Deepak blogs

a realization for change

2010-02-06T23:23:00.003+08:00

The feeling is of abandonment, an eerie sense of euphoria surrounding the whole place, like a house abandoned in some long-forgotten hurry, with dinner laid out on the table and a sheet of dust over it. Or a schoolroom evacuated during the war, with the textbooks open and cursive print on prim little ruled notebooks and a nasty little rattan cane by the schoolmaster's desk, a relic trickling over from the past. You can smell everything slowly growing old, jaded and decaying. And that's this blog for you!
So this blog from so-long-ago came to my mind some time ago and I thought of how it was collecting dust at the back of my bookmark list and waiting for the Blogger Cyberpolice to make it vanish under the pretence of severe neglect. And today, in the little sliver of time I managed to squeeze out of nowhere (no actually, I need to be doing Moot Parliament research =) I typed in its now-unfamiliar URL and came to that really really dead page.
I clicked through to the archives and went to my very first post and started reading, and pretty soon I couldn't help it; Vico had to wait, sorry Tien Pan (: I realised how much this whole blog contained. Maybe not for you, my dear reader, but for me, as Arfan our awesome OBS instructor said of journals, as a powerful medium for reflection.
The beginnings of the blog smells of a little boy trying to fit in, starting the blog because all his friends were blogging, and blogging about the things that happened at school, and perking up the blog with all the awesomest skins and gadgets and widgets, and filling each post with the coolest smilies and SMS language.
There were the happy things and the difficult things.
Then the blog gets some semblance of depth and I began to reflect a little bit, once touching on how this whole blogging business could be just a facade, quoting from one SZ's blog on how because of you, my dear reader, the blogger needs to put on this facade, trying to put up a show in conforming to what everyone was doing instead of really trying to sort out our thoughts.
Now I realise how so many things would be better if I could look at them through time, and honestly look at myself through these times.
I really want to start blogging again because, doubtless, it is a amazing and natural way to look at ourselves as we go through time. But I want it to acquire some sort of purpose. Even now, as I write this, I need to choose my words carefully, because there are so many things you, my dear reader, can see differently.
I don't want to blog for the fact that everyone is doing it (not that anyone is nowadays) and that it is a cool thing. I want it to, as SZ said, be a way to sort out my thoughts, that is, ALL my thoughts, not the ones about school or whatever that would portray me as having a cool public life. I want to be able to think honestly and candidly about anything, and not feel choked by the restraint that such a public affair affords.
At the bottom of the matter, I want to be able to have a mature reflection of myself and be able to think through my life freely. This kind of journal is incredibly priceless in that matter, but not in its current form. It crucially needs to be private; or at least private whenever I need it to.
So firstly, I am moving this blog over to Wordpress, where you can password-protect posts whenever you want to. But do not think this is the major revolutionary modification being led up to. The shift in blogging platform is perhaps the most minor, insignificant change that is going to take place from today.
I am going to really put everything out into this blog, and make private whatever is so. It is going to be candid, honest, perhaps disturbing, but complete, with no necessity for restrain. It will not remotely be for any sort of conformity, and will not need to have an audience whatsoever, because it is candid reflection.
So it is a change that is more than necessary. I will import the previous posts into the new Wordpress blog, but just for keeping the past there. The importance is to make it different, and apart, from what I have done before. It is, as such, a good thing that the last post was a heavily disjointed five months ago.
And in the irony of ironies, I just realized that the previous post has just turned exactly five months old!

History

2009-09-07T22:00:00.001+08:00

It’s been TWO MONTHS since I last posted. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I doubt anyone reads my blog anyway.

Not that there’s anything (new) to read.

Ok so what has happened to me in the last two months?

My, that’s a long time.

Far back in the echelons of history, I fell sick and missed school for an entire week!
Lots of tests and CCTs
The blasted H1N1 Outbreak
LITERATURE SEMINAR =D=D=D=D=D

And my subsequent foray into the awesome world of writing xD

Teachers’ Day
HPPS Reunion!
Super-short T4 Week 10!
IVP Show!
INVESTITURE!

Hmm okay lemme start.

Far back in the echelons of history (to be precise, term 4 week 3), I fell sick. It started on a Saturday when I came back from violin lesson and felt unwell. Then Sunday not well. Monday fever. Tuesday high fever. Wednesday horribly high fever. Thursday fever and mysterious muscle ache. Friday mysterious muscle ache persists. Saturday mysterious muscle ache stands down. Sunday alright.

And a whole week of school missed –> English ERP and Comprehension Summative (?) to take after school.

Odds are that it was H1N1. According to studies, 70% of flu cases in Singapore then were H1N1.

Alright.

So I fell sick for a week in term 4 week 4 with what might have been H1N1. Then there was an assortment of tests and CCTs here and there, through all of which CCA was cancelled because of the outbreak of the aforementioned flu ><

Because CCAs were cancelled, I had some free time on my hands, which I think I regrettably wasted ><

So from Week 3 all the way to Week 9 I somehow survived.

Then came LIT SEM xD

Which I will blog about later.

Canine slobber

2009-07-10T22:31:00.001+08:00

Our History travel as is a Google-Docs-advertisement-like video complete with stickman Raffles and A3-size background images of the Singapore River area. It looks damn cool! Just that filming it is astonishingly tedious, then there were technical difficulties and then, worst of all, I very cleverly overwrote the first scene. So have to refilm. I want to kick myself. Very hard. Somewhere that hurts.

Before meeting up yesterday, Calvin and I went ahead of the others to get some Firewire cable for his video camera from Lot 1, so we dropped by his house on the way. He has this bloody cute dog!

It likes to lick; when I left Calvin’s house I was covered in canine slobber. When you stand up it gets on its feet and paws you to make you get down for it to lick you, all the time licking your feet xO

Then when you sit down, it starts going ecstatic and climbs all over you, licking away all the time. So the dog licks me (starting from the bottom) under the soles of my feet, on my feet, over my legs, over my hands, my arms, then on to my face, ears, even inside my earholes and finally, it climbs on top of me to lick my hair! Then it gets down and starts going round and round me. Then finally it gets tired and lies down on me.

I want a dog! =D

Very Messy, Like My Room

2009-07-05T22:57:00.001+08:00

I found this speculative MRT map: (Click on the map to get a larger view)

Scary! There are dono-how-many new lines and the map is the extent of messy. Even got extension to Johor Bahru xO

Here’s a more believable one: (Click for larger version)

Whatever it is, MRT is a very useful thing. Unaffected by traffic jams of whatever kind and very, very frequent, it is the most reliable public transport system, so if it is extended to cover more of Singapore then it’s much more convenient.

Farrer Road Circle Line station opens next year =D With that, I have an MRT station at my doorstep and the Red and Green lines within 3-4 stops each! Will taking MRT or taking bus to school be faster? o.O

Strange

2009-07-01T22:40:00.001+08:00

Imagine going on a vacation.

You’re happy. You’re excited. The only thing between you and your much-awaited sandy beach is a long flight. And that will be over soon.

You queue up to board and, being the perfect tourist, take pictures of everything you see.

You enter the plane and sit down, planning to have a short nap before you start your vacation for real.

And that’s pretty much the last thing you do.

Or say your friends, family, loved ones, anyone is going overseas. You drop them off at the airport. They tell you they will call when they get there. You wave, they wave, you peer through the glass, they wave some more.

In the end, you don’t get any call.

Maybe someone is coming from overseas. You wait earnestly for them. Their flight should land any minute now. Then it says there it is ‘Delayed’. Oh well, it won’t be long.

But an hour later it still says ‘delayed’. You go to the information counter and ask, annoyed, why the delay is so long. And then the staff nervously usher you to a small side office.

Terrifying?

It’s certainly like that if you try to imagine these things. When a plane just gets ‘lost’ above an ocean of immeasurable scales, think of the anguish of the ‘next-of-kin’.

o.O

The Pseudo-Holidays

2009-06-30T21:56:00.001+08:00

It’s ironic that I didn’t post at all during the holidays and now I post during term time.

Well not exactly term time. Because of H1N1, all CCAs are cancelled, everyone has to go home by 1.35pm xO This leaves me feeling like a primary school kid – come back home, finish what little homework there is, slack the rest of the day, watch TV at night.

But no that’s not my schedule now; I don’t slack so much! =D

Okie let’s see, the holidays. There was band thrice a week and many other things in between, but believe it or not, these holidays were surprisingly relaxing. But I was slacking a bit too much. You know, the usual – chionging things last-minute. Then you realise the immense absurdity of the situation as well as your immense stupidity. Much of what I could have done leisurely in an entire month, I concentrated into a mere day.

So this is what I want my next June holidays to be like:

Slack for the first weekend
Work for the first week and FINISH all the individual work by then. (How cool would it be to go around suanning people about how you finished all your work before the first week of hols ended xD)
Spread projects out evenly!
Don’t get addicted to random games and software – they are useless I tell you, a gigantic waste of your time.
Read?

Published Post Number 143

2009-05-22T21:50:00.001+08:00

Bleargh. I live by weeks. It is like my life is compartmentalized into weeks. If my life were an Alice animation, you would programme it to run in loops forever.

Tomorrow is open house! I’ll be there for the whole day; there’s our band performance in the morning. We’ll be playing Samba for Flutes and Serenade, 2 somewhat manageable songs. We were supposed to play another one called Pops March (super jazz-intensive!) but we messed that one up. Never mind, let’s not get there..

I signed up to be an usher, so in the afternoon I’ll be showing people the way from the Hall to the Auditorium o.O And there’s this bandanna thing ~~everyone~~ everyone except most of the Sec 2s got; the printers hadn’t finished printing them or something -_- Ushers got it =D but I have no clue how I’m going to make it look vaguely decent on me.

And then in the night there is the English play. That makes the whole day spent outside tomorrow. And the two English Essay-Writing Competitions’ deadlines are this week.

And if not for the damn swine flu, I would have started packing for Malaysian Montage!

Born-Again Laptop

2009-05-15T22:47:00.001+08:00

My laptop had to go through the installation of a new Operating System, so I had backed up all my documents and it was sent for the installation. Then a mere 3 days after the new OS was installed, it CRASHED. First it decided to switch itself off at random points in time, and then it switched off once and could never turned on again.

It is strange how my laptop decided to crash immediately after I backed up all my things.

So for the past few weeks, I had been using my father’s computer. Of course, at first, I had to install all those programmes I deemed vital for my online life – Mozilla Firefox, Windows Live Messenger and the like with all the preferences and password-remembering features set. So this took a long time to get done as I had to download everything, set each preference and so on.

And today my laptop finally got repaired! =D So I need to repeat the whole process again with the born-again computer.

It’s surprising how much of these small things I take for granted; middle-clicking on a link will make something open in a new tab, I can go on Gmail or Facebook by just typing those words in the URL box, a double tab from there will lead me to the Google Toolbar search box where I can google any random thing I want to. Any URL – that of my blog, AskNLearn, Yahoo Groups, Dictionary.com, will be saved in the browser’s history and the moment I start typing the URL, I can select it from the drop-down list that inconspicuously drops down.

This Tuesday at House Meeting, Mr Jai Singh was telling us about the importance of participating in the inter-house competitions and he told us about how a few years ago, not enough people turned up to form a team for Morrison during Interhouse Maths and they could not call up anyone because no one had phones then. Now, don’t we take it for granted that when there is a need for communication, everyone can be contacted through phones? At least I do xD

When I have a project to do, the mode of communication between the people in my group automatically becomes MSN. For more urgent matters, there is SMS. Ever considered a world where such conveniences don’t exist?

Ah well I think I am rambling away randomly haha. Well, my point is, we take lots of things for granted. I guess we can’t do that. It feels really awesome to know that you live in a time which allows you to exploit technology to no extent, in sharp contrast to my parent’s generations!

Wah this makes me look like I have nothing to do. Totally not true! I should go and sleep now. Been surviving on 6 hours of sleep a day. This seems enough, but it is not o.o

RJ Gold!

2009-05-10T23:11:00.001+08:00

I mean, RI(JC).

RJ SYF was on Learning Journey day, so a motley bunch of RIMB people decided to go watch them play.

My Learning Journey Day was at the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Academy. It was interesting, yes, the gallery about Universal Design features and energy-independent buildings and all, but I thought the talks were dry.

So after Learning Journey, Haocheng, Kelvin and I waited for Arjun to finish his Tamil compo at the Prefect Room –_- and then went for lunch at J8. After that, we went to the MRT station when I remembered that I had to activate my CEPAS-compliant card thing in place of my old GIRO card. To cut a long story short, I had to take the next train which incidentally was “terminating at Ang Mo Kio” as announced by the cool, happy voice hidden in the depths of your average MRT station. Ang Mo Kio is the very next station after Bishan o.o

But I got the train from Ang Mo Kio almost immediately and reached Woodlands soon. Haocheng and Daryl were waiting for me – thanks guys =D We were walking so fast and Arjun/Kelvin/Irvin/Philemon/Wei Jie were walking so damn slowly that we caught up with them despite starting like 10 minutes after them.

We reached the Republic Poly Cultural Centre place and found some of the Sec 4s already waiting there. Apparently you had to have an admission pass to get in and watch the performances!

The company that had been outsourced to do ushering had apparently decided to start this admission pass system that you could get from any of the performing bands to ensure that the concert hall would net become overcrowded. I don’t violently object to this measure, but it was just absolutely unexpected. In all previous SYFs, you could just walk in without tickets or anything. This was so even for our secondary school SYF.

We came all the way to Republic Poly to watch and support our friends in RJCSB. We were looking forward to hearing them play and they would have been looking forward to seeing us in the audience. We asked the ushers from Extreme Productions, the company outsourced to carry out the whole show, nicely whether we could go in but they flatly denied us entry. Imagine our anguish when we heard that! Some of the RGSSB people who had come were in tears!

After lots of arguing, pleading, trying to talk nicely and agonizing over what would happen if we didn’t watch RJ, the ushers said they could let 6 people in. We decided to have 2 from each of the 3 batches that turned up go in at first, then Johnson found out that the RGSSB people were unhappy about this, so he called Josiah and got him to get Arjun, Kelvin and Wei Jie out. Haha their faces were a tad crestfallen just then.

So 3 of us had come out and it seemed that the ushers were on the brink of giving to all the people bugging them to be allowed to go in. In the end, 5 from RGSSB and 4 other RJ people went in. Wah exchange rate not fair leh xD

So the rest of us stoned outside there until RJ came out after their performance. We helped them take a few photos and then the RIMB seniors crashed in..

Then later was the results where, ironically, anyone could go in. So we all went in and waited for the results. The emcee read out the same list of people to thank and introduced an almost identical panel of judges as our own SYF. Deja vu. Then he started announcing the results. Catholic JC got Gold With Honours and were screaming in jubilation to the extent that the emcee couldn’t continue, just like St Margaret’s did on our SYF day. More deja vu. Then.. “Raffles – Gold”.

I was relieved. For Mr Oura’s sake.

Random musing

2009-05-10T22:19:00.002+08:00

Crap so long never blog.

On most days, all I do is go to school, go for band (or debates), go home, eat dinner and shower, do homework sleepily and go to bed, only to wake up the next morning to repeat the cycle. It wears you off after a while. I seriously should get a life. Just that I can't.

But the truth is, with everything I get from my school I don't really mind it the way it is now.

o.o

Class deco!

2009-04-23T22:58:00.002+08:00

Aargh another long posting hiatus as many would call it.

WE FINALLY FINISHED CLASS DECORATION TODAY!

Heh class decoration is a horrible job with a class like 2M to do it with. With people like Chiraag experiencing an inability to make a noise without yelling, it is impossible to even ask the class to stay back to decorate or discuss the theme or whatever. So last Thursday I asked people to stay back if they could to start something on class deco. This is what we came up with.

E=2Mc2/2

You know the E=Mc2 formula for energy… And so the deco theme became

2M energy!

But we did an awesome job lah. It wasn’t a solo-ed thing or done by a small group of people but almost the whole class did it. When it came to today’s last-minute chionging of decoration, really a lot of people came. All the spray-painting and cutting and randoming around was fun.

Damn it my laptop’s Bluetooth is not working and it’s not sensing my handphone’s memory card either, so no pics D:

Tomorrow is judging; I hope we do well :D

SYF Day

2009-04-08T23:46:00.002+08:00

This time yesterday, I was feeling a mixture of excitement couples with anxiety, anticipation coupled with nervousness and so on. I had two different images that kept on recurring in my mind:

- It is announced the we have won Gold With Honours and we leap up from our seats, yelling in joy.

- We get Silver and our heads hang down in disappointment.

Ah well.

Today morning we wore our shirt and black pants to school and came to the band room after the first 1 and a half periods. (In fact most of us tried to pon a bit of the 2nd Lesson xD) I had English and Geog, so all of us left halfway through Geog. There are 7 RIMB members in my class, and Jin Kiat was absent today, so there were 24 people in the class after we left o.O

We went in, warmed up and had concert for a while, then went for lunch and concert again. Then we left for Singapore Conference Hall, blazers and all.

At SCH, each school was given a mere 10 minutes to warm up and tune. I think this was seriously not enough time; my tuning randomly decided to go off just then, so I was desperately trying figure out how to get it right. At the same time, Kei Jun’s baritone saxophone grandly messed up by giving out strange pulsating noises when he tried to blow into it xD

Fortunately Joseph did something to the sax and the problem got solved. But then I realized my tuning was still quite bad and my reed was not vibrating!!! Loosen ligature!

So like that we went upstairs to the stage door and waited for our turn. There was a TV there for us to listen the school currently playing inside – so nicely builds up the pressure haha. Then it was our turn. At this point I was nervous, yes, (and worried about my tuning!) and also really excited because we had been practising for so, so, so damn long for the next 15 minutes we were about to have 0n stage. 239 hours over 6 months. Overture No 1 and Die Fledermaus have been the only songs I’ve practised since Investiture! (Except for the REACT song – small thing lah xD)

So we went on stage and started. Overture No 1 went okay. I thought we had done parts of it better in concert prac, but never all at once. We weren’t exactly ‘together’ for this song. And I squeaked – twice..

Then came Fledermaus. I thought our Fledermaus was seriously awesome and later it looked like everyone shared this sentiment. My reed was screwing up! I managed to not squeak and then adjust my reed later lah o.o Oh and I didn’t squeak at all for Fledermaus! =D

Yes Irvin, I only squeaked twice, during Overture, and not 6 times! xD

After the performance Kirk was giving everyone the thumbs-up sign lol. Most people thought it went well. We all went outside and took a band picture plus the J1s and J2s. We slacked around there for a bit, then went inside to watch the other bands perform. Since we were the 5th last school to perform (yes in the whole week-long central judging series!) there was not much time left till the results were released..

We waited “while the judges deliberated the results” and randomed around making racist jokes *coughbrandom* =D Then the judges came back in and the announcer read out the results (at this point I was freaking nervous!).

Ping Yi….. Silver

*applause*

Temasek…… Silver

*applause*

Raffles Institution…

…

Silver

Of course there was applause, but we were deflated. Upset. Disappointed.

RIMB had a ‘gold streak’ – 34 years, 17 Golds in SYF and we had just broken that gold streak.

And even then, after all this practice.. 239 hours what not… silver.

Silver. No more Gold.

Everyone was telling us not to be emo and disappointed, but feeling depressed was inevitable. Reading Alastair’s blog, I realised even the J1s were shocked by our result. On the bus back there was just silence. No one wanted to talk. At school we packed up; all of us were moody. Then Kirk cheered us up by making this very important point: the medal we get isn’t what matters the most, it’s the fact that we 1) entertained and 2) did our very best. The J1s were telling how awesome our Fledermaus was, especially the polka parts. Definitely, everyone enjoyed playing the polka parts! =D

As Mr Oura said later, what has been done has already been done. Let’s start working to make ourselves better. And then of course SYF 2011 – Gold With Honours!

Of course there still lies this tinge of regret that we got Silver. I keep thinking how great it would have been if we had gotten Gold With Honours – what we would be feeling now and how we would be celebrating now. Even a Gold would be great. But silver..

Of course, all of us agreed that we deserved more than a silver and compared ourselves to other schools. But we can’t change the fact that we got silver, so I guess no point being a sore loser.

But anyway thank you to all these people for helping us along the way:

-MR OURA!

-Mr Jee, Mrs Tan, Ms Kek

-Mr Oura’s friends for coming down to help us

-All the J1s and J2s who came to supports us! =D

-2M for giving us a round of applause before we left today xD

And go for GWH in 2011! And everything else before that!

3 DAYS LEFT AND COUNTING!!

2009-04-05T23:08:00.001+08:00

Choice Piece – Die Fledermaus Selections (based on the operetta Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II, arranged by Eiji Suzuki). Conducted by Mr Takehiro Oura

Set Piece – Overture Number 1 for Wind Band (Kelly Tang). Conducted by Mr Takehiro Oura

Benjamin from batch of ‘08 recorded our Arts@The Atrium performance. Hey it doesn’t sound bad.. at least from my untrained, amateur point of view.

THREE DAYS LEFT!!! PANIC AND RUN IN CIRCLES AIMLESSLY!!!

My tuning still horrible; I tried playing the songs and recording at home and I realised at some parts it sounded like #$%^ because of tuning. RGS got silver, Nanyang (who owned up-side-down at the exchange) also got silver. Um let’s hope we can pull through lah. Come to think of it, we probably practised for over a hundred hours! Let’s estimate..

Nov/Dec Holidays: 11 5-hour pracs if I’m not wrong? That is 55 hours.

Saturdays: From 28th February I think – which is 5 Saturdays (that’s it?!). Multiplied by 4 hours each plus 3 hours yesterday = total of 23 hours.

Normal Prac: 12 weeks so far this year. 3 times a week, about 3 hours each. Total 36 times = 108 hours

Extra Prac: I’ve been coming dutifully on most Tuesdays and Thursdays xD Say I came for 20 extra pracs and stayed for an average of 2 hours each. That makes 40 hours.

March Hols: My estimate is that we practised for 9 hours (?) during band camp plus 5 hours on Friday of the March holidays. That makes 13 hours.

55 + 23 + 108 + 40 + 13 = 239 hours of practice!!

Whoa that is a lot. This is the first time I have bothered to calculate this figure, and I’m pretty much dumbfounded. It may be an estimation but it is not a rough one; I can assure you that it that this figure is quite accurate! We have spent 239 hours of blood, sweat and tears (yes, all three of them xD) in preparation for the 8th of April, Singapore Conference Hall, 2.30pm!

Muz make it pay off! =D

Birthday!

2009-04-05T22:37:00.001+08:00

Thank you to all those who wished me happy birthday =D!

In chronological order:

Wan Qian (Facebook)
Heng Kee (Facebook)
Alaric (Facebook)
Rachel (SMS)
Arunima (SMS)
Tharun (Facebook)
Naman (Class)
Damn it lots of other people at school, cant remember
Jin Kiat (Class)
Zachary (Class)
Ravin (School)
Hui Fen (SMS)
Justin (Facebook)
Shaun Sia (Facebook)
Keith (Facebook)
Elias (Facebook)
Gary (Facebook)
Ernest Tan (Facebook)
Glen (Facebook)
Han Jie (Facebook)
Bumsoo (Facebook)
Matt Tjoeng (Facebook)
Keng Chee (Facebook)
Lionel Deng (Facebook)
Arjun (Facebook)
Gerald Tan (Facebook)
Basil (Facebook)
Sean Tan (Facebook)

Please tag if you are not in this list but are supposed to be in it.

Heh looks like Facebook is the new medium of mainstream communication.

My parents got this awesome cake:

This post is 3 days late o.o I should wish myself happy birthday..

Yes, I am born on April Fools Day, and I’m proud of it! And I’m not joking! Haha even my aunt thought she was being the victim of an April Fool’s Day prank when she was told of my birth.

The good thing about having your birthday on April Fool’s Day is that people remember it xD but there are also people who don’t believe it’s your birthday.

Snip

2009-03-30T22:53:00.001+08:00

PIECE OF ADVICE: Use Microsoft Publisher for the English To Kill A Mockingbird freesheet assignment! All the formatting work is already done on templates in Publisher, so all I need to do is copy and paste the content into the Publisher document. It’s awesome, go try it!

SYF IS IN 9 DAYS!!!! xO xO

We’re doing cutting already – that is, if you spoil the music at certain parts, you don’t play those parts. I got cut for a few run-ups and the ending of Overture. Those were more or less expected lah, I can’t get fingering evenly. But everyone except for Brandon/Andy/Ying Cheng/Irvin got cut for the whole of parts D and E in Overture – didn’t see that coming. xD

Anyway, I think if I get cut then I can concentrate more on the parts not cut lah. And try to get ‘uncut’ for the cut parts =D

Tomorrow is STAFF TRAINING DAY! =D

Viriya Flag Day

2009-03-28T23:37:00.001+08:00

We had batch CIP today – doing a flag day for Viriya Community Services. To say the truth, it was damn fun! =D

I signed up for the morning shift (since I had band in the afternoon) at Ang Mo Kio. There were people from Viriya who were giving out the donation bags (yeah, not tins, bags. They’re much easier to carry around anyway). After a long queue to get the bags, Ming Jin, Liang Pu and I decided to go around together.

Ming Jin had the bright idea of going to the bus stop opposite AMK MRT station, well away from all the guys crowding around the MRT station seeking donations. Well this was a good idea since we could ambush the hordes getting off the buses. Um, thanks Ming Jin!

So whenever a bus came, this was the ~~conversation~~ that followed:

Me yelling at random people with a bigbig smile: Good morning sir, would you like to help Viriya Community Services?

And this always had three outcomes:

Number 1: The person digs in his/her wallet as he approaches you and takes out a few coins. While this takes place, this person may ask you about the VWO or what cause this donation supports. The person then puts the money in, takes his sticker and walks away with a smile.

Number 2: The person smiles sparsely and indicating that he doesn’t want to donate, walks past you.

Number 3: The person dao-es you, pretends you never said anything to him, or even worse, looks away.

I think the way some people just blatantly ignored you was disgusting. And the thing is, 80% of the people I asked for donations did this ignoring. At least 15% declined while 5% donated which is, of course, great. But absolutely ignoring someone is just wrong! It just feels extremely irritating when someone pretends you don’t exist.

It was damn fun competing with each other for donations xD Like a bus comes, then all 3 of us rush to stand at the door and start yelling out pleas for donations. Many little kids were going “Mummy, I want sticker” at their parents. It’s amusing to see their joy on getting what may seem to us such a random, trivial thing.

Most of the donations were in coins – 50c to $1. A really generous soul cared enough to donate $10! xD And when we walked by the MRT station, we kept asking people ho had already donated. Then they showed their stickers: Amulets of Protection from the Flag Day lol.

It was interesting to see human nature alive in people – how they react to a request for donating to the needy really shows you what kind of person they are. And the really random thing was that it was quite easy to tell someone’s reaction to a request for donation just by taking a look at them.

Ah well it was a good experience lah.

(Nothing better to do..)

Tuesday, 24th March

2009-03-28T22:55:00.001+08:00

I should go to sleep soon..

Yesterday it was swimming/water polo for PE. 500m endurance swimming was okay but I was dying during water polo! How do you tread water properly??

Then later assembly; it was a talk by Mrs Lim. She started off with a message on seizing opportunities – she gave out Popular bookshop vouchers for no reason. People just ran up to the stage and snatched the vouchers from her!

And I missed a line in RPOH…

SYF Soundtest!

After school I did homework in the library till around 5 and then went for dinner with Chiraag and Jie Qi. Then we went to the band room and moved stuff down to the buses and then to Singapore Conference Hall.

The concert hall is quite a large one and I realised how crazy the acoustics in such places are; any sound you make is amplified by hundreds of times! As a band, our playing was bad today. Lots of tuning, rhythm blah blah problems. Essentially we didn’t sound ‘together’. D:

But I guess on an individual level I was decent. I think I have improved by leaps and bounds in the past couple of weeks. My squeaking rate has plummeted! =D My rhythm is a bit better, tuning not sure, tone is still screwed.

Term 1 Week 11

2009-03-22T22:54:00.000+08:00

So ~~March Holidays~~ Term 1 Week 11 ends and Term 1 starts.

I remember my March holidays last year – the first school holiday I had after joining RI. I can remember emoing over how packed the holidays were and how I got absolutely no rest; some big science project, tonnes of other homework, RE, band camp, lots of other things.

I guess these March holidays weren’t much different, if not much more packed.

Friday (Holiday for RJC’s good A-Level results! xD)	Band (8-1)
Saturday	Band (1-5)
Sunday	(Went out in the morning, skatezone reunion in afternoon)
Monday	Band Camp!
Tuesday	Band Camp! =D
Wednesday	Violin lesson –_- (Entire Morning)
Thursday	Violin lesson again (Entire Morning)
Friday	~~Band (8-1)~~ CEC Training (8-12), Debates (1-3)
Saturday	Band (1-5)
Sunday	HOMEWORK

To all those #$%^&* who didn’t have to go back to school even once during the holidays…

Lots of band lah, but SYF is in 16 days!!! D:

And violin lesson… -.- Sigh

You’ll be able to see that I had not a single absolutely free day like one you would expect of a holiday. Thus I rename this week T1 Wk11 =D (The T1Wk11 thing is courtesy of Kirk BTW xD)

Lol tomorrow is the Uniform check – Over my big heavy bag containing lots of homework, I need to carry my clarinet, and in a big plastic bag, my blazer, long-sleeved white shirt, long black pants, belt, black shoes and black socks ----> LOTS of things to carry to school.

Another long-time-never-post thing.

2009-03-22T09:55:00.001+08:00

Um let’s see what has happened since I last posted on March 6th:

- CEC Investiture!

- ~~March Hols~~ Term 1 Week 11

- Band camp

- Lots of band practices

- CEC training

- My boring life

- Lots of ~~incomplete~~ homework

I’ll post details and pics and all after I’m done with the CS project for Alice and English TKAM freesheet.. Looks like I have a great day ahead.

Hey I’m using Windows Live Writer to write this post. Try it; it seems somewhat more convenient than Blogger.

Heyhey I finally post!

2009-03-06T22:43:00.005+08:00

Don't know why, I've been lazy to start/procrastinating over/putting off posting for a long time.

1 month..

And I was sick for almost a week and a half!

19th Feb, Thursday:
Feel damn sick at school, came back home immediately after lessons. Turns out I had a 39 degree fever.

20th Feb, Friday:
Still sick, can't come to school, misses IVP launch, CECC intro (postponed) band and lots of other things!

21st Feb to 25th, Saturday to Wednesday:
Sick throughout the weekend, staff training days on Monday and Tuesday, then got an MC for Wednesday as well!

And all the band practices I missed:
Thursday (extra), Friday, Monday (super-long), Wednesday, Friday, Saturday (super-long)

And our SYF performance has been confirmed for 8th April, Wednesday (a week after my birthday!). 2.30pm, Singapore Conference Hall. And last day of SYF, i.e. seven bands would have played Fledermaus before us.

And my playing still stinks grandly.

We got our blazers today - they are downright misshapen! Somewhat like the Bibi and Baba school uniforms, these blazers have ultra-short arms and flowing torsos like tuxedoes or something.

And yes all the PTs/random assignments/tests to attend to over the weekend:
-Alice assignments for CS
-Alice project for CS
-English TKAM Poetry collation
-English TKAM quiz
-English TKAM theme handout
-Science Performance Task on Acids & Bases
-Science (Chemistry) Practical Test

I'm overjoyed!

I really should go to sleep now.

Falling up stairs

2009-02-10T22:15:00.002+08:00

I'm falling up stairs. Literally. I tripped over the stairs around the Raffles bust at the Admin block and fell on to the next step. Falling up stairs heheheh. I hit my knee and it hurts like crap now. I won't be able to fall in tomorrow!

I'm falling up stairs. Figuratively..

2009-01-31T23:54:00.003+08:00

Today I felt strangely motivated to do lots of work. Yesterday night too. Very weird. But I'll stick with it.

Went to Aidan's house today to random around.I vaguely learnt some guitar chords. Taboo was random! Lunch was awesome.

Aidan's dad has archer fish - they shoot prey that are on leaves above the surface of the water by spitting water at them. So suddenly you can see a burst of water from the tank and a worm put on a leaf falls into the tank. Then.. Feeding Frenzy!

I'm 2nd from left. Zack looks dumb in this xD. Aidan looks evil in this xD. Jkn lah.

Anty uploaded this pic onto Facebook 3 hours after he reached home from Aidan's house...

An Overladen Plate

2009-01-31T23:32:00.002+08:00

Yesterday was Friday! =D

Yesterday was spent rushing to different things without going for anything completely. First came the Writer's Programme launch (Farren dragged me along but I found it quite interesting..) Then I had to rush off to the watch the MOF Budget Debates. After the secondary school debate, I went to band before the JC debates started.

Too many things on my plate? That thought has never crossed my mind before, and now that it has, it frightens.

Well I just hope such clashes, especially between band and debates, don't keep happening.

50+ more days to SYF!!! xO xO xO

It's Just Another Day

2009-01-29T22:38:00.004+08:00

My timetable every Thursday is intimidating.
English, Maths, Science, Mother Tongue and History (on odd weeks) or Geog (on even weeks) - all the content-based subjects lined up together.

But thankfully the next day is Friday: 4 periods only, 1 period RE, 2 periods CS/Philo (odd weeks) or PE/Philo (even weeks. The other period is English or Science. And of course the best thing about Friday is that the weekend follows it..

I've spoken a lot today.

By spoken I mean like presenting!

We had our English presentations on the Scottsborough Trials trials today. I think we did much better than what I expected! I got through my prejudice & discrimination more or less with ease. I guess in terms of speaking style and confidence and stuff, this presentation would be among my best. Looks like going note-less works.

Band extra prac after school was.. productive! I managed to to roughly learn the first page of Overture Number 1. But I'm still lagging way behind everyone else. Taking forever to read notes isn't helping.

Had debates after band - Anty the pro debator and the seniors were sparring the team for tomorrow's MOF BP Competition thing, so Aidan made me and the other 3 juniors who turned up (on time) today prep a crazy motion:

This House Would mandate participation in HOTA mandatory.
(Thanks to Aidan for the big words xD)

Nothing wrong with the motion if you're proposing. But I was opposing...

Flowers on a Rampage

2009-01-25T22:01:00.018+08:00

I just found out how to create a Facebook badge! =D

I went to Sentosa with my family for the Sentosa Flowers thing today. It's quite nice. Got some pics.

Yeah that's a turtle!

We went to the beach after that and my sis buried me in sand! Not the whole me at least; we didn't have time to do that. Thank goodness. Me buried in sand:

facebooking

2009-01-24T21:55:00.002+08:00

I've been actively facebooking for some reason these days, and in the process I made 16 'new friends', bringing my total 'friend' count to 121. Quite pathetic, I know, but I'm still on my way to Facebook stardom!! =D

Just like Google (and everything owned by it), Facebook is one interesting thing. It totally turns the consumer's role around in its business model. It's sole source of income is not from its millions of users, but those who put up those little advertisements on the right side of some pages. And with these tiny ads, Facebook Inc is now estimated to be worth anywhere from US$1 billion to US$15billion.

Facebook is even referred to very commonly during Mr Mag's speeches! (He's on Facebook, so is Mr Kwok)

Anyway, I found this on Arjun's profile:

Arjun and Billabong are raising money for Music for Relief using SocialVibe.
7:38pm - Comment

Was curious, so I went to the SocialVibe link and found that with the simple ad (now on your right), a sponsor (in my blog's case, Nike) would pay to a cause I selected (in my case, the World Food Programme) for every visit I get to my blog.

One in every 7 humans cannot get three guaranteed meals a day. That makes nearly a billion people in hunger. If I could give a few of them guaranted meals for a couple of days it would be great..

So:

Deepak and EA Mobile are raising money for World Food Programme using SocialVibe. 9:40pm - Comment - Show 1 More Post

Happy Chinese New Year!

2009-01-23T21:23:00.013+08:00

Hey guys, happy chinese new year!

We had a half-day at school today even though today is not CNY eve; CNY only starts on Monday. How awesome of the RI administration. RGS had regular school until 1.30 today! CNY celebrations consisted of a drum performance by Chinese Orchestra (I'm guessing that there has been a performance by the Chinese Orchestra in every single school in Singapore today). Stephen was on the drums along with his entire section. Damn imba!

Then there was a damn cool erhu performance about a horse race - another damn imba thing. After that I had to go for band. I really had an overwhelming urge to pon this band session to go to Henry Park but in the end, I didn't. We could go off by 12-odd, straight to Jurong Point.

After the agonizingly long trip from Bishan to Boon Lay via Jurong East, I arrived at JP to find that everyone had yet to reach there. I waited for a while for Naman, etc. They came and they headed straight to Subway.

Apparently Shaowu told Kuan Hian about the results of the debates tryouts (see previous post). Obviously current debates members aren't allowed to tell people about the results until they are officially released. Then Shaowu realised that I would probably tell Aidan on him and started begging me - yeah pleading - asking me to not tell Aidan about Shao leaking the results =D

Sigh..

It turns out that at Henry Park, everyone broke into their little groups and went to Jurong Point and for lunch there seperately. The cliques never cease do they?

After lunch, we somehow managed to get together and take a look at the cinema and arcade. Some people didn't want to watch a movie and most of us thought the arcade wasn't great. So we stood at the wooden bridge-like structure on the 3rd floor of JP deliberating on what to do next.

Very randomly, we ended up deciding to go to Hui Fen's house to play soccer/cards/whatever else we wanted. We occupied all the seats of the lower deck of a bus from the interchange to her house.

HK and a number of others were walking behind us and missed the bus by mere seconds. This ended up in them getting messed up directions from ~~HF and Elim~~ xD and getting off a bus stop early. Which resulted in them walking almost a kilometre to HF's house only to discover that we were walking to the bus stop they got off (wrongly) at. This because we had decided to play soccer at the field there.

But come to think about it, most of the NTU I've seen is just forest and fields and this pic seems to be the perfect epitomy of that..

We played soccer for a bit at this place you see above and then started playing tai-ti during "half-time" that eventually became game over.

Then HF went and got the baseball things, so we played baseball for a while as well. Then we started playing tai-ti again.

Some time later, HF's mum kindly offered us a lift to the Boon Lay MRT station, so we went off and randomed around in the MRT (Boon Lay - unidirectional MRT line!! -> all of us on the same train).

Wth the picture quality is so crap.

I guess this reunion was pretty ok, but everyone split up according to what they wanted to do. Next time, we must not try to make 40 kids hang out at a boring mall!!!
=D

Really great pic:
Blue

Debates tryouts

2009-01-22T23:25:00.004+08:00

We had tryouts for the debates club today, and unlike last year when I tried for the debates club, it wasn't just a speech we were supposed to make. The new sec ones had to do general knowledge quizzes as well! And some of their answers were just so comical:

Name the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Steven, John, Thomas

Uncle Bobo

Yes, sec ones wrote all this. If they at least named countries wrongly, the mistake is entirely forgivable, but Uncle Bobo??

Then the most amusing one of all:

What can you bring to the Raffles Debaters?

Of course this question talked about achievements and your good qualities and stuff. But...

Notes, cue cards, pens

2009-01-22T23:23:00.003+08:00

I'm now officially emo. I need to get my mind cleared before it explodes.

februaryMARCHapril, and of the ostracized

2009-01-21T23:09:00.004+08:00

We filmed our drills video for SYF today at band. I tell you, marching and playing the clarinet at the same time - not easy. Everyone made lots of screwups, but apparently, by sheer luck none of the screwups were caught on camera. But a marching band is an interesting thing, so yeah.

There's going to be band until 12.30 after CNY celeb on Friday!! Ah well, to look on the bright side, RGS has a normal day on Friday and some people have CCA till 6+ so I'll just count myself fortunate =D

So I won't be able to go to Henry Park Primary on Friday D: but I'll still make it for lunch/movie, etc after that.

(rest of post removed)

2009-01-19T23:06:00.002+08:00

Lots of things that happened today were thought-provoking. But I'm damn sleepy. Gnite!

What a pathetic post...

Blogger Problems

2009-01-18T22:37:00.003+08:00

Hey everyone, anyone out there having problems logging on to Blogger? I tried to log in on Firefox but I got a page that said this:

Blogger Sign In
We found the following errors:
Your browser's cookie functionality is disabled. Please enable JavaScript and cookies in order to use Blogger.
Blogger Help explains how

I logged in on Internet Explorer and it worked fine. Anyone has the same prob?

A Boring Life

2009-01-18T22:26:00.002+08:00

The weekend's over! xO

But on the great side, Chinese New Year starts this week! That means a Friday half day at school (Visit HPPS later, then P6GEP'08 outing!), then a great, big, 4-day long weekend.

I just realised how boring my life is currently.

At this same time, exactly 7 days ago, I was preparing for another week ahead. After reading some Chem out of my textbook, I packed up my clarinet and packed my bag. My bag was weighed a ton and I groaned when I realised that I had to take the load that is my bag as well as my clarinet to school the next day. I tied my school tie for the next day and then put my bag, clarinet and wallet near the front door of my house.

After all that, I sat at my laptop, churned out a blog post, shut it down, brushed my teeth, set my alarm clock and went to sleep.

I did precisely the same things in the same order at the same time today. And I will be doing precisely those same things in that same order at the same time for the next countless Sundays of my life.

At least there exceptions to that. Like next Sunday! =D

At the end of another week

2009-01-16T22:57:00.003+08:00

I've just managed to survive yet another mondaytuesdaywednesdaythursdayfriday cycle. I now have vaguely poetic ideas about trudging through the sludge of the weekday and tripping, falling, picking myself up, then at the end of the whole thing I reach Paradise for two days before I'm pushed back into the whole sludge again.

Never mind.

I seriously need to buck up at band; I have not by any means finished Die Fledermaus yet. Then there's still Overture Number 1..

I'm going for extra prac!

i'm not gonna give this post a sensible title

2009-01-11T23:03:00.003+08:00

A really sudden, startling, freaky realization just struck me.

It just became 2009, this new year, a really short span of time ago. And I am already in the thick of the new (school) year. You know, the usual; CCA everyday, coming back from CCA late, lots of things to do after that, late nights..

My dad just taught me one big load of chemistry. It's awesomely interesting - just how everything adds up and makes sense..

I just finished packing my bag for tomorrow. It weighs one heck of a ton - chem textbook, history textbook, lots of files. Then my clarinet as well.

Bye then..

A Meh Post

2009-01-10T22:30:00.005+08:00

Oh my gawd my debates research just hung on me. Ok disregard. The OpenOffice doc containing my debates research just hung. If I don't get it back I'm so going to kill it.

Oh thank goodness OpenOffice managed to recover it.

You know this week has been feeling rather long. I guess it was because I had to stay back everyday. The workload has been surprisingly manageable so far. Well, let's wait for RE to start..

I've got nothing to post about right now! Then I guess I'll just end it there.

Edit (Sunday, 11th Jan '09, 23:07): Anty has just protested about me having koped this post's title from his blog. There, it's no more plagiarism, k? =D

What happened yesterday

2009-01-08T22:16:00.004+08:00

I'm running out of titles for my posts. Shall I start doing what Alastair is doing right now? i.e. simply numbering your posts.

I've long decided not to do regular RE in Sec 2, so I decided to try Destination Imagination. I didn't get in, so I was seemingly stuck with doing regular RE until, by sheer coincidence, I realized that my new Chemistry teacher (Ms Liew) is the Innovation Programme (IvP) teacher-in-charge. So I asked her about joining and she said that today would be the last day for submitting names. (According to today's RE briefing, the school asked the organisers to extend the deadline)

I started looking for someone to work with and I found Sean Sum. The maximum number of people in an IVP group is 3 (no minimum), so we thought of finding more people. Then Liang Pu and Chiraag came said at the same time that they wanted to join our group.

Then Chiraag wanted to do scissors-paper-stone to decide who would go with me and Sean! Liang Pu objected to this. Anyway, picking one and leaving out the other is without doubt unfair right?

So I suggested both of them doing IvP together in a seperate group from me and Sean Sum (like you know the fable where two monkeys quarrel over fish and a bear comes and takes the whole fish away to resolve the fight xD). Then both of them strongly objected. Well the reasons... 2M would know!

I finally persuaded/mediated between them to cooperate and to stop hurling profanities at each other. Now they're in a group, and with any luck they seem to be doing fine..

Quotes

2009-01-07T22:36:00.002+08:00

Quote of Yesterday:
At debates:

(Andrew has just made several cracks about wiping companies' dirty butts)

Zhiyuan (stands up to give POI): No vulgarities, sir.

Andrew: Please keep your ass on the chair, sir.

Thanks Anty cos I koped this from your blog.

Quote of The Day

Mrs Chan: So 302x multiplied by... Ernest!

(equals to infinity =D)

Some post

2009-01-06T23:02:00.002+08:00

Our ~~new~~ old Senior Block is definitely a far cry from the shiny metal railings, psychedelic colours and attention-attracting movable roof of the awesome Junior block. 2M is at a corner of the third floor, so yeah not used to climbing all the way up. Then there is no toilet in the entire block! So we have to go to the second floor. Then from a fantastic, carpeted, wooden-paneled classroom with a motorized projector screen (our class used to be a lab =D), we have an ancient one with a projector screen that won't roll back up fully xO

Okay I'll stop complaining because I named this blog "The Optimistic Blog". At least we have a nice nice school right?

Today PE was damn random. Mr Lim told us to run as a group and we ended up doing the chu-chu train. Like we were recently demoted to kindergarten. Then English was also random. We played a modified version of Taboo where you give the other team their words. We ended up giving/getting really obscure unknown things and people.

Well, must finish preparing for the Commonwealth essay thing.

Teachers

2009-01-05T22:24:00.003+08:00

We have three new teachers this year - for Chem, History and English. The thing about all of them is that they seem to respond to Chiraag's dumb, ubiquitous jokes in just the way that makes the class erupt in unstoppable laughter.

But they're all fun teachers though. I detest the kind of teachers who are a liberalist's nightmare, those who go strictly by the book, etc. I'm glad and proud to say RI has no such teachers. =D At least no teacher I've seen so far.

To make for all our great new teachers, our new Hindi teacher is horrible. She gave us a compo on the first day that is due on Wednesday! (I just finished it by the way o.O)

The second last episode of this TV drama (The Little Nonya if I'm not wrong) was shown this evening and both Mrs Tan and Mr Oura wanted to see it. So we got released from band very, very on time! xD

Today Kelvin was the one who had to use the plastic clarinet. I used a mixed up clarinet (i.e. the different parts of the clarinet were taken from different cases.) which was, for some reason, very difficult to play. Then just as I finished keeping it back in the store room and was walking out, I saw my awesome clarinet lying on the shelf. Too late.

First day

2009-01-04T21:56:00.003+08:00

2009 came and school reopened like way too fast. Hence, my Facebook status:

Deepak is surprised that school's already started.

New Year's Eve was alright; I went with my family to this Lebanese restaurant. The food is simply awesome!! And I have a special liking for that restaurant because it has a vegetarian menu xD I recommend the "Sheesh Taouk" - a kebab-ish thing made of (vegetarian) chicken.

I spent the first day of 2009 clearing my table. Quite literally, it took a huge amount of effort and a whole day to clear a year's worth of junk; used papers, lots of crap plastic things, old pens that have never worked and will never work.. And I ~~threw away~~ recycled 12 kilogrammes of junk paper.

First day of school was.. uh, eventful? The first half of the day was filled speeches - SDHM, Principal, Year Head. Oh and the little Sec Ones.. I don't think they were as impressed by our Unite cheer as we were last year; the Unite cheer at Morning Assembly was pathetic because no one was saying the words! Eh come on lah! At least we did a good one at Year Head assembly.

Our form teacher is Mrs Y, out last year's Geography teacher! o.O o.O

That was more or less it for the first day. We had class games after that, where people like Chiraag and Darren Foo started screwing around grandly, screaming - yeah screaming - their heads off. Ben must have lots of self-control to not blow his top off at these guys =D

Then there was band - my clarinet has been sent for repair, so I have to use a horrible sounding plastic one for the time being.

Not like I sound that great on a $3k wooden clarinet.. D:

Finally, I did it

2009-01-04T15:30:00.004+08:00

Yay, I got a new blogskin!

Loads of thanks to FalconHive.com for 'bloggerizing' this skin. I found the link to FalconHive.com on Tharun's blog; it's an awesome site for skins.

There's a problem in the alignment of the background pics at the top. I asked Alvaris Falcon from the Falcon Hive about this. Apparently other people have the same prob as well.

Arunima was complaining about this skin's likeness to Eugene's blog o.O

For the millionth time

2008-12-29T10:33:00.003+08:00

Hey guys! I hope you still remember this miserable blog thing here. After my last post almost one and a half months ago, I went to India for three weeks, then for two days after coming back suffered from 2 1/2 hours of jetlag. Then the rest of the week I crapped around until my cousin came from India on Saturday the 20th.

They were here for the rest of the week, so we brought them to lots of places to see.

And at Snow City, I hurt my butt/back in a bad, bad way. Details later.

My cousin left yesterday, so today I've finally gotten around to posting.

Now what I'm going to do is:

Link/Relink/Delete the link of Kartik, Anty, Aidan, etc

Stop dao-ing all the kind people who've tagged

And in the very near future, I need to:

Change my blogskin

Change this blog URL

Blog about the last month and a half

Ciao!

2008-11-19T21:52:00.002+08:00

Seems like my resolution to blog everyday was.. EPIC FAILURE.

I'm going overseas (India) for 3 weeks starting this Friday (21st Nov) to 15th Dec. I'll try to post then. By the looks of it, I'll be posting much more often in India than when I'm at home =|

Band.

2008-11-12T23:25:00.003+08:00

Band has been extremely tiring these days. We have practice thrice a week during these holidays and each session is 5 hours long. By the time I come back, I am dead. Not like I can play much of the damn song; there's just a whole spam of notes on the score -- mental overload of notes.

When Mr Oura goes through the song, my seniors can all play so well while we Sec 1s (or at least I) stone there making vague sounds.

Tomorrow, I'm going to make myself learn up to the second page. Wish me luck.

Random Blogthings

2008-11-07T15:48:00.005+08:00

There Are 0 Gaps in Your Knowledge

Where you have gaps in your knowledge:

No Gaps!

Where you don't have gaps in your knowledge:

Philosophy

Religion

Economics

Literature

History

Science

Art

Do You Have Gaps in Your Knowledge?

I Rock! =D =D

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

Slack, no slack, slack?

2008-11-04T20:47:00.003+08:00

I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS POST!

OKAY?!

Sigh, ever since the EOYs ended, I have been slacking. Well yeah, that's what's supposed to happen... but I'm just spending every day playing stupid games. I want to do all these things during the hols:

Blog everyday
Learn how to make a blogskin/learn html
Learn C++
Write
Read
--Alot!
Solve the cube under 40s =O
Organise my blog labels
I have a vague idea of learning to play the guitar?
Make my DIE Fledermaus better
Start a bit of next year's work? (Nay, this one too lazy :D)

Can I stop playing random comp games and actually do the things above?

Okie, for a start, I shall switch off the comp when I finish this post and finish The Da Vinci Code before I go to bed..

Got band tomorrow. Mr Oura told Kelvin last practice to remind him to test the clarinets on the terrifyingly fast part of Fledermaus (tongue a note every 0.04 seconds on the recorder from primary school. You get a hundredth of the difficulty of playing that on what I play).

Fine, off to read.

My Mugging

2008-10-21T21:07:00.005+08:00

Here I'm just going to talk about how the EOYs have been for me. Organised by subject.

English
Exam format: Comprehension, Formal Letter on Animal Farm
There really wasn't much to do for English, so I just took notes for each chapter of Animal Farm. These were somewhat useful actually, and on the whole I guess my letter was good and comprehension.. ok?

Lots of people wanted my Animal Farm notes photocopied and later they were thanking me profusely xD.
I want: 42/50

History
Exam format: 2 inference questions, 1 reliability question, 1 essay on Explorers
Having had a very bad shortage of time for the History CCT, I was really worried about whether I would get enough time for the exam. So I sat down with a whole load of practice questions and started to do them till I could do them in the time I planned for.

As for the essay, our teacher had "hinted" to us about what our essay was going to be about. She talked about personal qualities and how to write an essay comparing personal qualities in an explorer.

So I was quite well-prepared for this exam and when we got our paper, I went to the essay question to see how much time I would need. THEN I saw the essay question was:

Two important attributes of a successful explorer are:
Open-mindedness
Ambitiousness
Which of these attributes is more important for a successful explorer? You may use examples from the case studies of the 3 explorers you have learnt.

That is the SAME damn question our teacher discussed with us!!!

Effectively, we could have mugged Kei Jun's perfect essay and regurgitated the entire thing out during the exam - and get full marks for essay! (That is what Chiraag and a few others did, by the way) I really don't understand why they would give us in the exam something we discussed - in detail - in class!

Anyway, because I had practised on that question, I could finish the essay in 25 minutes =D So with any luck, I can retain my 4.0 for history.

Geography
Format: Lots of LONG questions on Mapwork, Plate tectonics and Geography of Food

This one I started mugging too late ): I also tried a new studying method on Geography because of the huge amount to mug, but I think it didn't work out well.

The exam was okay actually, but I don't think I did well.

Aargh I can't remember!!

Science
Remember the bio relief teacher? =D Lol, only 1M guys will know about this.

Format: 25 MCQ questions, open-ended questions divided into GS/Bio/Chem/Phys

Anyway, the Science was a killer, but a managed to get enough time for all the questions. The MCQ was extremely hard but the rest weren't bad. There was a bonus question in the General Science section where we had to write a bibliographical citation in APA format; with all the RE I did, I'm sure I got that correct :D There was another question under Physics which asked us to explain why the Titanic sank with reference to the concept of density. Apparently Anty didn't realise water flows in when the ship hits the iceberd xD

So with any luck, I'll be able to maintain my 4.0 for Science.

Maths
Format: Lots of questions

The last one! That was about all that I could think of during the weekend before the Math paper. I finished the big, thick stack of revision exercises we got. I used a total of 98 sheets of paper for this!!

The exam was somewhat difficult; kindof like the Math PSLE - tedious but do-able. The tedious part makes it difficult, so yeah..

On the whole, the difficulty level of the EOYs were... satisfactory? But next year, I must start revising much earlier. This time I had to chiong a lot - especially for mugging subjects like Science and Geog. Otherwise.. I slack until the results come!! :D

Phew, finally finished this post

EXAMS OVER!

2008-10-20T13:58:00.003+08:00

EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!EXAMS OVER!

It's hard for me to take in the fact that I don't need to mug.

~~I don't need to do work.~~

I can actually slack!

I'm feeling high.

I'm too high to write about the exams themselves =D Today was the last paper - Math. After our invigilator collected the last paper, the excited little kids in all of us surfaced and the whole class went like YES.

After that a lot of us went for lunch at J8. Then we realised it was way too early for lunch - it was 10-something - so we went to Bishan Library to slack for a bit. Kartik found this great C++ book, so I borrowed it and the CD that came with it.

Later we went to J8 for lunch and we split up between Subway and Mac.

"I'm coming to Subway because I HATE the food at McDonalds"
- Ernest

Then lunch was full of randomness. The guys at Mcdonalds came and everyone started taking pics of each other. To uh, you know, protect ~~Kei Jun's~~ people's right to privacy, I won't be posting any photos. The Bishan g.. I mean, Bishan Uncle was there as well, perpetually staring at people and smiling in his trademark freaky manner.

Later we hung around for a bit before Kartik and a few others went for a movie and the rest of us went. I switched on my mp3 player and blasted music all the way back xD

one hundred

2008-10-03T14:45:00.003+08:00

Guess what, this is my hundredth post! I was planning to give me blog a big makeover at this point but I'll have to keep that for after the EOYs.

Mugging maths is fun. Yes, you read it right and I typed it right, mugging maths is kind of something you get addicted to and don't want to stop. The nearest thing to it I can think of is... runner's high? Like what I described in my post from April about the 2.4 run.

It's a nice (!) feeling you get when you find yourself running along, feet pounding by one by one, in annoyingly-repetitive breathing pattern.

Something like that.

Something to REmember

2008-09-26T14:42:00.005+08:00

During RE yesterday, there was this presentation of the outstanding Sec 2 research projects and a certificate presentation of the outstanding Sec 1 projects. And one of the outstanding Sec 1 projects was mine!

RE this year was simply not a great experience. As my group's leader, I think I perpetually had this pessimistic outlook on what my group could do and I was also extremely perfectionist. So at the beginning, I was always doing many things myself and micro-managing what I asked others to do.

Later, I realised I couldn't continue with this solo-ing, so I started to try and make my group cooperate a bit more. This (kind of) worked, and RE became much less monster-like.

Yesterday, Mrs Yap said that the reports of these outstanding projects were going to be put in the library. When she said this, she held up our very own report! That's just kewl..

Next year, of course, I would want to be like those people who presented their projects yesterday. And of course, be less of a dictator =D

Super luck

2008-09-26T14:33:00.004+08:00

There was PE as usual today and I forgot to bring my PE things! xO

Then it started raining immediately when PE was supposed to start, so Mr Lim had to call off PE! xO xO

Freaked luck, eh?

My condo is being painted green and they're only halfway done with it, leaving my block looking like this:Amusing.

It's been a long time

2008-09-23T22:15:00.005+08:00

You know, a hurricane is shaped like an eye, and at the very centre of it is a column where everything is calm. There are no winds and no storms, but there has already been plenty of destruction and strong winds because.. well the other parts of the hurricane would have just passed by. At the same time, there is this sense of impending doom because the rest of the hurricane is going to pass.

Right now, I'm in the eye of the hurricane that is school. Amid the flurry of work that has come throughout the year, right now seems to be a time when everything has calmed down, yet the upcoming EOYs carry this aura of imminent danger.

CCA Stand-down has begun - well it began 2 weeks ago. CCAs are halted for us to mug for the End-of-Year exams, but I'm still slacking around. With CCAs gone, these days seem to be really free, yet I keep letting all that time slip through my hands.

My big stack of Math revision worksheets remain relatively untouched. And there are mere weeks left to the exam. Damn, I need to try harder.

REACT!

2008-09-05T21:56:00.009+08:00

Oh crap this post should have come like nearly 2 weeks ago..

The first Monday of the September hols was REACT - annual gathering of RI, RJC and RGS bands. We had to get to school early in the morning and after helping out with the rather messy process of moving the percussion instruments from the band room to the atrium, we went to RJC. REACT was being planned by the RJC band, so we had most of our activities held there.

First up was ice-breakers, where we stood in a big circle and had to play random games. The thing was that the circle went like this: all the RI boys making up one half of the circle and all the RGS girls making up the other half with the RJC people dispersed throughout. When seniors tried to pull members of both parties to the other side so that we could mix around, the pulled people just ran back to where they were.

It strangely reminded me of immiscible liquids; they never mix, are always separated with a clear line of separation, upon shaking hard, they will mix for a bit and then go back to their separated state..

After ice-breakers we had sectionals and combined concert. Each of the bands had a song and we practiced the songs together. RI's song was "Wham" - a medley of jazz songs from the '80s. Such Naman-ish music, but it sounded somewhat good and I could play the songs because I mugged it over the weekend.

The RGS song was "Dawn of A New Day" by James Swearingen. This one was in the typical J. Swearingen style and sounded fantastic; I guess all Swearingen songs are good.. RJC's song was "Appalachian Overture" by another James - James Barns. This one was so damn difficult I couldn't even get the main melody, let alone play it.

Now the thing is that we had to sight-read the songs of the other schools - 2 really difficult songs in just over 3 hours! Combined practice was in the RI atrium was rather messy - and I was permanently looking at Andy's fingers to find out where we were, but it was fun anyways. Also, my sight-reading has managed to improve a lot.

After combined practice we carried back the percussion instruments to the band room in half the time we took to get them down! Talk about doing miracles in a hurry. Then lunch was at J8 where all the sections decided to pack food from the outlets in J8 and sit around at the big space on the 3rd floor together and eat together. It looked very random to see everyone in big, big circles. I heard the flute guys didn't wait for the RGS girls to get their lunch. Well at least we did, and they took a long time. Clarinets rock!

Ok now comes the very screwed up part of REACT - team games. Everyone was divided into teams of about 10 and went on this station-games trail with games more lewd than those at the ACS Debate Camp. Example: line up alternating between boy and girl, smear toothpaste on the first person's cheek and pass the toothpaste on by... well, rubbing your cheeks with the next person. We didn't have time to go to that station.

There was also one where each group had to line up with boys in one line and girls in the other, forming pairs. Each person had to draw a card from a stack and each card was labelled with a body part. Then each pair had to hold a ballon in between the body parts assigned to them. I got neck and head which was not that bad; there were people who had knee and .. posterior.

There was another (more decent) game where we the RJC people had laid out paper with letters on them in the arrangement of a handphone keypad. By jumping on the letters, half of each group had to spell out the sentence and and the other half had to figure out what the sentence was. Rather boldly, I volunteered to spell 'schizophrenic'.. those who were figuring out the sentence couldn't catch it, so we cheated. yeah! And in this game, before each one of us spelt out our word we had to roll in flour - really irrelevant.

Then was the war games where all the guys had to pin pegs to their back and the girls had to try and get pegs off boys of other groups. This was held in a huge hall at RJC and it just went crazy. It was just a whole load of chaos and reminded me vaguely of.. landmines? =D

There was a storyline behind the station games - something about the DBM getting murdered and finding the culprit.

Anyway that was fun. After that REACT was over. We had to fall in at the band room later and as Johnson said then, we really didn't have much interaction between the schools. I mean, I didn't even learn the names of a single person from either RJC or RGS in my section alone. Heck, I had no idea of the names of the RGS people in my group. I guess it was just the usual situation where one party waits for the other party to start some conversation while the other party does the same. This results in both parties stoning o.O

So guys, make sure that next year, you try to interact more. Be miscible liquids. Stitch stitch.

Teachers' Day

2008-09-03T22:17:00.005+08:00

Teachers' Day concert at RI was great (that is, oddly and lamely funny). With Biquan and Isaac Chay as emcees, well whaddyu expect. I guess the most random part was when the "Heroes" (teachers) and "Zeroes" (students) were chair-racing. This involves standing on chairs and moving them around so as to move forward.

You see Andrew Tam, Rohan and another Sec 4 was on the "Zeroes" team while 3 teachers were on the "Heroes" team. As the Zeroes team were quickly picking up pace over the Heroes, Mrs Albar came and blocked their (Zeroes') way. Then Mrs Smith came and sat on one of the Zeroes chairs! The look on Andrew Tam's face right then was priceless.

Random Quotes from the RI teachers' day celebrations:

"Brief-man and Boxer Boy!" - Isaac and Biquan donning, well, briefs and boxers
"With Fong, you can't go wrong" - Ashish during the quiz

After the concert and a hurried giving of my presents, I found out most of the Henry Parkers had left. Then Naowed turned up at the atrium, so we took 156 together. At HPPS, we saw quite a few of the teachers - Mrs Idil, Ms Ng, Mrs Seow, Mr Yip, Mdm Rozaidah. Had nice chats with a few of them. I could barely remember Mrs Seow's name!

Those little kids at HPPS are really small and never say hi! When we passed by them and waved (well yea it was in a rather intimidating manner) they just looked up at us and stoned/staired.

We managed to get everyone from our batch to the concert at the HPPS hall. A staggering 30-odd of 34 of us came, counting Amal and Tharun out for having migrated overseas. (I guess those who didn't come weren't informed by the horrible people that are *ahem* some of us.) So with so many of us in the hall, we didn't fit anywhere, so we ended up camping behind the teachers' chairs.

" I feel like taking attendance" - Mrs Idil when she turned around from her seat and saw us all gathered behind her

After a really short time, we were making too much noise. I mean, there was this Chinese flute solo going on but we could only see the student playing the flute. We kinda saboed the HPPS kids because we were making lots of noise and they were scapegoated for it --> scolded by Mrs David. Sigh, good times.

Mrs Idil suggested we go out and play, and all of us scrammed out. We decided to go to West Mall for lunch and whatever we were going to do after that. After taking Bus 61 and talking a lot inside, we reached West Mall.

"Deepak, where exactly are we?" - Shao.. lolz

We decided to go wherever we wanted for lunch and meet at the foodcourt later. I went to the foodcourt with most of the rest. I ate at the vegetarian stall - Vegetarianism! Yea!

After walking around aimlessly trying to find a table for all of us, we finally got a recently vacated one. We decided to be helpful and piled up all the used dishes. Just then, one of the helpers there came to our table and told us that we had put the Halal and non-Halal plates together. That was kind of troubling - I mean, we were trying to help as well as to make space for ouselves at the table, but then we caused trouble.. So much for the argument going about returning plates at food courts.

Ok after lunch, we went to Bukit Batok Civil Service Club to bowl, but there were no lanes available, so we went back to West Mall for the arcade. Whee my driving has improved..

So after going to the arcade (and screwing around with the AXS machine outside..) we went back to CSC to bowl and this time, they had lanes. I was bowling dismally as usual, then I was thinking how to improve my score.

What was my problem? - I approch the lane from the centre and the ball keeps turning to the left. So what will solve the problem? - approaching from the right, doh! So then I went up, bowled a hyper-slow ball from right next to the right gutter then the ball rotated to the left and hit the centre pin spot-on! K, I shouldn't brag so much..

I decided not to stay for another game because I had violin class, but it turned to be cancelled in the end. So I left with Kun Siang, HF and Arunima. Bright KS thinks he should take the MRT to Newton and then get to his house at Adam Road! from all the way there! I got him to take 157 with me and I ended up listening to him emo-ing. xD

I must say that reunion was much better than the rest we've had.

Investiture

2008-08-30T22:01:00.010+08:00

Investiture has finished! I got promoted!

First up for Investiture was the batch performances. This went like this - we sec 1s went and played Centuria first, then the sec 2s came and played 2 songs, sec 3s came and played 3 songs, sec 4s came and played 3 songs.

Our song went more or less okay, but I'm sure we played way better at practice than at investiture. I really have no idea why we messed up some parts, *ahem* Bar 146 *ahem* Percussions *ahem*.. And I squeaked!

After that had the other perfomances, and later the Sec 4s played Centuria as well! In Alastair's words:

I remember when we were Sec 1, the Sec 4s at the time played it and we were all practically cringing in our seats because it completely pwned ours. Really strange to see the Sec 1s doing exactly the same thing when we played.

Lol.

After the performances was the ceremony, which I guess was a naming error; with Lucas and Jerald as emcees, the whole thing was just full of random jokes. Funnyness =D

All of us got promoted (even the perpetual ponners!). Jerome got best in practical, Arjun got best in drills and outstanding recruit.. They didn't announce the departments we (sec 1s) were going to be assigned to, so I'm still just hoping to be an RD.

The exco and other posts for next year were announced. Brandon is the clarinet SL, Josiah is DBM and Kirk is BM. With his new position as band major, Kirk gave a speech to end off.

After this, Kirk (our new band major!) told everyone to fall in outside except for the sec 1s, who were to fall in seperately. At this point Samuel was on a high a walking around squealing to us about how he was not our RD Head anymore. Then in a seemingly impromptu ceremony-of-sorts (with Russell's trumpet fanfare), we (sec 1s) were marched to the rest of the band, making us literally part of the band. With that, investiture more or less ended.

Well really, our piece was okay. As to why we could play much better when we were practicing, I really have no idea. Alastair suggested stage fright, but I don't think that was so for me...

But anyway, from Kelvin's video of our piece (kindly recorded by Irvin, kindly uploaded onto Youtube by Kelvin), we didn't sound too bad. We managed to go from 100% noobs at our instruments (most of us) to learning a Grade 3 song in about 5 months. So well done guys! As Kirk said, look through the glasses of optimism.

Now I shall emo a bit. Well not emo in the emo sense but just emo. Don't tell me you geddit. (now my fingers start to fly over the keyboard)

You know early in February this year, I put band as my 6th CCA choice. When the CCA results came out there were people like Benji who was dancing around the class ~~like a big dinosaur~~ and many other people who were ecstatic over their assigned CCA.

But then under my name, I saw the letters RIMB and I was like "What! I didn't get sports, not even Guitar Ensemble!" I went emo-ish for quite a while after that because I, for some very strange reason, thought I was going to hate band like crazy. To tell the truth, I despised band and went for practice just to fulfil the 80% attendance mark. I was hoping like mad that I would get into debates as core by Sec 3. Any debate competition support or something similiar to get excused from a practice was cherished. Look at this earlier post to see all that.

Then for more mysterious reasons I realised band wasn't that bad after all. Drills were dreaded, of course. But you know how rebellions like the Thai one going on now occur - the people are united in the process of disuniting what they are against. (Not that I'm comparing Samuel and the RD bunch in their no-nonsense drills mood to the likes of Hitler and Stalin. Well, maybe I am.) Like that, we just got to know each other better through the drills.

Soon, we were "comrades united as one" (Animal Farm?) through all those drills. After drills were stopped, attendance among our batch became like what... a constant 90+ percent for each practice?

And sometime during all this, band for me went from being despised to being enjoyed. Thinking about why I changed from assuming that band was not great to enjoying band, I realised the reason behind this was just that the people at band were just great to be around with.

"heck i'll just try in RIMB first. Hopefully it is better than wat i expect it to be. "
(Post from long time ago)

Indeed it's better than what I expected it to be, and by far! Thanks guys for making band great..

Well, really don't know what more to type. (Clicks the "Publish Post" button)

Very-Long-Ago Olympics

2008-08-25T23:13:00.003+08:00

This is damn terrible. I didn't post for 10 days, definitely a cardinal sin. I had 4 tests, 3 assignments and a many many many many other things to do. (Well I tried not to exaggerate all that) Then the blogging feeling just didn't come..

I have tonnes of things to post about and if I post about them right now, they would be disgustingly outdated. I'll post them anyway.

So I want to blog about the very-long-ago Olympics. As I watched the closing ceremony, I was thinking about how massive the Olympics are. I mean, nothing short of the UN General Assembly gets more prime ministers and presidents to one place than the Olympics. And then nothing else gets both Channel 5 and Channel U to dedicate half their broadcasting time to relaying the Olympic shows which have almost no advertisement time.

And what can get countries to spend hundreds of billions on makeovers. What can unite South Korea and North Korea to form a team together! (They did that both in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004)

But why is there so much attention drawn to lots of people running and jumping and kicking and throwing? True, the competition between countries is exciting and watching sports keeps you at the edge of your seats. But beyond that, I think it is just somewhat excessive..

A Dodecahedron of Problems

2008-08-15T22:12:00.004+08:00

(Post contents removed until further notice)

Progress Report 2

2008-08-14T22:26:00.004+08:00

We got our Progress Report 2 today

3.84 - I'm happy..

I was really happy with my Humans grades but I really need to improve English and Maths.

Vote for Eugene!

2008-08-11T22:14:00.002+08:00

Vote for You, vote for You-gene..

Geddit?

Eugene Lim gave me the role of campaign manager for his RIPB election campaign - the least I could get after being unable to get past even nominations..

Anyway, you can visit his campaign blog at http://eugenelimripb.blogspot.com/ and take a look at the campaign. And vote for him! Thanks.. xD

An Olympic Saga

2008-08-11T21:36:00.005+08:00

Happy National Day!

I know it's kinda late, but yea... :D

I was watching ~~a bit of the extremely long~~ Olympics opening ceremony the other day - I mean on 8th of August. You know how China has been desperately trying to clean up and beautify Beijing and the rest of the country so that the world can have a great impression of China when the Olympics start?

The Chinese government certainly have been doing a fantastic job! I mean, we went to Beijing this June for a holiday (see my earlier post) and my mom showed her colleague some pictures. Apparently, her colleague was surprised by all the flowers and stuff that weren't there when she went.

Also, the pollution level seems to have gone down like crazy, according to what my tour guide said. So do various reports and all. (Ha, I did cross-referencing, Level 5 answer for upcoming History CCT - :D) Many polluting industries have been moved away from Beijing and the narrow alley streets have been removed due to safety concerns.

Also, press freedom has increased and all. But I think the whole concept of improving Beijing is not a good idea. It's globalisation taking place too fast for the population and culture to catch up. That's the reason for the unhappiness of many because they lost their jobs or homes for the Olympics to happen.

Anyway, hope Singapore wins a medal this time.. (hope) xD

(Dis)Connect

2008-08-09T21:59:00.002+08:00

RI participated in the Connect Singapore thing yesterday where 40,000 schools kids were supposed to link hands and say the pledge together and all. For us, all we Sec 1s had to go for it.

Now apparently, this whole occasion was suppossed to have taken a year and a half to plan. It was an extremely elaborate, impressive affair where people from schools all over were suppossed to come to gathering areas from which they were to walk to their holding-hand-place. Then everyone was supposed to wave at the Minister passing by in a jeep and then wait for the radio on 91.3FM to count down for everyone to start reciting the pledge together.

That was exactly when everything got messed up. All of us were neatly in position, lining up side by side (and mauling Shaowu's hands :D). Then we heard the radio count down, but no one started saying the pledge!

It was like - everyone knew they had to say the pledge but noone else was saying so noone said it either. I guess it's just one of those things which no one can explain...

I guess the orgnaising people could have reminded us to start saying the pledge during the countdown or led us in the pledge. But that's something they overlooked...

Otherwise, it was perfectly executed though.

After A Brief Sabbatical

2008-08-07T21:24:00.003+08:00

Been almost a week since my last post. Busy with the Math Performance Task, RE presentation stuff and so on.

Anyway, the Debate Club Annual General Meeting was today and the level-reps and exco for next year were voted on. Nick Quah is our new chairman! Then when at the end of the whole AGM the new exco members randomly yelled out "Long Live the Fong" - cue the laughter..

You know, if you put a bunch of people together and make them do interact with each other, a leader will emerge in minutes. Put them together for years and that leader will still remain. That was very evident at the AGM when we were selecting level reps..

Hopefully I can be an RD or something for band next year. Is there an AGM or something similiar for RIMB?

What comes before the work

2008-08-01T22:26:00.003+08:00

You know how when a teacher calls for the whole class to get into groups, it's a measure of popularity how fast you get into a group. Queer, yes.

We have some random Perfomance Task for maths (about credit cards!!) and a couple of days ago, my math teacher gave out the instruction sheets for it.

Then, she told us to get into groups of 4, and I found myself in a quite good group within a minute or so, and was happy and contended and satisfied and all that.

Group-making always seems to be held up by a number limit - in this case 4 people, but more wanting to be with the same people. So finalizing your group and asking other people to find their own group is kind of a sensitive issue =D. Then in the end, there is a last group full of the most unpopular people in the class and maybe a person who is .. quiet and generally unknown in the class.

In the case of our Math assignment, there was great unhappiness in this last group and our teacher decided to re-allocate the groups randomly.

The main problem here is that telling people "I don't want to be in a group with you" is so difficult to do. But why do we keep ostracizing some people and preventing them from being in our group? Another totally complicated matter..

Anyway, I'm glad I never have to go through the last-group situation.

I'm not fooled, you little things in the torrent

2008-07-28T21:45:00.006+08:00

Recently, I tried torrenting Microsoft Office 2007 and tried from 2 sources. One of them was rather dumbly directly copied from the CD and when you run setup, it says something about inserting your CD =D while the other one was messed up some other way.

Yea, I illegally torrent stuff like everyone reading this and by the way, to my knowledge, there are no laws restricting the download of pirated software, only sharing. This is interesting anyway, I want to blog about it someday.

Anyway, I suspect some form of malware was hidden inside one of the torrents because some time later, whenever I clicked on any folder in Windows Explorer, I got this popup message:

Then, whether I press Yes or No, it leads me to the following page on Firefox and another popup comes up asking whether i want to download "ieantivirus.exe".

I noticed the absurdity of the whole thing. I mean, the screen shot above is from Mozilla Firefox
trying to show my My Computer page being scanned with a Windows XP theme! (I'm on Vista) It said that my computer was infected with some random virus which needed an antivirus software to solve. Also, it wanted me to download this antivirus software called IE antivirus.

So I was like... "nonsense" and googled "IE antivirus". I found out this so-called antivirus programme was actually bogus - it was actually a virus made to look like antivirus and cheating gullible people into messing up their comps.

So I ignored the popup for sometime until one day, I couldn't start up my computer properly. That made it really screwed up, so my dad helped me do a system restore. Fortunately, none of my files were affected xO

Anyway, Darren Foo told me he got the same thing on his computer but he actually downloaded that bogus antivirus and his computer got grandly screwed. As my philo teacher Mr Lim would say - critical thinking. =D

So people, watch out!

A Trans-Fat Story

2008-07-27T21:56:00.002+08:00

Trans-fats banned in California

Trans-fats are used in many fried and baked foods

California has become the first US state to ban restaurants and food retailers from using trans-fats, which are linked to coronary heart disease.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the new legislation, which will take effect in 2010, represented a "strong step toward creating a healthier future".
Violations will incur fines of between $25 (£13) and $1,000 (£502).
Trans-fats are chemically altered vegetable oils, used to give processed foods a longer shelf-life.
Some cities, like New York City, Philadelphia and Seattle, have already banned the fats. Many food makers and restaurant chains have also been experimenting with replacements for oils and foods that contain them.
'Tremendous benefit'
Trans-fats are produced artificially in a process called hydrogenation which turns liquid oil into solid fat.
They can be used for frying or baking, or put into processed foods and ready-made mixes for cakes and drinks like hot chocolate.
Trans-fats are used because they are cheap, add bulk to products, have a neutral flavour and give products a long shelf-life.

TRANS-FATS

They are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, turning oily foods into semi-solid foods

Used to extend shelf life of products

Put into pastries, cakes, margarine and some fast foods

Can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol

Even a small reduction in consumption can cut heart disease

They have no nutritional benefit

The US Food and Drug Administration estimates that on average, Americans eat 4.7lb (2.14kg) of trans-fats each year.
A review by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 concluded that there was a strong connection between the consumption of trans-fats and coronary heart disease. It found they boosted "bad" cholesterol levels in the body.
The review said that eliminating artificial trans-fats from the food supply could prevent between six and 19% of heart attacks and related deaths each year.
The legislation signed by Mr Schwarzenegger will ban from 1 January 2010 the use of trans-fats in oil, shortening and margarine used in spreads or for frying.
The president of the California Academy of Family Physicians, Jeffrey Luther, said that the law, "when it finally takes effect, will be a tremendous benefit", adding that there was no safe level of consumption, as with cigarettes.
The California Restaurant Association opposed the ban, but a spokesman said that it had no plans to challenge it in the courts, in part because some restaurants have already begun to phase out trans-fats to satisfy customers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7526624.stm

Fries that cost US$1.75 will cost US$2.75 after the law is put into place. No donuts! No cakes! Not those with trans-fat at least.

But will it work in decreasing obesity and heart fatality rates? And will it contribute to the global food crisis? (Ok, California is big but not enough to affect the global food crisis, so no)

Something imba

2008-07-25T20:48:00.004+08:00

http://www.learndebating.com/

That's a [free!] book on debating by this guy called Simon Quinn who, to put a long story short, is a damn imba debater from Australia. It's a really good book because I learnt how to properly do 3rd speakker and reply, which I constantly messed up when I had to do it.

And I say that because I have to do 3rd speaker for interhouse! Aaargh. Wish me lots of luck.

A Close Encounter of the First Kind

2008-07-21T21:33:00.002+08:00

Since it was raining like crazy in the afternoon today, I had to take Bus 156 and change later to get home. And guess who was on 156..

Bishan G--!

The so-called Bishan G-- is a plump man in his forties who hangs around at Junction 8 shopping centre and Bus 156. He often wears an Old Rafflesians Association t-shirt and spectacles with those hanging things used to prevent them from falling off. Now, the freaky part is that he stalks RI guys, taking photos of them and smiling in a freaky manner.

There are many, many, many stories surrounding this Bishan G--, too many to distinguish truth from nonsense. All RI guys know him, most of us have seen him. Apparently, his real name is Mr Daniel Cheng. Oh yes dig this.. Jeremy sold him two tickets to the RIMB concert!

There was a whole bunch of RI guys taking 156 because many were hockey guys going to watch a match. (Seb was there as well) The bus today was one of the wheelchair-accessible ones and he was sitting at the seats at the front, lower section of the bus. When we boarded, we all got freaked out as usual and got the seats at the very rear of the bus.

First, the Bishan G-- shifted his seat, seemingly to get a better view of us. Then he took out his handphone and started taking pictures of us! Freaky..

Then, he moved up and sat on an empty seat near where we were sitting and started talking to us - about where we were going and all. Then more pictures taken..

My transfer stop came quickly to my relief, lol. But the thing is, Mr Seet my history teacher says he was hanging around at J8 even when he was in RI 6 years ago!! That means that he's been there for at least half a decade?

What's he doing man? I mean, he probably needs psychiatric help or something and I'm sure many of the teachers know about him as well. How come no one has reported him...or something?

Deflation!

2008-07-18T21:52:00.003+08:00

Ooh. 1000 hits and counting..

In 2005 - 3 years ago - my parents got me a 512-Mb thumb drive for $50+. A couple of days ago, I got a 2-Gb thumb drive for just $18!

Mathematically speaking, that's a 91% decrease in value-for-money.

But how the heck does it happen? I mean, the $50 512-Mb one was some unknown brand while the $18 2-Gb one was from Imation. I guess the rate at which tech advances is way too fast.

Sure beats oil prices eh.

Moon Landing

2008-07-17T22:53:00.003+08:00

Cool pic eh. From the Sunday Times, july 13, page 12.

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.

2008-07-16T22:39:00.004+08:00

Guess what, the dudes at SBS Transit finally decided to get new buses for service 93, so today I went to school for band in a spanking new bus.

Off the point. So today at band the sec 1s all got together and played our instruments for the first time. And Chiraag wasn't playing the *ahemTABLEahem*!

What the heck everything we played sounded like crap. Quoted from Samuel:

"At least what you're playing has a vague semblance to what the real song sounds like"

xD

At least us clarinets were quite ok. Trumpets!

New Skin

2008-07-15T22:21:00.002+08:00

How many times in the world of blogs has that title been repeated?

Anyway, here's a new skin. Quite nice though it's black and I like the pic at the top. It's also easy to organise because of the 3-column layout. Whaddya think?

There are a few things I need to sort out in the new skin. Firstly, this font does not make nice reading! Especially in long entries like the one about Dr Vivan Balakrishnan's RI Lecture, it's really difficult to read. Then I can't remember the old list of friends' blogs and I neglected saving it somewhere. Must dig it up from the big html file..

Disappointment

2008-07-11T21:37:00.003+08:00

The RIPB nomination results are out. I didn't even get past nomination.

The simple truth lies there.

It went like this: Yesterday, school ended at 1.30. All Morrison house Sec 1s were supposed to have a short meeting. At 2pm, people who got through the RIPB nomination were to have a briefing. The list of successful nominees was on the notice board in the canteen.

After hearing all my seniors say getting through nomination wasn't very difficult and all, I was feeling somewhat confident about getting in. Kartik and I raced to the canteen and we looked at the piece paper.

Scanning my eyes down the list, I looked towards the end of the "Class" column and found 1M. This was all that was under 1M:

Antariksh Mahajan 1M
Benjamin Wong 1M
Jonathan Tan 1M

That was it - our 3 CEC members. Kartik and I stared at it meaninglessly, as though we expected our names to magically pop out somewhere. Then I walked off. On my way to the gate, I passed by the Lecture Theatre outside which the successful nominees were gathered. They were chattering merrily. Contrast that with how upset I was then.

At that point, I couldn't help but comparing the situation with my CCA appeal day. Same time, same place, same road, same feeling.

But this was worse. I'm quite happy with band now, but this dashed my wildest fears of not getting through even nomination. And this dashed all hopes of becoming a member of the RIPB. At least for this year.

My mind was in emotional chaos. Emo, upset, sad, disappointed, angry, unfairness?

At least along came cheery little Kim Bum Soo with his stories. I guess having someone to talk to is nice. I wasn't that upset anymore.

I found out a couple of things about the RIPB election process but I don't know what some things people have told me are true. So I'm posting about them now. Also, I noticed a few really objectionable people who were nominated, but I shouldn't post that as well because it's a personal and inflammatory opinion.

But the questions I have now is: Why wasn't I nominated? Who did not want me nominated and why? How are people nominated in the first place??

I'm really not sure how the nomination process is carried out. I know that they ask teachers and CCALs. What have I done wrong?

I must try and become a CEC member next year. According to my personal evaluation, I may become one. (But then according to my personal evaluation, I had thought I may become a prefect) And needless to say, I'm going to try my very best next year for RIPB.

Anyway, I think the RIPB elections are really fair compared to those of other schools. A friend of mine said his school (not named) selected prefects from the class committee. That's horrific.

Random quote:

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.

First 2 down, I hope the last is true!

So many hits... not one comment?

2008-07-06T22:01:00.004+08:00

Ooh.

The good people at theonlinecitizen.com did a feature article named Students’ and bloggers’ reaction to Vivian Balakrishnan’s RI Lecture. They quoted a number of students' blogs and a couple of popular bloggers. Among them was Alastair my clarinet SL, popular political blogger Mr Wang and o'course, ME! And the best thing was that the quote from my previous post was at the top of the list, so I got a staggering 100+ hits in just 2 days. Seems to have died down today though.

I try not to be bothered about the number of hits I get because... well, it's just a rather materialistic way of looking at the purpose of blogging xD. But I'm sad that none of the 100-something people who were directed to my blog from the theonlinecitizen.com page tagged or commented. So HI people, please comment on my previous post. Meybe I should post the question I wanted to ask online...

The RI Lecture - Freedom of speech about freedom of speech!

2008-07-02T22:54:00.007+08:00

On Wednesday we had the RI lecture, when Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for MCDYS, came to school and gave a speech and then answered questions.

The topic was on the effects of the new media on politics. He talked about the Internet and other kinds of technology being a source of change in the way politics is conducted (see the Channelnewsasia.com article) as well as how fast the information available on the internet spreads, how large the amount of user generated content is.

All was well during the speech itself, but it was when it came to the Q&A session that things got interesting. Benjamin Mak was the MC while Shanzhi, the head prefect, was helping out with the Q&A. (Dr Balakrishnan was amused at the way they called each other "Master Benjamin" and "Master Thia" in formality xD) Firstly, Nigel Fong came up and fired away 3 questions when Shanzhi said to limit the questions to just 1. Heck, that's fine lah.

Nigel's questions were interesting but I can't remember most of them. They were rather engaging though. At the end of his questions we applauded and cheered prompting this: (These may not be the exact words the people in question used)

Dr Balakrishnan: Whoa, is he a hero or what?
Shanzhi: Yea, of sorts

After him, Jarret came and talked about freedom of speech, comparing Singapore with other countries in terms of free speech. Aargh, darn me, I can't remember exactly what Dr Balakrishnan said to that. But after that this was basically what took place: (These may not be the exact words the people in question used)

Dr Balakrishnan: So Jarret, if you were the minister for home affairs and were going to work right now, which legislation would you decide to change?
Jarret: [Evidently confused] I guess I would change the laws restricting the freedom of the press, sir.
Dr Balakrishnan: Exactly which law would you change, give me an example.
Jarret: I would change the laws regarding the restriction of reporting in newspapers.

That was kinda funny. But I agree with Jarret, though.

What happened was that because of space constraints, sec 3s and 4s were in the hall where the talk was actually going on and us sec 1s were in the auditorium with the sec 2s. I think sec 3s and 4s could just walk to the microphone in the hall and ask their questions but if sec 1s and 2s wanted to ask, we had to go up to this lady. We had to tell her the question we wanted to ask and she would screen it for us, based on whether it's a repeat of an earlier, already asked question or other.

I really, really wanted to ask a question but the lady said my question wasn't specific. Sigh, should take pen and paper to next year's RI Lecture so that I can remember the good questions I think of. Sigh some more. Anyways, who was the lady who was screening the questions? I don't think it was a teacher because if she is doing such an important task, she must be a "senior" teacher of sorts, and I have never seen her in school before. I guess she is Dr Balakrishnan's secretary or something?

Anyway, the issues Dr Balakrishnan talked about were really interesting because I thought everything linked to freedom of speech, and so did many of the people who questioned him. Here are some quotes from news sources:

Dr Balakrishnan said:
'There is no dirty little secret which the PAP is trying to hide from its people and that's why the Government is actually very comfortable with new media.
'That's why we are investing hundreds of millions in infrastructure which will connect us to the Internet, that's why we invest so much money into making sure every student, every family has a computer that's connected to the Internet.'

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_254050.html

Dr Balakrishnan in turn urged his audience to 'dare to be different' and publish critiques on the Web without fear of persecution.

To 16-year-old Jarrett Huang's reservations about the repercussions of publishing online, he said: 'This paranoia that there is a thought police and that there are things that you cannot say is (just) paranoia.'

However, should one's political expression be laced with 'falsehood, malice and the intention to inflame religious and racial tensions', there would be consequences in the public realm.

Lynn Kan, Business Times 3 Jul 08; http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2008/07/dr-balakrishnan-says-internet-will.html

What I understood is that commenting on the government is fine, so long as it is what one believes in and one does not have any intention of - as he said - inflaming tensions. I think that this is great because with critisicm --> discussion --> improvement. Well that's my view anyway.

And BTW, Nigel Fong and Jarret were quoted in the Straits Times! On Thursday, 3rd July, Jarret had almost a whole article to himself!

A good-humoured exchange about persecution drew the most laughs. Asked if he had been persecuted for publications or views he had put online, the youngster replied: 'I don't upload things on the Internet, sir.'
As for whether he ever felt persecuted for anything he said or wrote, he said: 'Not legally, sir.'
The teen added: 'The sense of persecution is not a reactive measure in my situation but rather it is a pre-emptive measure taken such that certain things which are deemed incorrect cannot be said in certain situations.'
It was then Dr Balakrishnan's turn to draw the laughs as he said: 'Let's translate that into normal English.'

http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_253969.html

Yes Jarret, speak not just in normal English, speak in English. And that leads me on to the really random stuff Jarret, Antariksh, Jun Yan and I were all doing in the library today. More of that later

The Power Fails

2008-07-02T22:50:00.001+08:00

Because of *ahemprotestsahem* against my post to increase my blog hits based on the nick quah thing, poof and it vanished into thin air!

Six months - six years?

2008-06-27T21:22:00.005+08:00

Happy birthday to my blog - it's six months old today.

Yay.

Let's take a look at my very first post, posted on December 27th, 2008. Firstly: really lame. I mean - "frombeyondarea51.blogspot.com".

This is my third blog. I think. The thing with having blogs is that u keep 4getting abt them. well hopefully this will stay 4 some time...

from beyond area 51. Howz the name? area 51 is a place where space aliens and their spacecraft which crashed onto the earth are supposedly kept. i kinda like gettin freaked out by videos and the sort abt area 51. the prob is - i cant get a skin for the blog that suits the name and looks gd as well.

Well, ho ho ho, everything's changed hasn't it? From a pathetic dribble of mebbe 1 hit a month, now I'm getting more or less 7-8 a day (I know, still pathetic; somebody is getting 7 times that much and somebody else is green-eyed xD). Now it's past 400.

But what, really is the purpose of blogging? I read something that makes a lot of sense in the RI head prefect's blog. This should be relevant to each and every one of you people out there who blog.

Aren't our blogs all just a facade?

In the words of Shanzhi the head prefect:

its too fake to speak from this small box here on blogger. its too fake to be putting up a facade online as well. i cant stand how fake this can get. there are so many things i want to say, have to say, but i cant say. because of you. because you read this blog, and i dont know who exactly you are. there are restrictions imposed on me, just that no one told me. but i know they're there. and they're increasingly hard to work with.

...

its not worth it to be fake here. that defeats the whole purpose of blogging. i believe you blog to sort out your emotions, to be true to yourself, to be true to others. and as long as you are restricted, you cant do that. you cant possibly do that. so i'd rather not do anything at all.

He was saying that when we blog, we can't blog our own, true thoughts and feelings cos' they're private while our blog is public! Even now, as I type, I think about who would be reading this, who would be offended if I were to type something... offending.

Why do we blog? In Shanzhi's words: "you blog to sort out your emotions, to be true to yourself, to be true to others." But does that still apply now? I mean, most of the people I know well started their blogs because their friends were starting. I admit, I started this blog because of 'peer pressure' as well.

So yes, blogging is a facade, but it can still help you sort out your feelings. When you blog, you think about what you are blogging about and yes, that does sort out your emotions.

For me at least.

Now on to less emo stuff. Eugene hopes to "to keep posting all the way to adulthood, idealistic maybe, but I'd really love to see that happen." Totally agree. I mean, I still have that miserable diary from when I was in Primary 1 talking about how I want to climb to the top of the pyramid in West Coast Park and all xD. What will this very post look like if I read it six.. ten.. 20.. even 50 years later? Euwww.

I'm balding!

2008-06-22T21:56:00.002+08:00

Today I went for a haircut and you know the shaver thing has an attachable clip.. that fell off when the barber was cutting my hair and for some reason now I have this big bald patch on my left side. He tried to fix it up a bit by trying to make it "less outstanding" but he seemed to be making it bigger. So when I got home I was feeling really irritated. Before the first day of the semester some more!

Then my mom got this bright idea of putting eyeliner at the bald patch. Then it looked somewhat okay!

Holidays? What holidays?

2008-06-22T21:41:00.004+08:00

So the hols are over. Way too fast. As usual.

But these holidays were rather pathetic. I mean, the number of days I didn't have to go for debate/band/project meeting/violin lesson etc etc etc could be counted on my right hand. I manage to do properly all the homework and projects they gave us.. well somewhat.. *ahem RE interview ahem*.

I was incredibly busy these hols, not a doubt. I guess you were too. As Nigel puts it - RI guys don't have holidays. No wonder the Bishan G was still doing his *ahem* activities standing-arounds-at-J8 thing during the holidays.

I was planning to do many, many things like the maths practice worksheets we got and all. But with the minuscule amount of time I got, where got time to do such stuff? Aargh. Well I guess this is the kind of holidays you get in RI xO.

Over a plastic box

2008-06-16T21:08:00.003+08:00

My Rubik's cube record is 2 minutes, 2.11 seconds. Yea, don't rub it in. So I lubed up my cube today by prying open 1 cubie and putting Vaseline (petroleum jelly) in the inner workings of the cube. This I learnt in another antastic video by pogobat on youtube - he's the guy who did the extremely useful cube tutorial.

Then the whole cube collapsed and I spent 20 minutes trying pathetically to stuff all the pieces back in their notches. Only to get stumped by my father who did it in 5. ><

It's much better now, and guess what. MY SISTER CAN SOLVE!!! I'm twitching in shock..

Boy, 9, rides US subway alone - Big shock??

2008-06-13T16:45:00.004+08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7449795.stm

When I saw this tucked in a corner of the BBC front page, I was like "what the heck?". In Singapore, I guess it would be more or less okay for a 9-year-old kid to go on the MRT alone. NYC is comparable because it is also a first-world city like Singapore and is somewhat as safe. So why the big outcry?

I guess it's all about what the society considers "normal". But the weird thing about this is that the little boy was begging his mom to let him go on the subway alone, and it was more for the "experience" than transport. So that's weird..

Cubing Addiction!

2008-06-12T22:02:00.003+08:00

I got a Rubik's cube today, and now I'm hooked as u could expect. Using Dan Brown's (no, not the author) fantastic tutorial on youtube, I finished one in less than 20 min. But then I guess I struck lucky because I couldn't repeat that. Still trying...

Finished - yea

The Great Finding in Human Hiccuping

2008-06-10T20:50:00.003+08:00

No it's not a weird title, I really found out something really interesting about hiccups. They occur at exactly every ten seconds! This figure has an accuracy of within 2-seconds. So just now for some reason I started having hiccups, and I was counting the number of seconds between my hiccups. I have this fantastic skill of predicting hiccups with an accuracy of abt +/- 2 seconds! Lol...

Hey anyone knows what's happening in South Korea with the US beef thing? I just heard on the news that the whole Korean Cabinet was wiling to resign over the protests. That must be something big..

Map woes

2008-06-09T22:02:00.004+08:00

Aaargh, Singapore doesn't have an online street directory as of now!! I exclude Google Maps because it is a bit generic in terms of detail compared to hard-copy Singapore street directories. But now StreetDirectory.com is down because of their legal dispute with SLA and today SLA's street directory system also didn't work! So I had to get Google Maps to check something.

Are we regressing into a state of technophobia or what. 0.O

Dig this - An argument against myself

2008-06-09T09:01:00.004+08:00

So you guys would/should/must know that I'm vegetarian. (O yea and i found out Mrs Rosie Smith is vegetarian as well xO) You would hav seen all the ads here ad there about how the human body was designed for vegetarianism and not a meat-eating diet because of the teeth, digestive system, and so on.

But think about it, going back to the basic principles of Ecology in Primary 5 science, any animal that is at the top of the food web is carnivorous. So if we humans had remained vegetarians ever since the dawn of time, we would not have risen up the evolutionary ladder to become the ruling species right now because we would still be living in the primitive fear of being eaten up by predators.

Not that I promote anti-vegetarianism tho..

ACS Debate Camp Last Day

2008-06-05T21:56:00.002+08:00

Today was the last day. We debated before lunch - "This House Would prepare for an alien invasion" - xO - opposition against Team 7. They decided to screw up the definition by saying aliens mean foreigners while we said aliens are green, three-eyed monsters from Mars. So predictable... bleargh. So we got screwed up by the judges for the pathetic definitional challenge we gave.

Since Ian and Chee Kiang didn't come today, I had to speak for the 3rd time :) Fine with me as I was 2nd speaker but I had to be reply as well so Dx but my reply was not bad - I think. Chelsea got best speaker (predictable) but we lost.

Then we had an extremely long lunch and after that was this totally random and nonsensical debate frm the seniors.

"This House Would teach kiddies that Santa does not exist"

Wah liau! Then the opposition went and told everyone that not only should we not bother to teach children that Santa doesn't exist, but Santa does exist in the first place! So they came up with all sorts of random nonsense. Basically it was darn funny. Watch out for video of Walter's speech here!

After that we did the hurried goodbyes and went home. On Tuesday, I took Bus 74 all the way to Bukit Timah and came home after changing at Bukit Timah. Today, I realised I'm such a doofus because I can simply take 196 till Commonwealth and change to 93 after that... bleargh.

Nooo, I missed the GEPers reunion. But this was kinda nice too.

Quote of the Day: Opportunity knocks just once.. :|

ACSI Debate Camp - Running around Orchard Road with oranges and wasabi

2008-06-04T20:18:00.003+08:00

On the first day which was yesterday, we just debated for two rounds. We were mixed into teams with people from all the different schools. Theres one frm Nanyang, PLMG, Catholic High and ACS in mine. I spoke for both debate rounds yday (I think i've kinda improved - yay). We lost one round and won one. Very normal.

But today was "team building activities at Orchard Road". Basically we were running around the Orchard area doing random things our crazy seniors told us to do. We got clues to find stations and when we got to the stations, the station masters told us their task.

The first place we went to was the botanic gardens, where we had to this task involving blindfolding ourselves and eating Fruit Plus. The next clue was difficult, so on asking the station masters at Botanic Gardens they told us it was in Dhoby Ghaut and we were making random and complicated theories why this was so. But in the end we got there and we were made to play charades there. Full of obscene movies and songs.

Then we went to Wheelock Place where Nick Quah made us hunt throughout Borders for specific words in books and specific lines of songs! Then we were under the perverted Michael (xD) who apparently came here in the morning and took pictures of mannequins wearing... ahem, lingerie. So we had to take pictures of them as well. Chelsea and Rachel did nearly all that work for us to save us the embarrassment but then got fed up, so Ian, Chee Kiang and I had to do the rest o.O

After that, was the most screwed up part of all. We went over to Isetan where they told us to buy oranges and wasabi. Then I demonstrated my superior orange-peeling skills and the station master put wasabi on the oranges for us. And guess what, we were supposed to cross Orchard Road, through Wheelock Place and to Michael carrying oranges and wasabi in our mouths... retarded or what!!!

After attracting the freaked out stares of people in the area ("what the heck are a bunch of kids doing running around with oranges in their mouths??") we went over to Far East Plaza to look for some more horny things. Time got over soon after and we went home frm Taka.

China!! D1

2008-06-03T20:15:00.016+08:00

Sry for not posting so long, was at the ACS debate camp today... The trip was quite nice. I'll post abt it in a few posts, so here's day 1.

The flight there left at 1am on Wednesday so we had to go there by 11, which means no sleep for the entire night. We were leaving frm the new Terminal 3 in Singapore and arriving in the new terminal 3 in Beijing, so that was really nice xD.

T3 in Singapore

I was using the free internet to check my mail lol.

There was a train to our gate! (A18) So big...

We were flying Singapore Airlines (thankfully) and it was a six-hour flight. I slept for 3 hours+ and was listening to Simple Plan all the time because I had played it on the entertainment system and I forgot to take the earphones off xD. Watched Simpsons and some other random shows as well. We got breakfast - a roll with butter, a hashbrown, mushrooms and baked beans. T'was damn good. But I was eating the roll in heavy turbulence and u shud've seen the plate when I finished. And also, the plane hit heavy turbulence when I was in the toilet...

We arrived in this super-shiny, sprawling airport - simply huge - with an uber-cool control tower -(A photo of it coming later.) There were just 12 other people on this 5D4N tour, so the travel agency - Chan Brothers - put us with the people who had booked an 8D7N tour that went to the same places in Beijing as well as some other places called Chengde and Tianjin. So now there were 31 people in the tour altogether. The four of us were the only non-Chinese, so we were the only ones needing an English-speaking guide. So we had our personal guide! Her name was Rachel (obviously a name taken so that English-speaking tourists can pronounce it) and she was in university.

Terminal 3 in China:

So polluted!!! We were scheduled to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in the morning, and I could barely breath with the pollution. Our guide said that a sandstorm was happening that day, and that was why the air was so bad.

We didn't go inside Tiananmen Square but just took photos outside. Then we went into the Forbidden City. Wah liau, so damn HUGE!!! We walked and walked and walked and walked until so darn tired.

You know in Forbidden City, everyone was ~~looking~~ literally STARING at us!!! They din't just look discreetly but when they pass by they gazed at us like we were stars, turned their heads as we passed and then pointing at us! Some people wanted to take photos with us and there were even some freaky perverts who tried to touch me! Eurgh... There were also the others who, upon seeing us, whipped out their phones and tried to take pictures of us... soo freaky.

That last picture is the "Hall of Supreme Harmony" which is simply huge like everything else there. Fortunately, lunch was at a restaurant in Forbidden City itself and was good.. After that we went for a trishaw ride and then a show kinda thing. There, they made us sit at tables and served us Chinese tea and peanuts. Then a bunch of quite old people came up and did freaky things like stabbing themselves, swallowing metal balls, getting people to strangle them, eating swords, etc.

Here's a loooong, boring video of the trishaw ride:

Then we watched this acrobatic show in this old, creaky theater. There were a bunch of little P5 kids from St Hilda's Primary on an exchange trip there! It's a small world.

After this we had dinner and checked into the hotel. Note that this was the first time we went into the hotel after the long, tiring flight. And to think that there was a 92-year-old with us! But it was fine, when we got to our rooms we just showered and went flat.

The thing is, we were staying in 2 hotels, a 5* one and a 4* one. We were staying in the 5-star one only for one night, and that one night had to be the one on which we came to Beijing! So we couldn't enjoy the pool and stuff that day.

The room was really huge and we knocked for the day in the comfortable aircon. The trip so far had bin good!

China? Yea, China..

2008-05-27T20:07:00.004+08:00

I'm going to China in like 3 hours. Yes, China. My parents wanted to see the great wall, I'm looking forward to watching movies in SIA xD.

I'll be going at 1am today and coming back on Sunday, 1st June at 10.30pm. So no posts for 5 days, please keep reading after that!

After I come back hav P6 GEP ex-class party, on Monday, then ACSI Debate Camp for the next three days. We got a lot of projects for the hols and I'm trying to explain to ppl that I wont be free till week 3 of the hols :)

When Tharun migrated to India, he went there on singapore airlines as well and he said his seat remote didn't work. Ow tat sux, hope it doesnt happen to me.

Another Exam

2008-05-24T21:21:00.003+08:00

My violin exam just finished. Since my teacher was in Malaysia for a performance the principal of SIFAS examined me with the normal examiner! But both are really nice guys.

I screwed up my theory but I played quite ok.

Yea...

2008-05-23T22:05:00.002+08:00

Yea, hols are here! Sigh, hav to wait one more day because of my blasted violin exam trow.

What happened today in school today was quite freaky, shocking! We can't tell ppl about this - I dun know my opinion on the "keep this within the school" thing. So I can't blog abt it anyway...

RIPB elections have started!

2008-05-20T22:00:00.004+08:00

Elections for 2008 Prefectorial Board have started! I want to be prefect; if u ask why, well.... Apparently someone cudnt believe that I was trying to become a prefect and that person asked why on MSN, I didnt have an answer! xDxD

So, why do I want to be a prefect? I guess its the respect and all I think prefect command. I dunno..

Anyways, now the nominations are going on. The whole process to becoming a prefect is really complicated. This is what I think happens; info gathered in bits and pieces frm seniors, their blogs, etc. First, people in school nominate you via forms. Teachers screen all the nominations and select people. These shortlisted people campaign, put up posters, hand out flyers and make speeches. Then there is the elections, after which there are interviews.

After this, the prefects are chosen. (To the random senior that happened to chance on my blog: is all this right?) Right now it's nominations, so I'm trying to get as many nominations as possible. But are we supposed to campaign for nominations in the first place? Dunno, but everyone seems to be doing it. Ppl are also like this:

Person A: Hey can nominate me?
Person B: Yea ok, u nominate me also.
Person A: Ok, deal

Ok I admit I've been doing that too. But the whole process seems quite messy, just wait and see. Hopefully I get into RIPB.

Everyone's been putting their MSN messages as "Pls nominate me" and all that. Then Jonathan put his message as "Everyone asking for prefect nominations.i ask that if you pick me you are genuinely want to.collect forms from me if interested.thnx". So I realised that tats true, so I wrote mine as "If YOU think I will make a good, fair prefect, nominate me! Thanks :D Pls ask me abt the forms".

So in the meantime, Please Nominate Me! Thanks xD

Edit by Author on 21st May 2008, 9.46pm:
I realised that nomination doesnt mean as many nominations as possible. If you dunno why, go consult m-w.com. Dumb me

Seeing Off

2008-05-20T21:51:00.003+08:00

A new kind of seeing off at the airport - went to see Tharun off yesterday. Ravin, Arunima and Hui Fen were there as well. Nothing eventful really. Because Tharun's parents had some Singapore dollars left to spend, we went to Swensen's at T2 and had ice-creams. After that we took pictures then he had to go in already.

Moving On

2008-05-18T21:38:00.005+08:00

The title because I just heard that in Meet You There by Simple Plan. As time moves on, people move on but memories stay where they are. Had Tharun's farewell party with Skatezone yesterday. (Tharun's migrating to India tomorrow)

Back in P4 - the good ol' days of DC, Roundup, TWOT (all random games we invented), IRS, CEP, YI Day (school stuff), Ms Ng's Dots (her reward system) - we had YI Day, a project kinda thing where groups of 4-5 work together on a scientific experiment. Mrs Seow told us to find our groups. Almost the whole class had just joined Henry Park then, new to the GEP. I was looking for a group to join for YI Day. I saw Tharun, good friend from St Anthony's (my previous primary school), sitting with a bunch of people. He asked me if I wanted to join that group. I said yes, and I think that was one of the best syllables I have ever said.

So we - Me, Tharun, Arunima, Hui Fen and Rachel - did the YI Day project on the oxydisation of fruit and called our project "The Brown Fruit Disease". (We got a distinction for that - xD) Then Ms Ng announced in class about this (optional) video-making competition. I have no idea how, but the five of us decided to participate in it together. Then we included Ravin in the video-making thing and decided to do our video on how to rollerblade safely! Extremely random topic, come to think of it now.

We called ourselves and the video "Skatezone" and filmed lots of random stuff. We didn't do a bad job actually; the first video was quite good, but the second was really screwed-up. It turned out only one other team from the school had been formed.

After one filming session when we irritated the security guards as usual in Arunima's condo (which was mine too until I moved), the parents decided to hold a party. Soon, the first of our parties was held, after which followed lots of playing at school and other projects done together.

In the next 3 years, we played/ate in the library, played more random games, did more projects together, had countless parties, got into tonnes of trouble and even had parties in school (food-sharing day - each of us brings snacks and voila, a party). We were - as cheesy and freaky as this may sound - the best of friends. Even our parents were great friends.

But now we go our ways. Tharun's migrating, and "Skatezone" - as lame as the name is - wont be "Skatezone" anymore. We organised quite a bit 4 yesterday. Arunima got these badges made and we bought a couple of other interesting things for him. We were trying to make this party a surprise, but that plan fell through. Then we tried to have a radio dedication on 98.7 FM for him but the hotline never picked up and the SMS never got a response.

Basically we tried to have a round of Double Crossing (a freeze-and-melt kinda game) and then we looked through old photos. (AAAARGH we looked so freaky) It wasn't much but it was good enough - the way "Skatezone" operates. xDxD

We made a card for Tharun and wrote messages inside. Almost all of us said something about staying in touch. What if we are still chatting, SMSing, reading each other's blogs and having parties in ... 10 years? 20? 50 years? The formation of this group is probably like a one-in-a-million thing. I dont think I can such a thing again, in RI, RJ or university.
Hopefully we can stay in close touch.

The Concert

2008-05-16T21:32:00.003+08:00

Well, what a concert. Ever since that fateful (!) day when I joined RIMB, I have heard the seniors playing the same songs - the one I just found is called St Florian Chorale and all. Then yesterday I heard the whole band play it, with the bass & percussion and it was the first time I appreciated classical music!

Really, the music was damn nice. But then the clown bit...

Basically the whole clown thing was part of a song called A Day At The Circus. There was a ringmistress (Mrs Jacqueline Chua!) , "human cannonball" (Jeremy xD) and of course the clowns. After a section ended, Mrs Chua the ringmistress came out and said some funny intro stuff for the next one. The song was divided into sections - grand entry, high trapeze, clowns, human cannonball, menagerie and finale. We had to come in during clown and finale.

For the clown part, Chiraag and I came in through the back doors and threw sweets at the audience while walking down to the front. Then we did some random things onstage for a couple of seconds and we went out.

But the finale was the freaky bit. Mr Oura the conductor told us to dance with each other on the stage!! We screwed that up a bit (not on purpose!) so I dont think it looked like we were dancing. xD

I thought the clown stuff was not too bad lah....

Searching through Singapore for ....

2008-05-14T21:34:00.004+08:00

A clown costume.

Yea, for the RIMB concert, Chiraag and I are clowns as you saw in my earlier post, so we went to hunt through Singapore so that we could dress up like.. well, clowns. xD

First, on Monday, Samuel our senior suggested we go to some place at the People's Association. I checked on the internet and it said we can only collect the costume 3 days after booking!

So I found this place in the Lavender/Bugis area called "No 1 Costume Costume". On searching around endlessly and walking in circles, we finally found the shop, only to find that it charged $70 + $100 deposit for each costume! Obviously cannot, so we called Samuel who told us to go to another place in the Bugis area.

This one was our stroke of fantastic luck. We found the place extremely easily, and it was like just $50 per costume, including wig, funny shoes, nose and cane! So immediately we start picking costumes from the big pile. We quickly got them, paid, and on thanking the aunty there profusely, ran off towards Bugis MRT and back to RI on the train.

And then public humiliation! Well, isn't like carrying two gigantic bags full of psychedelic material kinda weird? Especially in almost fully transparent plastic bags! The next worst thing after actually wearing those costumes on the MRT. xD

Though it's nice how Singapore's public transport is so easy to use. We went to those places with absolutely no idea of where they were. We just looked at the maps at MRT stations and info at bus stops and found our way around.

The address of the shop where we found the good costumes is:

"Masquerade" Costume Shop, 24a Bali Lane

It's near Raffles Hospital and behind Golden Mile Complex, short walk frm Bugis MRT

Mutiny!

2008-05-11T21:54:00.002+08:00

If I remember right, we voted in our CEC members because we thought they could lead the class best. And now... On Friday, we had class meeting and a person in class was upset by the proceedings, so he sent out an email on the class egroup kinda lambasting the CEC. Then I sent an email back kinda defending the CEC. Then the CEC sent emails and this person sent a final email clarifying what he said in the previous email, then other people involved said sorry.

I really hope this CEC-unhappiness thing is over and never happens again. It's kinda screwed up lah. With luck, I think everyone will learn something from all this. But what will the PSLs say?

(To That Person: If ur reading this, I'm sry xD I hope I described things objectively)

Sz reunion/ baseball party

2008-05-11T21:26:00.002+08:00

Had lunch with the rest of the skatezone ppl and then a baseball party with some people we invited. If u r from Henry Park P6 GEP and weren' t invited; sorry! It was mainly HF and all who organised this [ha - pointing fingers xD] and we're having a big party during june hols. We had this party before the hols because... of impt thing u shud know.

Since the party was at Jurong, we had lunch at Jurong Point. Rav had this fabulous idea of going to pizza hut and we somehow spent $100+ there. But then when we calculated everything out, it was actually kinda ok. Ahh the good ol' times, with all the funny stuff abt teachers, gossip (xD) and all that. We haven't changed... xD

Then we Rach's parents gave the bunch of us a lift to the big empty field where we played baseball with some other guys we invited. First we played baseball (with Arunima the only softballer there trying in vain to be pro - hence I conclude that either the selection for RG softball or RG baseball itself sux. Of course RI softball rox xD.) Then we tried to play touch rugby but it was quite boring, so we sat down and began to discuss random stuff. O well, it was fun lah.

In the middle of the party a couple of planes came down so low that we could see the bomb-bays. Then my extremely dumb Motorola V3i becomes out of memory so cudn't take a pic. (My 1GB memory card got screwed up)

Come to think of it, the days in P6 were so fun! Well, what else to do but somewhat easy paractice papers, and more of them? Just PSLE to be worried about, no RE, stupid group members, random projects, etc.

Myanmar - It's terrible

2008-05-09T22:10:00.006+08:00

In Myanmar, 100,000 people died and millions more got their lives messed up. Like in any such disaster, all the countries - rich and poor - give billions in food, supplies and humanitarian aid. And the government refused aid!

It's terrible! There are millions in terrible conditions around there right now, as you read this. During Katrina, the Dec 2004 tsunami and all such disasters, there was so much suffering, so many problems after the incident even when there was tonnes of from nations worldwide. Now, with food generously donated by the UN impounded and doctors and aid workers refused entry, imagine the death toll from waterborne diseases!

Hopefully, the government soon realises that caring for the people should be their utmost priority because that is why the government exists.

I Have an Identity Crisis!!!

2008-05-07T21:29:00.002+08:00

Got my Math CCT results back today. Mrs Chan has a big problem with mixing up me and Antariksh. When she was giving out the papers, she gave me the paper. I looked and it said I got 29.5/30!! So I yayed in joy. Then she said "ok, Antariskh has the highest in this class. He has... eh?"

She gave me Antariksh's paper!!

So I went aargh and the rest of the class were like "jacked, jacked". So that was so irritating. But in the end I found out I got 24.5; not that bad.