Deafen them with your actions

At this juncture, willpower is of utmost importance; the fact of the matter is that we will fall at some point, and the determining factor of it all is whether or not we can get back up again. it's encouraging to see my friends getting up, brushing the dust off their knees and reclaiming that drive that they seem to have lost.

the time for preparation has passed. the time for drawing out elaborate and lofty plans has passed. the time for pretending that airplanes are shooting stars and making wishes at 11:11pm has passed. now is the time to grit our teeth and turn aspiration into action. all the hopes and dreams in the world will serve as excellent motivation, but nothing more; this is when actions truly speak louder than words.

and it doesn't matter if people don't appreciate you, because 1: you can and should appreciate yourself, and 2: it's a lie, and there are people who appreciate you, like those who have walked the path before you, or those walking the path with you, or those who have seen the path for themselves.

The time is now

Today we had HOD's contact, where the HODs of every subject basically came up to talk about how much we need to improve for the A levels. harsh, sure, but definitely required in my opinion to spur everyone on. like ms chua said, we only have 4 weeks before prelims and 7 weeks of lessons tops before the study break starts for the A levels, so really it's time to go all out. for those of us who have been putting off the real hardcore mugging with the excuse in mind that "i'll burn out before A levels if i start now" (yes, this is a confession), now is the time that this all-purpose excuse card expires. the prelims will be much bigger than anything that's happened before, with full papers for all subjects. not only that, the prelims will be nearly as important as the A levels as well: not only will this make or break our scholarship chances, but it will also more or less predict what we will be getting for the A levels. for all intents and purposes, the prelims should by right be treated with just as much rigour as the actual A levels. of course, there is a very big leap from "should" to "will".

after that was the NJC track meet finals. many other NJCians have already complained sufficiently about how both gates were locked and guarded to prevent anyone from leaving early, so i shan't delve into that. in any case, we managed to occupy ourselves for the most part. we played frisbee monkey for a while (it's amazing how complete strangers can come together and organise a game so quickly when there's a frisbee involved) until the PE teachers threatened to confiscate all thrown object lest they land on the track -.- then we resorted to doing idiotic things like collecting as much black synthetic field rubber as we possibly could to sprinkle around like holy water. ended up joining that SH1 class (i just realised that until now i still don't know what class they are :P ) and the ignis councillors with lionel, where we threw black synthetic field rubber at each other and shouted death threats at passing runners (ok that was just lionel and i) (ok maybe that was just me). when the races were over, we picked up the frisbee again to play "ultimate touch contact frisbee rugby", also known as the "tackle everybody and declare your own rules" game. the moral of the story: when you are locked up in school for three hours, your standards for "fun" drop like a rock.

The place is here; the time is now; the prize is great.

can't remember where that quote came from, but it's very fitting for the occasion.

Early judgement

Got back my PAE today. it was painfully accurate. a short summary of the report: disorganised, undetermined, unconfident, unambitious, underachieving. they did initially say that i'm creative though, but they quickly took that back, saying that i'm idealistic instead. other people's reports were about half good and half bad, and i would have been ok if it was 40% good and 60% bad, but according to the report i hover between mediocrity and incompetency, with the latter being more frequent. i know that now is a very very bad time to get demoralised, but after reading comments like that it is very difficult not to be.

yeah, it's only one personality test, and i'll probably get over it eventually, but for now i just feel kinda tired and demoralised. i guess i'll just wait for this to pass; lose myself in work and music.

here's another new A7X song, Save Me:



this song has a very Dream Theater kind of feel to it (perhaps influenced by Mike?), and it's a song you won't get bored listening to the entire 11min of the way. i think that it's awesome that A7X have gone on to become so much more than just your above-average metalcore band to having such versatile music :)

Questions

Certain events have caused my mum to be rather paranoid, what with all those reminders that our birth certs and documentations are kept here, and our bank account books are kept there, et cetera. i think she's even planning to make a will soon or something. i know that it's unscientific and superstitious to think that making wills is inauspicious, and that it's to everyone's benefit that she wants to have things written clearly in black and white, but something about her suddenly frequent usage of the phrase "what if" unsettles me. i guess it's an unavoidable fact that everyone will leave one day, but it's also a very uncomfortable one. i wonder how long i can ignore the glint of the scythe before it's right at my throat. how do the adults in my life find the courage to face it without going insane? is it some sort of enlightenment that will come naturally with maturity?

maybe that is the ultimate goal of life. when Death knocks on my door, i will not be the one who will lock it and hide in the closet, only for him to find me huddled in the darkness, disgraced as a human being. i will be the one who will grab my hat and coat, say goodbye to my family and friends, and leave with him for a stroll.

now don't get me wrong, i'm not contemplating suicide or anything (if i were then i would start wearing heavy eyeliner and sporting wrist scars). i just want to put aside all the taboos of death for a while and simply think about it for a while. it' precisely because there is so much not known about death that people are so afraid of it, so the logical thing to do would be to put aside our fear of the unknown and take a good hard look. after all, there are so many questions:


(Question! by System Of A Down (i am aware this is a re-post -.-))

and it's UNRELATED FUNNY COMIC OF THE DAY(not necessarily updated daily)!

:D

foREVer

If you are an A7X fan then READ ON.

i was randomly surfing the interwebs yesterday night when i discovered THE ENTIRE NIGHTMARE ALBUM AVAILABLE FOR ONLINE STREAMING :D no download links though, but they'll probably start popping up once the album is officially released.

the overall feel of this album is a lot more emotional and sentimental than previous albums, with about half the album being ballad-type songs, which are probably tributes to The Rev. Fiction is especially haunting because it actually stars The Rev on lead vocals. Save Me sounds like a tribute to Pinkly Smooth, Syn's and Rev's side band which played avant-garde metal.

but for those who like their music heavy, Nightmare doesn't disappoint either. Welcome To The Family is plain friggin awesome: very A7X-style metal with intense verses and a melodic chorus, and i love the whispering parts :D Danger Line has an interesting tune and the chorus is very catchy too, somehow the intense guitar paired with melodic vocals reminds me of Lost. and there's even a throw-back to A7X's metalcore days with God Hates Us, which definitely satisfies the part of me that was hoping for a return to Sounding The Seventh Trumpet.

ok, even though i already posted the link to all the songs, i still feel like i need to put this here:



above all the other songs, i believe this is the one that captures the entire album. we keep hearing A7X say that this album is a tribute to The Rev, but it was only until i heard this song that i was fully convinced that they really meant for this album to be foREVer.

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEG1PRJWyUA (read the description :D )

Prisoner's dilemma

Today was chinese listening compre! well, nothing much to say about that, i guess it went as well as i could hope for. more importantly though, no more chinese! and for real this time; absolutely no more chinese. even if it started raining blood tomorrow morning and the sun exploded and the four horsemen of apocalypse commanded that i retake chinese, my answer would still be no. no no no.

and in any case, that isn't the main point of this post. after listening compre, i went for the "person of influence" workshop, which was basically a workshop for leadership skills. i want to focus on the highlight of the workshop, which was a game based on the prisoner's dilemma to teach the dangers of predatory competition between peers:

the game worked like this: we were split into four companies, each with a starting capital of $10000. every round, each company would wager some money by holding up either a red or black card. in general, if there is a mix of red and black cards amongst the four then the red cards will win big and the black cards will lose, if all are red then all will lose, and if all are black then all will win small. collectively it is obvious that all should choose black so that all can win, but choosing red is better from the individual companies' perspective as it presents a chance to earn bigger winnings, and also acts as a safeguard in case other companies betray the group and also choose red. communication between companies was allowed in some rounds and banned in others, creating many different mindgames to be played amongst the companies.

the trouble came in one particular round where communication was allowed. after realising that choosing black was mutually beneficial, representatives from the four companies discussed over what cards they should put up. three of the companies agreed to put up the black card, while the last one (i'll call it company X) was still sitting on the fence by the end of the discussion. when it was time to reveal the choices, the three companies had indeed shown black cards, while company X showed a red card, thus "betraying" everyone, and causing one company in particular (let's call it company Y) to lose nearly all their money because they placed a significant amount of money on the pact. after that incident, the workshop conductor opened up the possibility of loaning money to company Y to allow them to continue playing. company X was the first to offer a $10000 loan, but at a hefty 25% interest, and was quickly rejected. at this point of time, there was significant real-life animosity between X and Y. finally, the three companies formed a cartel against X: one company would show black at minimum wager while the other two would show red and go all in (ensuring that they would not meet an all-red scenario) and the winnings were split between the three companies, thus causing X to finish in last place despite their cut-throat competitive style.

this game left a very deep impression in me. for one thing, it's probably the first game conducted in a workshop i've seen that directly proves a point. i've seen many games that only prove ideas in their figurative form and not the actual ideas themselves; for example, the game might be a three-legged race and the moral might be that it is important to be close to your people, but then i'll be left thinking "you've only proven that it's important to be close in a three-legged race; how does this prove that it's of any use in a leadership setting?" but in this case, you actually see the consequences of placing and misplacing your trust in other people; it's an actual mindgame that involves believing and deceiving people.

the other reason, and personally the more impactful one, is that it made me truly see the great value that people place in trust. when X "betrayed" the other companies and caused Y to lose nearly everything, there was actual animosity between them. think about it: we are talking about fake money here, nothing but numbers hastily scribbled on a piece paper with a whiteboard marker. no sane person would get angry purely over losing fake money. then were the people in Y simply being petty? of course not. they were angry because X betrayed their trust.

you keep hearing that integrity is important. you hear it from parents and teachers. heck, you even hear it from barney and sesame street. ever since we learned how to listen, one of the most oft-drilled messages is "integrity is important". we've become so jaded to messages like this that we take it for granted: 

"is integrity important?" 

"of course!" 

"why." 

"erm..."

well, today i saw why. integrity is important because people take it as a sign that they can entrust you to do what's right amidst even the most tempting of distractions; they count on you to do it, and when you don't it is akin to letting them go at the last moment of their leap of faith. and people do not take kindly to that.

Crush the hand that feeds you

being split into classes based on personality? sounds very very tempting on paper. no more fretting over any fissures and cracks forming due to contrasting personalities. the spontaneous, light-hearted people can gather in one class and have the best two years of their lives. the ones who spend their days burying their heads in books and notes (though not necessarily learning anything) can get together in another class and... i don't know, do they call it fun? well, whatever. but then again, if the class can affect you, then it could potentially affect everyone. maybe we were brought together so we can influence each other in ways that can only be brought about by conflicting personalities. after all, the best diamonds are those that have been polished over. i've seen the miracle of change happen before; maybe it can be extended.

personalised education? the school was really shooting for the stars with the IP programme. regardless of the holes caused by frequent collisions with reality, i will concede that the original concept is very alluring, if not very far-fetched. but at the end of the day, it still reeks of elitism. people must think that i have a split personality for hating the very system that has benefited me beyond my wildest imagination. but then again, people think i have a split personality regardless. a joke quoted from somewhere: the best part of split personality disorder is that there is no good part about it, you idiot.

I won't question why so many have died

PTM has been scheduled to be a few weeks later or something, which kind of renewed the latent unrest that has only recently hidden itself deep in people's hearts.

i know i shouldn't be thinking like this now. it's inevitable. it's how the system works. it's how meritocracy works. it can't be changed. i know that they wouldn't want me to feel like this. i know the school definitely doesn't want me to think like this; they want me to think that it's my earned right. but it's just one of those things that i simply cannot drag my mind away from. it's a feeling that has been haunting me after every exam, but this one much more so than others, because of its combined importance and difficulty.

how does the lone survivor feel? how does he cope with the guilt and the burden of being the only one who escaped death's greedy jaws, while his friends and fellow man perished? night and day, thoughts whisper in his head: why me, of all people? why not anyone else? what have i done to deserve the salvation that the innocent person standing next to me didn't do? and if i did nothing to deserve it, what heinous theft have i committed, to rob survival from my friends?

they sometimes joke with me: "you have so many marks to spare, why don't you give me a few so i can pass?" sometimes, i really wish i could.

i can probably imagine people thinking "what the hell is this guy talking about? he doesn't have to worry about his grades so he should jolly well shut up." maybe i should. in fact, i probably should. i'm going to shut up now.

by the way, the post title is a quote from Gunslinger.

Live here; live now

Woke up at 7.30am on a sunday, which is terrible and inhumane time to snap out of slumber on a weekend, but the seminar was at 9.30 so what can you do about it. anyway, the aforementioned seminar was the CATS scholarship and career fair. the first part was a talk to help us "constantly operate at peak capacity", which is just a euphemistic way to sell about an hour of inspiring but ultimately vague and useless words like "energy" and "efficacy". the speaker was entertaining and engaging and all, but i think everyone already knows what must be done; the cold hard truth is that it is much much easier said than done :( the second part was a dialogue session with a few scholarship recipients. it was refreshing to hear candid responses from post-graduate scholars who were not trying to promote their respective scholarships with every other sentence :)

after that was the tea session, which was really high-class :D what with their forest mushroom quiches and teriyaki chicken on-a-stick. met kevin and friend there and decided to tag along with them, since i didn't go with anyone. we were just sitting there eating our (FREE FREE FREE) food when a lady from HDB sat down with us to tell us about the HDB scholarships, but because she was hungry and too lazy to move on to the next table she decided to eat with us and have a random chat, where we explained the current academic unit system to her because apparently she's "not that old" and yet completely out of touch with the new system >.> so anyway after that we walked around all the booths, which were mostly about overseas universities (US, UK and even germany), and once again the question i've been trying to avoid was raised again: do i want to study overseas? until now i still have no idea on that. if i do study overseas then it will have to be on a scholarship though, since my parents would probably agree with me when i say that i'm probably not worth the half-million-dollar investment. i guess right now my best answer would probably be to  keep both my options and mind open. so anyway, we went out to the nearby KFC for lunch with the intent of going back for the university admission talks, when:

well actually they were students, but i'm not too far off, am i? :P and they were clogging up the entire venue and choking the queue lines to the talks, so we decided to go home then.

these few days i've been going for scholarship and career talks, and the surprising thing is that i do occasionally see SH1s there too. you guys should be running around acting retarded! singing dora the explorer and charlie the unicorn and pokemon songs while walking down the corridors! SH1 is a time for living in the present! not for worrying about the nitty-gritty details of the future and attending talks (and might i add, also adding to the queue in the process :P ). how can you plan your future without living your present?

You lived for the touch, for the feel of the steel

Left school early yesterday ( :D ) with xiaolan, pangxin and joy to attend a talk about interview and general job-hunting skills, then met tingyi, shanice, yuhao and a few other NJCians when reached there. the first part was more of advertising accenture, the IT consultant firm that hosted the talk in the first place. i still don't feel particularly inspired to enter the infocomm industry, but the what the two speakers said about the career stories woke me up to an unavoidable truth in the working world: you most likely will not hold a job that is 100% related to what you studied in university, and even if you do, as you progress up the management ladder you will slowly require less of the technical skills from university and more of people-management and contract-negotiating skills that will not be taught anywhere. it just feels kind of depressing that we will spend 3-4 years studying and specialising in one particular subject, only to find that we will barely be able to apply any of it once we enter the working world.

the actual job-hunting talk, however, painted a much more optimistic picture. the speaker encouraged us to aim for the career that we wanted, even if it means momentarily holding jobs in other areas. the analogy she drew between career planning and sailing was quite apt in my opinion: not planning your career is akin to drifting out in the open sea, where it is the external forces of the waves and winds that dictate your destination. with planning though, even if the winds and waves are against you, you can still tack and steer your way back on course, even if it means taking detours here and there. the part of the talk about networking was a bit scary though: she defined networking as "socialising with an agenda" O.O but when you think about it i guess it's something like exchanging favours between acquaintances; she specifically warned against "making use" of people without returning the favour.

after the talk, i went back to NJC with xiaolan and pangxin for the highlight of the day: ROCK NIGHT! :D notable bands: the last band, Good Friday, was definitely the best, which is expected since they've been around the longest. they were the only band that successfully managed to entertain the audience between songs, which is a skill that goes beyond being good musicians and is something that has to be learned as a band. and they played A7X's Gunslinger, which automatically won me over :D the teacher band, The Agent, was also good, with powerful vocals from the female singer. Rubber Band was also quite good amongst the others; i'll rank them in 3rd place (speaking strictly without friend bias :P ) the JH band wasn't too outstanding, but after all they're the JH band so i guess they still need time to develop. the SJI band did the slow songs quite well, but they dumbed down an energetic song like Highway To Hell to such a boring and lifeless rendition -.- the SJI International band, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, was also quite ok, but the lead singer was a bit crazy with all the jumping around and the self-induced high, and i can't get used to her incredibly strong angmoh accent (but that's not really a fault i guess). Alveric And Friends, the semi-external band with nicholas on bass, was a disappointment. i heard from chin before that they were supposed to play Iron Maiden's Flash Of The Blade and Metallica's Master Of Puppets, but they cut both songs away. they did play another Iron Maiden song though, The Trooper, but completely butchered it because the singer sang literally the entire song flat. their guitarist is above average, but it was drowned out by the sound of everything else. in case you were wondering, this is how it's supposed to sound like:

and their covers of Love Story and Bad Romance were quite (very) bad too. just goes to show that "external" and "good" are two very different things. still, i'd say that Rock Night was an overall success, though i'm still waiting to see Flash Of The Blade live T_T dinner/supper afterwards at Adam Road, then i met kahming on the bus on the way home :)

Buried Alive

H3 math today was quite the disaster. i think as far as graph theory is concerned, we have completely lost all credibility with the teachers. they're treating us like we're learning the topic for the first time. maybe it isn't such a bad thing, seeing as we aren't exactly fulfilling our roles as SH2 students either.
Get Bo(u)lder was brought forward to today after H3 maths, and Darrell couldn't make it last minute, so in the end i still managed to go for it, even though i didn't have any practice on wednesday, making me the only crazy idiot there going in as a complete noob. at the very least i managed to complete the green trail, which is the easiest trail anyway. bouldering was definitely an interesting and fun experience, but it forces you to exert muscles in places that you normally wouldn't train, like the fingers and lower arms, leading to very weird side-effects (like not being able to clench your fist).

well, tomorrow's rock night :) looking forward to watching chin's band play (they have changed their name to Rubber Band out of sheer randomness), among others. should be an interesting experience. well, i guess i should also be looking forward to the interview skills talk, but it's still rock night first :)

Falling down hurts; it hurts a lot. But falling is not what will kill you. You can get back up after a fall, and when you do you will note how you fell and how not to fall again. The real danger stems from not getting up; from giving up and lying in the dust, because if you choose to lie on the ground nobody will be able to help you up. And when it comes to the final lap of the race, when everybody is busy running their own races, you will not have the energy to lift yourself up. When you give in to wallowing in self-hate, you miss the things around you that could potentially lift you back up. I've seen it happening a lot these past few days: friends who were so disappointed in their CT results that they completely gave up on trying to follow class lessons, which could very possibly help them pull their grades. Despondency is assured self-destruction; please do not fall into that trap.

A7X has released another song from Nightmare! :D this one's called Buried Alive:

when i first heard the intro i thought this was their customary slow calming song that they have in every album (Seize The Day, Dear God etc.), but then the chorus started and immediately the song changed. i love the part after the second chorus when the entire song suddenly changes to a very Metallica-esque guitar solo, and then to the heavy percussive sound with Matt finally screaming again \m/ suddenly there's hope again for awesome half clean half screamo songs like Chapter Four :D this is tentatively my favourite song from Nightmare.

Valley of the Damned

Just as i suspected, we got back GP and maths results. GP first: well, my gamble to use the "two extremes" essay structure for the first time during the CTs backfired, but luckily the compre saved me and i ended up with a B. i think out of all my subjects, GP is the one i constantly feel the most pressured to score in. due to my fluke A in last year's CTs, you could say that my reputation now precedes me, and everyone expects me to keep scoring A for GP. upon reflection though, i think that that is highly unlikely to happen unless i start bucking up for my essay, summary and AQ components, which are unfortunately also the hardest components to train in a subject that is already notoriously non-muggable. i just hope that 3 months is enough (it is only now that i realise that 3 months is a scarily short time).

well, maths was slightly better. i managed to score an A, but also discovered how ridiculously weak i am in complex numbers. more worrying though is that the cohort as a whole was slaughtered by maths. taking my class as an example: usually we would have about a 60% AB rate, being the "stream" class we're supposed to be, but this time there were only 5 As. i was choking on the heavy atmosphere throughout the entire lesson, and there might as well have been thunderclouds tumbling and crackling above our heads. there were friends who were too depressed to even continue listening to the lesson, friends who were desperately trying to find that extra 1 mark to pass, friends who tried to laugh the pain away and pretend they didn't care when actually they were bleeding inside. i wanted to comfort them, but what could i do? coming from a person who isn't in the same plight as them, my empathy will always seem to be nothing more than demeaning pity. how many tired soldiers will be rejuvenated by the words of a comrade who up till that point has not moved a muscle? how hypocritical i would sound, from their point of view.

there was the NJC career and scholarships fair after school, which above other less important consequences meant FREE STUFF! :D i got a transparent calculator, a laser pointer, a 4-colour highlighter in the shape of a person, and a foolscap pad. well, i did actually attend one talk, the one conducted by BCA, since lionel was saying that they were good because they offered a $12000 no-bond scholarship. also learned about an internship programme with A*STAR that i might apply for after A levels. after the fair i learned how to play monopoly deal from nigel, khaisoon, jianzhong and edmund, and i have to say that it's quite interesting :) went home and didn't manage to do much work since tomorrow is a slack day anyway, but i started on a few of the graph theory proving questions due tomorrow and got kind of depressed while doing them. it's really starting to seem that how i will fare for the H3 math A levels depends nearly entirely on whether or not i will be able to miraculously "see" the method to prove the given statements, especially for graph theory and combinatorics. it's become almost like GP: you never know what's going to come out, so there's nearly no way to prepare.

here's a song from DragonForce called Valley of the Damned. it's one of the few DragonForce songs i like because of it's inspirational tune and lyrics.



i believe that we'll all make it out of the valley eventually :)

Good day

Today was quite a good day, really :) it's quite refreshing to have this sudden breeze of optimism after the past few days filled with stifling moodiness. we're playing floorball now for tuesday PE lessons, which although isn't exactly like hockey, will still serve as a welcome substitute for my nostalgia. much against my will, i have become the go-to man for floorball despite being a hockey player (they are NOT the same!). still, it was great to be able to play a stick sport at all after leaving hockey for so long. ended up overexerting myself a bit, getting muscle aches in the ankles and calfs and blisters on both big toes (especially since i was wearing my strictly no running shoes), but it's totally worth it, and i'll play just as hard next week :) i also found out that there are no more chinese lessons from now on, so my tuesdays now end at 1.30pm :D spent my new-found free time in the library with 10% doing homework and 90% watching lionel turn his pencil case into a stationery warship. and darrell's replacing me for Get Bo(u)lder, so i can finally stop feeling guilty over quitting the team so last-minute. and to top it all off, i got back my H3 math paper today and i FREAKING PASSED. with a FREAKING MERIT GRADE :D it sounds quite impressive but it's actually 55.2%, which means i just barely scraped a merit grade, but it's technically indistinguishable from a 59.4% so i am damn happy with it. i find it quite ironic that i can score better for a H3 subject than my H2 chem. it just means that i need to work harder, i guess. for both subjects, really. in fact, why not just go all the way for all subjects? well, probably because it's much easier said than done :/

i have a gut feeling that we'll be getting back GP and H2 math results tomorrow. just a little bit more, and the suspense and dread will finally end. only to give way to blind frenzy.

oh, reading people's facebook statuses just reminded me that tomorrow is the career and scholarship fair. yet another one, except this time conviniently situated in NJC. it can only mean MORE FREE STUFF :D of course, it also provides crucial information for our life-changing decision of what to do with our lives after JC, but free stuff always comes first.

i thought that the injury had healed. i thought that after simply applying some medicine or bandage and waiting for a long time, the wound would heal. how naive of me to think that such a deep cut would ever heal. flesh has been ripped, blood has been spilled. all the time in the world will never erase the scar, the permanent reminder that sometime, somewhere in the past, a friendship had died. though with enough cosmetic products, sometimes i can imagine that the scar was never there, even if the self-deception can only last for a few minutes.

bleh, enough of the emo talk. today was 70% good, which is an A, which means that i should stop emoing.

120 minutes of wrestling, with brief interjections of soccer.

I never thought that i'd ever have a sleepover on a school night. but then again, i don't think of a lot of things. yesterday, edmund had the crazy idea of staying over at lionel's house to watch the world cup final. and i had the crazy idea of agreeing to it. so edmund and i went over to his house at about 11pm, and rayson joined us at around midnight (haha he missed the last train and had to cab his way there). between midnight and 2.30am, we were watching Jake and Amir videos (which by the way are awesomely funny and highly recommended :D ) and the double rainbow video (more on that later). and we also watched bear grylls taupok a pig :D
the match itself was kind of disappointing. they literally couldn't play for more then a minute without someone where committing a foul. and holy crap, all those yellow cards. according to the commentator, in all the previous 18 world cup finals there were 40 yellow cards (so that's about 2 per match), but in this morning's match alone there were 14 yellow cards (with only one red card -.- ). and of course with all the yellow cards, there were some spectacular fouls to go with them. there were players bear-hugging players, players jump-kicking players, players shoving players after the referee didn't award a foul, and even a spanish player who accidentally headbutted his own goalie in the bad place. but the most disappointing thing about the match was the utter lack of goals. so many good opportunities for both sides were thrown away because someone tripped over his own feet or screwed up the free kick or panicked when it came down to just him and the goalie. it was a goalless draw at the end of 90min and the only goal of the game came at 116min: an admittedly beautiful shot from iniesta that went right under the goalie's hand and propelled spain to their first world cup title.

pro tip: for the 2014 world cup, whenever spain is playing, always bet either 1-0 or a goalless draw. because that's really all they seemed to be doing the entire tournament.

so anyway, the match ended at 5am, and we had to start getting ready for school at 6.30am, so one could probably guess our mental state the entire day at school. the entire day today i had this stoned expression. as in more stoned than i usually look, which is saying a lot. luckily there wasn't much actual learning today, because mostly we were just getting back CT results. i scraped an A for physics, which i'm of course thankful for, and got a D for chemistry, which is within mr low's warning of CDE. i was hoping that it might be a C, but i guess i'm still grateful that it wasn't an E. there's still H2 math, H3 math and GP left, and the first one is the only one of the three that doesn't immediately fill me with a sense of foreboding.

but there's no use fretting over the inevitable, so i shall put those thoughts out of my mind in favour of something more epic, like the aforementioned "double rainbow video":



i've seen this video a few weeks ago already, but ever since chin posted it on his facebook wall it's become an instant hit with the 27 guys. now whenever we see two of anything we have the uncontrollable urge to yell "OH MAI GAWD OH MAI GAAAWWWDDD WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?!?!"

Left behind

Today was cat high homecoming! :D met up with bryan at about 12.45pm. saw lots of old friends again, but unfortunately not as much as last year, or even this year's CNY celebrations. at this point of time many people are just concerned with mugging for the A levels :( first thing i noticed when i stepped through the gates again (besides the huge bouncy castle next to the field) was that the track is now not a track anymore. what used to be your standard 6-lane 400m oval red bitumen track has been replaced with asphalt and tarmac. yep, the track is now a road. i heard some sketchy details that the change has something to do with the YOG, but i don't see how replacing the running track with a racetrack is going to help anything (unless YOG has an F1 event that i have been ignorant to until this point O.O )

but that wasn't the only thing that changed: this year's homecoming was on a much larger scale than anything i've seen before. there were two bouncy castles, a mechanical bull, a test-your-strength hammer thing (i don't know what they're called), zorbs-on-water, a foam sword arena and laser tag. there was also a tamiya section with the tamiya cars and tracks (i thought they became extinct long ago :/ ) and a yo-yo section run by spinworkx, which sells the extremely high-class $100++ kind of yo-yos (that much for a yo-yo?) and also provides training for professional yo-yoing. i'm really glad to see that cat high can now rope in so many more sponsors for its homecoming :)

on a random note, i saw mr paul ng's baby! ms yu lin was carrying the little baby around and getting us to guess who's baby it he was, and nobody could guess it :P and we also saw mrs valerie chua's kid too. can't believe she's only been married for slightly more than 3 years and she's already expecting her second child O.O

but not all the changes were good. bryan and i started talking about how as the years went by, cat high became more and more foreign to us ex-students. when we just left, there was still so much to talk to our ex-teachers about and so many juniors to meet up with whenever we returned to visit, but after a while we ran out of topics with our teachers and our juniors gradually left, being replaced with newcomers we didn't know. the vibe of returning to cat high is different now. i guess we've grown from graduates to old boys, and cat high will slowly change from a place we belong to a place we once belonged. and in a few years, even less than cat high, NJC too will become a place i once belonged. as we move along in life, it's inevitable that some things will have to be left behind.

Supermassive Black Hole

Today was a wake-up call.

in the morning we got back our econs results, and i got a B. it isn't exactly bad i guess, and it's definitely well within what i predicted to get. we haven't actually gotten back our chem results yet, but mr low was hinting that i got a C, D or E, which is once again in the range of what i predicted to get. still, i guess there's a crucial difference between predicting the future and accepting it. i know that my grades so far are not horrible and there are people who got worse than that, but i just can't help but feel disappointed with myself. everyone's always expecting me to score straight As and become a president's scholar and shoot brain lasers and other fantastical nonsense like that, and what i'm doing now is falling miles short of any expectations. here i am, the guy with 13 units whom everyone seems to know of, faring so much worse than others who keep within the academic unit limit. sometimes i wish that i could give the extra unit away to someone else more deserving so that it will be better utilised. that i would no longer be obligated to get a perfect score would also be a very appreciated side-effect.

if a star wishes to become a supernova, it must first grow. it must have the ambition to grow larger and more massive than most stars ever will. when a supermassive star eventually dies out, it's own gravity will cause it to implode on itself, releasing a huge amount of energy as a supernova explosion. but at the same time, if a star grows too big for it's own good, it could also leave behind the very opposite of a supernova: a black hole. instead of a magnificent burst of energy, a black hole threatens to engulf every passing beam of light that could otherwise have illuminated the cosmos. if the supernova represents my potential culmination of success, then the black hole represents my potential failure. and ironically, extreme success and extreme failure both stem from the same first step of deciding to grow bigger than everyone else. since i've already gone on the path of no return, the only thing left to do is to ensure that it eventually becomes a supernova.



yes, the only reason i put that there was because it's called Supermassive Black Hole.

Please let it be a supernova.

Fix it with sticky tape

This post was inspired by something i saw on TV a few hours back on channel 8. it's a show about celebrities doing charity work overseas, but i can't remember what the name of the show was. in this particular episode, tay ping hui was helping out a charity service for elderly ex-lepers, i believe. the scene that really affected me was when a prosthetics maker doing voluntary work was visiting an old woman with an extremely old and outdated prosthetic leg made with 1970s technology. it was made nearly entirely of steel with no springs or compression cylinders, only a hinge at the knee and a weighted foot to ensure that the foot always faced the ground, which consequently made it much heavier and taxing for the wearer than modern prostheses. there was no proper buckling system for the leg, and the woman basically secured it to her knee-stump by looping a rubber strap around her thigh many times and sort of tying a knot at the end. the footage skipped to the prosthetics maker in his workshop creating a new leg with light materials like plastic and aluminium, and using springs and dampeners to simulate ankle movement. he even used a laser line level to ensure that the foot was exactly level to the ground. in the final part of the scene, he fixes the modern prosthetic leg to the woman's knee-stump and she gives it a test walk.

the sight of a person with a prosthetic, a melding of the mechanical and the organic, made me start thinking about humans and machines. in terms of healthcare, humans are actually much like machines. we start off fine, but soon wear and tear will take their toll and we need to repair and maintain ourselves with medication and treatment. still, eventually the damage will be too great to simply repair and the entire part will need to be replaced. replacement limbs, replacement joints, and even replacement organs are now available today. and with the advancement of modern medical technology, the catalogue of replaceable body parts looks set to increase even further. i think now would be relevant to bring in a joke i once heard:

This axe here was the very same axe that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Except that the handle has been replaced five times and the axehead has been replaced seven times.

 the ridiculous rate at which the body malfunctions and erodes away as we age leads one to the logical conclusion that humans are extending their lives far beyond their natural lifespan. the continued survival of people beyond about 65 seems to be time borrowed from modern technology. the scene that was playing in my head while i watched the above-mentioned scene was that of a man using the same disposable styrofoam plate for years, and repairing any cracks and holes with sticky tape. when the plate has been used for significantly longer then it's projected lifespan, it will eventually be completely made of sticky tape and also completely unusable as a plate. humans were never meant to last forever; in a morbid sense, i guess we are all made to be "disposable".

so what are the consequences of "cheating the system" and extending our natural lifespans with science? oftentimes, wear and tear in nature is an indicator that your time has come. take the elephant for example: all elephants have a set of incredibly large and hard molars in the back of their mouths, where the primary grinding of the vegetation they eat occurs. these molars develop very early in baby elephants and are never replaced. once the molars have been ground down through constant chewing, the elephant will make its way to an elephant graveyard on its own accord to await death, knowing that it has already lost the crucial ability to eat. many a times, the elephant is still healthy in every other aspect except for its molars.

i've come to believe that many "wear and tear" diseases are just results of people living beyond their natural lifespans through medical aid, which is why it is so rare to find animals in the wild with high blood pressure or osteoporosis. these illnesses simply aren't natural; just like how it is unnatural that a paper cup will spontaneously disintegrate while using it, but it will eventually decompose anyway if left on it's own for years. and of course, our first reaction is to fix the cup with sticky tape.

but frankly, this changes nothing for me and my healthcare plans. who doesn't want to live an extra year or two, even if it has to be borrowed from science?

Perhaps the octopus has some use after all

I couldn't fulfill my promise to eat takoyaki today, but i swear that i will eat copious amounts of octopus over the weekend. the fact that i love takoyaki sure helps a fair bit :) and before you call me crazy, i'm not the only one taking it out on cephalopods, and definitely not the craziest one either:



things started off today with the NE club meeting in the morning, which was pretty intense O.O for some reason, the exco decided that today was the day to crack down on all the problems of attendance and participation in club activities (and in case you couldn't guess, those are very big problems for NE club). so we were lectured first by eunice, then ms lim, but the KO move came from ms phua. we were handed out the orange racial harmony ribbons that our classes ordered, and after a while she flared up again because nobody took the initiative to wear the ribbon and "personally support racial harmony" -.- and her explanation for not wearing the ribbon herself? "for personal reasons, i don't wear anything colourful." seriously, like wut? don't wear anything colourful? sure goes a long way to explain how she turned out that way. anyway, i expected the ribbons to be similar to the small little anti-drug abuse ribbon pins they give out, and i wouldn't have minded wearing something like that on my collar for the month of july, but it's an actual ribbon with a safety pin on the back, a full 3cm X 3cm, and we're expected to wear that glaring neon-orange monstrosity of a pin on our collars every day for the rest of the month. come on, one look and common sense will tell you that it wasn't designed to fit on a collar, but ms phua is absolutely adamant about this, despite other teachers already wearing it on their chests or pinning it on their bags. personally, i don't want to look like a mutant butterfly is aiming for my jugular, so i have it pinned on my bag. and on a random note, joy is literally the only person i know right now who thinks that the ribbon looks good on the collar, while everyone else is just trying to find the most inconspicuous place to attach it.

perhaps mercifully, we didn't go through CT answers during math and econs lecture, but that came at the price of having to cover new topics for both. for maths we started on hypothesis theory, which is... ok honestly i don't know what it's like because i fell asleep the moment mr chee said "ok so this will be an easy topic..." i think i freaked qihui out a little cos my head kept tilting backwards lol. because of that, i was (mostly) wide awake for the econs lecture, which started on international trade, but in hindsight keeping awake wasn't really necessary for this lecture since they were just going through comparative advantage again, but in more detail. argh, my heart bleeds for time that could have been better spent sleeping :(

went to the library with lionel, edmund and j.tan after school to kill time. my initial plan was to sleep and/or listen to music, but since mr low was also there giving yicen consultation and he made eye contact with me, i became morally obligated to do the chem assignment due tomorrow -.- anyway, lionel, yicen and i came up with a very rough and very tentative plan for a year-end class chalet which goes something like this:

1. Use whatever remaining class funds we have to bet in favour of Paul the octopus in the 3rd place match
2. Win the bet (currently the second-biggest uncertainty in the plan)
3. Use the winnings to book a chalet sometime after Grad Night
4. Blackmail, peer-pressure or otherwise convince a significant portion of the class to attend the chalet (currently the biggest uncertainty in the plan)

we actually were not entirely joking with step 1. if all the willing people in the class (which we're estimating to be just the guys in the class) contribute a mere $4 each (which by the way is actually less than the minimum bet with Singapore Pools) and we win, we could easily earn enough for a 2D1N chalet (maybe even 3D2N if the odds are good), and we'll only have to pay a nominal sum each for BBQ stuff. in any case, hopefully the plan comes to fruition, with or without Paul's help :)

instead of going for the H2 maths consolidation to go through the CT answers, i had to go for the H3 equivalent, which was just that much more depressing. mostly i was just copying down answers for questions i was completely stumped by and just left blank, but here and there were a few questions i should have been able to solve, that i could have gotten the answers to if i just thought them through, but ultimately just didn't. frustration and disappointment have been my good companions throughout H3 maths, but the fact that this was a past-year A level paper just made my "friendship" with them that much more intimate. and now i know just how badly i did for H3 maths, which i was expecting to flunk anyway, while having no clue how i did for H2 maths, which i feel could have gone either way.

and now it's time once again for UNRELATED FUNNY COMIC OF THE DAY(not necessarily updated daily)!

:D

No-man's land

The atmosphere these few days is weird. on the one hand, CTs are just over, there's nearly no more syllabus left to cover (save one chapter each for maths and econs) and the school has many scholarship and career fairs (read: slack days) planned out for us, so it should feel like ultra-laxing school days ahead. but on the other hand, CT results are just round the corner, prelims are in week 10 and A levels inch ever closer, so the pressure's really building up. it almost feels like we're trapped in limbo, a no-man's land in the battlefield of the school threatening to break out into gunfire at the slightest provocation. i predict that the hairpin trigger will be getting back our CT results; when all the tears have been shed and the blood has been spilled and the casualties have been mourned, the frenzy of war will descend over us all. and what a frenzy it promises to be!

anyway, it's time for light-hearted randomness about today. we're doing tennis for PE from now on, and right from the start ms eng was very pessimistic about it. well, she had much reason to be. i have to say that i have absolutely zero tennis genes in me. in the short half an hour we actually handled the racquet and ball, i managed to send nearly every ball in nearly every direction except forwards, a few balls straight into other people, and three balls over the court fence into the landed property yard near the school (safe to say i didn't manage to recover those three).

ok and fast forward a bit... physics lecture was spent with the teachers going through the CT answers. as with frustrating NJC tradition, we don't get our results back until they're done going through answers. i know this is completely random and may sound a bit weird all of a sudden  but i realised that i really respect mr lim as a teacher. he can lighten up the atmosphere with his sarcastic jokes (which he tells with an amazingly straight face) and then get straight to business, and the students will just follow him. he doesn't have to threaten the students with stern warnings or punishments (which so many other teachers do); somehow he manages to tell the students when to talk and when to listen, and somehow the students obey him. i think it's his general chillaxing approach to teaching. if i ever become a teacher (which i am actually seriously considering :/ ) then i hope to be somewhat like him.

skip a bit here and there... after school everyone went down to the track to participate in The Biggest Wave, a Singtel-organised inter-school competition to form the longest kallang wave. there were a lot of administrative delays here and there, and for the most part we were sitting on the track under the blazing sun doing nothing. the wave got started a few times but died off in the Aerius section >.> but finally we managed to go three complete rounds around the track continuously. i'm not sure if we're gonna win but personally i don't give a damn, seeing as the reward goes to the school and i doubt any of it is gonna trickle down to us peons in the bottom layer.

and Paul the octopus actually predicts that Germany will lose to Spain later! D: bleh what does the stupid invertebrate know anyway. i swear that i will eat takoyaki with extra octopus bits if Germany loses.

now i need to do my GP file, but i just realised that i don't actually have a physical file to store my GP stuff in (seeing as i managed to worm my way out of doing it last year :P ).

Sometimes the thorns hurt so much you forget about the rose.

Screwed up chinese oral. again. i can't believe i get two chances at it and still screw it up. is that even possible? what am i saying, it's quite obvious from my own example that it is. at least now there's only listening compre left. just one more component, then truly no more chinese forever and ever. if i can't end with a bang, at least let it end quickly.

there's GP later, for the first time since the holidays, and i am completely not looking forward to it. not only because i have not done any of the GP homework or the file, but because GP has become such a draggy subject for everyone in my class. just because we're a "1" class, we're expected to be so full of vigor and enthusiasm for the wonders and joys of learning, which although is very romantic and ideal, is rarely the behaviour exhibited by a single person, let alone an entire class. i guess if you asked my opinion on why my GP class is so screwed up all time, i'd say that the teacher is way too enthusiastic while the students are not enthusiastic enough. depressing, really; i want to sympathise and participate more in the lessons, but at the same time GP itself just repels me like anything, not to mention i'm already in her black book many times over and it's probably too late to start getting enthu now.

and i only just remembered about tomorrow's transition metals test, which probably means that i won't be studying for it. also, i just realised i have yet to reprint my data booklet since that unfortunate incident when my water bottle soaked through all my notes, which means i'll probably have to survive tomorrow by sitting next to someone with a data booklet.

looking at the hockey people now and comparing with some of my friends makes me feel like a horrible senior. did i overload myself too much and too early? in the early part of the year when everyone else was still going for their CCAs, i was busy with my H3s and chinese. now that most of that stuff is finally ending, it's already term 3 and much too late for SH2s to even get involved with CCAs anymore. i remember in cat high when i couldn't fulfill any significant "senior" duties because robotics club was then being run by mr ee (and thus was pathetic by default) and could barely attract newcomers. i remember saying to myself that i would try my best to be a good senior in whatever CCA i would join in JC. and very recently, i remember failing that resolution. i'm not a good hockey player to begin with, and now not only do i not have any good skills to pass on, but i also didn't get the opportunity to do so. sorry guys, if any of you even visit this place :(

aye, this is the first time i stopped filling my head with "life is awesome, don't think about changing the past" propaganda and seriously considered whether i regret going down this path or not. of course i'm grateful for having the extremely rare opportunity of taking 2 H3s, but at what cost? at the cost of being strongly persuaded to retake chinese? or having to give up nearly every school afternoon to after-school commitments? or being under the constant scrutiny of teachers and school staff? or giving up hockey? you could say that in a few ways, i had to give up being "normal". worth it?

so anyway, it seems that the term of the 42nd student council has ended. i know i'm not a councillor or anything, but i just want to thank them for organising and executing all the school events throughout the past year. i know that it's quite a thankless job and there will always be people who didn't like that one event because there was no air-conditioning or some other trivial matter, but i'd just like to say that no matter how many sarcastic jokes and witty remarks i made about the things which you guys did, at the end of the day it's still all appreciated :) so i guess here's thanks to the 42nd, and good luck to the 43rd.

comparing myself to the councillors who put in all their time and effort to making NJC a better place, suddenly my plight isn't even a plight anymore. life is awesome.

It's pronounced "meem", not "mee-mee"

Recently i discovered this website called Know Your Meme, which is basically like wikipedia, except for internet memes such as lolcats and mudkipz. some of the entries come with funny videos too (you can probably find the series on youtube). for some reason, i'm quite fascinated by memes. it's just so amazing and magical that something as normal as a cat or as inane as a lame comment (so i herd you liek mudkipz?) can quickly become a well-known insider joke throughout the internet. what is the innate appeal that facilitates their frenzied viral spread? internet culture has truly evolved into an entity separate from IRL societies, and it amazes me how something that used to be nothing more than a network for sharing files can now have such a rich and dynamic culture, albeit one that encourages eclecticism and schadenfreude much more than real life. the website is run by Rocketboom, or rather the Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies. if there really was a place where work consisted of studying meme trends, it would undoubtedly be the most awesome job EVAR :D

Live to fly, fly to live

Well, technically Youth Day was yesterday, but i'll bet that we all care more about the Youth Day holiday than Youth Day itself. and if, like myself, you are a 1992 baby, this Youth Day will be your last :( haha, nothing like "hey, you're not a youth anymore, are you?" to make you feel old.

six years ago, my last Children's Day passed by me without incident, probably because i was ironically still too childish to realise that it wasn't simply a lost holiday every October 1st that came with this milestone, but really a sudden nudge to cross the line from child to adolescent. thinking back, 12 is actually as magical a number as 18 when it comes to age, but unfortunately 12-year-olds rarely have the intellectual capacity to see this at their young age. it was an age when "so cute!" turned from a compliment to an insult (for boys, anyway) and restaurants stopped serving you smaller portions at discounted prices. for many, this would be the first time they will become separated from their friends as everyone splits up to go to different secondary schools. while primary school kids were generally "mischievous but ultimately benign", secondary school would be the time when the punks and rebels really start to diverge from the mainstream. 12 marked the beginning of the end of innocence in us all, a sad but ultimately inevitable and necessary step in life to forcefully disillusion us and see reality for what it really is.

and just as 12 was a time of disillusionment, 18 is a time of decisions. ever since we were born, we had all of our life-changing decisions made for us. or rather, there really wasn't much of a choice in the first place. the first 18-19 years of the life of a singaporean seem rather set: get an education. so for 18 years we read our books and took our exams and received our certificates, and suddenly we are faced with the very first crossroad in our lives, and probably one of the biggest. the choices at this junction are infinite; who can say which path is the best and which path should be avoided at all cost? nobody has ever found a winning formula for life and it is safe to say that nobody ever will, so any path is possible. in fact, what's with all this talk of "paths"? many have succeeded in life by trekking through the wilderness and creating their own paths. 18 is a time when all the side roads and narrow alleys that were barricaded in the past are now open and free for you to stroll through. drinking, smoking, driving, legal permanent employment, non-compulsory further education; suddenly the path isn't simple and straight anymore. the only path that can't be taken is the path going backwards, the path leading back to simpler times.

but in spite of all that, it's still the only way for us to grow up. we can't possibly remain children forever in neverland, so we might as well embrace the change. happy Youth Day everyone :)

anyway, here's an awesome Iron Maiden song called Aces High:



for some reason i find the the chorus lyrics to be very inspirational and fitting for the situation:

Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live, aces high

in the face of all the crossroads of life, the only certainty is that eventually a path will have to be chosen. so the only certain decision for us to make is that we all have to keep running, keep flying, keep living.

Supernova

Yesterday was the PSC scholarship and career fair, the first of many fairs to come during this time if the year. i met up with nigel and you'en at orchard mrt and we went for lunch at the wisma atria food republic, which hurt our hearts and wallets a bit ($5++ for hawker fare that would normally cost $3++ *gasp*). afterwards we wandered around a bit trying to find orchard hotel, and after about 30min of aimless walking we finally found it hidden in some small alley. i kind of realised how much of a heartlander kid i am: give me junction 8 and amk hub over ion orchard and vivocity any day. lesson learned: always travel orchard road with someone who knows the area like the back of the hand (AKA shopaholics). saw so many friends there! lionel joy guanhao gareth jp jerrell eunice liwei liz, maybe a few i missed out and surely a few more i didn't meet. and i also saw yenjin and micheal anthony too! glad they're doing fine in schoolwork, seeing as they got invited too.

the first talk i went to was by DSTA, and the scholarship mostly sponsors engineering courses. the post-graduate bond will be mainly researching and developing new equipment for the military, which sounds cool and is really flexible since each project will only last about a year or so, giving the opportunity to work on many different things throughout your career. the second one was EDB because i've heard quite a lot of good stuff about them. they sponsor a wide variety of courses so you most probably won't feel restricted in that aspect, but your career options during the bond are limited to managerial duties, which i guess is ok if you're into that sort of thing, but for the life of me i could never imagine day in, day out of simply attending meetings and negotiating contracts. the third talk was by A*STAR, which mainly does pioneering research into uncharted territories rather than applying things into new inventions like DSTA. while it is definitely something i want (call me geeky, but "scientist" has always been one of my childhood dream jobs. right after "ninja turtle" and "power ranger"), the A*STAR scholarship road is perhaps the toughest and longest of them all (you need a H3 merit grade to even apply, and it's compulsory to get a PhD in order to be sponsored fully), and i'll also have to give up the DSTA opportunity, which also sounds very appealing. finally, (for nigel's benefit >.> ) i went for the MOH talk, which basically sponsors future doctors and healthcare personnel. the talk was memorable, but for the wrong reasons. they had a guest speaker who was a podiatrist (a foot doctor), and he began describing his (supposedly daily) experiences of cutting away gangrene-rotted flesh, removing in-grown toenails and treating gaping wounds and even missing toes, complete with complementary graphic pictures of it all. i'm not sure how any of that was supposed to convince me to join them, but if you saw all that and your first reaction was "cool now i want to be a podiatrist!", then landing the scholarship should be the least of your worries. below, maybe, getting psychiatric help.

and of course what career fair would be complete without freebies! :D MAS gave the USB multiport again this year, which is fine by me cos i lost the one they gave last year :P but the show-stealer of free gifts had to be the cardboard model SBS bus given away by the LTA booth. it's just so random and impractical and childish that it makes you laugh out loud. it's still epic though. and i saw first-hand today just how thick-skinned and kiasu joy can be when i joked about getting some free NEWater from the PUB booth because i was thirsty.

Joy: *walks right up to the person* "Excuse me, can I have one?" *receives bottle, and points at me* "And can I have another one? Because my friend also wants one."

Me: *drops jaw, covers face*

she visited every single booth and got every single freebie before the third talk O.O

epic moment of the day: i followed lionel to visit the BCA booth, and lionel told the woman that he went for the talk:

Woman: "So what did you think of the animation I used in the presentation? Is it too childish?"

Lionel: "No, I think it was quite useful."

Me (thinking): "You are asking Lionel whether or not your presentation was childish?"

 all in all, a good learning experience. i think the DSTA and A*STAR scholarships look interesting. maybe the BCA and PUB ones too. but just thinking about the application requirementsmakes everything seem so futile and far away :( i guess it's not enough just to burn bright anymore. if you're gonna burn out, then make sure it's spectacular. it's not enough to be a star or a comet; you need to be a supernova.

and ARG 0-4 GER!!! :D

The fame

Alright, i decided to have this as a second post because i felt it deserved some attention on it's own. also, it's been quite a while since i had a post devoted on commenting to a newspaper article, and it makes me feel insightful and updated on current events :D (note the key word "feel"). so anyway, the article i'm referring to is actually nearly the entire Urban section of yesterday's (2-7-2010) Straits Times, which is devoted almost entirely to fame, infamy and the mad rush to possess either. i'm talking about people who see paris hilton as a role model here. you can pretty much guess that what follows will not be a glowing appraisal.

first of all, i have to clarify that fame itself is not the culprit here. most of the time, especially so in the past, fame is really just an avoidable side-effect of something else, like being a singer or actor or inventor. but that's the point: in the past, you were famous as a consequence of being good at something else; you were talented, therefore you were famous. nowadays, the reverse trend seems to be true: you get famous first, and then you get showbiz opportunities because of that. why not look at my first example, paris hilton. officially, she's a hotel heiress, which, in case you haven't noticed, isn't an actual job. her job literally entails whiling her time away until someone kicks the bucket and she gets a wad of cash. and yet it was precisely because of her notoriously decadent lifestyle (and of course that infamous sex tape...) that she managed to get into starring in reality tv shows , acting in movies, recording an album and designing perfume scents. the disturbing thing isn't merely that she became successful purely from fame, but that she became famous in the first place by emphasising the fact that she can't do anything else. there's even a wikipedia article about this bizzare phenomenon: famous for being famous. but do keep in mind that this isn't a personal attack on paris alone; i'm just using her to illustrate how some people who wander into the spotlight will do all they can to milk it for all it's worth and extend it for as long as possible - people like nicole richie, jon gosselin, ris low, focye le xuan, etc. etc.

but let's say that, by a huge stretch of the imagination, you somehow consider it a talent to be able to foresee what controversy will appeal to the masses and subsequently cater to the paparazzi's every demand. is it then a good talent to have? personally i feel that a talent like that is like being talented at pickpocketing, or swindling, or drug trafficking: acknowledgeable, but undesirable. reading through the article, i finally see the ugly epitome of the term "camwhore", stretched beyond the usual definition of "likes to take pictures of him/herself, often in funny poses and multiple shots per pose". some of these people will do practically anything to get noticed, resorting to baring fangs and skin alike to bask in the limelight. they are literally seducing the camera with cheap and dirty methods, selling themselves for screentime, just like the term suggests. they have become desperate for attention. it's disgusting and disturbing at the same time.

ok, i have to admit that i've been a bit harsh so far. but it's not even all of the above that completely pisses me off, but the attitude that some of these people have. honestly, some of them have their heads so inflated from their unearned fame that it's scary. some of them might be surprised if you told them that the earth actually revolves around something other than them. here are actual quotes from some of them taken from the articles:

I don't really care. Besides, hating me won't make you any prettier.

Hopefully, the reality show will be good for me as I can't hold down a real job. It might open doors for me to do nothing but still make a living.

Those who call me names are just jealous. They're not that pretty and nobody wants to make a show about them. And I don't care about ugly people's opinions.

Detest ugly, mean, fat humans.

this is too much. if you show some skin or start a flame war to earn your paycheck or boob job (this isn't hyperbole; some of them really do receive their payment partially in breast enhancement surgery), i have a personal opinion against it, but it's admittedly still a job. hate the job, not the worker, i will think to myself. but when you start judging people based on outward appearances just because you look good, and attribute all negative attitudes towards you to jealousy (after all, who wouldn't love you?), it's a vice that goes way beyond your occupation. if this plastic-fantastic-or-die attitude is due to the cut-throat rush for fame, then something is seriously wrong here. there are a lot of names i want to call people like that, but unfortunately they're all synonyms for "harlot" or "female dog".

and just to clarify, there were people who were interviewed by Urban who were not completely thoughtless, and i don't have anything against them. if GP has taught me anything, it's that taking an extreme stand on anything is a sucker's bet.

but at the end of the day, who's to blame for this fame craze? it can't be the fame-crazed people themselves, because they're just playing the game that has been set up for them. it isn't the first few "role models" either, because thy're just going along with a formula that they stumbled upon and discovered to work. personally, i think it's us. if you say that these people are selling their souls to the devil for fame, then we are the devil that they are feeding. who else would pay any heed to their crazed shenanigans, let alone reward them with even more attention, but the public themselves? why else would they continue acting out their play unless there was still an audience to act for? sadly, as long as people are attracted to the seedy, the sensual and the scandalous, there will be individuals who will have to step up and deliver it all. there will be people who want to do so. there will be people who want the fame.

Oil and water

Yesterday's class dinner had a larger attendance than expected: myself, kex, jj, chin, rayson, looloo, lionel, tzumi, brenda and qihui. met at AMK hub but walked around aimlessly for about half an hour before finally deciding on an Aston's at a nearby hawker centre (it seems like standard procedure for any class outing to start with aimless walking... i really don't see why we shouldn't just random number on a calculator to decide where to go since nobody ever has any opinions). food was good, but portions were rather underwhelming... i guess there has to be some sacrifice in the trinity of price, quality and quantity :/ after dinner we passed by a pasar malam and there was a stall selling those colourful syrup water drinks! :D haha they always remind me of boarding school... there would be supper at 10pm where there would be cake and a drink, except the drink would be so diluted that we couldn't make out what flavour it was, and we began identifying drinks by colour instead of flavour: "hey, there's Blue drink for supper today!" good times... i bought a cup of Blue, cos it always was my favourite (well it's really a tie between Blue and Red). afterwards the girls went home and the guys went to play pool until 11pm. i conclude that i'm not bad at pool; in fact, i'm horrible at it. oh well, whattaya gonna do about it?

well this is a bit random, but recently i've been thinking about miracles in the context of reality. people always think that miracles have to be huge events that defy all laws of everything to completely change your life. they keep lamenting that miracles never happen to them and that they are just fuel for false hope. but do miracles have to be big miracles? doesn't a small miracle count too? if two people were to meet each other for the very first time and later become inseparable buddies, doesn't that count as a miracle? if you were born into a family that can allow you to live your life without constant fear of starvation or war, doesn't that count as a miracle? if you have the ability to think, to experience, to live, doesn't that count as a miracle? in my opinion, the problem with miracles isn't that they happen too rarely, but that they happen too often and in too many different forms, such that we become jaded and unappreciative of how lucky we really are.

and i think we really need a miracle to get any progress now. it seems that they are like oil and we are like water: any attempt to mix the two together will only be pushing us against each other, with no actual mixing. no matter how much you stir or heat, oil will be oil and water will be water; there will be nothing more between them. it's not even a matter of trying anymore; it is simply our unresolvable intrinsic differences that doom us to be two minds imprisoned in one body. and i for one am glad that we will never change. we have come here as students, to live, learn and play. we did not come here to be hard drives and blindly stuff ourselves with information. 

No compass, no map

CTs are officially over :D H3 math went as well as could be expected; i was more than prepared to skip tons of questions anyway. but really, it was better than i expected (here's some math for you, better =/= good...), and i think it's primarily due to fact that it was an A level paper and not an NJC paper (here's the epic thing, they literally just stapled an NJC cover page onto an A level question booklet and passed it of as our CT). i think i have a chance to pass! *crosses fingers*

after the test i met mr chow for a while to have a very brief run-through of chinese oral, and i have to admit that i've seriously deproved. i must say that the chinese gears are more or less rusted stuck, and i'm not sure if they'll be fixed by next tuesday. oh well, just hope for the best i guess. in any case by the end of the month i will be chinese-free (for sure this time) :D

a bit random here, but i'm looking forward to all the upcoming career talks to get my bearings in life. i haven't thought much about what i want to do after A levels; in primary school and the first half of secondary school they basically chose our subjects for us, but increasingly we as students have been able to decide more and more of our future in terms of what subjects we choose to study. and of course academics and career-wise, the ultimate decision will be in which university course and industry we eventually choose to enter. after that there's really no more turning back; you could technically go back to university and attend another course to change jobs, but it's far from a fuss-free transition. when it comes to this fork in the road, the stakes are just far too high to decide on a coin toss. bleah, i hate making difficult life-altering decisions, but this one just can't be dodged.

class dinner later tonight! :D