Short short hair

hongkong, shenzhen, don't feel like blogging, main thing is that I cut my hair. It's now freaking short. So short that I don't feel it move in the wind.. the guy took 1h to cut it, and he hinted that I'll regret cutting.. Short short short hair.. ask me out if u wanna see my short hair.. I'm so free anyway..

Life isn't that boring without work.. I'm going to enjoy it.

Tues.. driving took half my day off (I remembered all the steps to everything inside the circuit=))
Wed.. went NUS tea session to waste my time, can't help noticing that there were not many RJ pple around. We concluded that the capable pple either went med/ engine/ overseas, science is only a backup for most, that's what even the NUS guy talking to us said. Well, I want to do science..
Thurs.. lazed about, preparing for concert, jialing came over and we entertained each other with our playing..
Fri.. prepared some more, practised a bit, went for RJ harmoc concert. So weird, it's my first time going for a harmoc concert, see the power of Grace. Andy never managed to make me go for any harmoc concerts. The concert was actually q good. It got better as the concert progresses. The Mario game one was cool, everything after the interval was better than before the interval. I think that their SYF pieces are too difficult for them to handle.. it was messy, if they had chosen a simpler piece, they might have gotten a gold.

Sat.. Concert day! Wrapping gifts in the morning, cleaning up, making food.. practised a bit more. Freaking out a bit in the afternoon, then sunny came and practised emcee-ing over and over and over again.. Went to pick pple up from the MRT, in the meantime, everyone reached my house. Luckily there's Mr lounge player to entertain everyone..
Concert started, i wasn't nervous, but I started playing wrong notes everywhere.. everywhere.. even in my MMM, which I have performed so many times, it's engraved in my memory already.. Emcee script was a bit too short, I didn't even have enough time to dig out my scores and lay them out.. Michi, one consistently wrong pedal, still haven't figured out what that note is supposed to be; Comical Train, gave up on pedalling entirely, cos it's one whole string of wrong notes; Yujian, played safely, very safely; Alvamar, sounded quite fine in my opinion even though I simplified a lot of parts, and the last running part was flooded with wrong notes; Twinkle Star, great work by HK, sounded so impressive=); Pirates, even though there was a false start, then I lost the counting a second time, I managed to catch back, and it was the best Pirates I've ever played. =)
Interval: Pple were glued to their seats and not many pple were eating =( but had a nice time sitting at the table with telle and sunny and xh and beef...
Oh yeah, 1 major huge mistake that i made, I didn't invite Mr Tan.. The more beef talked about it, the more I think that I should have invited him along..
After interval: Renee + XM, the latin piece, got stuck in my head, i still can't play it; XM's Miss you like crazy, was q good in my opinion, Rain's saxy piece, forgot title, was stylish, like how she always plays her pieces; Shine and his Disney pieces, dramatic, got impro in the middle some more, and then his bam-bam thing, maybe it's his playing, maybe it's just the piece, that's so so catchy; Jialing and At the Beginning, nice, the elec guitar glided beautifully=)
When will spring come, ok, wrong pedals so i gave up on the heel-toe thing; Top of the World, so fun, hee.

Sun: didn't do much, went OG Chinatown to shop for my mom
Mon: went walking with Hannah, yiu sin, sunny from macritchie to bukit panjang. Craziness. macritchie was nice and shady and cool and no mosquitoes, but there were so many people, everyone was going to the tree top walk. Should go there one day when it's not a public holiday.
So emerged from the forests at about 2+pm, went ys's house and bummed, watched 3 episodes of CSI, it's actually very good, just that all the endings are the same, the guy will confess but there'll always be this little part that's unfinished, like the guy will plead insanity when the CSIs know that the guy is not crazy..

Big thank you to everyone who came last night and everyone who helped in one way or another to make last night a success..

Many thanks to

1. My mom, for all the food (that is still in my fridge)
2. jialing, sunny and others who ended up being waitresses
   
3. Sunny, great emcee-ing (even though my script is so lousy
   
4. Guest players: jialing, shane, renee, ximin, priscilla
   
5. our brave volunteer, hong king, who played beautifully (hope i didn't insult ur playing skills by asking u to play such a simple thing :x)
6. Everyone else who came!
7. Jacinth, for publicising :)

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 100%

Punctuation: 80%

Spelling: 80%

Vocabulary: 0%

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

You Are 15 Years Old

15 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Concert updates
Hey everyone

Please meet at 7pm on this sat at Eunos MRT. If you are coming straight, please reach before 7.30.. Come earlier if you want to.. Ask me for address

Sorry but there isn't enough chairs so I've decided to not put chairs at all.. The floor is all yours.. So dress appropriately, don't come in miniskirts..

Yes light reception is provided but feel free to bring food. =)

See you all on Saturday!

Steve just asked me to give them my blog add and of course he asked me not to insult the government.. Haha, no one is going to get this add.. I never knew which sentence I write is defamatory to who..

Lazing about at home. End of 4 mths attachment at BTI. Cool people, nice people, interesting people.. I learned quite a bit, but stoned quite a lot of my time away..

Last Thurs, went out for dinner with some people from work at that HK cafe place at Holland V, supposedly farewell dinner for me, but pple who went don't even know I'm leaving. The food is really not fantastic but well, the service is bad, (it's self order and they charge service charge) but it's the company that matters. The Singaporeans were learning Cantonese fr the non-singaporeans, and the Singaporeans tried to teach the American vulgar dialect phrases.. eew.. and then we went Wala, BTI pple's fave hangout.. well, it's a nice place, quite small, music was good. Shirlene's band was real good and the guy before them wasn't bad either, too bad no one was really paying attention to them.. It was a super smoky place, I went home stinking of smoke.. eew.. maybe we really should ban indoor smoking, even in pubs, though then Singapore will be a really smoker-unfriendly place. First time in a pub, tried some white, unfiltered beer(meaning the yeast is still in the beer). Actually Dave ordered 2 jugs of it. Bad mistake. I didn't like it, Sylvia didn't like it, so he ended up offering it to everyone around.. oops.. I left early, before Shirlene sang the Banana Boat song, but I heard that she didn't sing it after all.. I ought to dump stereotypes out of my mind. Stereotypes of smokers, drinkers, scientists..

friday.. presentation. If I had more time to prepare, would I have drawn pictures of what's going on? I'm not sure about that. My presentation skills still need a lot of brushing up, I wish I had gone for Danny's presentation that day. Took Steve's numerous questions. Well, actually he asked numerous questions, I answered a small proportion of those questions while Dave answered the rest, think he should be more stressed at my presentation than I am. Glad it's over..

sunday.. clowning. Went to be a clown trainee at NUH with hui chuan, her good friend's bunkmate, chang zi, and you li. Learnt to make balloons, so fun.. But seriously I think we were creating disturbance in the hospital rather than entertaining kids.. The heart shaped balloons were so easy to burst, we popped so many of them inside the wards that we decided we ought to pump the balloons outside the wards.. I liked the younger clown. He appeared so much more sincere and caring, really sitting down to talk to the patients. The other one just had a lot of magic tricks, but I guess that's just the way they work.. Then went Queenstown to eat, Hui chuan's idea of course, the queenstown/ queensway area is like her home, she knows everything there..

mon.. didn't do much, went Jurong Point to eat. Gosh. Then went 6th floor to collect signatures, everyone is so nice. Finally put a face to some names that I've seen on emails.. I still don't know where's Prof Yap's office or who she is, but I should be glad that I didn't meet her yesterday.. Last day of attachment.. yay

Complaints

hand hurts now from holding the phone for too long.. and something just happened to my keyboard, now I can't press the spacebar properly. Calling Microsoft to activate my Office XP.. Taking forever.. Apparently you have to call them every time you reinstall it on the same computer.. How dumb.

Since I can't say anything to do with politics, scholarship policies, blah, I'll complain about the school. School don't accept online credit card payment of deposit. And I think my deposit got losts in the mail. Something US postal service is supposed to be quite good at. So I have to wake up at some unearthly hours every other day to call the school to see if they've received my stuff. At least the admissions people are nice.. Just called FedEx to come and collect my another deposit and SIR.. So ma fan.. Yes it costs $44.40 to send 3 pieces of paper to US. Hope the FedEx guy don't get lost and can't find me or sth..

Band. Not a complaint. If I were a J2 this year, I would be touched by what Lynette wrote. I didn't think those 2 words mattered so much until I heard about what Oura said.. Should we have expected so much? Is it better to expect a Gold and Honours would be a bonus?

It sucks to..
- Work hard at something knowing that it'll probably fail in the end
- Have no purpose in life and just drift along
- Have a fixed goal in life and neglect all other aspects of life
- Be in a one-sided relationship, no matter which side you're on
- Do a presentation with only 1-day notice
- Console others when I'm not feeling too happy myself

Thurs.. JC band SYF.. weirdo results.. would I be sad if it was my SYF? I would if I have seriously worked hard for it.. But as Oura says, it's a chicken rice vs duck rice thing.. Judges just changed their tastes this year.

Watched Lord of the Dance with jac, cling, jinxun, angeline at Kallang Theatre. It was fantastic! Definitely worth the money, a blur Arts Central programme is not enough to show you the power of the Lord of the Dance. Even though the stage is small and the Lord didn't seem, at least not to me, a lot a lot better than the other dancers, it was a great show, great atmosphere.. Quite sad that we got last row seats that is like a kilometer away from the stage, but at 8.05 or so, everyone just got up and moved forward to the better seats. Haha, and the ushers didn't care. So we actually got seats which were $20 more expensive.
I still want to be an usher..

I loved the finale part, made me wish that the show would never end. Glad they did "encores", even though no one shouted encore, everyone just clapped non-stop. Hee. I hoped the performers enjoyed themselves and wished that the show would never end too like I did during band concerts.. Went home after that and walked the wrong way, had to walk all the way back. The stadium area is really so messy now that I don't recognise anything..

Fri.. Sunny came to my workplace and I was having an amazingly boring day, we entertained ourselves by playing minesweeper flags with everyone we see online. Haha, sunny's so pro at it. Then driving lesson. I failed the mock driving test badly. Flunked it. Got 3 immediate failures before I even left the centre. Then accumulated 24 points total. sigh.

Sat.. Theory exam. So fun to see everyone again and take the same paper in the same room. Hee. It was at RI junior block and someone was opening up and closing the roof. Yes the roof can be opened and closed. We all thought they were trying to show off that roof. Haha. So every time they open or close, people will go WOW.. everyone except the RI guys that is, and there are quite a lot of RI guys there.. Paper was fine, normal, though I screwed up quite a bit on the last section. Couldn't decide whether to write about Clarinet or about Trombone, and ended up choosing clarinet because the paper wrote clarinet before writing trombone. Haha, lame reason. Hope they give me 1 mark for saying clarinet is a woodwind instrument. Hee.
Slacked around RI after paper cos as I expected, we can finish the paper in 2h and sleep away the last hour.. so as we wait for Shane and "the boy"(I don't believe his name is John) to finish, we went to the main building and sat and talked crap while XM sacrificed her blood to mosquitoes to save us all. And I found out that the YEARBOOK IS OUT!!

Went home rather early and watched Howl's Moving Castle.. finally. The story is not as vague as what I thought it would be, it's just a very predictable storyline. But the characters are really cute. I like the boy, the fire (so cute) and the scarecrow.. but I never understood why Sophie can change from old to young and back to old at different times..

The other parts of the weekend are not so good, mainly because UCSD still has not received my SIR and deposit..

this is way way overdue..

This is an invitation to all those who are reading this blog, 3F pple, CB6, bandits, sec sch friends..

You are invited to..
My concert
Date: 21st May, Sat before Vesak Day
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: My house.. (ask me for directions)
Ticket price: FREE
Light reception will be provided but please settle your own dinner.

I'll be playing the electone which is what the girl in the picture on this blog is playing.. So if you want to know what an electone is, want to see how it sounds like, please come..
This concert is for you, my friends.. Make it a gathering, party, whatever, just come ok? You'll even get free food.. hee

Repertoire includes..
Pirates of the Carribean
Beauty and the Beast
Yu Jian
and others..

Jialing will be playing, so will some of my wonderful electone classmates, who all happen to be younger than me.. Hmm..
So please come for an evening of music, talent, food, friends... blah. Yup just come.

RSVP please.. Tag, email, sms, call.. Thank you =)

Careful with what u blog

S'pore student shuts down blog after threat of legal action

SINGAPORE: Blogs, or Web Logs, are electronic replacements for the good old pen-and-paper diary.

But the similarities end there.

While a diary can only be read by its author, a blog can be read by anyone anywhere.

One Singaporean scholar recently got into hot soup for making allegedly racist comments.

Now, Channel NewsAsia found out that another Singaporean blogger, studying in the United States, has had to pull off his blog.

The ex-scholar, pursuing his Masters in the States, has shut down his blog after apparently being threatened with legal action.

Lawyers say bloggers need to understand they can be sued for comments in cyberspace.

Blogs are popular ways for the internet community to express their thoughts online.

But Chen Jiahao, a Singaporean studying in the United States, might have taken it too far.

He allegedly criticised the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)'s scholarship system, in his blogs.

The former Public Service Commission scholar is said to have criticised some of its policies requiring scholars to meet certain standards.

Chen claimed he was threatened with legal action, in emails from A*STAR's chairman Philip Yeo.

But A*Star has not confirmed or denied the incident.

It told Channel NewsAsia that its chairman was away until June 7 and could not give a camera interview.

The blog was shut down last month.

In its place is a note from Chen, under his blog name of AcidFlask, apologizing for making remarks "which Mr Yeo felt were defamatory to him and A*Star".

He also promised not to mention the agency or Mr Yeo by name again at the website.

Lawyers say bloggers need to be aware that they need to be responsible for what they say online.

"I think that if the writings in the blog were indeed defamatory, then the person who has been defamed can actually take legal action against the blogger. In other words, he can be sued," said Gilbert Leong, a partner at Rodyk & Davidson. - CNA/ir

Stephen came. CL and Dave are both with Lee Dong Yup so he talked to me. About uni, phd, science, research..

What he said..
Have fun during undergrad. Have loads of fun, have sex, take drugs, but do reasonably well in school. Figure out which field am I interested in and passionate about, preferably in a field that's marketable, not like the digestion system of toads or sth like that.

Always keep in mind that there are much more brilliant pple than me around. People who send spaceships to Mars, Nobel laureates.. They will be competing with me. It sucks to be 2nd in science, like you discovered something after someone discovered it 2 min ago. It's only fun when you're the first, like Watson and Crick with the structure of DNA. (But this is not what the IMCB guy said, he said that you can always make modifications to the discovery and make it better)

So always be proactive. I'll be competing with the guy who loves puffer fishes since young and has won a Nobel prize for his work on puffer fishes. I'll be competing with those pple whose grandmothers died of cancer and are motivated and passionate to find cures for cancer.

This is interesting. Work takes up 1/3 of a person's day. Work 8h, sleep 8h, do rubbish the other 8h. So I'm deciding what I'm doing with 1/3 of my working life now. I'd better choose something that I'll enjoy doing.

Other stuff: Choose the right supervisor. A brilliant guy who doesn't guide much or a not-so-brilliant guy who guides every step? Research is not that hard if you have some common sense and don't get distracted by all the politics and competition. (is it?)

And most impt of all, if I don't like it, quit early.

Sunday: class gathering. Went beef's house to bake cookies and cake before going to sunny's house. Beef's house is a palace. It's so huge and classy that we didn't dare to touch anything. Woa, if you want to see a palace but don't have money to go Europe, go to beef's house. It's the same..

Anyway, fooled around, tried to follow the instructions to making a chocolate cake from scratch (I want the recipe!). Didn't screw up much except the mix leaked out of the tin, making this chocolatey mess on beef's expensive table. hee. Oh and we made the fudge too early and it solidified before we could spread it on the cake, so we reheated it. But somehow it just didn't look good.
Baked cookies from the cookie mix. The mix is really generous with chocolate chips, there are so many of them. Wow. Anyway, we experimented with huge intestines like cookies and finally decided to make decent ones for the class.

When we have finally finished baking and cleaning up it was 7+, so we decided to cab to sunny's house. Had to walk real far to get a cab cause the palace is in a very secluded place. =) Got to sunny's place.. Oh wow, 20 out of 26 pple in our class were there. Amazing. Class gathering attendances are getting better all the time. Talked to some pple, AS-ed quite a bit. Guys are as usual talking about NS, but really can't blame them, since they do those things full time now.. Loads of food and 2 cakes!! Ours and a pro yoghurt cake. Celebrating April babies' birthdays. How come all the guitar pple have birthdays in April?

Slacked a bit more and went home. Nice to see everyone again but wish we talked more, wish we did that circle thing.

Monday: driving lesson in the morning. Guess who's my instructor? It's the same guy again. haha. Blazing hot day.
Went Orchard to meet Alex, Weixiong, cling and jac. Alex was supposed to treat us, especially after he withdrew so much money. I hope he didn't get robbed. After thinking for forevr, we went Han's at Far East.. Well somehow, Alex didn't get to treat us. Met xh and lum at heeren and took neoprints. Then everyone started leaving..

Yucks. This is an absolutely lousy post. Won't post like this again..