Chinese culture? Basing the syllabus on the frigging wuxia novels is more relevant in this sense. I did RE on the comparison between the books and history of certain jin yong novels. Admittedly it sucked like crap, but the point is that we did learn about certain aspects of Chinese culture, taiji for example, and i can see infinite potential right there (weiqi, Chinese instruments xD). And our forefathers certainly did not speak the Chinese that we speak, at least not for RI guys (sorry guys). I mean, listen to ourselves speaking Chinese; is our sentences even coherent? Can we make ourselves understood to Chinese nationals?
This must reflect a failure of the system in RI(sorry guys again). I learned more about chinese culture from RICO and weiqi club than from the lessons. I swear my oral skills have steadily declined over the 4 years, probably not helped by the fact I hardly speak Chinese in school, but still. Now I even have troubles formulating conversations entirely in Chinese to Chinese nationals.
Damn.
On to the test. Damn I hate those comprehension questions. I actually like the passages a lot, they sound a lot more mature and insightful than English anecdotes, which usually just sound plain corny. Its some of question I can't stand. Usually a comprehension passages consists of:
-2 copy-and-paste questions
-1 inference question
-2 explain-meaning-of-the phrase question
-1 inference question that may or may not be a bit free response
-1 free response
or the like.
The copy-and-paste questions are sometimes blown out of proportions in their mark allocations, but its the explain-meaning-of-the phrase question that really pisses me off. Its a perfectly beautiful abstract descriptive phrase; now you want me to explain it another way? Theres certainly double standards here, since the teacher never explained whether to explain the meaning or simply replace each part of the phrase with a synonym, and I have been marked down when using either technique. And besides, its a frigging descriptive phrase!!! Do you ever see English papers ask, what does the phrase 'all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others mean?' Okay bad example, but you get the gist. Most of us know exactly what the phrase mean, but cannot use different words to express the idea or concept. Hate this type of questions.
And the chang wen suo duan is the worst of all. I have have scored everything from 4 to 20 in this year, and I always put in 100% for all the chang wen suo duans since they can be so fun. Its a complete lottery to see if something that favors you come out. Redundant idioms often are tagged with marks, and the marking scheme leaves absolutely no room for error. The test setters have the luxury of counting the words in their answer key; we just have to guess. At least make it a fair one by giving some extra marks in contends so that we can earn them lah.
zzz
Hate Chinese syllabus.
On a happier note, RICO concert 2008! I rank this concert 2nd in the 4 I performed in with RICO, the best one was VotD XIII in sec 2, 3rd is myRIad in sec 2, last is Spring of Life last year, which despite the importance of significance of it, I felt that it was utterly rubbish. I'm sorry.
Anyway, a play by play on what I feel about VotD IX!
Jin Se Nian Hua - It was quite okay I think. Don't really remember any screw-ups anywhere. This is probably because I had my mind on more ummmm pressing issues, but still I thought it was on the whole quite good.
Xin Xian - Wasn't listening to it backstage at all zzz. The stage crew can confirm that I experienced a mini-crisis backstage, having tried unsuccessfully to get my black pants on for a good half of Xin Xian's duration. D: But then again the episode left me absolutely no time to panic , so I was absolutely not nervous for my solo :D.
Zhan Ma - Despite being completely not nervous and completely ready, I managed to forget Kwaun Boon's instruction to not to rou my first note. So yes i zao xia-ed the first note. Being half tone-deaf I couldn't really tell the difference but still... On the whole people tell me it was quite nice and stuff, but zzz, my yin zhu was extremely typical of me (which is to say horribly off sometimes and miraculously accurate others), my tempo was still too fast and got the qie fen yin part wrong as usual. No good.
Jiang Nan Hao - Backstage taking photos. I hugged Emperor Orange afterwards though because I heard the last part. Wasn't too bad, wasn't too bad.
Long Chuan - :(
Qin Wang Dian Bing - Wasn't listening, preparing for qi zou. Judging from the things Patrick received, must have been quite impressive :D
Yan (sic) Guang - No typos there :D More backstage trivia. The entire erhu section was in the toilet through the song because the toilets had the best loudspeakers... I can't remember too many minor mistakes SZ made, just one very unclean note. Nice.
San Men Xia- I think apple pwned DHSCO. 'nuff said. Although the song itself probably was on the boring side, but it was quite nice in the end.
Ye Ge - Beautiful. Really. i always liked the song. I thought the performance was excellent.
Long - Technically I think we weren't as good as the orchestra that played last year, but the emotion and grandeur was much better executed. I think the atmosphere that we created was damn nice.
Lai Fo Shi- No Good, but at least we ended okay. The xylophone player tried his best, we all seen his improvements during practices. must be the stage fright. And the painful zhonghu and cello miscue... I suppose the ending was quite nice though.
Chu Sai Qu - Nice. Not appropriate for encore I must say, but still very beautiful.
Post concert - Thanks for the chocolates, Yubo. Although i haven't touched them yet since they look like very good chocolates, and i didn't want to get addicted or anything xD. I didn't really have time to meet all the people I wanted to meet since somebody was not in a good mood and wanted to scold us ASAP back in school.
Nice.
Minor thoughts on DMP scheduling:
1. Let us see the timings and stuff for each group. Please. Yes I know i won't get to have DMP ever again, but that's not the point. Not everybody can go to school in 20 minutes any time of the day. Spare a thought for the poor dudes staying in Clementi or Pasir Ris who takes an hour and a half to get to school. Of course those early slots will get snapped up first, but even if the school schuffles up the timings of the lessons, at least we get to plan our timetables beforehand.
2. Put the frigging CLE and assembly periods in the first period. The poor guy living in Clementi (read: me) wakes up at 9, does random chores for about 1 hours, have lunch, take 1.5 hours to get to school, listen to a 1.5 hour talk about pornography, and takes another 1.5 hours to get back, by which time it will already be 4.30. Very nice, the good half of the day gone with only 1 hour of work. At least in the morning my parents can fetch a part of the journey, and I don't loose a huge chunk of time in the middle of my day.
3. Why all the Philo classes in the 7th floor???? Discrimination? This rant doesn't really make any logical sense but I'm pissed at climbing 7 floors first thing in the morning...
To conclude this rather unnecessarily long post, I have a short reflection of the CCO concert, which I, despite the rather messy gong fa, enjoyed a lot. Very nice. I would talk more about it, but since there's only 1 person from CCO here I feel that is pretty much a waste of space. zzz. I shall upload photos from RICO concert soon enough. :D
C H R O N O I Z E D
3:48 PM
