today was our first coach training of the holidays. coincidentally, it was our first holiday training where it rained (hmm...). as was expected, he's pushing hard on our physical training (because as he puts it, and i agree, we dont have the sheer hockey skill to beat other teams, so we can only rely on being physically tougher than them). warm-up was 5 sets of running across the pitch and back, bent over and stick in front of us. that one was really tiring, and the killer part is that bending down while running not only screws around with your centre of gravity, but also prevents you from taking full strides. the body has to subconsciously compensate for all these anomalies, making it a lot more tiring than one would expect. the stationary drills after that were also quite tiring, but after that things toned down to a more comfortable level. goalie ivy got quite a tongue-lashing though, and you really have to feel sorry for her. the entire year she could only self-train as a goalie, and now george takes over and starts shouting at her over little things which in his opinion should be common sense or second nature, but for her might be something new. well, at least they have a goalie; the guys' team is still sadly without a goalie, and im starting to get anxious over where we might be able to find one.
after training, i went to j8 macs for lunch. saw youyue from 6D, but he didnt see me and he was just passing through anyway, so i didnt bother to call out to him. then just when i was about to leave i met bingqiang from 2-8, and we talked a bit about jc life, then he got on the mrt while i got on the bus. amazingly, i saw jill from 4A on the bus too, but i didnt call out to her. if i count marcus from hockey training as meeting someone from 4-4, then i have officially met a classmate from every class i have ever been in before jc, all on the same day. what are the odds! really brings me back to the older days, back to cat high and even ai tong. i wonder if this much nostalgia is healthy in a society that seems to scream right in your face every day: "NO TIME! NO TIME! FORWARD! FORWARD!"
when i got home and opened the mailbox, i really got my hopes up when i saw a letter addressed to me. i thought that it was an acceptance letter from NTU about my H3 application. well, turns out that it was just an advertisement for teaching scholarships:
"YOU'RE AN 'A' GRADE STUDENT"
"YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING AT AN 'A' CLASS SCHOLARSHIP"
what bullshit are they trying to sell me on? that i'm one of a "selected few" who got this? i'll bet they sent this to half or more of the entire JC1 cohort. but more importantly, im wondering if this means i didnt get into the H3 course. they did say that acceptance letters would be sent out starting from 23rd nov, which means (at least it is implied from the choice of words) that there is a chance that i did get in, but my letter will arrive another day, but i dont want to be led on by false hope all the way until 1st dec when the applicants' reply letters are due, only to realise that i didnt get in. well, a man can dream, a man can hope, and i'll be abusing those rights all the way till the last day (and by then i'll probably go emo in a corner or something).
a few days ago, gabby went on an SOAD rampage and got more than a hundred of their songs at one go, and he also introduced me to some of them. here's one that's been stuck in my head since then. it's called U-Fig.
in case you cant tell, the song is a protest against the Iraq war going on at the time. "melt in the sun" obviously refers to the Iraq desert, "hide in the sky" refers to the fighter jets, and "the cause" refers to ridding Iraq of their supposed WMDs, which was one of the reasons why the war was started in the first place. i hate it when people stereotype metal/hard rock lyrics as "satanic" or "barbaric", because in reality there's so much more than that. it also irks me to see people carrying over this assumption to the actual bands and their members. for example, there are actually people who think that AC/DC's band name means "Anti-Christ/Devil's Children" (obviously people with no knowledge of basic electrical safety, and given that they're surrounded by electrical appliances im surprised they even survived long enough on the computer to post this kind of crap in forums). i mean, just look at a band like PTH: they're a metal band, but when they perform live you dont see them biting off bat heads. *looks at Ozzy* they get on stage, tell jokes, drink beer and give one heck of a show. and before you say it, i know that there are actual satanic bands, but those are usually from the black/doom metal genre which i dont listen to anyway. so if you're one of those people who immediately associate "metal" with "satanic", you should know that that's as untrue a stereotype as any idiotic racist or sexist comment on the street.
a few days ago, gabby went on an SOAD rampage and got more than a hundred of their songs at one go, and he also introduced me to some of them. here's one that's been stuck in my head since then. it's called U-Fig.
in case you cant tell, the song is a protest against the Iraq war going on at the time. "melt in the sun" obviously refers to the Iraq desert, "hide in the sky" refers to the fighter jets, and "the cause" refers to ridding Iraq of their supposed WMDs, which was one of the reasons why the war was started in the first place. i hate it when people stereotype metal/hard rock lyrics as "satanic" or "barbaric", because in reality there's so much more than that. it also irks me to see people carrying over this assumption to the actual bands and their members. for example, there are actually people who think that AC/DC's band name means "Anti-Christ/Devil's Children" (obviously people with no knowledge of basic electrical safety, and given that they're surrounded by electrical appliances im surprised they even survived long enough on the computer to post this kind of crap in forums). i mean, just look at a band like PTH: they're a metal band, but when they perform live you dont see them biting off bat heads. *looks at Ozzy* they get on stage, tell jokes, drink beer and give one heck of a show. and before you say it, i know that there are actual satanic bands, but those are usually from the black/doom metal genre which i dont listen to anyway. so if you're one of those people who immediately associate "metal" with "satanic", you should know that that's as untrue a stereotype as any idiotic racist or sexist comment on the street.
