as usual, running away from problems.. When there's something complex to think about, my mind just wanders off and escape somewhere simple..

in a dilemma, should i go for vj funfair? should go, cos meeting mr Tang is such a rare opportunity, and get to see the class.. but, there's so much to be done this weekend, everything has to be done by mon, and there's no one to go with me (ok, that's a really lousy excuse).. Should I? or not?

Think I've just met the most determined girl I've known. She's so disciplined, in all areas, mugging, jogging, keeping secrets.. wow, I'm so amazed by her discipline and concentration, must have her mom's genes.. And surprisingly, she thinks so much but is so blur. How many people can put the wooden blocks on the wrong line during shuttle run? Gosh, she's really living in her own world but at the same time, manages to manage all her thoughts so well. OK i'm not making sense. I think she'll be that kind of successful people, who'll forget about everything around them and enter that zen kind of state.

concert yesterday, my last band concert, ever.. I believe.. but didn't feel sad or anything like Rhythm XVI, didn't feel that I've accomplished a lot even though I played all my important parts well (my Happy Ending was great! yeah, can actually hear me in the last part, the expressive melodious part)

Stage manager did a great job, there wasn't much confusion and most people were happy.. I love my room, I know that everyone was jealous of us. We got that conductor suite, which was a relatively big room with a toilet and a full length mirror and a comfortable couch and a bed looking like thing. All that for 4 people. Haha, compared to the 10+ strings stuck in some small dressing room with no room to move. And our room was connected to the next room, which was taken up by 2nd Violins, which had a great sounding piano. Entertainment for us.. Only bad thing about the room is that it's on a floor with only strings and teachers, the rest of the band are all on a different level, maybe that's why i didn't feel anything..

Esplanade is a wonderful place to play in. The hall just looks fantastic, this was my 4th time playing there and I'm still awed by the beauty of the hall, with the spiral thing on the roof, the theatre like seating, and of course, by my sound on the stage. Can hear myself so clearly, can hear every loose screw oscillating inside my instru.

Sometimes I really wish that I have wen-bin's confidence, don't scream people.. He's really confident.. Think professional, act professional, though maybe disgusting everyone in the meantime. Wish I can tell myself that I'm a professional, and believe in it. haiz, how to, when I screw up everything that comes into my hands..

sorry, i know my blog sounds sad and depressing again, but my blog is for me to complain, so if you are irritated by my complains, don't come here please

was just reading yesterday in Newsweek about Google and GMail and wondering why I've nv seen gmail before, haha, Blogger is asking me to try GMail.

Rather hot-tempered lately, no idea why. Been getting really irritated with people like Alex and, not surprisingly, my mum. sigh. she always kana my tantrums..

Been thinking quite a lot these few days, after the US uni talk and the AStar research talk. What do I want to do with the next few years of my life? Where do I want to be? Do I want to continue studying for the next 8 years? 8 yrs is a long time, that's from Pri 5 to now.. AStar scholarship is so attractive, but do I really want to study for the next 8 yrs continuously? I don't think the 6 yrs bond is that big a prob, cos AStar seems quite a nice place to work in.. And abt US unis, I need to do a lot more research before I can choose which ones to apply to.. and most prob, I won't have the time.

abt GP, didn't plan to write abt it but since HK mentioned it, yeah, it's the most frustrating subject around, cos I have absolutely no idea how to improve it and I don't know how my teacher can help me. And I know that he won't help me unless I ask him to, as in tell him what my problem is and ask for help. But the prob is, I have so many probs, don't even know which one to solve first.. help.

OK, dinner, no more blogging tonight.. Vox Stellarum tomorrow. Hope it's good.

Nicole Highway collapsed.. wow. Supposedly the road sank by 30m, that's higher than where I'm at right now. Heard that the road will be closed for the a month or so, guess there'll be no more suntec for me for a while.. such an important road down, and all the buses I used to take, 14, 196, 16, 608, all rerouted, wonder if they still go to the "12 bus stop" near DHS

Our class was sitting in this 道教 arrangement yesterday during tutorial. There was this curly distinction between the guys area and the girls area, and then in the guys area, there was 1 girl -- bao rong, and in the girls area, 1 guy -- eric.. haha, very interesting, 阳中带阴，阴中带阳。

Double lect today was boring but entertaining. As in the lecturers were not interesting, esp the physics one, trying to crack jokes and end up laughing at himself. But I was sitting beside HK and behind Alex, and they are rather entertaining people. Alex fell asleep halfway thru Maths and he hit his head on Hong King's table with this loud boom and our row was vibrating, HK and I started laughing non-stop. Somehow, the rest of the LT was also laughing at Mr Kan or something like that. And in that confusion of laughing, HK was rocking around and he banged his head on the table behind him. Apparently, you don't have to be asleep to knock into a table behind you. Anyway, that made us laugh even more, and HK was saying something like laughing is good for health.. hahaha.

My presentation skills are atrocious, let me list out all the mistakes I made during presentation: minimal eye contact, reading fr notes, weight in one leg, swaying around (that's my bad habit, I know that) and my handwriting on the board was illegible.. gosh, whatever happened to all my public speaking courses, and all the PW presentation training? Shall try to do better during Bio presentation. Really impressed with people like Tianjiao, everything is in the head, just stand there, take a pen, start scribbling on the board and talk to the audience. Impressive, they really know what they're talking about. Guess I'll nv be a teacher.. If I do teach, it'll be like Mr Wong's style, draw a diagram, then like that, like that, point here, arrow there, understand? Only I don't think I can be that pro.. Can see from my explanation questions in Chem, really just write down the key words. Wrong grammar, no sentence structure, just list the points separated by fullstops. Some call this pro, I call it a disability in expression.

read my post on PW, think it's really an ad for PW.. gosh, so brainwashed by MOE

feel rather useless, people ask me simple questions, half the time I won't know the answer. Like beef was asking some food biotech stuff that ms lee probably went through during the last lect, and I couldn't ans that, GP worse, don't know what to ans at all. For beef's question, at least I could invent an OKly reasonable answer, GP, my mind was blank. Happens all the time, in sch, outside sch, impro.. people ask for my opinion and I just go blank, one of the few serene and calm moments of my brain, where it suddenly hides everything and nothing's retrievable.. or rather whatever's supposed to be there wasn't there in the first place, so can't even try to dig for something. Amazed at those students who are interviewed by the news, can just stand there and talk.

Bio prac was um fun? poking holes into potatoes.. just too tedious, repeat the same thing for 12 times in 50 min? Boring.. and tedious, ended up faking results, and still not having enough time to answer the questions. At least I had a graph.. consolation? Don't know, what's wrong with our time management? Every prac so screwed, not just bio, physics, chem as well.

didn't realise how much courage moving house needs, the new environment, the entire new life that you get, the different hang outs, even the people you hang out with might change, plus the moving part, where everything must be sorted out, packed and unpacked, and big objects disassembled and assembled again..

tired of thinking...or worrying... 2 wks break fr lessons, good, shall conc on more relaxing stuff and enjoy life...

Changed my music. Yeah! Finally found the url, this music is soothing, not irritating like that 4 bars repeating melody. Now it's a 8 bar repeating melody, but a nice one. And it's electone music, so feel its power. It's written to encourage young people to look forward to life, to embrace life. Be inspired.. it might take a while to load, but if you can see Christelle's Clay Aiken, there's no reason why you can't hear this music.

Maths teachers are on a rolling sub. 3 tutorials in 3 days, 3 teachers. Interesting and going and rocket speed. Finish 5 complex no. questions in 1 tutorial, amazing. Wish we'll get Ms Chia some day, must be quite fun to see her in a tutorial.. My fave is still Mrs Chiang, so hyped up in class, psyches me up too, kind of like Hon Lyn getting psyched up for PE. Haha

PW, I know 很多人对它恨之入骨，but I liked it. Wanted to blog abt this a few days back, but somehow or other deleted it. Anyway, part of the reason why I like it is that we were doing so well in it, so smooth-sailing. Proposals, drafts, plans approved without major problems.. And it helps to have an apple in the group, a correspondence with the ST. I like it also because the group is made up of such fun people, not too diverse, but really interesting. Xu Xu is so funny, with her "blurness" and crazy plans, Christelle, so efficient, printing out hundreds of pages from books, Hong King being different as usual (paradox?), always doing something strange, like 自己罚站 to the back of the class, and Lester, always around to give critical comments abt our plans.. Basically our grp was always laughing during PW lessons. PW is good, cos without it, I would have probably known only the AS people well, but now, I've known 4 other people better, also maybe bena's group, since we are always leaching on their grp meeting place, and taking their precious time away by making them watch our presentation.. haha. Also, i did learn some things about Singapore, and abt Singapore's tourists. Guess NE worked.
Some stupid things abt PW though, the way we have to do research to adhere to the guidelines given, or the way we have to trust the ST completely on what we are supposed to do, and the internal competition in the group. (Oh no, XYZ has 20 sources, I only have 2) And how everything depends on the impression you give your ST.
Glad we did well.

had ice-cream at that vene-something shop today at Sixth Avenue. So nice! The chocolate especially, gosh, it was so smooth, and not too sweet and you don't feel sick after eating it, not like that $1 Magnolia ice-cream cone that the sch sells.. anyway, there goes my afternoon, managed to do half a Maths S question, while eating and chatting..

blogging reminds me of the journals that Mrs Goh Ai Lan used to make us write, where you can write whatever strange and radical views you have on some fun topics.. and then she'll read them and write sadistic remarks. Haha, that was quite fun, although we didn't really enjoy the chore of producing journal entries every week. But well, guess she knew more abt us through that, and that's probably how she know about all the things that were happening in class, like JQ and Meiqi.. or Timothy and Shuqin.. Wish essays nowadays are that easy, just write whatever lobsided, strange views we have on some topic which we feel passionate about, or at least, have a stand on.. and not need to go through research which confuses us more and more.. Nvm, guess that whatever skills we acquire during GP will be more useful in the future than those crapping skills that we learnt in sec sch.

Have I been abandoning qq? hopefully not...

reading thru my blog.. realised that some views are a bit extreme, some entries are a bit too explicit, shall be more vague fr now on.. some things I don't even remember writing abt, some words that I don't remember knowing how to use them..

I like being with a grp of people, where I can just keep quiet and listen, with no obligation to pipe in or give wise advice which I don't have.. Yeah, nice being with CB6.. Otherwise, it's nice to be with people who are have more things to say than me, as long as they don't try to put strange ideas into my head.. Then can have that kind of Chiao Luan - Hui Chuan relationship, where one talks and the other listens.. haha. Find it really tiring to think of conversation material.. So sad for Jacinth, must think of carrying out Civics conversation with the class..

Realised that JC standards are quite low, at least for RJ. I've been sprouting nonsense in my Bio, and with crosses, circles everywhere, can still get a B. That shows how 不值钱 a B is. Think HC's standards make a bit more sense, where it's harder to get As and Bs. Not that I'm complaining that getting As and Bs are no good, it's just that they give the misimpression that I doing fine in that subject when I'm not.. When all my concepts are wobbly shaky, after sitting for a test and getting a B gives the impression that my concepts are not so wrong after all. But that's not true. What's done in the tests are just vomiting out tutorial answers.. nothing much to do with understanding.. And although it's so easy to get a decent grade, I'm almost failing GP.. Why is it so diff for Science students to do GP? Ok, overgeneralisation, beef got an A. Why is it so diff for me to just get a 3? Nv gotten it before in my life.. and that reminds me. Surprisingly, I've nv gotten a A for Chem before.. Haha, always thought my Chem was OK.

feeling helpless.. throughout the day, have been thinking of how to help myself, no soln yet. The last time I was this helpless was, let me see, Sec 4? beginning of last yr? Can't remember, but it was a period of time where I write HELP! in all my notes. Think I might start doing that again.

I want to improve, in all areas, but don't know how. Nothing's working. So what if i practise every day? I still can't make a decent melody line. Want to improve GP, but how? Do more? Write more? Read more? Where to find the time? Sometimes I wish I would just stop trying to do everything, wish I have the time luxury like I do in "sectionals", where I can prac everything I need to prac and still have time to slack. About next year, that's such a huge problem, what do I want to study? I don't know. Where do I want to go? I don't know. What do I want to do? I have no idea either. How? help.. Sometimes wish I would just open my stupid mouth and ask..

RJ is a good sch. It has a lot of resources for us. The library, for example, has every reference we'll probably need, except for GP, I think. But I don't use it, rather go online to search. Teachers are just sitting there most of time waiting for us to approach, but I don't do that too.. what a waste.. haiz

went Rhythm XVIII.. really enjoyed it. First part of concert was normal, beautiful band sound, great lower winds and brass and OK soloists, think Mr Ng should know that 4 concertos in a row will bore most audiences.. Anyway, the 2nd part was fantastic. Maybe cos I went up to circle to sit. The sound was great, as in powerful and wonderful. One of the best band sounds I've heard. Passion of Christ was a great piece, especially the 3rd movt, very sad that I didn't get to see the score, wonder what the score writes when you have 10 sec where you can play any notes any styles you like. It sounded fabulous, wonder why they didn't win the Thai competition. Really good, much better than our happy ending. If I listen hard enough, I could be moved to tears..

Then was the encore. DHSSB encores always never ending one. 1st encore, Memory, conducted by Yao Cong, who's now the assistant conductor (wonder what's that), played by that China sax guy. Stunned the whole hall with his jazzy tone.. Marvelled by him even though it's not the first time I'm hearing him play that piece. Think he would have sounded even better on sop or tenor sax. 2nd encore was the autogear Stand By Me, standard encore piece, can memorise the whole score already, but it was really nice with swaying string basses and percs, maybe I should do that for my concert too, though it will look spastic with 1 string bass swaying around.. 3rd encore was Rondo from Standard of Excellence, that sec 1 book.. 4th encore was a joke, abt 3 false starting by basses trying to play a brass ensemble piece, haha, but it was fun and DHSSB concerts are abt having fun, esp during encores.. Then by popular demand (the J1s were yelling FANTASY!!), Mr Ng finally decided to conduct Paganini (Fantasy Variations), DHSSB's fame piece, can memorise that too.. The strings sounded so good.

Really wished that I was playing with them, especially for Passion, wished I went for the rehearsals for Passion, will really have enjoyed them.. and I missed Mr Ng's conducting and, um don't scream, his hair-flip, I like his steady strokes, though he does get tired sometimes and start drawing circles.. but it's OK, i spent my Mar hols well and I don't regret not going for DHSSB pracs

HK: I'll reply you another day, after I've thought abt how to phrase the ans to your question, and when it's not 12mn.. =)

to the person whom i believe found my blog without me knowing, (um, hope you know who you are): thanks for responding, really appreciate it.. feel free to email me any comments you have..

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they
arrive.
- Nin, Anais
I treasure my friendship with everyone here reading my blog..

Oh yeah, went MP just now for lesson and guess what, I saw this pink Mercure sign.. seem familiar? Yup it's that same Vallee Noisy hotel that we stayed in. Found it in beside Paramount hotel, if you know where that is. I think it used to be Century hotel or sth, shows just how long I haven't been in MP.. missed that place.

nu er and her good friend: why you all nv leave a tag? Aiyah, at least must show that you went to the right blog right?

telle: I talk abt a lot of music cos creating music is very impt to me, it's my way of keeping life under control, espressing the music and maybe myself, making boring life interesting, satisfying myself, preventing myself from going crazy by all the rubbish that's happening in my life... Therefore, making good music is very very impt to me.. very impt.. wonder why I'm not taking music. maybe cos I'm not any good in it.

Well, this blog is not secret any more, so I might as well tell everyone else abt it. *sigh* Christine is too determined to find this place..

Why do we torture ourselves? Why do we pay sch fees, go to sch, and let the teachers torture us by loading us with work? Why do women fight for rights to work and subject themselves to the stress and pressure of the workplace? Why do I pay $220 per month to go for 4 hrs of non-enjoyable impro sessions? To improve ourselves? To be able to enjoy the future? Why can't improvement be painless? Why can't learning be fun? Why am I writing so many questions? oh nvm, I hope to answer these some day.
Back to the fundamental question, what are we living for? What's life for? my ans.. for me to enjoy.. if so, why do I make my own life miserable? ans... so that I can enjoy it in the future (xian ku hou tian).. if so, when will that future be?.. can't ans that

after I add this entry, the 1st day of my trip will be gone from this page..

Time's moving too fast. I'm not using it wisely. 9 more lessons to exam. I can't figure out the chords all the time, can't come up with an interesting melody, can't do fill-ins, and have no style. On top of that, don't have classical piece, JOC still not chosen, haven't done sight-reading for a yr or so. This is the least prepared exam I'm going to sit for, reason: teacher's not really pushing, I'm on my own. Prob is that I just can't bring myself to do impro, set strict rules on it, and play. No self-discipline, kind of like 2.4, where I start walking because I don't force myself to run. Counting down.. 9 weeks to exam, I'll start mugging for it and practising with plan..

feeling helpless again, a bit overwhelmed.. too many things to do, no plan, can't plan, when planned, sth will go wrong.. told some people that i considered dropping S, but didn't cos don't think I'll be any freer without it, since i don't do stuff at night..

Went out with xx, sheryl and sandy yesterday. Think sandy was rather left out when we talked abt hc and rj band stuff, maybe she won't come out with us again nxt time.. Realised that I like being in a sch, any sch. It's a place where you belong, you own, where you're welcome. It's a place that you can find a place to just do whatever you like without being chased out. If you're bored, there's always some place for you to sit down and mug. haha. And I can always go to the band room where there are other bored people and we can start doing something interesting.. and there's the piano where i can practise my chords while irritating everyone else, and there's my bass where I can waste time by playing rubbish on it. I was early in Orchard yesterday, and i couldn't find a place to just sit and have something interesting to do for free. Sad case..

oh yeah, I think my strings improving. I wasn't so out of tune today. Hee hee, and my tone was quite decent, I wonder why. yup, even played the soft soft part where it's supposed to be 1 per part, but bass part dunno why, everyone played.. only accomplishment of the day..