Learning driving from Ubi is driving me nuts. It's real expensive and it's wasting my time. I want to hurry up learn and hurry up get my license, but from now until the end of april, there is no free time slot for me to have my lessons. This would never have happened if i didn't let my mum talk me into learning from a school, thinking that it's easier to pass and waiting time for the test is shorter. It's not. If you want to take up driving and haven't started yet, don't learn from a school. The only good thing about the school is that you get very structured lessons, they even teach u how to change a tyre.

Went for astar "accessment centre" yesterday, otherwise known as a day of activities for accessors to monitor and access us. Sound like what I do to my bacteria. Anyway I think it's real fun. I was Donald Duck for the day and when people started calling Donald, I usually can't figure out that they're calling me. The game was fun, my presentation sucked, the negotiation thing was quite screwed cos we didn't really know what our own interests were.. Then there was a psycho test. This one is really to see if you are psycho.. apparently if you are psycho they won't allow u to meet the chair in the final interview cos they are scared that you'll stab the chair with a knife or sth. So there were questions like Did you ever want to commit suicide? Would you rather be a member of the opposite sex? etc. 500+ questions, very repetitive. Their psychometric tests have so many repeating questions that I have half a mind to put a different response to each of the repeats.. They say it's to prevent people from faking responses. I think if you try, you can still fake without them ever finding out..
In short, it was a fun day, playing, meeting people of my age. It's a much more exciting day than any day at work..

Oh yeah, I saw Celine, the girl from AGA who was conducting the activities yesterday, just now. She was in full make up, nice blouse, nice skirt, no smiley eyes, no smile and I almost couldn't recognise her. Why do pple doing office work always have to dress so differently?

RJC band concert
A Tempo
11th April
Esplanade concert hall
$11, 13, 16, 21
Please come and watch, even if I never asked u to, tickets from any RJ band member, from Sistic or from me.

My concert
Date: don't know
Venue: not confirmed, my house?
Ticket price: free
Audience: anyone who wants to listen to some music
Am I holding one: depends
If I hold a mini mini concert on electone, like an intro to this wonderful instru and show off a bit, will you come watch? Respond k? through tag board, comments, sms, email, whatever.. If response is ok, then i'll go settle date and start scouting for people to guest play.. :)

Disney on Ice

I watched Disney on Ice- Princess Classics.

The elephant in Aladdin was so cute, it could nod its head and its skin was wrinkled all over. And the flying carpet as well, it was waddling all over and tripping over itself. I feel like hugging it.

The producers or whoever who planned the whole show wasn't the cleverest people. They brought out the similarities in each story, so, in every story there's a magical thing, be it a genie, fairy godmother, wicked witch, tiny dragon, in every story the princess will have to suffer before a handsome prince falls in love with her and they live happily ever after. Ok, these are the basic ingredients of a fairy tale, you say. But the way the princesses are saved is so similar too. They had a scene where Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel the mermaid lay on 3 corners of the stage, then the respective princes kissed their princesses and they all woke up.

Beautiful costumes as usual but the venue was quite bad. It was so noisy, like RJ hall, then the lights were not bright enough.. Anyway I think it's so fun to be an usher for such a show. You get paid to watch the show. So at intermission I went to ask one of them how to get such a job, and the girl said, "friend recommend one". Not exactly helpful eh?

I decided that I don't want to be a princess haha. If I live in a fairy tale, I want to be the magic carpet or some sidekick animal like Flounder

St Patrick's Day

Always like that, either a few posts in a day or no posts at all..

St Patrick's Day today, which means a year back at this time, we were in Europe. Yup, leprechauns are supposed to be dancing around throwing gold coins at everyone today. Watch out for little green men.. Dave came in green today with a green Guinness tattoo on his arm. I think it's gross.

Chihiro, nice right? Sometimes I feel like her, lost, in a strange world. But I wish I have coal friends too. so cute.

Few performances I want to watch: Disney on Ice, finishing soon, Sound of Music, but it's so expensive, Lord of the Dance, YEF heats on weekend before A Tempo and of course A Tempo.

X chromosome, source of gender and many diseases, is laid bare

Quotes from this article:

"The Y chromosome has steadily eroded to a little stump over the millennia, a process that holds out the intriguing theory that men may eventually be eliminated by evolutionary pressure.
The Y now has less than 100 genes... X chromosome... a whopping tally of 1,098 genes on it, about four percent of the total on the entire genome.
Seeking to understand this remarkable difference between X and Y, the team believes the two chromosomes evolved from humble beginnings as an "ordinary" pair of identical chromosomes in a sex-less organism.
Changes to a gene on one of the pair triggered the molecular cascade that led to male development, and set in train the degeneration of Y chromosome to its present rump-like state."

I wonder if a woman wrote the article.. haha

Anyway, here's a version of the article by the institute itself. And I still haven't found out what diseases are coded by the X chromosome.. Maybe the results are patented or sth.

I am freezing.. There is sth seriously wrong with the air-con here. Think they got the temperature wrong. This temperature is for the cold room, not for the office! It's even colder than in the labs and my specs misted when I stepped into the air-coned corridor. Wish I had a thermometer and measure the current temperature.

Anyway, I asked that question that I was talking about in the last blog. Can't let myself off without asking it. Asked it q elegantly, but the ans was q ambiguous.. Nvm, at least I'm feeling better, for what reason I don't know. Like I've just managed to close that chapter..

I am an idiot. I know that I will regret this inaction for the rest of my life. I am going to watch the day pass.

I broke my promise yesterday. How unexpected. My biggest failure in life is that words don't come out of my mouth at the right moment. I either say the wrong things, or I miss the chance to say something good. But I am a selfish bloke and what I've just said just means that, I always say the wrong things and hurt people, and I always don't say the things that will benefit myself.

Why live in dreams when you have the power to make dreams come true? Even if there's a price. Why did I miss the opportunity over and over and over and over and over again? Now I have missed the last chance.. I suck.

Some analytical thinking. Don't kill me for what I'm going to say.
What's the probability that I'm going to NUS?

1. Why should I stay in Singapore?
2. Why should I leave?
3. If I don't get a scholarship or any fin aid, do I still go? US? UK?
4. If I get a Astar scholarship, do I take it?
5. Am I even sure if Bio is what I want to do for the rest of my life, or even for the next 4 years?
6. If no US schools accept me, do I go UK?
7. If the London schools and the US schools reject me, do I still go?
8. Is US really more appealing than UK?
9. Am I ready to go? (Is this even a valid question?)
10. Can I bear to leave my electone? (Yes this is a consideration)

After I've considered all these questions and get answers, then I'll know whether I'm going NUS or not. So if you ask me now, am I going to a local u, I can't answer u, I should have just said, put me in the festival, but I didn't.. Whatever. bleh. mondays are blue. I suck.

Let me make a promise that I will break. I will learn some music theory this sunday. Can't stand myself wasting my life away.. no progress, just drifting..

The other day, I had lunch with Stephen and the rest of the group, he was talking about Rwanda and I told him I've never heard of Rwanda before. He started talking about Rwanda genocide and how half a million people were killed and I was wondering how can I not know such a major event? Then I went back to the office and checked out globalissues.org. And the Tutsies and Hutus popped into my face. Yes someone did a presentation on Rwanda in GP and there was probably quite a bit of discussion over it, but I guess I wasn't paying attention then..

Interest and employability. Dave's point is that interest is more important. Looking at all the chem engineers who claim that they don't like chem engine, I don't know if interest takes that big a percentage, cos the engineers seem happy with their jobs, but well, I didn't really ask them if they are happy.

Zhiyong wants to set up a service advising people on uni course choices, telling people about NS, and why to take chem eng and why not, but he is not setting one up because he doesn't know how and no one will pay him for his advice. He thinks that the education system is such that at O levels, students must already decide what careers they want in the future and take the right subjects in A levels or just go poly, so that they can enter the right course in university. I don't disagree. But I also think that people can still switch tracks from JC to uni. Double maths people don't have to do engine, they can do law, business, arts, science, even bio, cos apparently you only need chem.. Maybe just harder to get into med and dentistry. Besides, how many 16 year olds know what they want to do? I'm 18 and I'm still unsure. But then some people change careers at 40, shows that maybe you won't know what is the best career for u after all.

Saw Cassandra at driving centre. She wants to study therapy. Suits her. But still think that she'll be a fantastic kindergarten/ pri sch teacher. She's so sweet. Anyway if she wants to study in Singapore, she has to go to poly. Should she have started with poly in the first place? Or the therapy courses require A levels?

Anyway my point is, actually i've lost my point already, going JC buys you a couple of years to think about what you want to do in the future, but with the limited scope/ types of careers we/I'm in contact with in JC, I don't think I've learnt much about career shopping. Our hopes are that in uni, we'll probably know more and make a more informed choice, but will we and can we still change our field, like fr med to law? I think we should all have an official gap year, go job hopping, with help from the sch, maybe can get some great jobs like shadowing professionals, or gain experience from admin/ waitressing/ customer service/ sales/ cleaning, whatever. Or actually schools can just extend job shadowing programme to everyone, not only the few lucky ones who managed to reg early.

Back to civilisation with internet..

sian.. I'm sick of going to work every day. But I got tired of going to school when I was in sch before. About school, RJ didn't feel like my school, it felt like someone else's school and I was an intruder, a stranger.

Actually the thing I'm most happy with with my results is the TWO. I really didn't expect it, maybe the marking is screwed, but I don't care, I have a beautiful TWO on my results slip. People were telling me, "almost made it", haha, Mr Tan was saying he'll just give me a one. But I don't need it. The 2 was a fluke, no way i can get a 1.

Watched Moulin Rouge on Channel 5 yesterday with all the irritating commercials. Moulin Rouge is such a good story that it's worth watching even with the commercials. I just realised how MTV it is, during the songs, Satine and Christian will just zoom to somewhere magical, then zoom back when the song is over.

I realise that I always forget to ask the most important question on say the most important line. 3 times in a row, I missed my chance of requesting.. think I should just forget it.

I was sitting alone at a table at NUS, the kind of benches found everywhere in schools, minding my own business, reading my ultrageously thick complilation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when 2 girls came to sit with me and talk to me. They had a survey form, so since I was free, I decided to let them bother me with the survey. The 1st 2 questions look harmless..

1. Should Singapore set up a casino? Why?
simple innocuous question
2. Do you approve pre-marital sex?
simple straightforward question
Then it got weirder..
3. Do you believe in truth is relative?
4. Do you think a purpose in life is important?
Here comes the most important question..
5. Do you believe in God?

There are a few other questions but I can't remember what they are.
Smart questionnaire. Looks so deceiving at first. I thought they are some arts students doing some public opinion gathering for their project or sth. Anyway they are from a campus Christian group. So since I was free, I just finished my glucose concentration quantification and was waiting for Dave to appear, I let them talk to me. Nice to have company.

So, they were advertising for this service they provide, aimed at non-Christians, to study the bible once a week for 1h with one of their members. Then you can ask whatever weird questions you have about the Bible and they'll try to explain. So as I was saying, since I'm so very free, I just let them try explaining stuff to me. I think it's quite difficult for them, to explain the effects of believing and obeying a being that I don't even believe exist, to tell me about things happening after death when I don't believe in an afterlife. They say they're trying to share their experiences with me and help me find a purpose in life. Anyway I just listened to them for an hour plus I think. I was entertained, they were happy to find someone who's not furiously mugging for end of year exams and listen to them.