The whistle sounded; the marathon began.
I started off strong, keeping myself strictly within my planned pace. in fact, I managed to inch ahead of time to actually gain a small lead. At the halfway mark, I had much more extra time than I originally anticipated. People started to expect me to finish first.
Then the clouds parted and the sun started to beat down. On top of that, I started to become aware of my body's fatigue. The combination of sweltering heat and lactic burn was unbearable. I felt myself slowing down, but I couldn't find the will to pick up the pace again. After all, I can probably still finish on time at this pace, so why bother?
And then it came to the final lap, and I realise that I am desperately behind time. Of course I want to finish on time, but I'm not sure if my body can find the strength to speed up, or if there's enough time left on the clock to catch up. Surely I'll have to let those people down.
But then I remember that I am not running their race; I am not running for their time; I am not running for their glory. I am running to meet my own goal, a target I set for myself, independent of what everyone else thought I could or should achieve. Today, I realised that I have fallen very short of that target.
Now the race has become personal. Even if I cannot win the race, I will reach that finish line to attain my own goal. I will block out everything and everyone else; all that matters is me, that line, and the ticking clock. And now that it involves personal business, I will not hesitate to push myself beyond every conceivable limit. If need be, I will sprint until my body withers away and crumples into a breathless heap, so long as it crumples after the finish line.
At the start of the year, I decided to adopt the motto "burn bright like a star, burn out like a comet". Now's finally the time to stick to it till the end.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Top-heavy
Got back physics paper 3 today. i don't know how i should feel. well, i passed, and it's not a borderline pass, so i should be happy. in reality though, i feel very disappointed in myself. i'll admit it: i got complacent, and now i'm reaping what i sowed. people will probably say that i'm overreacting; after all, it's not that horrendous a score, and there's still hope with papers 1 and 2, but in spite of all that i still think - scratch that, i know that this has been my worst paper ever. not because i may be getting a low score, but because i didn't perform to my potential. i still remember when i was a kid in primary school, my mom would say that she didn't care what my raw score for the exam was, as long as i tried my best and put in my utmost effort. well, this time i didn't, and now i'm rightfully suffering for it. i won't blame anyone or begrudge anything; this is entirely and utterly my own doing.
When confidence gets too large for foundations to support
When success gets too great for effort to fuel
When head gets too heavy for feet to anchor
Even giants will topple to their knees
When confidence gets too large for foundations to support
When success gets too great for effort to fuel
When head gets too heavy for feet to anchor
Even giants will topple to their knees
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Slow day
Went with chin to suntec city today to find a new pair of earphones, because he said that there were a lot of shops there. still, i have no idea why he decided to meet up at 9.30am, when we could have easily gone after lunch or something >.> and right when i slept at 2am the night before, too. but anyway, we spent the entire morning basically walking around level two of the shopping centre waiting for the shops to open one by one since because they weren't open so early (seeing how they have rudimentary common sense and all -.- ). in the end we both got the same model from the sony store:
yup, and mine is purple too, just like in the picture. for some reason i just like purple on black. and also somehow i managed to convince chin to get pink earphones, to "show that you are comfortable with your masculinity" hahaha. i'm quite happy with my purchase; they are comfortable to wear and have great noise isolation and bass, so in my opinion it's money well spent :D
besides that though, today was uneventful; barely did any homework at all :( i think that as much as i'm glad that prelims are over, i'm the type of person who really needs some sort of pressure to function. as perverse and masochistic as it may sound, a small part of me is looking forward to the incoming slew of mini-tests and mock papers, as at least then i'll be pushed along by the current. and of course, the larger part of me is just going "OHNOEZZZZ D: "
anyway, here's another song from Jucifer called Deficit:
the incredibly forced slow pace, the heavy guitar and drums, together with her slow and gentle voice, is an instant formula for an amazingly atmospheric song. it seems that this is actually a genre called sludge rock/metal, where the music is "slow and thick". perhaps another genre that i shall explore :)
i can't believe what i've gotten myself into... *facepalm*
Generation V
Got back my chem results today... got a B, which is really beyond my expectations; i was expecting a bare pass after how the mcq went, but somehow or other i must have scraped through :D still don't know where my mistakes are though, since papers have yet to be returned. mr low only read out the names of the people who got Bs (since nobody in class got an A O_O ) so i've yet to see my script. of course it's comforting to know that i managed to get a B for chem, but now i'm also afraid of this glass ceiling. many teachers have already said before that what you get for prelims will most likely be what you'll be getting for A levels, so am i destined to get a B? is that really my peak? what's more, there's still that interview next saturday; will they be satisfied?
ok right now i'm completely hyped up over pokemon black and white, the two new versions of the game, so if you're the kind who thinks pokemon is "childish" and "brainless" i suggest you look away now:
in any case, i think the metagame shakeup will be huge, possibly even larger than the physical/special split which rocked everyone's world back in DP days. so so many new gameplay elements here:
i see a huge number of game-changing pokemon, the kind that could very feasibly turn the entire game around should they be introduced properly, which could possibly result in pushing many old-timers out of OU. i see crazy abilities and moves that completely change the face of the game. even with the old pokemon, i see huge changes: rain and sun outside of Ubers; magic coat given to a pokemon with good defenses, a huge support movepool and freakin' 145 special attack; zoruak's illusion ability which will bring a whole new meaning to the word "mindgames", and all that is just the tip of the iceberg. from my very inexperienced position in competitive pokemon, i think nintendo just wants to turn the entire metagame on its head and see how the dust settles. the black/white metagame threatens to be even more volatile and unpredictable than the already chaotic 4th generation, and even back then it was hard enough keeping up with the times :( but i guess this is just how generation V is going to be like.
ok anyway here's something random: an interview with Elmo from Sesame Street :D apart from the obvious "lol it's elmo!" reaction though, it kind of struck me that the people behind sesame street must really care about the children who watch their show to a certain extent. you can tell from the way the moderator is constantly in stitches that elmo's responses are all impromptu, and the way he answers them really gives children someone to identify with and look up to. you really can sense the puppeteer's sincerity and honesty in answering the people's questions. the most impactful part of the video for me was when elmo answered how he coped with his father being sent off into the war. firstly, that a child would pose such a personal and emotional question to elmo really shows how he's grown up looking up to him and relating to him, and secondly, the puppeteer replies with such a frank and earnest reply that it's almost as if he was answering to the child himself, except using the form of elmo for the boy to identify with. in any case, here it is:
ok right now i'm completely hyped up over pokemon black and white, the two new versions of the game, so if you're the kind who thinks pokemon is "childish" and "brainless" i suggest you look away now:
in any case, i think the metagame shakeup will be huge, possibly even larger than the physical/special split which rocked everyone's world back in DP days. so so many new gameplay elements here:
i see a huge number of game-changing pokemon, the kind that could very feasibly turn the entire game around should they be introduced properly, which could possibly result in pushing many old-timers out of OU. i see crazy abilities and moves that completely change the face of the game. even with the old pokemon, i see huge changes: rain and sun outside of Ubers; magic coat given to a pokemon with good defenses, a huge support movepool and freakin' 145 special attack; zoruak's illusion ability which will bring a whole new meaning to the word "mindgames", and all that is just the tip of the iceberg. from my very inexperienced position in competitive pokemon, i think nintendo just wants to turn the entire metagame on its head and see how the dust settles. the black/white metagame threatens to be even more volatile and unpredictable than the already chaotic 4th generation, and even back then it was hard enough keeping up with the times :( but i guess this is just how generation V is going to be like.
ok anyway here's something random: an interview with Elmo from Sesame Street :D apart from the obvious "lol it's elmo!" reaction though, it kind of struck me that the people behind sesame street must really care about the children who watch their show to a certain extent. you can tell from the way the moderator is constantly in stitches that elmo's responses are all impromptu, and the way he answers them really gives children someone to identify with and look up to. you really can sense the puppeteer's sincerity and honesty in answering the people's questions. the most impactful part of the video for me was when elmo answered how he coped with his father being sent off into the war. firstly, that a child would pose such a personal and emotional question to elmo really shows how he's grown up looking up to him and relating to him, and secondly, the puppeteer replies with such a frank and earnest reply that it's almost as if he was answering to the child himself, except using the form of elmo for the boy to identify with. in any case, here it is:
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Eye of the storm
H3 maths yesterday, in a nutshell, was horrible. differential equations is traditionally the easiest component of the paper because it's the most similar to H2, but i think everyone was caught off-guard by the question this time. combinatorics was also very iffy, and graph theory, as usual, was horrible (i've posted this same thing about graph theory so many times i think it can be taken for granted now). oh well, in any case after the paper i met up with a bunch of 28s for the most expensive chicken rice dinner of my life (my wallet is still reeling from the impact) and then we basically loitered about and made nuisances of ourselves like the immature adolescents we are. it's just great to just sit down with friends and chat about everything. i think that elaborate outings with friends are overrated; it's definitely the company that matters most of all.
i think everyone suffered from back-to-school blues today as the on-off study periods of the prelims suddenly shifted gears back to the full-day studying of the normal school timetable. luckily, GP lessons were easing very gently back to speed and we basically spent the lesson reading passages out loud and watching youtube videos. no such luck with maths though, as we were plunged straight back into paper-spamming mode with the 2009 A level paper, which we were supposed to do before school started, but which i obviously skipped in favour of (inconsequential, in hindsight) studying for H3 maths. lecture attendance suddenly became upgraded many times over, with teachers even patrolling the school to rope in would-be lecture skippers O.O personally i think that's pretty inefficient: if we know that we won't benefit from the lecture (i.e. we didn't do the paper you wanted to go through during the lecture because we were studying for that other paper you gave us >.> ), then why force us to go anyway? as much as they want to do everything for their own good, shouldn't we have some say in what truly is for our own good? oh well, now is not the time for childish rebellion. econs lecture was spent going through the prelim case study (without returning our answer scripts; typical NJC procedure -.- ), and from the looks of it i pretty much crashed and burned.
my earphones finally died on me too, yesterday, after showing signs of distress for a really long time. now i'm stuck with leaky earbuds which refuse to stay in my ear (thank genetics for these misshapen ears -.- ). i'll probably be getting another pair over the weekend, thankfully it'll only be another day of lousy sound and aching ears (i have no idea why earbuds make my ears ache while in-ears are completely comfortable with me :/ ).
apparently, i've been called upon for an interview session by the DSTA scholarship board! :D that's great and all, but two things are bugging me right now: 1. that i am utterly unprepared for an interview right now, especially seeing as how prelim results threaten to squash out any possibility of bluffing through my academic achievements, and 2. that they somehow got a hold of my number even though i've never, in recent memory, given them any contact details O.o but of course they're also probably the guys who invent wiretaps and whatnot for the government, so i'd best shut my trap now <.< >.>
i'm suddenly aware of my increasing tendency to use brackets (kind of like these) to add in extra comments. and i've also noticed that it kind of resembles a person with split personality disorder discussing things with himself. which is mildly interesting and disturbing in equal proportions.
in any case, i came across this two-person band called Jucifer. they are really the most versatile band i've heard, being able to do anything from rock to punk to black metal and just about everything else you can think of involving a guitar and a drum kit. personally i like them best when they venture into alt-rock territory, like in this song (Hennin Hardine):
love how the tempo changes during the chorus to that slow beat. definitely has some influence from metalcore there :D
i think everyone suffered from back-to-school blues today as the on-off study periods of the prelims suddenly shifted gears back to the full-day studying of the normal school timetable. luckily, GP lessons were easing very gently back to speed and we basically spent the lesson reading passages out loud and watching youtube videos. no such luck with maths though, as we were plunged straight back into paper-spamming mode with the 2009 A level paper, which we were supposed to do before school started, but which i obviously skipped in favour of (inconsequential, in hindsight) studying for H3 maths. lecture attendance suddenly became upgraded many times over, with teachers even patrolling the school to rope in would-be lecture skippers O.O personally i think that's pretty inefficient: if we know that we won't benefit from the lecture (i.e. we didn't do the paper you wanted to go through during the lecture because we were studying for that other paper you gave us >.> ), then why force us to go anyway? as much as they want to do everything for their own good, shouldn't we have some say in what truly is for our own good? oh well, now is not the time for childish rebellion. econs lecture was spent going through the prelim case study (without returning our answer scripts; typical NJC procedure -.- ), and from the looks of it i pretty much crashed and burned.
my earphones finally died on me too, yesterday, after showing signs of distress for a really long time. now i'm stuck with leaky earbuds which refuse to stay in my ear (thank genetics for these misshapen ears -.- ). i'll probably be getting another pair over the weekend, thankfully it'll only be another day of lousy sound and aching ears (i have no idea why earbuds make my ears ache while in-ears are completely comfortable with me :/ ).
apparently, i've been called upon for an interview session by the DSTA scholarship board! :D that's great and all, but two things are bugging me right now: 1. that i am utterly unprepared for an interview right now, especially seeing as how prelim results threaten to squash out any possibility of bluffing through my academic achievements, and 2. that they somehow got a hold of my number even though i've never, in recent memory, given them any contact details O.o but of course they're also probably the guys who invent wiretaps and whatnot for the government, so i'd best shut my trap now <.< >.>
i'm suddenly aware of my increasing tendency to use brackets (kind of like these) to add in extra comments. and i've also noticed that it kind of resembles a person with split personality disorder discussing things with himself. which is mildly interesting and disturbing in equal proportions.
in any case, i came across this two-person band called Jucifer. they are really the most versatile band i've heard, being able to do anything from rock to punk to black metal and just about everything else you can think of involving a guitar and a drum kit. personally i like them best when they venture into alt-rock territory, like in this song (Hennin Hardine):
love how the tempo changes during the chorus to that slow beat. definitely has some influence from metalcore there :D
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
One more day
What is Tumblr?
ok, now i just look like a technological retard. let me rephrase: "what is a tumblr used for?" of the few tumblrs that i've seen (mostly linked from pictures that friends post elsewhere), it seems like you mostly post pictures from other tumblrs. i'm being completely serious when i say i've never seen a picture on a tumblr that hasn't been taken from another tumblr which got it from yet another tumblr. oh yes, and quotes too: lots of quotes taken from all over the place. but not much stuff written by the blogger personally. i just find it quite weird that user-generated content becomes a minority when it comes to tumblrs. this is strictly my personal first impression, but tumblr seems just like facebook's "like" button for everything; if you like it, post it on your tumblr. i guess like twitter, it fills a niche for microblogging, but it just isn't the same as an actual blog for me. i guess i'm sticking to regular ol' blogger with regular ol' default templates. well, the second one isn't exactly a result of anything i said, it's just that i'm too lazy/noob to change it.
yes, maybe i am a technological retard. and i have the NS phone to prove it.
ok, random thought train coming through: i have always been of the opinion that suffering is relative, and that happiness is inversely proportional to suffering. i mean, even as the world as a whole becomes a better place to live in, it doesn't advance at the same pace for everyone, and those whose lives improve slower than everyone else will always be suffering compared to the rest. it's the same argument for how poverty cannot be eliminated because even among rich people, you have the richer rich and the poorer rich. and since you would naturally be less happy if you suffer more, that would mean that we can't have a world where everyone is happy, right?
well, i realised that this argument only applies to physical suffering, and hence only material, superficial happiness. who can say that the malnourished child in the third-world country who finds a stray football to kick around is not as happy as the city kid who gets a PSP for his birthday? ultimately, although the will to be happy can be strongly affected by our circumstances, it is still up to us to be happy or not. we can all be equally happy if we're content with what we have. to put it bluntly, we can all be happy if we all lower our standards enough :D
it seems that whenever a new and powerful social network develops, there will be people willing to exploit it for internet traffic. first there was email spam which can send itself, then there were msn phishers that started conversations with contacts while the user was offline, and after that there were facebook apps which spread their own url through status updates. now, perhaps the most potent spam virus yet has surfaced on twitter. you can't even protect yourself now by not clicking on the link: it automatically retweets itself if you so much as happen to have your mouse cursor within the window, and it turns the entire window into a button such that any panic-fueled clicking at the "undo" button will redirect you to another website. this time the virus only redirects you to an error page, but i have a feeling that it was only a test run, and soon there'll be viruses popping up that force you to go to seedy "risk-free forex trading" sites >.> i guess it's to be expected, especially for twitter, which has always been structurally iffy in my opinion. oh well, i shall abandon it for a week or so until they clear this huge fail-whale.
i can't really say i feel absolutely prepared for H3 maths tomorrow, but it's the most prepared i'll ever be :/ and then i'll get my one evening's rest before school starts again on thursday! :D (this is what i mean by lowering our standards) hopefully there's no H3 lesson on thursday; honestly i don't know if i'll be able to face them so soon.
thinking about a blog redesign/overhaul that may or may not happen after A levels.
ok, now i just look like a technological retard. let me rephrase: "what is a tumblr used for?" of the few tumblrs that i've seen (mostly linked from pictures that friends post elsewhere), it seems like you mostly post pictures from other tumblrs. i'm being completely serious when i say i've never seen a picture on a tumblr that hasn't been taken from another tumblr which got it from yet another tumblr. oh yes, and quotes too: lots of quotes taken from all over the place. but not much stuff written by the blogger personally. i just find it quite weird that user-generated content becomes a minority when it comes to tumblrs. this is strictly my personal first impression, but tumblr seems just like facebook's "like" button for everything; if you like it, post it on your tumblr. i guess like twitter, it fills a niche for microblogging, but it just isn't the same as an actual blog for me. i guess i'm sticking to regular ol' blogger with regular ol' default templates. well, the second one isn't exactly a result of anything i said, it's just that i'm too lazy/noob to change it.
yes, maybe i am a technological retard. and i have the NS phone to prove it.
ok, random thought train coming through: i have always been of the opinion that suffering is relative, and that happiness is inversely proportional to suffering. i mean, even as the world as a whole becomes a better place to live in, it doesn't advance at the same pace for everyone, and those whose lives improve slower than everyone else will always be suffering compared to the rest. it's the same argument for how poverty cannot be eliminated because even among rich people, you have the richer rich and the poorer rich. and since you would naturally be less happy if you suffer more, that would mean that we can't have a world where everyone is happy, right?
well, i realised that this argument only applies to physical suffering, and hence only material, superficial happiness. who can say that the malnourished child in the third-world country who finds a stray football to kick around is not as happy as the city kid who gets a PSP for his birthday? ultimately, although the will to be happy can be strongly affected by our circumstances, it is still up to us to be happy or not. we can all be equally happy if we're content with what we have. to put it bluntly, we can all be happy if we all lower our standards enough :D
it seems that whenever a new and powerful social network develops, there will be people willing to exploit it for internet traffic. first there was email spam which can send itself, then there were msn phishers that started conversations with contacts while the user was offline, and after that there were facebook apps which spread their own url through status updates. now, perhaps the most potent spam virus yet has surfaced on twitter. you can't even protect yourself now by not clicking on the link: it automatically retweets itself if you so much as happen to have your mouse cursor within the window, and it turns the entire window into a button such that any panic-fueled clicking at the "undo" button will redirect you to another website. this time the virus only redirects you to an error page, but i have a feeling that it was only a test run, and soon there'll be viruses popping up that force you to go to seedy "risk-free forex trading" sites >.> i guess it's to be expected, especially for twitter, which has always been structurally iffy in my opinion. oh well, i shall abandon it for a week or so until they clear this huge fail-whale.
i can't really say i feel absolutely prepared for H3 maths tomorrow, but it's the most prepared i'll ever be :/ and then i'll get my one evening's rest before school starts again on thursday! :D (this is what i mean by lowering our standards) hopefully there's no H3 lesson on thursday; honestly i don't know if i'll be able to face them so soon.
thinking about a blog redesign/overhaul that may or may not happen after A levels.
Certain death
I took a gamble. i barely touched physics over the weekend, thinking that i should start studying for H3 maths instead. the entire weekend, i only did one physics mcq. well, i lost my bet, and my gut feeling for today's physics papers is ominous. oh well, i don't really have anyone to blame for this except myself. when you gamble, you have to be prepared to lose, especially when the stakes are as high as this.
i'd be lying through my teeth if i said it didn't suck to have to leave the 25s and 27s after lunch while they went off for LAN, but i already lost physics to H3 maths, and if i still fail then i'm seriously going to start smashing stuff around me. but in any case, it's only another 2 days, and it's not like i'm the only one, so i don't really have a reason to complain. just gotta suck it up and deal with it for another 48 hours.
here's a video that jonathan posted on his facebook wall. be warned though, it's part 1 out of 10, and will take up about 2 hours of your time if you watch it all at one go:
it really makes you think. while any JC physics student would know that certainty in physics, in the corporeal world, has long been thrown out the window with the arrival of thermodynamics and quantum physics, the video has opened my eyes to uncertainties that lie deeper still. it has taught me that even in the abstract realm of mathematics, supposedly logic in it's purest form, there are uncertainties. in essence, the only thing we know for sure is that we cannot know for sure: there are somethings which are true but which we will never be able to prove, and we basically have to take a leap of faith. but perhaps that is what's so amazing about uncertainty: that no matter how complete a field of study is, there will always be someone able to offer something new to it, to keep it alive. here's my favourite quote from the video:
"A timeless and perfect world never changes, but it is dead."
i'd be lying through my teeth if i said it didn't suck to have to leave the 25s and 27s after lunch while they went off for LAN, but i already lost physics to H3 maths, and if i still fail then i'm seriously going to start smashing stuff around me. but in any case, it's only another 2 days, and it's not like i'm the only one, so i don't really have a reason to complain. just gotta suck it up and deal with it for another 48 hours.
here's a video that jonathan posted on his facebook wall. be warned though, it's part 1 out of 10, and will take up about 2 hours of your time if you watch it all at one go:
it really makes you think. while any JC physics student would know that certainty in physics, in the corporeal world, has long been thrown out the window with the arrival of thermodynamics and quantum physics, the video has opened my eyes to uncertainties that lie deeper still. it has taught me that even in the abstract realm of mathematics, supposedly logic in it's purest form, there are uncertainties. in essence, the only thing we know for sure is that we cannot know for sure: there are somethings which are true but which we will never be able to prove, and we basically have to take a leap of faith. but perhaps that is what's so amazing about uncertainty: that no matter how complete a field of study is, there will always be someone able to offer something new to it, to keep it alive. here's my favourite quote from the video:
"A timeless and perfect world never changes, but it is dead."
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time marches on
Went to the library today for studying with jianzhong, you'en, chin, lionel and nigel, but i think i was quite unproductive, especially for a library session -.- i still haven't shaken off the rust from my stat maths, and i barely did chem at all. in the end i just did chem mcqs as a quick way to brush up on concepts, but i didn't do any calculation questions or in-depth explanation questions, so i guess i'll just have to cross my fingers on that :X
here's an old Metallica song from Ride The Lightning. it's freakin' awesome but i realised i simply don't listen to it enough, so here it is, For Whom The Bell Tolls:
by the way, the intro riff is played with a bass guitar and not a lead; such was the genius of Cliff Burton. he became the Most Awesomest Bassist Ever after i heard his his bass solo track on the first album (search youtube for "anesthesia (pulling teeth)" and prepare for a guitar solo... PLAYED ON BASS)
maths and chem tomorrow, then tentative mooncake festival celebration plans with 09SH28? haha, maybe.
here's an old Metallica song from Ride The Lightning. it's freakin' awesome but i realised i simply don't listen to it enough, so here it is, For Whom The Bell Tolls:
by the way, the intro riff is played with a bass guitar and not a lead; such was the genius of Cliff Burton. he became the Most Awesomest Bassist Ever after i heard his his bass solo track on the first album (search youtube for "anesthesia (pulling teeth)" and prepare for a guitar solo... PLAYED ON BASS)
maths and chem tomorrow, then tentative mooncake festival celebration plans with 09SH28? haha, maybe.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
weird Nightmares of being Buried Alive
Last night i dreamt that i was being buried alive. i was one of three secret spy-soldiers who were tasked with infiltrating an enemy graveyard. the mission was to lie down in one of the dug-out but empty graves, then pop up and shoot down all the enemy soldiers during the funeral of an important enemy figurehead. so i lay down in the grave, a dead body was put down on top of me (the corpse looked like a a zombie Plants VS Zombies), and i waited. then apparently, during the time i was lying there our side managed to claim the territory and the friendly soldiers seemingly forgot that i was there and started filling up the grave with soil. i shouted out to them but they couldn't hear me, and when i tried getting out of the grave i realised that it had suddenly become too narrow and i was jammed inside. so i just lay there with my hand outstretched, trying to wave to them in vain, as the soil kept pouring in. the weirdest part of the dream was that it was from the perspective of a character breaking the fourth wall of a comedy, so even while being buried alive, i could hear laughter tracks and clapping.
and then i woke up. it was about 3am at the time, i think. and the first thing that came to mind was a short film that my mom told me about many years ago. she watched it as a teenager on television, from a programme called "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour". yup, the same Alfred Hitchcock of "Psycho" fame, so you can probably guess that it was a horror short. i'll just copy and paste the synopsis from the wiki:
Convicted bank robber John Perry is sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a state prison lumber camp. Determined to get out, he befriends an alcoholic inmate named Doc. Doc is in charge of the prison infirmary as well as burial of the dead. Doc makes an offer to John: if John will finance an operation for Doc's granddaughter, he will get him out of prison. Doc's plan is to hide John inside the coffin of the next inmate who dies. The coffin will then be buried and dug up after the gravediggers and guards leave. John will then make his escape. All goes according to plan, until Doc fails to dig John up. John is horrified to learn why after the shroud slips off the face of the corpse sharing the coffin with him: Doc died of a heart attack the night before.
except when she told me the story she misremembered it as a partnership between a grave robber and an undertaker. when you recall stuff like this at 3am, it's kind of hard to go back to sleep.
today's econs case study was also a horror story. didn't even manage to start on the last question, which means 10 marks gone right off the bat. i just hope that everything else can help buoy that stupid blunder. maths and chem again on friday, so hopefully i can make up for the missing half of a question from friday's chem paper.
i've nearly always had dreamless nights before the promos started. i think stress makes you have weird dreams :/
edit @ 11.55pm:
ok, i've spent majority of the day slacking, and as a consequence i found these two hilarious youtube videos which i feel must be posted here to share to the world and also to archive for posterity. the first one is possibly the awesomest "satanic" video ever:
i love how it digs at blindly-following extremist religion while still not insulting christianity as a whole, and there are tons of epic quotes: "But we are satanists; we desecrate what you love by creating images of Jesus in COMFORTABLE POSITIONS"
the second one is less loaded and basically more random:
once again, quotable quotes abound: "Power spawning babies you'll have so many babies 400 BABIES!" by the way you can search youtube for Powerthirst 2 and 3; they're funny too, but not as funny as the original (aren't all sequels like that?). i think i've given myself a full cardio/ab workout from laughing at these two videos repeatedly XD
and then i woke up. it was about 3am at the time, i think. and the first thing that came to mind was a short film that my mom told me about many years ago. she watched it as a teenager on television, from a programme called "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour". yup, the same Alfred Hitchcock of "Psycho" fame, so you can probably guess that it was a horror short. i'll just copy and paste the synopsis from the wiki:
Convicted bank robber John Perry is sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a state prison lumber camp. Determined to get out, he befriends an alcoholic inmate named Doc. Doc is in charge of the prison infirmary as well as burial of the dead. Doc makes an offer to John: if John will finance an operation for Doc's granddaughter, he will get him out of prison. Doc's plan is to hide John inside the coffin of the next inmate who dies. The coffin will then be buried and dug up after the gravediggers and guards leave. John will then make his escape. All goes according to plan, until Doc fails to dig John up. John is horrified to learn why after the shroud slips off the face of the corpse sharing the coffin with him: Doc died of a heart attack the night before.
except when she told me the story she misremembered it as a partnership between a grave robber and an undertaker. when you recall stuff like this at 3am, it's kind of hard to go back to sleep.
today's econs case study was also a horror story. didn't even manage to start on the last question, which means 10 marks gone right off the bat. i just hope that everything else can help buoy that stupid blunder. maths and chem again on friday, so hopefully i can make up for the missing half of a question from friday's chem paper.
i've nearly always had dreamless nights before the promos started. i think stress makes you have weird dreams :/
edit @ 11.55pm:
ok, i've spent majority of the day slacking, and as a consequence i found these two hilarious youtube videos which i feel must be posted here to share to the world and also to archive for posterity. the first one is possibly the awesomest "satanic" video ever:
i love how it digs at blindly-following extremist religion while still not insulting christianity as a whole, and there are tons of epic quotes: "But we are satanists; we desecrate what you love by creating images of Jesus in COMFORTABLE POSITIONS"
the second one is less loaded and basically more random:
once again, quotable quotes abound: "Power spawning babies you'll have so many babies 400 BABIES!" by the way you can search youtube for Powerthirst 2 and 3; they're funny too, but not as funny as the original (aren't all sequels like that?). i think i've given myself a full cardio/ab workout from laughing at these two videos repeatedly XD
Monday, September 13, 2010
Taboo
The maths paper was very unconventional. although it wasn't overwhelmingly difficult (by NJ standards, which isn't actually saying a lot), the questions were often presented in ways that we've never seen before, which promises to cause many careless errors due to panic and anxiousness :/ here's the first question, which is actually a personal favourite:
i wish things went as well with the chem paper. it seems that besides maths and physics, time management is a major problem that i have. we're supposed to choose 4 questions out of 5, but i only managed to do 3.5, which means that i can kiss 10 marks out of 80 goodbye right here and now T_T it's really frustrating to know that you just need 5 more minutes to get those marks, especially with such a giveaway question. for the first time ever, it was a zeroth order graph! that's just a straight line! D:
oh well, all that is now in the past. the important thing now is to focus on the future: one more maths paper and two more chem papers. then again, there's also econs and physics which are still not officially over. and H3 MATHS TOO.
i've been thinking about jokes that play on various stereotypes: racial, sexual, religious etc. are they really as bad as we denounce them to be? compare such a joke with a caricature: in both cases, a few humourous aspects are picked out and exaggerated for laughs, except a caricature is aimed at a single person while a discriminatory joke is aimed at an entire group of people. personally, when i hear a joke like that, i find it funny for the same reason i find things like spongebob squarepants funny: you take a simple concept and stretch it, then you apply it to daily scenarios for humourous effect. in other words, stereotype jokes are funny because the stereotypes portrayed are absurd and unbelievable. isn't it actually a good thing that stereotypes are being ridiculed and discredited as truths?
i shall end off with this sexist (kind of?) but hilarious webcomic:
The sum of the digits in a three-digit number is 15. Reversing the digits in that number decreases its value by 594. Also, the sum of the tenth digit and four times the unit digit is five more than the hundredth digit. Find the number.haha, i get such a primary school vibe from this question XD when i first saw it my jaw literally dropped for a while and i wondered if i had taken the JH1 paper by mistake. but of course, "guess and check" is no longer a viable method for questions like this when you enter JC. by the way, the answer is 852, which is the bus that mr teo takes home from NJ >.> i guess it's quite obvious who set it?
i wish things went as well with the chem paper. it seems that besides maths and physics, time management is a major problem that i have. we're supposed to choose 4 questions out of 5, but i only managed to do 3.5, which means that i can kiss 10 marks out of 80 goodbye right here and now T_T it's really frustrating to know that you just need 5 more minutes to get those marks, especially with such a giveaway question. for the first time ever, it was a zeroth order graph! that's just a straight line! D:
oh well, all that is now in the past. the important thing now is to focus on the future: one more maths paper and two more chem papers. then again, there's also econs and physics which are still not officially over. and H3 MATHS TOO.
i've been thinking about jokes that play on various stereotypes: racial, sexual, religious etc. are they really as bad as we denounce them to be? compare such a joke with a caricature: in both cases, a few humourous aspects are picked out and exaggerated for laughs, except a caricature is aimed at a single person while a discriminatory joke is aimed at an entire group of people. personally, when i hear a joke like that, i find it funny for the same reason i find things like spongebob squarepants funny: you take a simple concept and stretch it, then you apply it to daily scenarios for humourous effect. in other words, stereotype jokes are funny because the stereotypes portrayed are absurd and unbelievable. isn't it actually a good thing that stereotypes are being ridiculed and discredited as truths?
i shall end off with this sexist (kind of?) but hilarious webcomic:
edit @ 12.05am: some food for thought:
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Second wave
Well, the truce came and went, and now we are thrust into the thick of battle once more. what more can i say? hopefully, we're all now slightly more prepared for the upcoming fight than we were a week before. my personal worry right now is chemistry, since that's the one that always kills everybody, but then again maths might spring an ambush too :X gotta look on all sides man. even amidst all the doom and gloom though, just remember that this is only the first paper out of two for maths and three for chem, so there's still a chance to fight back even if you don't do too well tomorrow. and basically extending this mentality to all the other papers, it's just like what mr lim said: it's so much more manageable to get a good grade if you just spread out the marks required across all the papers. even if you don't do well for one paper, just get over it quickly and focus on the upcoming challenges, because getting distracted by one defeat is basically getting defeated again.
i must say that i'm really disappointed in myself for working on nothing but maths and chem the entire holiday, which meant doing nothing for physics, econs and H3 MATHS HOLY CRAP D: but oh well, it's too late for that now. i'll just see what i can cram in before it all caves in.
Good luck, guys :)
i must say that i'm really disappointed in myself for working on nothing but maths and chem the entire holiday, which meant doing nothing for physics, econs and H3 MATHS HOLY CRAP D: but oh well, it's too late for that now. i'll just see what i can cram in before it all caves in.
Good luck, guys :)
A near-forgotten goal
I've been getting very frequent bouts of nostalgia recently. i know i've said before that we shouldn't keep looking back at the past, but sometimes it's just so difficult to look in front when the scene up ahead is so difficult to bear. the second wave is imminent, and after that the final wave is less than two months away. i'd be lying if i said i'm not afraid in the least; all those old doubts and fears that i have been keeping buried underground all this time are starting to break through the surface again, and there's not much leeway to push them back when you only have two months left. every passing day, "i'll worry about it later" becomes a less and less viable way to handle the problem. increasingly, it becomes more and more tempting to go back to the past, even if only to the beginning of the year, when the storm was still far away.
but that is when i remind myself that no matter how far back in time i travel, i will have to pass this moment eventually. running away from the problem is futile, and daydreaming about running away is even worse when there's no possible way to actually turn back the clock. the time must come eventually, and fate has decreed that time to be now. the only thing left to do is to charge into the battlefield and emerge victorious. after all, the past seems bright, but the future promises to burn brighter still.
I want to be a supernova.
but that is when i remind myself that no matter how far back in time i travel, i will have to pass this moment eventually. running away from the problem is futile, and daydreaming about running away is even worse when there's no possible way to actually turn back the clock. the time must come eventually, and fate has decreed that time to be now. the only thing left to do is to charge into the battlefield and emerge victorious. after all, the past seems bright, but the future promises to burn brighter still.
I want to be a supernova.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Pointless ecstasy
People seem to really like the past. save for those people who've had truly horrendous and traumatic experiences behind them, we all seem to have this desire to return to a certain time period that has gone by. sometimes, though, i think that it's better that we've grown out of our immature happiness. as we get older, the feeling of joy becomes less frequent, but when it does happen then it's usually over something truly worth rejoicing. do you really want to be like a 5-year-old again and praise the hands of fate whenever your mom buys you an ice-cream? happiness, like many other good things in life, can be compared to fireworks: it only happens at the very end, and only for a short while, but for those brief few minutes you feel like you're on top of the world. if fireworks were to go off above our heads every other minute, we would soon be complaining about the blinding flashes and deafening booms. the appeal of fireworks stems not only from the sparkles and crackles, but also from rarity. perhaps in a way, it could be said that the older we get, the higher are our standards of joy. when we eventually feel that feeling of happiness which stems from something truly worthwhile, are we not better off than our past selves who knew only to clap and cheer over the smallest incident? if the cause of joy didn't matter at all, there wouldn't really be a very good argument against us all just popping ecstasy pills nonstop.
anyway, here's a news update about a band that i haven't been talking much about lately: Abandon All Ships is releasing their debut album on 5th october! :D i've heard a few of their singles which they carried over from their EP and i have to day that they're a lot more polished now. my technocore craze is officially back. here's Take One Last Breath, which is the remade version of Pedestrians Is Another Word For Speedbump:
anyway, here's a news update about a band that i haven't been talking much about lately: Abandon All Ships is releasing their debut album on 5th october! :D i've heard a few of their singles which they carried over from their EP and i have to day that they're a lot more polished now. my technocore craze is officially back. here's Take One Last Breath, which is the remade version of Pedestrians Is Another Word For Speedbump:
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Recurring dream
Well, not exactly, but if you have the same dream for two nights in a row then it's probably more significant than your average dream, right? so anyway, here's how it goes:
i'm with a whole group of students sitting on a stage in a hall, and everything is dark except for the spotlights, which are aimed directly at us. even though i can barely see further than the end of the stage, somehow i get the feeling that it isn't the hall in NJC, but rather the one all the way back in ai tong, my primary school. we're all wearing some kind of uniform with shiny buttons, but i can't remember if it's NJC or cat high. then i see a silhouette pacing off-stage, and i hear mr tek's voice. i can't remember his exact words, but he's talking about our prelim grades. he says that on the whole the cohort did averagely well, but then he turns his head towards my general direction (it's too dark to see if he's really looking at me) and says that there's a certain group of people who fared way below average. at this point of time, everyone suddenly has their prelim certificate, seemingly pulled out from thin air. i peek at the guy next to me, who scored AAAA/B. then i realise that i don't have my certificate with me, and somehow i come to the conclusion that i left it at home (even though i have no recollection of anything before this point, and therefore have no idea what my grades are).
and then i wake up.
i honestly have no idea what to make of it, except that it gives me a general feeling of foreboding :/
i'm with a whole group of students sitting on a stage in a hall, and everything is dark except for the spotlights, which are aimed directly at us. even though i can barely see further than the end of the stage, somehow i get the feeling that it isn't the hall in NJC, but rather the one all the way back in ai tong, my primary school. we're all wearing some kind of uniform with shiny buttons, but i can't remember if it's NJC or cat high. then i see a silhouette pacing off-stage, and i hear mr tek's voice. i can't remember his exact words, but he's talking about our prelim grades. he says that on the whole the cohort did averagely well, but then he turns his head towards my general direction (it's too dark to see if he's really looking at me) and says that there's a certain group of people who fared way below average. at this point of time, everyone suddenly has their prelim certificate, seemingly pulled out from thin air. i peek at the guy next to me, who scored AAAA/B. then i realise that i don't have my certificate with me, and somehow i come to the conclusion that i left it at home (even though i have no recollection of anything before this point, and therefore have no idea what my grades are).
and then i wake up.
i honestly have no idea what to make of it, except that it gives me a general feeling of foreboding :/
Monday, September 6, 2010
Open your eyes
When you go through life, you will meet a few people you hit off with, and they become your friends. by the same token, you will also bump into people you simply cannot see eye-to-eye with, and you mark them down in you personal blacklist. once they're in that list, you start saying things like this:
"Hey, you know i heard that that guy, XXX..."
"Oh, that guy..."
sound familiar? when things reach that stage, we have officially forgotten to treat that person as a fellow human being. we begin to associate that person with that particular set of traits that we hate about him, and we forget that that person has his own tears and failures, his disappointments and regrets, his heartaches and breakdowns. like you, he has been bruised and battered by the grinding stone which we call life; can you really bear to add to his burden? if you can, then what makes you so much better than the person you despise?
maybe it is empathy and not forgiveness which is the true answer to peace. not forcing yourself to forgive a person's misgivings, but forcing yourself to see the world through his eyes, and then having mercy come about as a natural conclusion.
sometimes we get so caught up trudging through our own private worlds, cursing over every tree branch that blocks our path, that we forget that our world isn't private at all, that we share our world with everyone else, and that maybe that branch is actually another person reaching out to your. open your eyes and see your world as what it truly is: our world.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Cold War
It didn't really occur to me until during assembly yesterday morning that it was the last day of the term. i guess i've been so caught up in the rat race that insignificant things like that just got forgotten. i'm beginning to see how it could be possible that people can get so busy that they forget milestone events like their own birthdays. importance really is relative, not just with respect to each other but to time as well.
econs was quite bad, really. i was banking on micro to save myself because i still can't do macro at all, but all the micro questions were of the broad, vague, 25-mark type. also, my pen ran out of ink halfway through the second essay, and during the only exam where i left my pen refill in my bag instead of bringing it with me... it was kind of unsettling, but ultimately beside my main problem of time management. i've got a long way to go before the 'A' levels man T_T
after the paper, 09SH28 went to KAP for lunch, all because we trusted jacob (a fatal error!) when he said that macdonald's breakfast hours have been extended to 12 noon -.- we stayed there for a while to occupy seats and make noise, then moved on to bukit timah plaza for pool. once again i volunteered myself for the noob table, but we still had a great time chasing after that little black ball. afterwards, a bunch of us went to jianzhong's house for table tennis and swimming. jianzhong was being an idiot as usual (on home ground, too), and we ended up imitating an olympic table tennis match, complete with all the "hurh!"s and "hyah!"s when we "smashed" the ball. swimming was great too; i can't remember the last time i went swimming, and it was even better given the sauna weather we've been having.
today has been completely unproductive, and being introduced to A Very Potter Musical hasn't helped my concentration either. basically it's a fan-made harry potter-based comedy musical that you can find on youtube, and i've been watching it all day while trying to do actual stuff. the worst part is that there's a sequel too, so that's potentially another day burned away :O
ok, i've finally updated the music player to suit what i've been listening to! :D basically it's mostly Sikth and old Metallica, with some new Avenged Sevenfold and a very tiny bit of old Iron Maiden.
and it's time for a random funny picture! :D
econs was quite bad, really. i was banking on micro to save myself because i still can't do macro at all, but all the micro questions were of the broad, vague, 25-mark type. also, my pen ran out of ink halfway through the second essay, and during the only exam where i left my pen refill in my bag instead of bringing it with me... it was kind of unsettling, but ultimately beside my main problem of time management. i've got a long way to go before the 'A' levels man T_T
after the paper, 09SH28 went to KAP for lunch, all because we trusted jacob (a fatal error!) when he said that macdonald's breakfast hours have been extended to 12 noon -.- we stayed there for a while to occupy seats and make noise, then moved on to bukit timah plaza for pool. once again i volunteered myself for the noob table, but we still had a great time chasing after that little black ball. afterwards, a bunch of us went to jianzhong's house for table tennis and swimming. jianzhong was being an idiot as usual (on home ground, too), and we ended up imitating an olympic table tennis match, complete with all the "hurh!"s and "hyah!"s when we "smashed" the ball. swimming was great too; i can't remember the last time i went swimming, and it was even better given the sauna weather we've been having.
today has been completely unproductive, and being introduced to A Very Potter Musical hasn't helped my concentration either. basically it's a fan-made harry potter-based comedy musical that you can find on youtube, and i've been watching it all day while trying to do actual stuff. the worst part is that there's a sequel too, so that's potentially another day burned away :O
ok, i've finally updated the music player to suit what i've been listening to! :D basically it's mostly Sikth and old Metallica, with some new Avenged Sevenfold and a very tiny bit of old Iron Maiden.
and it's time for a random funny picture! :D
for some reason i read the bottom caption with a deadpan i-gave-you-what-you-wanted-now-screw-off tone of voice, and it was hilarious XD
the truce is starting off peaceful, but i'll bet that it'll soon tense up again. frantically preparing for a war that is not yet here, but seems certain to commence soon - almost like a cold war.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Get up today to die again tomorrow
Well, the first day is over, and i can't help but feel slightly disappointed over GP. i really don't know what came over me when i picked that essay question. looking back, i have no idea how "'Powerful branding now dictates consumer choice.' Discuss" looked like an easy question to do, by any means. in any case, i doubt that choosing a different question would have changed much, given my horrible time management. couldn't finish the essay or the AQ. i just needed maybe 5 minutes to salvage my concluding paragraphs, and perhaps my grade as well. oh well.
physics was slightly better, i guess, but the quantum physics question was out to kill us all. until now, i haven't found a single person who can confidently say that he/she has found the right answer, and i'm only about 50-60% sure of my own answer.
in any case, there's no way to look except forward; to let past failures demoralise us is only to lose again in the same battle. even though there's not much to look forward to tomorrow (econs X_X ), you'll have a greater chance of success (or be likely to lose less) if you go in at 100%.
something i stumbled upon: God did not create Universe. personally, i was rather taken aback by this statement from Stephen Hawking of all people. from what i know of him (which admittedly is not a lot), he's always taken a neutral religious stance in his work. for him to come out and something like this must have took quite a revelation on his part. still, from what little of his argument was revealed in the link, it seems that he deduced that the big bang could possibly have resulted from all the particles in existence coming together due to their collective gravity, and then used Occam's Razor to deduce that since a higher power is not needed to explain things, we should therefore not consider one. personally, this still doesn't change my strong apathetic agnostic position on religion. one has to consider why much of the universe is minimalistic: applying evolution theory, it can be explained that all the unnecessary junk in the universe simply phased itself out due to non-utility, but can we really apply this when a higher bing is concerned? no, not really. either a god exists, or it does not, and you can't simply have a god "disappear" when not needed. so in my opinion, it's still 50-50. and hence my agnostic stand remains. (note to self: add "A Brief History of Time" and "The Grand Design" to my after-'A's reading list; i can't believe i have yet to read these classics)
it's amazing how people can change over the years. granted, it has been 6 years, and i've heard stories about it, but i'm still reeling from shock of actually seeing it all. i won't judge based on stereotypes, but if those stereotypes are true here then i really wonder what happened to the high flyer who was supposed to be.
physics was slightly better, i guess, but the quantum physics question was out to kill us all. until now, i haven't found a single person who can confidently say that he/she has found the right answer, and i'm only about 50-60% sure of my own answer.
in any case, there's no way to look except forward; to let past failures demoralise us is only to lose again in the same battle. even though there's not much to look forward to tomorrow (econs X_X ), you'll have a greater chance of success (or be likely to lose less) if you go in at 100%.
something i stumbled upon: God did not create Universe. personally, i was rather taken aback by this statement from Stephen Hawking of all people. from what i know of him (which admittedly is not a lot), he's always taken a neutral religious stance in his work. for him to come out and something like this must have took quite a revelation on his part. still, from what little of his argument was revealed in the link, it seems that he deduced that the big bang could possibly have resulted from all the particles in existence coming together due to their collective gravity, and then used Occam's Razor to deduce that since a higher power is not needed to explain things, we should therefore not consider one. personally, this still doesn't change my strong apathetic agnostic position on religion. one has to consider why much of the universe is minimalistic: applying evolution theory, it can be explained that all the unnecessary junk in the universe simply phased itself out due to non-utility, but can we really apply this when a higher bing is concerned? no, not really. either a god exists, or it does not, and you can't simply have a god "disappear" when not needed. so in my opinion, it's still 50-50. and hence my agnostic stand remains. (note to self: add "A Brief History of Time" and "The Grand Design" to my after-'A's reading list; i can't believe i have yet to read these classics)
it's amazing how people can change over the years. granted, it has been 6 years, and i've heard stories about it, but i'm still reeling from shock of actually seeing it all. i won't judge based on stereotypes, but if those stereotypes are true here then i really wonder what happened to the high flyer who was supposed to be.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
First wave
Tomorrow, the battle begins. the fight that we've all been frantically preparing for these past few weeks will finally be here. this will be the first wave, and after a brief one-week truce, the next wave will attack. i'm really unprepared this time for GP and econs (i won't even mention chem because at least that's in the second wave), but there is very little else we can do in preparation for the first wave, except maybe to remain calm. in any case, good luck to all :)
But not now
after pondering over the idea for a while, i decided not to go back to cat high for teachers' day, and the decision's been squirming in the back of my head ever since. after all, it will be the last teachers' day before we get checked into NS. i think i'll visit after A levels instead, once we have truly fulfilled our duty as students. i think successfully surviving JC is the best gift to give our teachers.
slacked off in the band room today with you'en, joshua, chin, nigel and joshua, where i finally managed to play what you'en calls the "standard rock beat" :D which is basically cymbals on 1234, bass on 1 and snare on 3 (yes, not very outstanding at all, but it's still a personal milestone). partially due to that, i barely did any studying at all today :(
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