yeah, tmr is a holiday.
Like.......finally!
During the collection of O lvl results period...some schools has like 3 days off, some had 5! And we only had ONE.
Also, after common tests other schools had things like sabbaticals or enrichment week, and for us it was just business as usual.
So, this is well and truly and well-deserved break for us la, and all thanks goes to all the sports players who earned us this break. =)
22 golds! Like...how good is that?
Oh, and next Wed too, will be a school holiday since 07 08 07 celebrations is at night.
So, guitar pracs are finally resuming and I am realising how weak I am, but yeah thankfully the people there are really nice and helpful, and I'll certainly have to spend time memorising that piece of paper which I have about the note arrangement on the guitar...so I'll be able to be more pro-active and be able to read guitar scores. It's like so embarrassing, knowing how to read music scores but not know their corresponding positions on the guitar.
And, the weeks seem increasingly stretched...with physics H3 and olympiad meaning it's now 5+2+2=9 hrs of physics per week. Aha. Boy am I going nuts about it. But yeah, I'm thankful I have my saturdays free, I know that if I compare, there are tons of people who are so much busier than me, from those pple like AG who had to spend the whole week helping out for Lit week and Othello, councillors....etc. I am always so amazed at how these people can manage their time so well, and I have a lot of respect for such people.
So really, I hate myself when I try to compare myself with people who are so free, have few commitments, and think that I should pity myself. Oh, that would be my downfall.
As busy as I am, I know it's really only from my point of view, and if all things are relative, (or as economists would say relative to the marginal 'product'), I really shoudn't be lamenting anymore.
Perhaps if future work requires me to, then I'd have no choice, but I won't let myself be deprived of football for the next year or so. I know, Arsenal are a shadow of the team they once were. The Untouchables - Henry, Pires, Vieira, are just a shadow of their former self. They are no longer the match winners they once were. Yes, and now Ljunberg is the next one to go. He was the one that helped us to win 13 in a row in 2001-02 to storm from 12 points behind at one stage to beat Man United to the beat, and believe me, the sweetness of that was more than winning 03-04 unbeaten. yes, I remembered young me, boasting all over football forums then, yes. Now, I think about it.
Chelsea. Match winners? Cech. Terry. Carvalho. Lampard. Drogba. Joe Cole.
Man United? Ronaldo. Rooney. Giggs.
Liverpool? Gerrard. Carragher. Maybe Torres.
And, for Arsenal? yes, the first name people will probably mention is Fabregas, but seriously, the only one Arsenal have is van Persie. So, yes, I'm resigned to the fact that we are way behind in terms of quality relative to the other of the top 4. But hey, ask the same question of any other team in the premier league. And they would probably have none. If Arsene could swap any players now with any other player from the other 16 clubs, the only one that would be of interest is Berbatov or Tevez. Forget Michael Owen.
The beauty of football is that the whole is not the sum of it's parts, but rather, how they interact with one another.
And yes, I am eagerly awaiting Aug. 11. As for now I'll be doing all I can to offset the reduction in focus on studying come that day.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Just came back from Class Adventure Camp.
As usual, we had lots of fun and laughter with the many jokes, funny remarks, and pervertic statements we cracked, but the planning of the entire camp really left much to be desired, in my opinion.
We were first spilt into feed me, protect me, and lead me groups, such lame names, but yeah it our class did it totally randomly and I was in feed me (cooking), which I totally suck at.
After arriving at Ubin, we had lunch and found out that the "non-drinking (but SUITABLE for washing hands etc.)" water had a tinge of brown on it. An understatement indeed. Managed to get a shot of Chen Xi staring at a 'STOP' sign for more than 3 minutes. Haha. Talk about spiritual link. zz.
Then we had our hiking activity which was pretty lame, just using a map and finding locations based on grid coordinates. Yes, it involved pacing and reading of bearings and checking of landmarks, and perhaps it's because I've been there twice for ATC (and OBS people would find it equally similar), it just felt a little boring. Got to 3 checkpoints until Yiting had an "eye ulcer" which was quite bad, so she unfortunately had to go home and we decided to abandon the hike thing and just stone around the basketball court.
Then, this facilitator made us solve this problem cum game which was about throwing stones. It was so diffucult and a high level of skill was required and so we couldn't do it, sigh, but what was worst was when we found out that the "solution" was really just that and involved so much skill and speed which made it as good as impossible. Or maybe TJ would have the solution to that if he was there, lol.
Well that burnt a lot of time and me ahlu and shiya went to buy dinner with whatever money we had 'earned', and how lucky that we could take the van all the way to the campsite, leaving the rest who had left quite awhile ago in their wake. I felt guilty though, lol. So we reached the campsite and to our relief there the water was at the least transparent. Man, the psychological effect of such differences cannot be underestimated.
So anyway we got about cooking dinner while the 'protect me' people were working hard setting up our 'tents'. Due to the restricted budgeting dinner was the usual noodles with canned food. Fortunately the pot did not collapse and thanks to great 'healthy food cookers' like Anna and Shiya dinner was pretty good, I.M.O again.
After that we had an oh-so-exciting nightwalk, where it was like a km or two of a straight trail which got darker and darker as you kept walking on. Of course I went solo for the kick of it, and yeah I just spent some time saying a prayer, and the rest of the walk reliving Federer's awesome win against Nadal, which I'll get to later.
So that was all for the main day of the hyped-up camp, and by 11 we were free to do whatever we wanted / sleep. So anyway fortunately due to my golf club membership, I got to sleep in the neatest tent along with 3/4 of the bridge club and xinyi and friends. lol. It was big but still tight for space. Anyway, we spent like an hour or so just plain joking about the day and about Giraffe, lol, which is what I call amusement. Oh, and AG's occasional random sick jokes. Ah, I really pitied the girls i.e. the bridge club people, esp. Giraffe for they just couldn't fall asleep for a long long time no matter how much they tried, esp. Alicia, haha. Not that we boys could do any better with the exception of Chris, lol, definitely not with non-stop comments about hurting internal organs and the tenderness of Giraffe neck meat, lol. zz.
So the average person had like 2-3 hrs of sleep. Which was OK for a camp la. Woke up at 7 and had a (as AG would agree) fun time cutting all the strings and destroying the tents, and hurling rocks down into the water and folding groundsheets and compressing them so much till they were able to fit into the bags which we were provided with. Breakfast was the bread with jam and lychee syrup. Big thanks to Giraffe for holding the bottle of jam and helping so many people spread jam on their bread. After that, Yong Jin and I played bridge with half of the bridge club i.e. Alicia and Joanna, where Yong Jin kept losing...aha.
At 9 we left the campsite anticipating something interesting like high elements or something of the sort but all we got to do was this sick task where we had to be blindfolded and walk together maintaining contact and eventually finding A tree quite SOME distance away and having everyone's hand touch the tree. I didn't really get the objective of such a task because it heavily relied on the skills of the front person, and whether she could walk straight and not get disorientated. Full marks to Elita for trying so hard and it must have been tough trying to do something virtually impossible and impractical. Hmmm, either that or maybe 'we chose one of a million possible strategies and it just happened to be one which wasn't suited for us'. Oh whatever la. I mean, fair enough, the facilitators (who according to Bong are primary 5 camp - rejectees) were doing their best to make the most out of the activities which had been planned for us, it was just that the activities were way too boring and un-interesting for us. Yes, my sympathy goes out to them if the events had been pre-planned by some other people but if otherwise then......
So that was it! And we were like off and heading back to Singapore i.e. civilisation and being within Singtel's network range, lol. Didn't really have much of a lunch, and just boarded the bus back to RJ the moment we got off the boat. Was left to do some cleaning stuff which was pretty...fun, splashing water to clean the groundsheets at the watermelon steps. And then, the best part of the 2 days....filling in the feedback forms! Boy were the few of us desperately waiting for it to really give the school our peace of mind so that future batches of j1s who go to Ubin as well enjoy themselves more. Speaking of that, it's just plain unfair that Jun Jie's class got to go to dairy farm and enjoy he high elements there. And still he thinks it's boring...haha. Well, thought about going to attend the first H3 phy lecture since it was only marginally after 1530 hrs...but then found out (rather obviously) that changing into uniform and staying awake would be too much for me to overcome, and so it was just home sweet home after that, heh.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Got some much-needed sleep in the late afternoon, since I had slept at 2 on Sunday night watching the Wimbledon final, which I must say is the best tennis match I've ever watched live, and it was a pity Mom wasn't here to watch; Dad and her were in Prague for a week. Federer, winner of the Wimbledon in the last 4 years was outplayed for large parts of the match, to the surprise of the crowd, by Nadal's deep strokes which I must admit, are damn impressive. It was 15-40 twice in the final set and any of the 4 break points lost would be equivalent to Nadal winning the title, but he amazingly held on with great determination and then played a series of stunning winners to earn his 5th in consecutive years, in what was a hugely unlikely victory considering how the match panned out. Well, Federer sure inspired me on Sunday. How he managed to dig his way out of such a sticky situation only he knows, but for that he has achieved immortality status in the sport. And he......deserves it.
As usual, we had lots of fun and laughter with the many jokes, funny remarks, and pervertic statements we cracked, but the planning of the entire camp really left much to be desired, in my opinion.
We were first spilt into feed me, protect me, and lead me groups, such lame names, but yeah it our class did it totally randomly and I was in feed me (cooking), which I totally suck at.
After arriving at Ubin, we had lunch and found out that the "non-drinking (but SUITABLE for washing hands etc.)" water had a tinge of brown on it. An understatement indeed. Managed to get a shot of Chen Xi staring at a 'STOP' sign for more than 3 minutes. Haha. Talk about spiritual link. zz.
Then we had our hiking activity which was pretty lame, just using a map and finding locations based on grid coordinates. Yes, it involved pacing and reading of bearings and checking of landmarks, and perhaps it's because I've been there twice for ATC (and OBS people would find it equally similar), it just felt a little boring. Got to 3 checkpoints until Yiting had an "eye ulcer" which was quite bad, so she unfortunately had to go home and we decided to abandon the hike thing and just stone around the basketball court.
Then, this facilitator made us solve this problem cum game which was about throwing stones. It was so diffucult and a high level of skill was required and so we couldn't do it, sigh, but what was worst was when we found out that the "solution" was really just that and involved so much skill and speed which made it as good as impossible. Or maybe TJ would have the solution to that if he was there, lol.
Well that burnt a lot of time and me ahlu and shiya went to buy dinner with whatever money we had 'earned', and how lucky that we could take the van all the way to the campsite, leaving the rest who had left quite awhile ago in their wake. I felt guilty though, lol. So we reached the campsite and to our relief there the water was at the least transparent. Man, the psychological effect of such differences cannot be underestimated.
So anyway we got about cooking dinner while the 'protect me' people were working hard setting up our 'tents'. Due to the restricted budgeting dinner was the usual noodles with canned food. Fortunately the pot did not collapse and thanks to great 'healthy food cookers' like Anna and Shiya dinner was pretty good, I.M.O again.
After that we had an oh-so-exciting nightwalk, where it was like a km or two of a straight trail which got darker and darker as you kept walking on. Of course I went solo for the kick of it, and yeah I just spent some time saying a prayer, and the rest of the walk reliving Federer's awesome win against Nadal, which I'll get to later.
So that was all for the main day of the hyped-up camp, and by 11 we were free to do whatever we wanted / sleep. So anyway fortunately due to my golf club membership, I got to sleep in the neatest tent along with 3/4 of the bridge club and xinyi and friends. lol. It was big but still tight for space. Anyway, we spent like an hour or so just plain joking about the day and about Giraffe, lol, which is what I call amusement. Oh, and AG's occasional random sick jokes. Ah, I really pitied the girls i.e. the bridge club people, esp. Giraffe for they just couldn't fall asleep for a long long time no matter how much they tried, esp. Alicia, haha. Not that we boys could do any better with the exception of Chris, lol, definitely not with non-stop comments about hurting internal organs and the tenderness of Giraffe neck meat, lol. zz.
So the average person had like 2-3 hrs of sleep. Which was OK for a camp la. Woke up at 7 and had a (as AG would agree) fun time cutting all the strings and destroying the tents, and hurling rocks down into the water and folding groundsheets and compressing them so much till they were able to fit into the bags which we were provided with. Breakfast was the bread with jam and lychee syrup. Big thanks to Giraffe for holding the bottle of jam and helping so many people spread jam on their bread. After that, Yong Jin and I played bridge with half of the bridge club i.e. Alicia and Joanna, where Yong Jin kept losing...aha.
At 9 we left the campsite anticipating something interesting like high elements or something of the sort but all we got to do was this sick task where we had to be blindfolded and walk together maintaining contact and eventually finding A tree quite SOME distance away and having everyone's hand touch the tree. I didn't really get the objective of such a task because it heavily relied on the skills of the front person, and whether she could walk straight and not get disorientated. Full marks to Elita for trying so hard and it must have been tough trying to do something virtually impossible and impractical. Hmmm, either that or maybe 'we chose one of a million possible strategies and it just happened to be one which wasn't suited for us'. Oh whatever la. I mean, fair enough, the facilitators (who according to Bong are primary 5 camp - rejectees) were doing their best to make the most out of the activities which had been planned for us, it was just that the activities were way too boring and un-interesting for us. Yes, my sympathy goes out to them if the events had been pre-planned by some other people but if otherwise then......
So that was it! And we were like off and heading back to Singapore i.e. civilisation and being within Singtel's network range, lol. Didn't really have much of a lunch, and just boarded the bus back to RJ the moment we got off the boat. Was left to do some cleaning stuff which was pretty...fun, splashing water to clean the groundsheets at the watermelon steps. And then, the best part of the 2 days....filling in the feedback forms! Boy were the few of us desperately waiting for it to really give the school our peace of mind so that future batches of j1s who go to Ubin as well enjoy themselves more. Speaking of that, it's just plain unfair that Jun Jie's class got to go to dairy farm and enjoy he high elements there. And still he thinks it's boring...haha. Well, thought about going to attend the first H3 phy lecture since it was only marginally after 1530 hrs...but then found out (rather obviously) that changing into uniform and staying awake would be too much for me to overcome, and so it was just home sweet home after that, heh.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Got some much-needed sleep in the late afternoon, since I had slept at 2 on Sunday night watching the Wimbledon final, which I must say is the best tennis match I've ever watched live, and it was a pity Mom wasn't here to watch; Dad and her were in Prague for a week. Federer, winner of the Wimbledon in the last 4 years was outplayed for large parts of the match, to the surprise of the crowd, by Nadal's deep strokes which I must admit, are damn impressive. It was 15-40 twice in the final set and any of the 4 break points lost would be equivalent to Nadal winning the title, but he amazingly held on with great determination and then played a series of stunning winners to earn his 5th in consecutive years, in what was a hugely unlikely victory considering how the match panned out. Well, Federer sure inspired me on Sunday. How he managed to dig his way out of such a sticky situation only he knows, but for that he has achieved immortality status in the sport. And he......deserves it.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Back-to-school week. And the problem I had of insomnia has disappeared, so be replaced by the usual bout of tiredness again. It seems like something which is either at one end or at the other end, something which never equilibrates, a la diarrhoea and constipation.
Well no guitar this week, so it's a good way to return to school. Although there's the small issue of olympiads and H3s looming as large as the dark clouds were at SW19 in London this week.
New timetable is pretty similar to the old one except now there is a PHY-PHY to add to the 3 consecutive hours of chem we have on monday. More importantly, changes to our tutors. Our dear CT Ms. Wu is now replaced by Mr Wong but he is away for a month of so, so our current PHY teacher is a female j3 teacher who is *ahem* attracting a lot of attention. Haha. Not that there's anything wrong la, seriously.
And now our CT is this Mr Lim guy and I'll give him a few more weeks before I comment on him. So we've got back math, chemistry and GP thus far. Physics and econs - not anticipated- to come next week. Well I guess our math CT isn't as difficult as other school's, but yeah considering the fact that I had barely 3 hours of sleep the night before, and getting so angry over insomnia, I'm glad I managed to maintain my concentration for the test and did well, so I'm glad, although I know there are much sicker tests to come. Anyway 6N truly owns, with like the only 2 students who scored full marks for math coming from there! Chem was bad, and I'm relieved to have been able to scrap the grade I got. GP was truly disappointing, reminiscent of the english marks I got during sec 3 and 4. Yeah well I guess for CTs it all boils down to the word 'relative', yeah, I can compare with people such as the geniuses that are in my class, and I can also compare with a load of other people and suddenly feel fortunate to be able to do better. So, oh wells, I'm fairly content, especially considering the noise that came from above every day of the holidays. But, I suppose subjects like GP and econs for me, will be works in progress, just like Rafael Nadal, just like Arsenal. Some people just start of doing well at stuff, and I'm thankful I'm coping pretty ok with the sciences. From my point of view, GP and econs, as bad as they seem, is not chinese. So hey, it's just more time and effort needed to be put in and I'm sure it'll improve - same thing for anyone facing a problem with a subject not chinese. And yeah, there's still plenty of time to work on them. And if (BIG IF) the A ever arrives eventually, the feeling will be all the more sweeter, and if it never comes, they hey, be glad that you've given your best shot at it, and there's no need to be obsessed with wanting to do well at it and resorting to retaking or rechecking or what not. Hats off to you if you know what I'm hinting about. Sometimes, you just need to hold your hand up and admit you got outdone. The point is never to be too confident, and never to be too disappointed. (Another eg. of something which never equilibrates)
Anyway, after sounding pretty (by my low low standards) philosophical I'll shift my focus to the rest of the week's events. My parents were off to Prague on holiday for a week, so it's just me and sis and our maid at home, and no construction noise any more, thankfully. Thurs CG was just great. Attendance for it was good, and I especially liked the sermon discussion session we had after that. It was truly insightful to discuss issues from the previous sermon by Ben Lee, and just allowing each person to share his or her own free-flowing thoughts, with no 'proper notes' or 'answers' to the question we 'attempted' to figure out. It was really enriching for all of us who participated in it, and that's the way we really should act, persevering to gain knowledge of the truth.
Well, today is LIVE EARTH day, and while a large percentage of the population will be spending it romancing and getting married - nothing wrong at all, what a wonderful way to spend such a day if you could - I got to do some reflection of the state of the earth, of global warming, and the scary thoughts of the world that the generation or two ahead of us would have to endure. Then again, there is nothing much that can feasibly be done without upsetting anyone. So, sigh, to the people who insist on not helping developing countries. Week after week such insightful editorials appear within the Straits Times, and I'm sure even better ones appear in the newpapers in the US or UK, and I'm even more sure that top government officials are aware of them, and hence the conclusion that they can't do much about it, which is sad.
Not so sad, is the state of Arsenal. Yes, Man U has had big signings like Nani, Anderson and Hargreaves, and Liverpool has Torres, and Chelsea still has the only one that keeps them alive and doing so well - the special one. But there's that stubborn confidence within me of Arsenal for next term, that they are so going to cope well. At least better than Real Madrid, who are so stupidly creating speculation after speculation about all of Arsenal, players, manager. zzz. All they do is aim to get quick-fixes which would so obviously backfire. Now they will become a worse-than-arsenal team with Beckham gone. Wahaha, the ethics of journalism.
Well, 7 days ago, I would have turned 17 17 days from now, on the 17th. Do the math.
Well no guitar this week, so it's a good way to return to school. Although there's the small issue of olympiads and H3s looming as large as the dark clouds were at SW19 in London this week.
New timetable is pretty similar to the old one except now there is a PHY-PHY to add to the 3 consecutive hours of chem we have on monday. More importantly, changes to our tutors. Our dear CT Ms. Wu is now replaced by Mr Wong but he is away for a month of so, so our current PHY teacher is a female j3 teacher who is *ahem* attracting a lot of attention. Haha. Not that there's anything wrong la, seriously.
And now our CT is this Mr Lim guy and I'll give him a few more weeks before I comment on him. So we've got back math, chemistry and GP thus far. Physics and econs - not anticipated- to come next week. Well I guess our math CT isn't as difficult as other school's, but yeah considering the fact that I had barely 3 hours of sleep the night before, and getting so angry over insomnia, I'm glad I managed to maintain my concentration for the test and did well, so I'm glad, although I know there are much sicker tests to come. Anyway 6N truly owns, with like the only 2 students who scored full marks for math coming from there! Chem was bad, and I'm relieved to have been able to scrap the grade I got. GP was truly disappointing, reminiscent of the english marks I got during sec 3 and 4. Yeah well I guess for CTs it all boils down to the word 'relative', yeah, I can compare with people such as the geniuses that are in my class, and I can also compare with a load of other people and suddenly feel fortunate to be able to do better. So, oh wells, I'm fairly content, especially considering the noise that came from above every day of the holidays. But, I suppose subjects like GP and econs for me, will be works in progress, just like Rafael Nadal, just like Arsenal. Some people just start of doing well at stuff, and I'm thankful I'm coping pretty ok with the sciences. From my point of view, GP and econs, as bad as they seem, is not chinese. So hey, it's just more time and effort needed to be put in and I'm sure it'll improve - same thing for anyone facing a problem with a subject not chinese. And yeah, there's still plenty of time to work on them. And if (BIG IF) the A ever arrives eventually, the feeling will be all the more sweeter, and if it never comes, they hey, be glad that you've given your best shot at it, and there's no need to be obsessed with wanting to do well at it and resorting to retaking or rechecking or what not. Hats off to you if you know what I'm hinting about. Sometimes, you just need to hold your hand up and admit you got outdone. The point is never to be too confident, and never to be too disappointed. (Another eg. of something which never equilibrates)
Anyway, after sounding pretty (by my low low standards) philosophical I'll shift my focus to the rest of the week's events. My parents were off to Prague on holiday for a week, so it's just me and sis and our maid at home, and no construction noise any more, thankfully. Thurs CG was just great. Attendance for it was good, and I especially liked the sermon discussion session we had after that. It was truly insightful to discuss issues from the previous sermon by Ben Lee, and just allowing each person to share his or her own free-flowing thoughts, with no 'proper notes' or 'answers' to the question we 'attempted' to figure out. It was really enriching for all of us who participated in it, and that's the way we really should act, persevering to gain knowledge of the truth.
Well, today is LIVE EARTH day, and while a large percentage of the population will be spending it romancing and getting married - nothing wrong at all, what a wonderful way to spend such a day if you could - I got to do some reflection of the state of the earth, of global warming, and the scary thoughts of the world that the generation or two ahead of us would have to endure. Then again, there is nothing much that can feasibly be done without upsetting anyone. So, sigh, to the people who insist on not helping developing countries. Week after week such insightful editorials appear within the Straits Times, and I'm sure even better ones appear in the newpapers in the US or UK, and I'm even more sure that top government officials are aware of them, and hence the conclusion that they can't do much about it, which is sad.
Not so sad, is the state of Arsenal. Yes, Man U has had big signings like Nani, Anderson and Hargreaves, and Liverpool has Torres, and Chelsea still has the only one that keeps them alive and doing so well - the special one. But there's that stubborn confidence within me of Arsenal for next term, that they are so going to cope well. At least better than Real Madrid, who are so stupidly creating speculation after speculation about all of Arsenal, players, manager. zzz. All they do is aim to get quick-fixes which would so obviously backfire. Now they will become a worse-than-arsenal team with Beckham gone. Wahaha, the ethics of journalism.
Well, 7 days ago, I would have turned 17 17 days from now, on the 17th. Do the math.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)