I'm a cheaterbug, I peeped at a reference. Couldn't help it. Envelop was too lousy. I had to change the envelop, and while i was changing it, i peeped. Aiyah, they should all do it the way RJ seals envelops. Make sure that i can't open it. Anyway, the rec is so truthful and direct that it hurts. Ouch. So so true, so descriptive of me. Nothing fanciful, just me. No chance liao.. haha

After all the excitement on HKUST, i'm going to miss the application deadline cos I can't ask miss lee to write my rec now and send it within the month right? *sigh*, and for HKU, there's a personal statement, which is detering me from applying. Guess I won't apply hong kong after all. I'm sick of applications. Hope i get into UC, and solve most of my probs.

On second thoughts, the rec is not that bad lah. I like the last sentence. I hope he really meant it...

Talked to a stranger. I've known him for let's see half an hour and hear his wisdom:

唸書很辛苦, 我知道, 書永遠看不夠, 也唸不完, 但是唸對書確很重要.
找對老師, 進對學校, 考對系, 就是要念對的科系.
很多學校學的後來在社會上都派不上用場, 但最主要是去學習研究的方法和觀念, 會影響你將來工作的態度和作為.
人外有人天外有天..怎麼都覺得自己很渺小
加油囉!

Basically summed up all there is to an undergrad education.
My mom will freak if she finds out I'm talking to a stranger at midnight.

Found shane and renee's blog by accident. I won't read that again. Makes me a bit jealous of the talent and opportunities and friendship some people have..

Not in the happiest moods.. I should create a law of ups and downs, or more chim, it'll be law of elevation and depression. When you jump up, you land and dig a hole in the ground. The higher you jump, the deeper the hole will be, and the more time and strength you need to climb out of it. Yeah, life is a sine curve, it goes up a distance and goes down the same distance, only difference is that the x-axis has been adjusted, and you can't find out when you're going up or down..

The moment before dawn is always the darkest.

Do I look like I can be a good teacher? Why does everyone think that I can teach?

Yesterday, Sunny's party. Sunny's house is so huge, at least I think so, and there was sooo much food. Great food, her parents are, i think a bit too 热情, wonder how many days they'll need to finish up all the food. Parents should keep in mind that teens nowadays don't eat much, especially the girls, they eat pathetically little, maybe to save food for the African children..
It was supposed to be a sad parting, we won't see each other until, theoretically, March, when the results come out, but it didn't seem to end any differently from other class outings.. Haha, guess we know that we'll just meet up some day anyway.

Wish I got acceptance letters instead of rejection ones.. will feel so good to know that some school will take me next yr.

Today was less boring than I expected. Cos there was a lot of singing and the kids were really cute, and my teacher was nice enough keep me entertained throughout the long speeches. And as usual, there're lots of friendly people around who say hi and thnks to me, even though i don't know any of them. Sorry to say this but I really wonder how many people in there really understood all the words, their Chinese must be really good. And Beef, I met your secret good friend. Haha. Not a secret any more.

My teacher was talking abt the types of students that he teaches and i think I'm the type who's a bit 钱多没地方花. Sometimes i really wonder why i go on and on and on, sometimes i think i should just save up the little money that I have for uni.. since, i can't go far in music anyway. Well, at least he claims that he doesn't put me in that category..
I think that I have made 1 wrong move in my music career, and I've moved in that wrong direction for too long before correcting it, so it's extremely hard to get the direction back again, i'll have to start from the beginning again. Basically, I can't have a music career, even if i want to...... Sometimes parents are right

Imagine my shock when I heard that the woman who wears leopard skins is Iskandar's wife.. my jaw dropped, literally..

I'm lousy, i believe i'll get what i want if only i ask.. but i just 开不了口.. And there's so many things that i want now. Darn

extensive blogging today.
Will be playing at evelyn's church this sunday, if you are interested to come watch, contact me.

OK, my book's found. Yup MG's there and it's with her now. phew..

I am an absolute idiot. How could I have lost my book? Hope it's still there and nobody koped it. Great, now nobody i know can check if it's still there, hope no strangers use that place, pray that MG's there.. urgh, how careless of me!!

Hong Kong

Went 香港，深圳，广州 and my Cantonese has definitely improved. Think I've got my Pri 2 vocabulary back..

Hong Kong: everything is tall and narrow. Tall buildings, narrow streets. Although air isn't very clean, Hong Kong looks colourful, especially at night, not like China where everything is gray and gray. Christmas lights are more fantastic than usual, they actually move. The Avenue of Stars is well, a mini Hollywood Walk of Fame, for HK movie industry I guess, and a lot of the stars are already dead.
HK People are so 自动，on escalators, everybody just move to one side, leaving a clear passageway for those people who like to walk up escalators. Kindergarten kids look so cute in tiny blazers. Bet I looked like that when I was that age. =) People are really efficient, shops are super professional, even the tiny ones, like a 五金店 will sell every nail and screw and whatever you'll ever need. Went to buy jeans, and the shopkeeper knows exactly which pair will look good on me. I tried on a few other pairs and none of them looked as good as the one he recommended. Amazing people. Hong Kong immigration officers look real good in uniform, and they are actually very friendly. They smile and talk to you. Breezed through ID making the first day. Singapore immigration will never be this efficient.

Went 香港大学，科技大学，中文大学. HKU is well, rather old. It actually has architecture, not like NTU which in my opinion is just cement blocks plunged onto the ground. Was peeping into the rooms and actually saw an electronic organ in one of the music prac rooms. A really old one, one of those cardboard kind i used to play when i still had a single digit age.
HKUSTU is really new and looks so good. The view from the school is really breathtaking. The school is on a hill and overlooks the sea and 新界. The campus is on the slopes so moving from one block to another may means taking the elevator down 10 floors. Happy climbing if the elevators break down. It's a campus that I really like, it feels very welcoming.
Chinese U is in a real ulu place, actually i didn't notice much about the school cos i was quite tired then and it was some master's graduation there on that day so there were people wearing those graduation robes everywhere and somehow I always get asked to take photos for people.

i shall stop being cool and show more emotions, show that i'm enthu and excited when i am..

sunday, grad nite
Spent ~$250, compared to ~$70 for DHS prom.. grad nite should be renamed dress nicely and take photo night, cos that's probably what everyone did.

ok, yesterday, qq's outing
kboxing.. sang pretty much every nice song on the list, nice to have people who likes diff kind of songs, then get to listen to different types of songs.. Found out that qi qiong has such a great singing voice, she should sing more often. Too bad if you were not there yesterday. She's really good.
Then went Singapore River + Fullerton, Fullerton looks so gorgeous, all the Christmas decor made it look so elegant.

today,
found out so many things.. haha. Went NUS, walked around, got bored and went Jurong Point to meet xx and eat.. her logic was that since we're in the west, might as well go all the way to the very west, so we had a journey to the west to Jurong Point.
then went for music lesson, my first ever theory lesson in my life, can't believe it, how did i pass through all those practicals without theory. So nice of my teach, specially went mp to teach me. haha. anyway, saw ms goh again, so qiao, she was using his studio.. found out why they are such good friends, they were once classmates, interesting, which means he's really old, should hurry up get married. Beef, please go and ask him to choose a girlfriend and get married soon.

oh yes, i must not regret my decisions, no regrets, cos i made my decisions with my brain and not with instincts, so it's a human decision, not an animal one.. i'll probably know if it's wrong, few yrs later, especially if i take up a scholarship.. oh shit, really think i'll regret this..

sheryl was saying sth about singaporeans getting robbed and mugged overseas. I don't think I'll be robbed or mugged, I think I'll be cheated, badly. And I wouldn't even know that I've been cheated, will probably think I zhuan4 dao4. I must learn to say no. No, No, No.. Hope I wasn't cheated.

photos: http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2134554628

or you can always wait for me to invite u to the album

Somehow I get this feeling that people expect me to say something in some situations and I stupidly not say them, like I don't get the hints.. and i get this feeling that people think I expect them to say something when I actually don't.. Went see my teach yesterday, and felt that we were talking in 2 levels, the spoken conversation, the "hi how are u, now very free" and so on, and the underlying, "i think u want me to say this, u think i want u to do this" conversation, actually I didn't really bother reading into his conversations, but I guess he read mine, though I actually didn't mean to say anything more than what I said. if I give hints, I'll give them openly.. I'm too lazy to think nowadays.

Don't understand how people can enjoy shopping..

Firefly interview. If I were the interviewer and I knew me well enough, I wouldn't give me the scholarship. Well, I'm glad I found out what they are looking for.. and I don't think it's me.

IEC 2004

Royston won IEC! Wow! Think he's the 1st Singaporean to win it in electone history.. Heard from everybody how great he is, wish I heard his performance.

Interview

Wanted to blog yesterday, typed halfway and my com crashed.

Interviews: they remind me of oral exams. Chinese orals especially, for some reason or another. When the interviewer asks a question, i'll just sprout whatver that comes to my mind first. If i only thought of 1 thing, then that'll be what i say, and i'll try to stall time to think by elaborating that 1 pt. But since I can't multitask, I either end up being incoherent or just stuck with 1 point. If I thought of more than 1 point, then I'll have to keep the points in my head while talking abt something else, and hopefully by the time I finish my 1st point, I can still remember what I want to say.. and say them without jumbling everything together. Well, 1 good thing abt interview is that you can always explain more if they don't understand, not like essays with word limits.. Yesterday's interview, i probably broke all the rules, all the yah, erm, aahs punctuating my sentences. Guess the interview didn't help me, but at least i got a warm up for Firefly.

Yes exams have ended and I think doing that Chem S paper would be quite enjoyable if I have more time, don't need to choose questions and not panicking. But no I didn't feel bad about exams ending, not like I did in Sec 4. Probably because I'm not a wandering spirit yet, I have 2000 things to do before I can be a free soul, which is really good. But there are other more interesting things I want to do, and actually, shopping for a prom dress is not one of them.. well, i guess they'll have to wait.

I don't think I can say that my birthday wish didn't come true if I didn't even make that birthday wish on my birthday. Was pretty crazy about it for a while, but guess it just doesn't matter so much any more, since I didn't even remember it on my birthday. I've found things that matter more to me, like friends, and maybe that's what I should write in my essays.. grr, stupid essays. and interviews, stupid interviews.. grr

Cochineal beetles and drugs

Cochineal is a natural red colour from the egg yolks and other parts of the dried female insect Dactylopius coccus Costa, a parasite of the prickly pear cactus. The insects occur in colonies covered with a fluffy wax that they secrete. The major regions of Cochineal production are South America, especially Peru, and the Canary Islands. It is an expensive colourant and is therefore not in common use: it requires 70,000 insects to make one pound of colour. The product, which in its processed form is usually called Carmine, is a crumbly solid or a powder.http://www.unicapinvitrosight.com/templates/Allergens.asp?id=2532

drug (n.)
1. A substance used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of a disease or as a component of a medication.
2. A chemical substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen, that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction.
~The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary

Commercially, barium is made on small scale by the electrolysis of molten barium chloride, BaCl2.
cathode: Ba2+(l) + 2e- --> Ba anode: Cl-(l) --> 1/2Cl2 (g) + e-
Barium metal can also be islated from the reduction of barium oxide, BaO, with aluminium.
6BaO + 2Al --> 3Ba + Ba3Al2O6

I was walking to MRT today and saw Clarence. I was on my way to school and he's going Aljunied to eat before going to school. VJ is just so near. Anyway, I nv knew he's a French genius, he said that he's fighting with Jaireh to get the top marks for French, wow. Unless they are the only 2 people taking French which shouldn't be the case, he's really good. Nv knew he became so involved in French, he's actually going France for uni. Other than the French part he's still the same I think, except that VJ suits him more than DHS perhaps, he sounds so much happier.. yeah, and we actually talked about a primary sch reunion instead of a sec sch reunion, how weird.

Somehow I think A levels are more enjoyable than O levels, don't know why but I remember that O levels were not fun at all..

went bedok to eat today, then realised that the hawker centre at the interchange closed down.. how lucky, so we went to the hawker outside TJ.. how interesting. Too bad didn't really know what's good there, so ended up anyhow buying stuff to eat.
I really think that if anyone saw us this week after papers, they wouldn't think that we're having exams.. Hanged (is there such a word?) around the post office at Ghim Moh the other day for an hour, then today went Bedok to eat.. Haha.. Anyway I have faith in us all, we will all get our As.

This week's Time is so good. It's a travel guide to so many places in Asia, Singapore has a swimming pool in Changi Airport featured as the best airport surprise.. There's a section on the worst of asia, and one of the worst things is summer: let me quote
"goes on way too long. In Singapore, it seems to never end. (The government has to do something about this.)"
I don't get it. What did the govt do? Someone pls enlighten me if u find out.

Education system is changing so much, in 5 yrs time when we are out of uni, we wouldn't be able to relate to the pri, sec, jc people any more, cos everything's so different. PW, science practicals, counselors in school, O level, A level, maybe they'll abolish S papers soon..

about my last post, i'm not sad or depressed or blaming anyone for anything, just typing down some stuff that i've been thinking about. so, thanks to those people who showed concern, but i'm fine. =) next time i write such things i'll put lots of smiley faces around. =) =D =Þ hee hee.

so funny, mole said he thought about me last week, hope it was during GP papers, and hope his powerful english telepathic messages reached me and i'll do well for gp for once. Haha. mole's a family friend from USA who's starting eng classes

so far, don't think i've had the chance to put my brain engines to high power during exams.. there's either not enough time (like bio today) or too much time (like maths today), either not enough time to think, or too much time so can take my own time working through the questions. Do I want it to stay this way? I wouldn't mind, but it's probably harder to get As like that.

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so what? so what if he claimed that I was his best student, it's probably all changed now, and if it's not, it'll change in a yr's time. I'm not talented. so what if i get a fantastic recommendation? i can't promote myself properly cos i don't have the substance to promote. My playing suck so badly, I'll have to reject invitations to play in public. How to make recording? So what if I take up composing? no one will ever see or play my scores, just like no one heard me play. Is there any point in doing things when nobody knows you've done those things? Are those things really done?

I was reading the Chicago U book, it says that U Chic wants to provide a uni education that's not just one which we have to go through, but one that gives students firm foundations and allow them to go on to the next step. Building foundations, haven't we been doing that for the past 12 years? What are we building foundations for? What are we going to put above the foundations? When is it that we stop building foundations and start building the real structure, or are we building foundations and structures at the same time? What are we aiming for? Is there a final building that we are aiming towards?

I'm running out of time. I'll nv forgive myself if i don't get an A for Physics, or worse don't get A for Chem.

Nvm, q sad, last time doing GP, not that I ever liked doing GP stuff, but as I was telling my TERP partner this yr before CT1, GP's the only non-science/maths thing we do, it's sometimes a good way to relax those science/maths part of the brain, act felt q lost when i came home and saw my GP stuff lying on my desk, kind of wondering what to do with them.. haha, my GP evaluation form was so negative, so unprepared for GP exam, the only positive thing was that i enjoyed the subject.. haha

Anyway, it's sunny's birthday!! Everyone's getting older.. ok duh. Had a great cheese/ yoghurt cake, went Mac to eat, ended up playing games there. Those games are really addictive. I bet if we didn't have to go back to sch the last time we went there with AS club, we would have played that PayDay thing for another month. Anyway, it's so unlike me, stayed and played with those people, sunny's friends, whom i don't exactly know well.. but well, it's fun. Then the stupid sky started raining, and we were trapped, so continued playing from lunch to dinner. Fantastic us, u would think we've finished our As or something.

Great, at least I got one decision made today. Will take music theory, finally. Don't know how high I can go though, hope my fundamentals and impros can take me up to a decent level.