Athens

this is a really lagging blog cos have been too busy studying to blog

Opening ceremony was fantastic!! It really shows how much culture, how much history Greece has, the entire Western civilisation seemed to have stemmed from there. The scientists and mathematicians, the philosophers and astronomers, the sportsmen... the greek mythologies as well. Really fascinating. The fire Olympic rings thing was really cool, and the "lake" in the stadium was creative and the flying people!! They really look like they are flying, not held by strings. Funny how countries like Iraq and Afghanistan got the most applause during the march in although they sent all males..

On to badminton, Ronald Susilo was everyone's idol for a few days, especially after he beat the Chinese. Everyone in school was and still is playing badminton. Then it was fascination with Li Jiawei and people started playing table tennis. See the power of sports. Li Jiawei shouldn't have lost to the north korean, she was thrashing her, come on, 11-0, then wasted, panicked in the last game and lost 9-11. What a waste! If I were her, I would cry all night too.

On to gym, Khorkina didn't win individuals. She's real good, but she's a stick, only bones and skin. Too tall for a gymnast although she's just 4cm taller than me. So sad she didn't get the gold.

diogenesian discourse

quite a cool anti-war, anti-bush site that's easy to read
diogenesian discourse

Yay, a background finally. Can't believe it, i actually deleted part of the template in the process, so might as well, change the entire thing.. sigh

doing the band evaluation thing, realised that I have nothing to write about, especially the part about the contribution that I'm most proud of, hee hee, didn't contribute much, so nothing to be proud of. Can I write that? Seriously I didn't do much for band except play a weird non-band instrument and add noise.

Some idiot slammed onto my locker, it's now jammed. I can't open it at all. Will get someone to help me open tmr, maybe open from HK's locker.. and the whole column of lockers is standing on its own now, really tall and thin, low stability, if I yank hard enough on my locker door, the whole block will topple.

I'm motivated by everything around suddenly, everybody is boosting my confidence. So nice of everyone. Haha, someone said to me today that "I believe you can do it", woohoo, so I wish I can with all my heart. Ok, a bit duan4 zhang1 qu3 yi4 here, there's an "if" behind that quote. Conditional probability.. Hope I can overcome the "if" part, or rather, convert the "if" to a "because".

Important day today, swearing in ceremony of 3rd PM. But don't feel happy or excited or anything. The 3rd PM didn't look as confident or imposing as the mentor or the SM, maybe he's nervous.. Hope he'll be able to do a good job..

I'm going to get the birthday present that I want this yr, maybe it's a birthday wish granted! Yay! Actually I knew what I wanted since June, haha, just never told anyone. Nevertheless I'm going to get it, though it'll come more than a month late and I actually hesitated before accepting it. Weird me.

Prom, prom, prom, should I go? Waste money and look ugly. Any point in going? Maybe.. but that's the least of my worries now, 15 days to go.

recorded sch song on sat. Was tedious but the editing is going to be much more tedious. Wonder who's going to do that.. whether it's the recording people or Kah Chun. Whoever it is, I don't think we'll get to hear it next monday. Anyway, felt different during that prac, maybe because it's a so predominantly J1 prac, (1/3 of the J2 batch went), I felt da pai, like how people felt when they were sec 4s and kings of their CCAs. Oh yeah, and Christelle was in sch, haha, she always seem to be hanging around sch, every time I go somewhere to AS and study, I'll find her. Nice company though.

Then went to the Experiences thing at VJ.. Still can't believe how near that place is from my house, and I have to travel an hour plus every day back from my school. Anyway, the more schs i talk to, the harder it is to cross them off my list. So my list is growing instead of shrinking. sigh.

Watched fireworks yesterday with CB6. Doing stupid things to pass the time while waiting for fireworks like play "animal farm", or the band people will call it "concentration", whatever, it's the same game. Played 7up, boring, and played "terminal password", zhong ji mi ma.. haha. People around us must have thought we were mad, doing stupid animal actions and making weird noises, and shouting weird messages to Singapore. Played some snap game as well, and I have to say that Bao's reaction is so super fast, must be all the goalkeeper training during handball and the carnival games that we throw balls at her.. She's so super fast. Xiaowei was right, that was probably the last time we'll see each other before our 'A's, we should really treasure each other and stay in contact..

Glad that I didn't go out with CB6 today cos I managed to have a long long chat with Sunny and Xuxu today. So long. It's been ages since I just sat somewhere and chat for let me see.. 2h? Guess I'm not much of a chatty person. I'm composed? Haha, look at some of the more prominent people in school, they can scream, shout, jump, fly without getting a hair out of place. That's composed, in control. We were talking about people having a positive aura, interesting way to see people. And yes, the girls in our class are really nice, but I think the guys are nice too, even the person that most in the class can't stand. Well, maybe I haven't been interacting with him much, or maybe because I made my stand clear in the beginning, I didn't really have the bad experiences some other people in the class had with him.

I just have to say this again. You'd never know when you'll say something that you think is so insignificant that will impact someone else so much, in both positive and negative ways. So say more, higher probability of affecting someone positively.

Dunno why he have to do it this way, use the word "invited". He must have known that I can't reject it. The dates are really bad, one in the 10th week after the pracs, one after the last day of 'A's, so there's almost no time to practise unless I sacrifice my studying, but I really really want to go. Does he know that I want to go this much? i need a few days to think abt it...

Harvard, Yale, Princeton.. ever wonder why they arrange it this way? Is this some kind of ranking? Or just simply for the HYP? Anyway, these schools are too far out of reach. I'll never make it there. Even if I do, I don't think I'll like it too much, though Yale does sound fun, or maybe it's just the presenters who are good. I'll never know.

How would I ever know what I really want to study? Or want to be? Ans I got was "through mistakes, and hopefully your mistakes are not too serious". I never expected to get that advice, so it came rather as a shock. So the conclusion is "try everything and see what you like and don't like". Makes a whole lot of sense doesn't it? but is that the only way? What if I realise that I made a mistake only in my final year? What if I'm on bond and have to stick with whatever I don't like for another 6 years? But don't think that will happen.. The Warwick woman yesterday claimed that she still don't know what she wants to do when she "grow up", and she's surviving fine, with a great job travelling around the world, getting an overfilling LT of audience. Will I be that lucky and find a job that I really like? Will someone pay me for doing something that I like? What do I like? Glad I asked today, and got a really good answer.. so i didn't waste my afternoon, though effectively I did work for only half an hour.

QQ likes that "funny girl" so much. She's like her kai xin guo, to make her day so much better. But it's true that she's super funny, and disruptive too. haha

Was walking through that underpass leading towards MRT and the guy (the short one) was singing "Stand By Me". Suddenly all the memories flood back, the 8-bars repeat until you think that the song is about to finish, the score that you see for one practice and then can throw it away forever, the evergreen encore piece, the "bye-bye, go back and sleep, audience" piece. Or to a smaller extent, the Takano piece which I accidentally deleted.. Music stores memories definitely.

Identify KI(aq) in 1 step

I just realised how easy it is.. Fe(III) is yellow in solution. How could I have missed that? Just add everything to Fe(III), and the one that changes it brown is KI. Trust me to come up with some stupid answer like KI is stored in a dark bottle. Really lame answer.

Fridays are long days, guess it's pretty much as long for all our teachers, so they either come in as lame or as tired as us. Mr Wong was more interested in the Raffles cat outside the window than our overturning ships with high metacentres. Oh yeah, and hk and him were competing with each other to kill flying mosquito-like insects, and ended up wondering how mosquitoes can suck blood of different blood groups and not die. Last week he was giving lame reasons to why the radioactive substance should be kept in a lead container which is contained again in a wooden box, he said it was to let people draw a picture of the radioactive sign on the box. Mr Khoo as usual, got carried away while trying to explain something and ended up somewhere so complex that no one found their ways there. Oh, and Andy got a fishing game set for his birthday, so there was an intense fishing competition among the guys during the 10min break that we got. Not a bad Friday, just lots of work to do this wknd.

GP video was The Matrix! How rare to let us watch a movie for once instead of the usual documentaries..

Went for the Engineering talks. The NTU guy was really nice, although he was so biased towards RJ. He was putting ideas into our brains, trying to make us lobby for a casino to be built cos gamblers are the people who pay the most, paying for the building of Esplanade for example, and he was driving us to the overseas universities instead of staying in Singapore. But I agree with him, or want to agree with him, especially about the overseas part.

Went for Xian Liang's wake. Sad for his father, lost both wife and son, a son who was really smart. Anyway today was more of a sit around and chat with old friends than a sit around and remember him thing, saw quite a few people whom I'll usually have no opportunities of meeting, like Tsz Shan, Wan Yie, Miss Goh (our Sec 2 super pretty relief science teacher), Weizhu, Ruoya, Sabrina, Winnie and Ying Heng. Wow, they were primary school friends. Shows how small Singapore is.

Saying a big 'Hi' to you who's reading this, especially to those whom I have not spoken to for ages. Enjoy your life!

My personality

Got the PSC test results, quite inaccurate I think. But I'm no judge, so hopefully you'll tell me whether it's the results are accurate or not.

First on the aptitude tests, they say such positive things that it's difficult to tell what is really good and what's not. Is outstanding better than excellent? Or is it the other way round? I can't tell.
Personality test, the accurate part, I am very self-contained, I do not interact effectively in social situations. That is true, at least that's the way I answered the PSC questions. I am discreet and keep things to myself, in other words, I do not communicate my views and feelings, true, I do not participate in social situations, probably true.
Now to the inaccurate part, I do not consider other people's emotions and pressures?? I am able to defend my own views?? I do not listen to othe people's views and ideas? I never knew that. And I'm as imaginative and idea-oriented as the average person. I didn't know Singaporeans are that unimaginative.

Looking at my blog and at me, it's really hard to understand why I want to study Biochem, or Engineering, cos my deepest interst and things which inspire me clearly don't come from those areas. My favourite subject in sch is not bio, nor physics.. But I choose my fave subject according to how interesting it is and how well I do in it.. Maybe I should really forget about Singapore scholarships and go to a liberal arts school. But who'll know whether I can decide what I want to study even after a year in uni?

Class video is coming out fine. It's really so much better with the music.

Shocked

Received this SMS from Hui Chuan today during the UK briefing, Xian Liang passed away.. What? Was that a joke? Second time I got such a scary msg this year. This yr must be a bad one.

Picked up my phone this morning, and picked out 4 ants crawling on it. Get off my property, ants! Gross, how can I answer my phone peacefully any more, with ants crawling on it and eavesdropping on my conversations. Anyway, during that UK briefing, I found another ant trapped inside my phone, it was crawling in the display. Xiaohui said I found myself a new pet. Guess I'll have a microwaved pet ant soon. But the ant disappeared, so I assumed that it either found a way out, or found the inside of my phone too comfortable and decided to stay there and eat up the mechanics of the phone. Now I know why my battery's running out so fast, must be those ants sucking away the power.
Gosh, in a crappy mood indeed.

Got the UCAS form, suddenly felt nervous about the hurry, the pressure of the deadlines and applying suddenly sank in. The September 31st deadline. That's really not far away, considering the preps for pre-lims and pre-lims from now to Sep 31. A lot of things to do. Really.

HK was asking about changes in me. Hmm, learnt that GP homework need not be handed in on time, bad bad influence on me. Think i'll lag behind forever, conclusions, essay, compre.. all at the same time. Hopefully I'll finish them all. Learnt to rank the importance of things-to-do, though still dreadfully lousy at it, ranking things which I don't like doing last.. bad. Grew more grouchy and impatient with my parents, bad. Anything good? Probably, learnt how to ask for help when I need it, especially this year. (I didn't know before. haha) Tried to appear more friendly perhaps, know that I have an AP face sometimes.. hmm, don't really know what else.. will probably add on to this list as time passes.

I'm psychic!

vowed not to switch on my com today but well, since my mom switched it on, might as well use it.. must start studying soon, at my present rate and with my present schedule, I'll be lagging in tutorials by next week

anyway, after medicine talk today, I just had this nervous/ excited feeling, that kind of thing adrenaline do, but couldn't find the reason why. I can't be excited by the thought of doing medicine right? I don't even want to be a doctor. It can't be the thought of doing Normal Distribution tutorial also. Anyway, so I went home and opened the mailbox, and guess what? That letter of notification for me to collect my organ results was lying right on top of that whole stack of mail. Am I psychic or what?

confirmed that medicine is not my cup of tea. One major down, 100 more to go.

Came home with people that I don't usually talk to. Learnt that their relationship is really more than very good friends. They know so much about each other, care so much for each other. Really worry for each other. woa. It's going to be one longlasting relationship..
 
the last post was just to test the photo blogging function. Quite fun.. =)

editting the video, feel like some DNA splicing machine, cutting away the introns, joining the exons together
 
Anyway, found this picture of me the other day, didn't know it existed. I was young then, though probably slightly overaged in that competition, but I won! yea! I looked thin. haha.
 
 
上圖右邊為冠軍:薛拾楓; 亞軍:羅浩員; 季軍:朱廷軒

And here's my food, looks good. Gerard said that red plates stimulate appetite, remember?

冠軍之得獎之菜式

Inspired

oh cool, no more html formatting needed. They should have this function long time ago.
 
Be careful of what comes out of your mouth, as in words that come out of your mouth. You never knew which word will strike which person in which nerve. Sounds like an advice for people to choose their words carefully. Nope, I'm trying to say that something you say might just touch me in the right spot and I'll be inspired, or motivated to do something or to seriously think about something, whatever that might be. Was inspired today by one of the teachers during tutorials. Weird right? Cos I usually don't pay much attention in tutorials, functioning with only half of my brain power. But somehow I listened, and I'm glad I did.
 
Chem prac was a mad rush. Were we all so slow? Anyway didn't like it, what's the point of handing in stuff that's not the best that I can give? The answers were so not thought-through, just see and write, so mechanical. Didn't have time to do the parts which require a bit more thinking, like the part where you add alkali, and then add acid and get yellow solution, or the part about how to improve the thermochem expt..
 
still trying to find out who said the thing about everything is about perspectives in that philosophy video..

UIUC talk

learnt quite a few things abt US universities, cleared some of the flurry fuzzy misconceptions I had.. interesting trip home, talking about universities.. just wish I have a better idea of what I want to study and do in the future. Shall go for more of these talks, considering ponning pe next week to go for 1 of those talks..

for some reason or another, I can't stand lectures nowadays, they feel sooo longgg, almost never-ending. After about 50min of lecture, I'll be so restless and start looking at my watch every 5 min, so I'll have to look at my watch 5-6 times every lecture, even during post-mortem. This is such a lousy word, like someone died and doing autopsy on him. eew.

talking about eew, that milo + yoghurt thing during zhong ji mi ma was really eew, although it tasted quite normal, and I would know cause I kept losing.. Christine too good liao.

oh yeah, wish mr khoo will stop calling me during GP. Very irritating when half the time my brain don't function in tutorials. And I just had this feeling that he's going to call me today, and he did. And I gave a really rude answer. oops. Glad it's video tomorrow.

Doing some reflections.. found nothing spectacular about me that i can advertise about.. or am I falling into the trap? Found nothing good that no one else don't have.. Don't have 1 single event that changed the entire direction of my life. Everything's so gradual. No big issue that's so impt to me. How?

If there's anything that really helped build me, it's probably band, dhssb. That hierarchial, non-democratic system. The band music made me confident, in music and otherwise. How's that I don't know, probably because band's so loud, it doesn't really matter how I play.. Then bring it to other areas of my life, blasting on organ. Haha. The rising up the hierarchy thing probably helped too. Oh yeah, Mr Ng seldom pick on me, was able to ace throught indoor tests that I didn't take and get promoted, that's one morale-booster. Can't believe I only took 1 indoor test in my 4 yrs there.
Band landed me in that horrible time I had at the end of Sec 2, and also pulled me out of it. Escape from reality, band didn't really do that, but maybe stop thinking abt reality for a while when you concentrate from 7.45-6pm on music during camps.

might write on that.. but that's boring too..

Elan, so similar to the actual one. Andoh's so good at arranging. must learn the pieces..
anyway, here's what he thinks of the concert:
コンサートのほうも６００名ぐらい来てくれてて、とても
楽しかったー！
Come more often and you'll get more audience and enjoy it more!

Andoh Yoshihiro rocks!

Hmm, actually I predicted that will be my title today yesterday. Haha. Went for his concert on Stagea today. Great concert, made my day.. Got his photo and autograph!! Yay!! Haha, sound like some hua chi teenage girl right?

At 6.30, I was there already, but stupid me didn't dare to go play because of all the ushers there.. wasted chance. Anyway, Andoh san is such a good composer. His LAUDA was so beautiful, a nice tropical island with green mountains and native tribes, at least that was what I felt it was. So good, it was the piece that touched me the most. The concert was more of a Andoh concert than a Stagea promotion, wished there were more intro of the instru, but nvm, can always go for some free demo by that Mina woman.

Was wondering how many people are really touched by his music.. How many people really know how to appreciate it? There was this guy in front of me who was playing games on his PDA, and other people who left at interval.. I was moved, especially by LAUDA and Another Century.. guess I'm still an orchestra person, cos I liked the orchestra pieces most. Found the effects pieces too noisy.. Traditional piece was OK, quite realistic and interesting, with the monks singing but I found it too loud also..human voice can really draw everyone's attention.. Romantic pieces, I wasn't really paying attention, was trying to take good pictures of him.. Dance Pop pieces were very infective, was moving to the beat, and he was disco-ing on the bench. Haha. He's so thin and fair that he looked like a wriggling snake.

Understood why performers had to move. Practical reason: to shift weight around so you won't fall when you pedal with both legs. Perfomance reason: to show the audience what the mood is supposed to be, not just let them hear, but let them see too, cos they are this bunch of people who don't open their ears to the max, and need their eyes to help them get into the music. Andoh is good, great voice, though I didn't understand a sentence he spoke, amazing music, really techie, quite interactive too. MC was lousy, if she can't talk, should get a script. Used countless fillers, you know, you know, I don't know.. Interpreter was good, actually managed to show us what koto is. Haha.

The audience was made of kids and their friends, kids and their families. I'm overaged, as usual. Thought I saw Jian Wei there, the eupho guy from DHSSB who was a J1 xiao you when I was a Sec 1, with his girlfriend. Thought he recognised me, cos we just stared at each other. Really stare. Was waiting for him to say hi, but since he didn't, neither did i.

The concert really made my day, despite the lousy GP result once again for the CTs.. guess I'll get some single digit percentile again. *sigh* and I really don't wanna land in remedial.. Andoh rocks.

Get that guy outta my house!!!

Shut up man!! What are u doing at my house at this hour yelling at my mum, talking cock?? it's just a hundred bucks. What's wrong with u? Not like we're not paying u.. just paying u after the u've finished ur job. And stop that Singaporean/ Chinese people shit.. What rubbish discrimination! Shut UP!! Get OUT OF MY HOUSE, you agent!!

Sorry for the language.. This is gonna be a long night.. cops are coming i think..

2's company, 3's a crowd

Don't agree at all.. 2 is too little, 3 is the best size. when u're in 2s there's a pressure to respond to whatever the other party's saying, to come up with some sensible response.. when u're in a group, or just 3 people, the pressure is drastically reduced, 50% discount..

of course, in 2s, you get the attention that you need, the other person is forced to listen to you, and you'll get to know each other better

like those in that special 2-people long-term relationship. but people always get married and have kids, and it'll be no longer 2 people, but 3, 4, 5, 6... Then these parents will spend too much time and love on the kids and neglect each other or something, and they'll long for the 2-pple-world that they once had. So they look for the 2-pple world outside the home, and so on, and they go to the lawyer and sign those papers.. if they have 2 kids, each takes one and it'll be a 2-people-world with the kid.. Think of the kids, parents! Do they want to be alone with you? Have u ever asked them? Maybe they prefer 2 fighting parents to the total attention and love given by one parent. Would you have known? They might be too polite to tell you..

What's my point? I don't know either..
(um, i'm not targeting anyone, just to let you know, so don't be offensed)