Sunday 31 October 2004

"Singlish, has developed divergently to the point where, it has immense value as an identity marker. ...the Internet has become a way of using and promoting Singlish, since it is a medium that escapes the efforts by education and government leaders who wish to see the demise of the language."
~ Block, David. 2004. "Globalization, Transnational Communication and the Internet". International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6 (1): 13-28.
www.unesco.org/shs/ijms/vol6/issue1/art2

qq's pic



QQ's masterpiece. Don't tell her it's here, or she'll kill me.

Friday 29 October 2004

few days ago was complaining abt how boring bio pract was, actually i'm quite glad it's so uneventful..
phy pract wasn't difficult, just that i stupidly can't count, and can't label nos. on an axis properly, ended up without a gradient or y-intercept, and of course no other values for calculations.. hope i pass that pract..
chem pract was ok, except that i spilled the purple powder all over my script and my bench, so my script had a purple cover, gross. then while I was heating that NaOH + FA5 thing, the solution spurted out of the test tube and landed all over the place, including on my finger (ouch, hot!) and on my calcuator and the script. Hope my paper don't corrode by the time it reach Cambridge and hope my calculator can survive through my entire A level. I don't have a backup.

walked around the staff rooms yesterday and they were so empty, the whole place was so evacuated.. well at least we got what we need to do done

was buying stamps just now at this shop near my house and the auntie saw my teacher evaluation forms and said, “你读RJC是吗?”“是啊”“我女儿在那里教书,不过她现在没有教,她刚生小孩”“你女儿教什么?”“她教数学” (sounds familiar eh?) “她是谁?”“Mrs Ou” or something like that. Haha, guess the world's not so small after all.

Monday 25 October 2004

telemarketeers today are so friendly, guess it's hard to make a living nowadays. I'll be more than willing to do their surveys but, too bad, I'm underaged..

Some quotes:
"The future is already here. It is just not uniformly distributed." ~ science-fiction writer William Gibson

"Canned arrangement books (playing scores that are arranged by others) are like recreational drugs. They allow the individual to get instant gratification for a period of time. But then they need to get more and more in order to get that same satisfaction. While there are many other ways to find enjoyment in life, the addiction of this instant gratification is very easy to get lost in. Soon it robs the individual of experiencing anything meaningful in life." ~ Louise, attacking everything that i love to do


Saturday 23 October 2004

Almost fainted today.. so scary. Went out and got sicker on the bus, when i reached the stop i just collapsed onto the seats at the bus stop and threw up.. darn gross. Was feeling so horrible, and my stupid phone died as usual.. Ended up borrowing a phone fr some stranger and called mummy. Tried walking, but blood don't seem to flow to my head or my limbs, don't know where the blood went, almost went black.. Was soaked in sweat. Sat back down, thought that i was going to faint and if I faint, i'd better faint from a lower CG and not hit my head on the floor.. felt so terrible, hope it won't happen ever ever again.. got so many people worried.. and nice passers-by donated medicated oil, too bad i don't know how to use it, but if i use, i'll prob feel even more nauseous..

Friday 22 October 2004

Hmm, how come people keep finding my blog and i don't seem to find anybody's? Strange..

Bio practical.. they shld change the name to Bio theoretical.. The only practical things we did were to grind a leaf and felt that i was cooking, chopping up the leaf, suck up the leaf extract using capillary tubes, fold some Al foil and cellophane and put everything under the lamp. And that can give probably 4 marks? The rest of the question were so theoretical, the results of the expt was already predictable, can ans the question without doing the expt.. Then the O level rice counting thing came out.. and kidney histo. Was hoping that mitosis or meiosis slides will come out. I mean, how many chances do we have of seeing beautifully stained mitosis, meiosis slides? The kidney was beautifully stained though, can see clear glomeruli, if there's such a word, and podocyte nuclei

Change of copyright laws nxt yr. Better go and download everything u need before the year ends..

Saturday 16 October 2004

Farewell RJ, mt sinai, 3f...

if they're trying to make us cry, they're not succeeding.. but it's quite a great day anyway.

assembly was luckily short enough. guess they know that we can't sit there for long, it's too hot and stuffy. that thing yingheng took from hodge looks really really special, i've never seen such a plaque before.. and it doesn't look like it weighs 6kg. They're really smart with the certificate of merit thing, just flash everyone's names, can just imagine the groans if they decide to read everyone's names. and band has the largest population getting the CM, more than even council. and the band photo is cool, it shows the whole band! instead of just 1 person. hee. John's speech is really good. He's a really good speaker. I wouldn't have minded if his speech was twice as long, I'm sure he would have something interesting to say.

lovely evening, night, with the class, taking photos, throwing lightsticks around, making shooting stars. Wish that the light sticks have some sort of magnet thing, then after throwing them, just walk around with a magnet and the lightsticks will be attracted back to us, no need to bend down and pick, so tiring. guess it's quite interesting to watch the class fr the canteen area, can only see light sticks flying around. haha

played until the school was evacuated, we were the last group to leave the sch, wow. and it's great to have a council vice-pres in the class, cos he has the keys to the gate, and we didn't have to climb out the front and walk all the way..

only blemish of the day, stupid applics stuff. wish i didn't have to go around and be pathetic to prevent the teachers fr killing me..
thank you people who persuaded me to apply. if weren't for you all, i probably wouldn't have the courage to apply early action.

Thursday 14 October 2004

My attention span is getting shorter, was so restless during yesterday's GP and that interview talk, nearly fell asleep during the talk, found it torturously long. Don't see why we hired such "interview professionals" to talk to us when the best interviewees we find around us are probably our teachers, they do the speech thing every day, with the right body languages, tones and so on.. if they're lousy speech makers, we would have spotted their flaws long time ago and try not to make them. I think that to ace an interview, it really depends on how practised one is for interviews..

Hate last min changes, it's Oct 14, Oxbridge dateline has long past, early d/a dateline is in 16 days, now he decides that i should go somewhere for the name and not for the major. How on earth am i suppose to make the dateline? i'll rush like mad and the teachers will kill me. Apply HYP on regular, might as well not apply, sure can't get in.. Doesn't he know that this won't work? I can't get in, so why don't he just save up the $60 applic fee?

Went for bio lect today, the attendence is pathetic, maybe that's gd too. It seems so easy to get full marks for an essay after u look at the ans scheme, but I've nv gotten one before.. Promos are over and J1s are starting CCAs again, sch has more life.. Spent an hr reading thru the mock paper essays, read almost everyone's essay, (sorry, hope u all don't mind) realised that I can't distinguish the bad from the good. Think essays are really subjective, a different marker would give a totally different mark. I didn't think my essay was good, but got a really high mark, or maybe it's that mark inflation before the exam thing. If I got my mark, bao luo should get a much higher mark, at least 40. Really don't know how they mark..

Monday 11 October 2004

Happy Birthday!

Thanks everyone for a great birthday. Special special thanks to alex, jialing, telle, siew, xh, bao, eric, hk for making today so wonderful.

1st sms of the day was from Alex, though don't know what he's saying in the msg. 1st happy bday sms was fr wenwei. people who gave me bday presents really 精神可佳, went all the way to my hse, wow. The photo's really nice, will somehow stick it on the wall, with all my other photos above my organ hopefully. Oh don't know if you intended it, the Ireland had 2 letters missing, so it's rela d. hmm, interesting word. alex, nv know he's so nice, anyway his 好意我心领了。He's not a bad SL what..

thanks telle for staying with me all morning, thought I'll have to as to some TS but that classroom was great, not cold at all. =) GP was um, the usual, can't write well on paper and within that time limit, I believe that if I have a comp for GP essay, I'll do much better, I wanted to change this entire para, but can't cos too 麻烦. Compre had a lot of time left, maybe cos don't know how to do applics question at all. Q entertaining though, to watch ur teacher play with rubber bands.

Eh, supposed to talk abt birthday. So, after that went Ghim Moh, had a nice chocolaty cake thanks to all the nice people, they also 费心费力 to light those candles, at least the fan left me 1 candle to blow. Oh yeah, got birthday blessings from the Prima Deli auntie and the otah auntie who was so nice to give us 1 free otah.

To everybody: I don't need birthday presents. Thank you very much if you have given me one. I appreciate them. But if you didn't give me, don't worry abt it, don't waste money buying me stuff, I don't deserve ur niceness.

Thanks all again, and I need to go back to writing my dreaded essays and writeup.

Saturday 9 October 2004

SAT2day, SCH nice place, very conducive, huge table, nice swivel chair, not too cold, just that I was stupid enough to not find the clock until the last paper. Writing wasn't too good, don't think my essay's too convincing, Maths was surprisingly difficult, got stuck at the matrix question and another "i don't even know what kind of question is it" question. Chem was easy, finished way before time, and for maybe the first time in my life, I actually fell asleep during a test. Was really sleeping and woke up with a shock when the woman said time's up.

It's so easy to tell who are Singaporean students and who are not. There were abt 15 people there and there were 3 foreign students. Probably from international schools, cos they are the only ones asking questions aloud, Singaporeans either try to figure out everything themselves or call the invigilator to their desks and then ask.

Went DSTA openhouse and saw Wenwei. Had a nice chat on the way home.
I must start mugging soon.

Friday 8 October 2004

Last official school day. Sad.

All the teachers are giving motivational speeches, all-the-best-for-your-future speeches, and so on.. Mr Hodge gave his "last time you'll hear the train move past during morning assembly" speech, and surprisingly. Mr Leong's speech was good, the one abt us being the last batch in Mt Sinai, the batch that can make history. Mrs Kwan's, is that her name?, timeline thing came at an appropriate time, it's time to go back to studying. Yes past S03Fs were fantastic, even when she was the CT, hope this S03F will be just as fantastic, or even better, under the present CT. I said in an earlier post that I think Alfie will make a better CT than Ms Lee, i believe now that mrs Kwan will be an even better one. She seems to know 3Fs better than my CT does.. OK, back to speeches, Mr Wong has been extra nice these few days, smiling and laughing a lot more than usual, giving marks to everyone, although he went back to his bullet train speed today. Brilliant guy. Mr Khoo came with a huge bag of junk food, had a great time pigging out, gave some life advice, but um i didn't really get any great insights from it.. heehee.. when he left he sort of wished us all the best and said things like we've been a great class and so on, and we were saying things like we really can't promise to produce great results but we'll try our best, was such an "aww" moment..

went on a phototaking trip around the sch and found people flying kites in the field, so fun. Found out that there's a huge deep drain near the fence next to the track, really deep, will break a leg if you happen to fall in. Talking about photos, Christine, I will take that photo with him one day, but don't like that call me over fr 1 side to the other lah, very paiseh and he'll think i crush him. On photos again, my camera has a really small screen, so whatever I thought was small on my screen turned out to be gigantic in my computer. Really should stop using the screen and use the viewfinder instead.

uni applications, it's a chore, really want to get it over and done with but can't even decide if i want to apply for financial aid or not.. irritating..

I am a selfish person, many or even most of the time. we were talking abt not leaving anyone in the class behind and i realised that that thought of pulling people up never ever crossed my mind. i should have been more open to qq's help calls, more responsive maybe, more encouraging perhaps, and not respond only when she sounds depressed... really really wish everyone can do well in As. It's the A level anyway, the level where everyone gets As.

Tuesday 5 October 2004

Had a great break yesterday. Went Macs and played Payday! Such an exciting game, everybody trying to act pathetic and poor, as in having no money, so that they won't be asked to pay money. Haha, glad I didnt stay in sch and study SAT.

School's getting so boring, go to school, don't even learn anything much, just sit around, look through own paper, check answers, dig for marks.. BORING!

Friday 1 October 2004

Great day!

seems like it's my birthday today, everything was going my way. Woke up and started on my database of organ scores i own, finished recording down 1 yr's worth of scores, had a great time typing the Jap words, trying to type those Kanjis which I don't even know how to pronounce, haha, so left quite a lot of blanks

then went airport to pick Daddy up, thought I was late, but turned out to be just in time, and he was so happy to see me. yay. Realised that I really don't know T2, always take planes from T1, T2 is so foreign, never knew they had such a localised shopping area, and it's quite flooded with students. Then came the best part, Daddy bought 10 Disney soundtracks, a collection of Disney classics DVDs (abt 15 movies), a Tom & Jerry cartoon collection, some other kiddie Chinese cartoon and Lion King 1 1/2 for me. A last childhood gift before i turn 18. So sweet of him, knowing that I'm a fanatic Disney fan. I was so touched, was crying when I left for the bbq.

The day remained good, i boarded this bus that was totally empty, I was the only one on the bus with the driver. How rare. Then went Bena's hse.. and got a really really nice postcard from Christelle! It's written in green! =) And got a bday present from qq, wrapped in green! Got a beautiful plate fr bena and sang. And a bday present from the class, not green but a cute white sheep. haha. Really like it's my birthday today. Then AS-ed with Christelle and Sunny to the pool and had a story-telling session of the Cinderella story by christelle, which was interrupted shortly by a cockroach trying to go swimming. glad I wasn't dunked, knew Christine and xh were planning it. evil people. Was really impressed with Andy's sparklers construction, spectacular with little resources. Was quite impressed with Evelyn's sense of directions as well, she's not so lost after all.