24 JC

2009-03-20T19:23:00.004+08:00

JC almost ambigrams itself, so I shan't bother with one heehee. Gosh I haven't blogged in ages since Orientation, mainly because I was too lazy to make ambigrams for the title. Irony...

Any RJC is turning to be alot better than RI :D. 10S06O pwns about as much as 4P, even though I missed some people in 4P, espcially the anime clique. But 6O has plenty of other interesting people, like Wince and Melvin Yin, making 6O pretty pwnage as well :D.

RJCO doesn't even compare with RICO because it pwns the latter so much. Its so much more fun with more interesting people instead of just plain bureaucracy for a change. Even though prac hours are quite ridiculous, the people in there makes it all worthwhile. :D

Bridge > Weiqi. Being a complete noob in a new but proper CCA is 100% better than being a pseudo-CCAL in a pseudo-CCA. Contract Bridge is also damn fun because theres arguably more interaction than in Weiqi.

But at the end of the day, theres always the frigging lessons... Math tutorials are exactly the same as RI math lessons in that nobody listens to the teacher while doing the maths homework. Math lecture is fool around time with the non-math RA people (wince, winnin, xiaozhi, melvin, haran kumar), while chem lecture is copying time because I don't follow most of the lessons at all... Econs lessons are the most interesting by far because its a completely new subject, with so much new info to learn. Its all very fun until the essay part...

And then theres physics RA. Damnit I shouldn't have taken phy RA at all, not because I can't follow, but because the lessons aren't too different from the regular kind. So its kind of wasted, since I could have simply signed up for physics O training. But if I didn't take phy RA I wouldn't be in 6O, so heh.

6O outing was a success too haha. I was late :( by like 45 mins because I missed the stop and held up everyone. So ps...

OHNO

2009-02-09T19:58:00.002+08:00

Orientation was a smash.

Wow, I mean I didn't expect OG to be like such a fun and important group. I came into BB12 with the mindset that it was just a filler before the classes start and the real friends are made. Now its more or less the complete opposite.

Day 1: (no photos haha, just go to my facebook account to see all the exciting cam-whoring by the whole group)

I already knew that xia and bernard was in my group, so it was a pleasant surprise to see huiyaor in the group too. But I didn't know anybody else from the OG, so I was already like: This OG sucks man. Haiz.

Icebreakers: Epic. I remember I lost at the the first game and had to sing twinkle twinkle little star with Yu Ting(i think, haha cant remember clearly liao..), then there was whacko where everybody just called Mel because her name was so easy to remember, and the rather confusing hongbo/hongfei and christabel/kristabella combo. Ah well.

Then there was station games. Aiya station games all quite stupid la, except for the actionary where the girls shows off their imba telepathy skills. I mean like, how is an eraser supposed to mean CSI???

OG dinner was pretty tame though, abit too early I think to really be of any use, but did get to know pingpong boy and moses alot better.

Day 2: EA. Welcome, Hong Xuan! The first part was damn fun while the guys were leading. Aha, all the random things that we did on the way, the epic failz shortcut xD and the playground search. Then when the girls took over everything became super-ultra efficient. We whizzed through everything damn quickly in Bugis until the checking out when they jacked us by changing the location of the check-out point. The post-race activities were quite fun. But when nobody responded at all at the end of the while thing made me quite scared that the OG might just collapse right after Orientation. Haha unfounded fears...

Day 3: Wargames. This was fun fun fun. The first one was quite fail la haha, because Rachel and i can never decide which house to attack. The second one was the best, because the defending at first was fun, and attacking was even funnier. The third one was crappy because I'm a guy, so I getz mauled all over by girls from every single house including BB -.- . But the final one was great because all the stations are so fun xD. The only bad thing was when I decided to go for bloody RJCO practice for some reason. WTH

Day 4: Dance. Song and dance isn't that fun I think. But the 'OG' lunch was quite fun, although only like 10 people turned up -.-. But I was dead tired from the sleep debt and dancing, so went home earlier than expected. Spent the rest of the day retaping the whole frigging
'flag', making ambigrams for the OGLs and picking clothes.

Day 5: Take 5/O'nite. Sorry jimmyz cant watch Jai play haha. Heard it from the Kayak though. Quite nice but the drums damn offbeat tsk. Haha joke joke. Went for amazing race with the motto of 'have fun'. Haha was quite fun until we got lost -.- but credit to everyone for not like throwing tantrum or anything :D. Then we spent the whole afternoon making stuff for OGLs and designing joel's tail. Haha I thought Joel and Mel were the most pro on the stage, just the judge all like the ones where the gay acts gay so they didn't win :(. O'nite was damn nice, but I wished they didn't like screw up the song, which like spoiled the experience :(. Dinner at playground was epic, but Moses damn you stop ponning everything because of guitar practice >.<

O'HNO ftw!

AshishBernardCharlotteChristabelDanielDelaneyDylanEllynHong(BoFeiXuan)HuiyaoJaclynJoelKristabellaMelanieMosesRachelRoySamborShideVanessaYuting

Public

2009-02-08T20:41:00.003+08:00

I have made this blog public for the main reason that I don't post anything interesting any way, and I'm too lazy to add everybody from BB12 one by one... So there you go. :D I shall try to post more often than once every 93275y9842759 months from now on... Orientation post tomorrow!

New Year

2009-01-07T11:39:00.002+08:00

I was supposed to post this after midnight on the first but then I got lazy, hence the rather off title. But nevermind.

2008 has been pretty much a mixed bags, what with those great moments balancing spectacular screw-ups. RICO and CCO concerts were the highs, as well as those little test results leading to the EOYs. And of course I found love for ambigrams near christmas.

On the other hand, 3.64 is hardly even close to my start of the year targets. We also failed to give hwa chong a proper fight for the Qiu Ping cup. And OIP was the FAIL. What a disappointment...

I have only have one resolution for 09, and that is to always pause before I speak, so as to give sufficient time for words to pass through the brain first, and not ever says anything out of impulse or emotions....

What comes up

must come dn

Ambigrams

2008-12-29T19:43:00.003+08:00

Ambigrams

Can't stop making them even though they aren't very good...

The day the Earth Stood Still ZZZZZ

2008-12-16T20:15:00.002+08:00

The day the Earth Stood Still ZZZZZ

For all of those anticipation, this movie sucked shit. BADLY.

I can't even figure what genre the movie is. Sci-fi? Most of the movie involves Mr Alien walking around in a suit, way too little visual effects or hard sciences. Moral? Mr Alien changed his mind about destroying the world, because what? The step-mother and her child finally decides to get along? How does that even make sense?

Damned the only exciting character in the whole movie was John Cleese's Prof Barnhardt. God they have made the whole goddamn movie with just Klaatu and Barnhardt having a discussion about whats to be done with the human race. Reeves was pretty good as the nonchalant alien, whilst the defence secretary also did well to portray herself as the stuck under orders from her superiors kind of person, but the rest of the characters are bloody shallow.

Klaatu barada nikto, god it was a waste of 2 hours and $6.50

Overseas...

2008-12-09T23:15:00.002+08:00

Overseas...

Haiz, must everybody go overseas whenever I want to do stuff with them...

So sian...

Shangying-CCO grade exam wasn't too bad, just really boring after the erhu songs. And I really don't think you can get distinction in percussion just by banging the cymbals very very loudly. Oh wait... Anyway, well done Yiu Sum, the solo was good =).

CHIJ Katong COncert was better than expected, but would have been rather enjoyable had the other 7 people came too. Why must did you pull out, Ernest and Adeline??? Arggh so sian in the end. I didn't find Seng Fong as well. So much for a reunion...

End off this stupid and pointless post with a quote from somebody from Shen Zhen OIP on QQ

Homico 23:06:34
but the students don't really care
In~ 23:07:56
as a chief of club
i prepare sell CD, dolls , cortoon posters
In~ 23:08:40
i have 10 inferiors

让人哭笑不得...

Dip Exam

2008-12-04T22:13:00.002+08:00

Dip Exam

Sigh, screwed up pretty badly for yi kuang. Just like last year, all the screw-ups were in unexpected places. At best low merit. But I definitely passed, because the examiners said so. zzz

On the other hand, I got into all 3 RAs I applied for. Weeeeeee. But I only took physics because its the only one I want to get. heh.

Erhu Dip

2008-12-03T20:00:00.001+08:00

Arrrghh Dip exam at NUS tomorrow. Wish me luck...

OIP Shen Zhen

2008-11-24T20:50:00.006+08:00

OIP Shen Zhen

Finally back from Shen Zhen. Definitely not as good as I thought it would be. In fact, I think it was pretty screwed up.

Days 1-3: We did absolutely nothing. We slept through the whole day on Day 1, went sightseeing and shopping on Day 2 and did more sightseeing on Day 3. Look, we can go check out the Mangrove Swamps and the nuclear power plant ourselves if we ever choose to, so why waste the frigging time from OIP on this??

Moved into my host's home at the end of the third day.

Day 4: I cannot remember what we did on that day. Seriously. I think it involves us doing more sightseeing in Shen Zhen Primary school.

Day 5: We do something meaningful for the first time. Woohoo.

First we have English interaction with some special sec 3 class. Their English is actually quite good, especially when its written. It was quite interesting, but then there was a problem. We could have kicked ALL the guys from Shen Zhong out, and the entire session would have been nearly identical because the guys were simply daoing us upside-down. And when we broke down into smaller groups, my first groups that had myself, Nguyen the Vietnamese scholar and 3 Shen Zhong guys simply broke down because the Shen Zhong people started to play Chinese chess. The second group was much better. 2 girls and 1 guy with Nguyen and me. But I thought it was 2 girls only the whole time because the guy was sitting like 50cm away from the table, so I thought he belonged to another table completely. -.-

We sit in a Sec 3 class doing Chinese. I got a guy on my right and a girl on my left. The guy pretty much daoed me for the whole period, then he magically disappeared when I wanted to take a photo. Hmmmm...

We played sports with them, then we joined this funny interaction with sec 2s, which consist of the sec 2s asking questions off a notebook and then stoning at you after they finish all the questions on the notebook. Hmm...

Day 6: Went to Happy Valley.

Day 7: Went to Lian Hua Shan with the host family.

The guy on the right is my host.

Day 8-10: We had lesson observation with the host student. Whilst 3 days is plenty of time for an extrovert to make friends with a whole class, it isn't quite enough for somebody like me. ZZZ. If only I had balls to make conversation with people other than the 5 that my partner knows...

Day 11: Slacking time. Sec 3s were supposed to teach the Primary school kids English, and we were supposed to facilitate and help them do reflection etc etc. Sec 3s chose to use the high school musical song and then teach the more difficult words to them.

Went to shop after that. Paid 100 RMB for a pair of shoes listed as 168 RMB. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking.

Day 12: Went to window of the world. Camwhore...

2 major things happened after that. Somebody was scamed into buying a piece of calligraphy work that he didn't even ask for, and another's buddy was robbed of a 1000 RMB handphone.

First the scaming. A group of us went up the fake Eiffel Tower in the W of the W, and there was this interesting booth for signature design and poem composition. We all went to do a signature design. Then one of the sec 3s decided to let the person compose a poem for his parents. After writing the poem on a small piece of paper, the person manning the booth evidently didn't think that the 100 RMB income was worth his time, so he 'offered' to do a brush version of the poem for 'free'. 'free' became 'material fee' when he started his work, which eventually came up to 600 RMB when he finished.

@#%^$&$%#%^#$^&@#%^@#!^%&#^%*$%

Eventually we paid 400 RMB for it. He had the cheek to tell us he shouldn't be trying to earn from students, and that he had too much money to spend any way.

Not entirely sure about the robbery thing, but apparently 4 teenagers pushed them into an alley and relieved the host of his handphone. Not very sure about the details.

Day 13: Had this interesting camp thing. To clarify: The camp sucks bad. The facilitation is off, the student facilitators obviously never received any proper instructions, the games didn't help build team spirit at all. But the group was definitely interesting and fun, although the group leader went through hell. She cried during a sharing session about one's fears, and then she cried again when her blindfolded partner fell and broke his lips. We heard that a group leader fainted while doing push-ups on Sunday. I have a strong suspicion its her. Shity camp, nice people.

Day 14: Class BBQ with host's class. Love to post photos, but it wasn't taken with my camera, and I have yet to figure out how to download QQ, so I can't get them yet -.-

Day 15: Left Shen Zhen. Host had food poisoning from BBQ, so didn't have chance to say goodbye. Sad.

OIP Shen Zhen

2008-11-08T21:46:00.002+08:00

OIP Shen Zhen

Leaving at 7.30 am on Monday, but I don't expect to go home after grad night, so this is my last post in 2 weeks.

Lugging my erhu along, so I'm just missing my football and my starcraft. Espzen and ICCup awaits... Heh. So much to look forward to during the holidays. So much to do.

So much to hope for...

ESPZEN League

2008-11-05T23:11:00.005+08:00

ESPZEN League

Wow I'm excited. I just joined this amateur indoor soccer football league with my neighbourhood team as goalkeeper. League kicks off on the 2nd of December. Can't wait for it....

Relationships and math problems

2008-11-03T21:09:00.006+08:00

Relationships and math problems

13,20,24,31,35,42,46,53,57,64,68,75,79,86,97,131,202,
242,246,313,353,357,420,424,464,468,531,535,575,579
,642,646,686,753,757,797,864,975,979,1313,1353,1357

Find the next two numbers in the sequence.

Today I cut my finger on the windows because somebody accidentally closed it while my finger was still there. No blood but it hurts like shit.

Then I got completely drenched going to play badminton, and I only reached the sports complex after the booking session was over. Naturally that wasn't the best of days.

Still that doesn't grant me the rights to be a bastard. Sorry Tian Yang.

I wasn't as pissed as I might have acted. If you are late and become completely soaked because somebody unknowingly gave wrong directions, you would be pissed too. The best course of action of course is not to act defensive and insist that you are right, even if you are. That can leave to later on when I'm not fuming. Of course that is not an excuse to be a bastard, but still I hope you can understand this.

So, we take 50-50 blame. I started it, but you shouldn't have helped it burn, and you could have handled it a bit more maturely. No hard feelings?

Note: I wrote and published this originally before I read your blog post.

Anyway: Answer is 2020 and 2024

Sandwich thingy

2008-11-01T22:24:00.010+08:00

Sandwich thingy

Learnt this from the OIP facilitator course. Basically you write 1 good thing, 1 bad thing and then another good thing about everybody else in the group. So I'm going to us e this for 4p '08. If you aren't from my class you will want this supremely boring so don't bother wasting your time.

1 Ben Goh

Easy going person, with a infinitely long fuse. I don't recall him being angry throughout the 2 years.

Weak personality. Never really seen him do anything by himself. Always doing whatever his clique was doing.

Humble. Not a loud mouth at all.

2 Ben Ni

Diligence. Always doing exercises of some sort. Never fail to complete any homework.

Way too introvert. Even wins me in 'introvertness', which is some 'accomplishment'. Must speak up .

Helpful. Always willing to help us even if we admittedly tend to ostracize him.

3 Bryan

Great temper. I bet he doesn't have the ability to become angry. Like he doesn't even get pissed off at anything.

Too follow guai sometimes. Follows rules too inflexibly.

Exceedingly friendly person.

4 Yan Wei

Smart. (I know you going to ego me after this.) If you hadn't be so lazy last year i serious think you would have had a shot at chem prize.

'RI' syndrome (tactless). I'm still pissed at the MSN incident at your house.

Frank. Almost to a fault. Won't sugarcoat anything he says, but also won't overstep boundaries. Most of the time.

5 Thomas

Is a very nice person when he decides he likes you. This of course means that:

He gives you hell if he doesn't.

Very practical. Like pons on days where he isn't needed. There are plenty of other examples but this is the most obvious one.

6 Dixon

Damn happy. Just once this year where he wasn't laughing his signature laugh.

Of course being so happy usually means that its difficult for him to focus.

Damn 'on' and friendly

7 Lu Wei

Has moral fiber. In a sense. Like how he 'books' people for infringments despite all those peer pressure.

Very inattentive during class, because

Too busy being a clown during class, which does liven up the atmosphere and helps learning.

8 Chuan Hong

If anybody in the class is to make it big, it will be Chuan Hong. A very good balance of intelligence and social skills

This 1 is a bit complicated. I think he is role-playing subconsciously. That is to say, he has a sort of character and then acts out to fit into that character.

9 Huan

Huan speaks 5 languages. Frigging hell

Can make more noise during lessons.

Had the drive and grit to get through his initial difficult period.

10 Lawis

Sincere person, means whatever he says.

Although got put in effort, could really have started studying rather much earlier.

Nice guy, and never ever a bastard on purpose.

11 Joel Cake

Can speak to, even manipulate persons of authority very well. That is definitely a favorable skill in the future.

As I have no doubt mentioned 1 million times already, you say 1 thing and do the other, Cynical Bastard.

Joel Kek is either very smart or secretly very hard-working. Either is good

12 Jack

Honest effort to learn and adapt in new environment

Not for me to judge effort but results definitely can be better.

Friendly personality

13 Jia

Very open with his thoughts, which also means

Spews colorful language like free for no apparent reason, which also results in

Tension diffusion

14 Han Yuan

Helpful to friends around him

Not always understanding to others' actions.

Doesn't attack anybody verbally for any reason at all

15 Wee Kien

Hardworking. At least during chinese. Heh

Jokes are not funny. Silence

Has a natural urge to prove himself. In games. I suppose he could shift that ambition to something more practical.

16 Duc

Damned math genius

Too quiet during class.

willing to help others.

17 Moi

Is usually willing to admit his own faults.

A lot, but boils down to low self-esteem

Sets goals and takes steps to achieve them

18 Dat

Responsible PE rep.

Has fallen quite a bit this year in terms of studies.

Patient.

19 Hee Zhi

Eager to succeed.

Too calculative. The world doesn't revolve around GPA

20 Pranav

Very open to ideas and contributes a lot

Can be insincere in what he says. Would do well to think a bit more before speaking, but

Will admit his faults after thinking

21 Charles

Innate curiosity for things around him

Umm, has frustratingly little common sense sometimes.

Good at discerning situations to say the correct things

22 Kenneth

A very social person whom is unlucky to enter the school of cynics.

On the other hand, as much as I don't like to mention it, your grades aren't exactly even average. Thank your luck for getting into RI, and make use of it by continuing to

Work hard. Theres definitely no lack of effort.

23 Jeremy

Very nice person to talk to.

A person's value isn't judge by just his GPA, and the world isn't made up of mugger either. Must learn how to associate with other kinds of people.

Has got his priorities down very very well

24 ttx

Eager to learn new things.

Not very active in class, which is a pity because

Has plenty of good ideas

25 Jing

Dancing. 2nd in open man.

Can be very impulsive.

Good at asking the correct people for help

26 Guo Dong

Calm and composed all the time

Damn mischievous and sometimes irritating when he chooses to be

Very tolerant of pranks from others though.

27 Eugene

Responsible monitor.

Probably shouldn't indulge in 4P madness that often.

Has good social skills to handle all sorts of people

28 Marcus

Very hardworking

Like CHG said, expects too much spoon-feeding and cannot find out things for himself

Can discern tensions and other such social matters well.

29 Sheep

Tian Yang is a nice person to talk to if he isn't

Being completely random midway through conversations Edit: 3/11: This probably stems from a more general problem of unwilling to admitting that one is wrong. Eventually you will grow out of it.

Sheep also has a clear idea of what he wants and what he doesn't need.

30 Jun Xiang

Jun Xiang is very easy to talk to, he's very responsive most if the time

Can be a lot more serious in class.

Doesn't hold grudges against anybody.

31 jl

Good memory for details but then,

Has severe 'RI syndrome', and can be completely tactless sometimes

Loyal to friends though

32 Pei Su

Brutally honest about himself, doesn't hide anything

Cannot accept people different from him easily

Not afraid to display his own talents when a situations arrives, but otherwise quite humble.

Phew. Too stupid to get the font working properly, hence the new format...

EOY Results

2008-10-29T19:17:00.002+08:00

EOY Results

English - EOY: 70 Overall: No Idea

Chinese - EOY: (Over) Overall: 70

Math - EOY: 90% (CA 85%) Overall: 87

Physics - EOY: 100% (CA ~92%) Overall: 95

Chemistry - EOY 92.5% (CA 88%) Overall: 89.8

Biology - EOY 85% (CA ~81%) Overall: 82.6

History - EOY 87.5% (CA ~79%) Overall: 82.4

SS - EOY 90% (CA 74%) Overall: 80

Overall GPA: 3.78

Actual results are horribly off from my targets.

English 27/45 (60%) Overall: 63%

Math Paper 1 52/60 (87%) Overall: 85%

Math Paper 2 51.5/60 (86%) Overall: 84%

Physics 65/80 (81% horrible) Overall: 89%

Chemistry 64/80 (80%) Overall: 85%

Biology 73/100 (73% duh) Overall: 75%

History 30/40 (75%) Overall: 77%

SS 25/30 (83%) Overall: 78%

Giving me a GPA of 3.64, with the exact same grade point combination I had last year.. Granted the EOYs was pitched at a slightly higher level I expected, but still this is extremely disappointing.

English - Got the AQ completely wrong. This is worrying considering theres GP next year. Damn it.

Math - Paper 1 was plagued with silly errors, like 12+18 = 40 etc etc. I lost most of Paper 2's marks on misreading the question requesting for degrees.

Physics - Sigh. I feel more confident in the RA placement test than this. Clumsy work.

Chemistry - Mostly lost marks to organic chemistry. Like short of clarity of thought for a lot of common sense questions.

History - Nothing to say.

SS - Freak I actually enjoyed doing question 1. But I still only scored 13/15 for that one.

A consolation is that I improved in every single subject apart from math, which fell by 4 percentage points. So okay, wasn't too bad.

heh

Homosexuality

2008-10-22T22:22:00.003+08:00

Homosexuality

I was 'inspired' by some people around me to write about this. Person in question doesn't have access to this blog.

There's nothing really wrong with being gay.

It makes me sick in the stomach, but that doesn't mean that its wrong by itself. A cockroach isn't wrong. Neither is a 15m worm.

Why we actually condemn gays is that it churns our stomachs. We need a reason to hate them, so we create the illusion that they are the immoral dregs of human society, with no sense of decency. They are sick perverts that can only think about having unnatural sex with each other, they are cheap, blah blah blah.

Lies.

I'm sure all of you have encountered reports on gay animals. 8% of rams will consistently mount another male. Males are naturally more sexually active than females. There's a scientific explanation for every immoral myth about homosexuality. The only true penalty that homosexuals suffer is their loss of rights compared to the rets of ours.

I don't subscribe to the 'It's a problem they can't help' version of things either. Its a lifestyle choice that is no more wrong than a person choosing to marry a person of a different race. There are no real arguments that can conclude that homosexuality is wrong.

They still makes me sick in the stomach, but it is lifestyle choice we should respect. Openly gay people are no less brave than the first blacks that stood up against racism or the first slaves that went against their masters.

That was quite interesting :P. Going to talk about atheism and theism next time.

Post EOY Goals and Thingies to do

2008-10-20T22:09:00.002+08:00

Post EOY Goals and Thingies to do during holidays

Just the 12 things I want to do from tomorrow onto the start of the RI(JC) term:

1) NUS diploma distinction for erhu. The cert is worthless except for in NUS itself, but still...

2) Trim down by a lot. Like on the order of 15kg of fats.

3) Become an organized person by tidying up room, getting a practical notebook, filling system etc etc etc. I still can't organize anything at the moment, and JC life is going to be far tougher.

4) Relearn French, just to prove that I can and to atone for being a lazy retard in sec 1 and 2. I dropped out with the excuse that I don't have the brain for languages.

5) Spam College Physics to get into physics RA. This is important. I don't think I wanted something this badly before

6) Develop habits to follow current affairs, in preparation for GP next year, and because it is important for me in the future as well.

7) Watch Heroes online, and finish it. zzz

8) Develop lower body strength so that I can actually play keeper in the frigging street soccer court. Can't control lower body well enough to block shots with any consistency...

9) Improve typing speed by learning touch typing for real. Anybody knows how to get the full TypingMaster software for free?

10)Pwn Starcraft ICCup.

11) And to reinforce 3, 'organize' RICO 'chalet' at cytam's house.

EOYS

2008-10-20T20:25:00.000+08:00

EOYs

Hur hur. Its over.

心情

2008-10-16T18:22:00.002+08:00

Screwed up physics.

Realistically my physics paper is around 75/80. Thats quite some way off from my target.

I feel sad.

It isn't about the 4.0. Its about missing your targets and your goals. When you set high goals, it motivates you to do better, and when if you do reach your goals, your success taste that much sweeter.

But the trade-off is that when you fail, you feel bad, even if you did well in the end.

Yes its a very comfortable 4.0, and thats a good improvement from the exactly 80% I had last year, but utlimately I failed to achieve my target.

I had a dream of topping physics for the year after the first 2 papers. My chances were probabliy nil after the practicals and concept map assessments, so I modified it to be topping the class as well as scoring full marks for the EoYs. All of those are shattered. Its painful when you miss your goals, it always hurts.

Damn it.

Better drop it now then. Its already over. More emoing/whining/bitching etc etc etc won't help one bit, and I still have bio and math to study for. Heh.

EOY target and goals

2008-10-06T20:43:00.003+08:00

EOY target and goals

English - EOY: 70 Overall: No Idea

Chinese - EOY: (Over) Overall: 70

Math - EOY: 90% (CA 85%) Overall: 87

Physics - EOY: 100% (CA ~92%) Overall: 95

Chemistry - EOY 92.5% (CA 88%) Overall: 89.8

Biology - EOY 85% (CA ~81%) Overall: 82.6

History - EOY 87.5% (CA ~79%) Overall: 82.4

SS - EOY 90% (CA 74%) Overall: 80

Overall GPA: 3.78

Today sucked pretty bad. So much so that even good news also turned into bad news. I managed to miss my goal of scoring perfectly for all my physics papers at literally the last hurdle, the last frigging question on the last quiz. And thanks to the fact that bonus marks don't carry over to other papers, I have a total of 88/85 for all my tests combined and still score only 84/85. This must be Murphy's Law at its best.

And then I recieved my History paper. Holy crap, I managed to throw my 4.0 away by screwing up and only scoring 14/20. Wonderful. My CA was around the low 80s the last time I checked, so I think my score would have dipped under 80s. Problem is, I have consistently failed to score higher than exactly 80% for most of my papers, so this will be a big problem. Ditto for SS. I don't know how do I go about scoring 90% for my paper, but I must try to.

I haven't got any idea how lousy my English CA is now, so I'll just stick to 70% on the paper. Heh. Assuming my English to be at a GP of 2.8, my GPA if I meet all my goals is 3.78, allowing for the screwing up of one subject, which is probably Chinese. Wow. Thats some imba improvement from the 2.98 I got in sec 1. Heh. Mug Mug Mug.

Modern Society - Random rant

2008-10-04T21:30:00.002+08:00

Modern Society - Random rant

~ Pringles is not technically a potato chip (they are allowed to claim that since their product is only 42% potato, and that exempts them from certain taxes), chicken flavouring is added to chicken nuggets, and certain species of tomatoes were actually registered as pesticides. ~

Anyway I don't really have much to say about people sending their money buying completely useless junk. I hope nobody sees the practical use of a gaming console with a frigging camera (DSi), as if not every single electronic device nowadays comes with a camera already. Hopefully nobody buys the iPhone just because it looks cool. How of those 1 bazillion functions will we actually need? Want to serve the internet? Use the frigging comp. Not at home? Do you really need to surf the net on a train? What practical use could that possibly offer? You didn't buy the PDI, so the touch screen isnt the reason. The iPhone is simply a collection of every single electronic device melded into one so that apple can have another go at cheating all your money.

Heh

I doubt anybody reading this blog would buy it anyway.

On another aspect of consuming, I have had at least 4 people giving me weird expressions when I say that I listen to CO songs on my iPod. Why the weird looks? I'm not modern enough? Hmmm? I don't know, what else? You think I have poor taste? Well I think heavy rock and metal is junk too, do I give you dirty looks when I catch you hearing it? As matter of fact I couldn't be bothered by the genre, artist or anything about the song, as long as I like it. I just happen to like more CO songs. It shouldn't be on an iPod because its traditional isn't it? Granted I don't listen to too many songs, but thats really my problem. So if I ever mention that I have a ton of CO songs in my iPod, at least have the decency to appear to respect my taste.

I don't understand why people become fans of artists or even sportsmen. As in those idiots that cheer wildly during live concerts and the like. What are they cheering for exactly? To encourage the artist? Fair enough, but do you need to actually scream your head off? Its disgusting. I would estimate that a good half of them at least are only doing it to make themselves popular, even on a sub-conscious level. Popularity by association.

If you truly are a fan of somebody, you respect his character, you respect his personality and you admire his style. You do not make an utter fool out of yourself in front of other people. Goddamned fan-boys and fan-girls. The hypocrisy makes my stomach churn.

Hopefully you are not one of those people whom cannot accept yourself for what you are can only blindly follow those whose life you envy.

Completely incoherent post again. Weeee.

Modern Society - Episode Finance

2008-10-03T23:10:00.002+08:00

Modern Society - Episode Finance

It is an ultra-consumerist society we are living in. To keep the money flowing, we MUST buy all kinds of shit. Trade by definition is the exchange of money between people. A country that doesnt do trade is in trouble. Frankly, it is ridiculous that the world is in a huge crisis simply because the virtual cash isn't changing hands quickly enough. Using a warped version of the blank state thought experiment, imagine that you are an alien with absolutely no prior knowledge of Earth. Wouldn't you be utterly confused as to why people panic when numbers they have created moves down? I mean, 'OMG the earth is cracking!', 'OMG everybody is turning blue in the face and dying for no reason!' or 'OMG the sea's going to flood Holland!' Fine. Panic. 'OMG some numbers are falling!' Hmmm.

Two financial corporate managers are walking down a road. They see a piece of dog shit. One bets the other $250,000 that the latter wont eat the dogshit. The latter calculates the trade-off and agrees. He eats it and recieves $250,000 from the first guy. Then they see another piece of dogshit. The second guy bets $250,000 that the first guy wont eat it. Once again, a long series of cost-benefit follows, and the first guy agrees. He eats it and receives $250,000 in check as well.

The first guy goes, 'Jimmy, we both ate dog poop and neither of us are better off, it was not a good piece of business.'

Jimmy replies, 'But James, at least we have each involved in $500,000 worth of trade.

Yes it is joke in rather poor taste, but the sad thing is that it actually make sense...

What is a financial crisis anyway? Where is the money going to? There are 2 scenarios here, either somebody is gaining from everybody's losses, or everybody is losing. We must stupid fools to create a system wherein we can all lose, which must be the pinnacle of non-intelligence. And if somebody is gaining from the'crisis', then aha, so its a crisis is caused by some selfish bastard. Who is that most likely to be? The CEOs, the owners of the big big corporations. And what do we do? We pump their pockets full of tax-payer money to restart the cycle. Why the hell should American pay the big banks money for screwing up their savings and investments? Why? Because if they don;t, they get screwed even more. Aha. Irony right there.

Instead of having the top talents in our society working in the government or other sectors wherein thay can actually benefit us, they work in finanical institutes, wherein they manage all this virtual numbers that change hands in the virtual world of computers. In the crux of it, what do these financial people actually do? They most certainly don't produce anything, they actually offer us any solid service. What is happening is that they take money and throw it around to invest in other companies, whom in turn throw around that money to invest in other companies. what comes out of it? Money. Is there any practical use for money? No. you can't eat it, you can't get any entertainment value out of it, and you most certainly can't live in it.

Okay so the evil genuises of the world are flinging cash around at each other like nobody's business, getting paid much more than regular job people, and with absolutely nothing to show for it. So? Who cares as long as we can listen to the latest music and buy the coolest gadgets?

When you buy useless junk that big companies say that you need, you pump millions of currency into the big companies to throw at each other. Whe companies invest money in other companies, what happens next? The companies expand themselves, increase their production, allowing them to convince you that you their crap better, produce more crap to sell, and thus earning even more money to fling around, possibly even back at the first company. Meanwhile we all just sit around and pay them for shit that we didn't need.

Very nice.

What I am getting at here is that the modern capitalist-consumerism society is completely screwed up. Human resources wasted in management of the virtual 'resource' known as money. People whom don't produce anything as paid shitloads of money for sitting there and lending other people their shit load of money (Which is in fact a definition of capitalism, wherein capital is king). The rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer is the inescapable conclusion of capitalism.

Why do we persist in such a screwed up system then? It all very simple actually. Who controls the power in capitalist-democratic society. The governmetn that is funded by big companies, whom just happen to own about 1003147803298403849031 times what you own. Are they likely to change the system and lose their extragavant lifestyles? do kings abdicate when they feel they have become tyrants? Do lords give up their land when they see the people starve?

Don't worship those big wealthy tycoons. Most of them are out to suck you dry so that they can buy their 54657th mansion. To be fair though, what would you have done in that situation? This is a pitfall we created for ourselves. Ican alsmot foresee that in maybe 100 years time, we would be back in situation similar to a monarchy, with a few people control all the money, and everybody else trying to make a living off whatever electronic cash they have.

This post probably isn't very coherent. zzz. Tomorrow I bitch about the consumerism side.

RICO concert pics

2008-10-01T22:05:00.011+08:00

RICO concert pics

Pictures from the long-forgotten Voices of the Dragon IX

Spot the Yi Heng

Hint: Follow the finger

Random pics

RICO sec 4 batch of '08!
Posing in solo attire...

iWin

Ugly vs Handsome :)

Gay Jimmy

Heh.

Somebody is really going to get pissed this time...

Presence of GoD...

Erhu section at its best

cy - pre-rape

And finally we have a poser pic of myself

Heh. Not nice. Nevermind.

Testimonials

2008-09-29T20:00:00.003+08:00

Testimonials

Today wasn't a good day thanks to my testimonials.

Mr Choo texted me at 6+ in the morning to tell me that he misplaced my testimonial.

zzz.

So I have to re-do it.

zzz.

Without the guide since nobody has it now.

zzz.

After struggling with it for an hour, which wasn't pleasant at all, I stil had as good as nothing for my testimonial. So I borrowed Eugene's and copied and edited it a little. 2 hours gone.

And then I pissed cy off.

Basically I asked cy for my CCA testimonial to put into my testimonial draft just in case. Evidently I called at the wrong time because he wasn't at home and he didn't exactly enjoy being disturbed at that moment in time.

zzz.

It gets worst too. I can't open Jeremy's ppt file for our presentation tomorrow. Not even with Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer. How stupid does it get? First you make your software frigging non-backwards compatible, and then your power-point viewer can't even fulfill its one and only purpose.

How nice.

I mustn't piss my best friend and my future CCAL off anymore. Bad.

OIP

2008-09-25T19:56:00.008+08:00

OIP

A blog seems like an excellent idea now. I have actually have things to rant for 4 consecutive days.

RANT ADDED IN BY KENNETH:
I was under the stupid impression that he was in, cos' they said they wanted non-OIP2007 members. but no! They changed their minds last minute and kicked the non-OIP ppl out. How's that for fairness?

Also, DO NOT LINK TO THIS BLOG. SECOND REMINDER. OR TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a time-span of 5 hours, I was 'kicked' out of OIP before allowed back in. Hmmmm.

Anyway the full story is that Master Kenneth Siah had me under the impression that I was already in OIP. So I happily canceled my NAFA erhu grade exams to go to Shen Zhen.

And when the list came out, Viola! My name isn't there. i thought it was a mistake, but today at around 10 when i went to see Ms CC, and she told me I wasn't in.

zzz

That was very disappointing. I was also surprised about how much I really had wanted to go on the trip. I didn't even have time to get pissed with the system or anything. I just felt disappointed.

Anyway I canceled the mugging session with jx, and emo-ed by listening to Qiu Yu on my way home. Thanks cy for the very practical consolation.

And then KSiah came up at 3 to tell me that I got into Wuhan.

-.-

So much for emo.
Emo is bad. Don't emo.
---------------------------------------------------
Kenneth: You told me u weren't. I was more emo than u lor -.-

Private Blog

2008-09-24T20:31:00.001+08:00

Private Blog

Guys its private for a reason. Please don't link me or tell anybody else I have a frigging blog. When they try to access then I have to explain why I don't consider them to be my closest friends.

Please.

Ultra long first post

2008-09-23T15:48:00.003+08:00

Ultra long first post

First 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

First post

2008-09-22T21:57:00.000+08:00

I got a blog again.

Damned temptations...

Hopefully it wont be as retarded and useless as the previous one.

Noticeably this time the blog is private. If you are reading this then you have had a huge positive impact of whatever time I have spent knowing you. An excellent chance for me to thank you for the past [insert time-frame here]. Thank you.

I shall be having a real post tomorrow when I find something to bitch and whine about. :)