Sunday, August 31, 2003
*smacks own forehead*
Forgot to write smth about teachers! Even though teachers dont access my blog ( i HOPE so.. ) I think it is appropriate to mention a little smth about teachers.
Teachers are very important people. If you ask me, a teacher has the most important profession in this modern society. They exert such influence over their students, they could never imagine its extent.
I really wish to thanks all the teachers in SJI who have taught me. From 1e1 to 2e1 to 302 to 402, you all share one common thread: You tolerated all my bullshit. :D SO happy teachers day! Of cuz, not forgetting my primary school teachers. I still remember madam liza, who was so appalled at my atrocious handwriting that she made me stay back after school and write out passages from the english textbook until she was satisfied with my handwriting. :D She is partially to thank for my more tolerable handwriting now. Jonny, mathew and zenas could have used a teacher like her eh? =D There are others who deserve mention, but me being me, I will just leave this at this.
" Those who have acquired knowledge will shine like the brilliance of the firmanent. Those who have taught people to be just will shine like the stars for all eternity. "
Daniel 12:3
Jacques Derrida
" I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me under-privileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary. "
Language. The ability to create ideas in people's minds, just by making certain noises. What power!
Friday, August 29, 2003
Chem practical exam
Halfway through the chem practical... ... I realised that I am not as good as I think I am. Ayeayeaye... Must wake up...
The volumetric analysis part was a li'l screwed up. We got varied readings, since there was room for open interpretation to about One test tube of dilute sulphuric acid and potassium iodide, and pale yellow. VA shouldn't be a problem.
The Qualitative analysis part was a little screwy for me. Don't know why, but didn't really know what was going on. Didn't really answer the extension questions properly.
I noticed that after each prac, there will always be a question that everyone asks each other. For the bio prac, it was 'length or width' ? For the chem prac, it was 'R or S'? haha.
So after the Chem practical, we had a quarantine period until 2 pm. Got quite a bit of maths and physics papers done, AND had some fun. We had a little, no, big picnic in the LT. I brought M&Ms( not enough to go around though), gerard brought biscuits, etc. But Andrew Sophian really takes the cake. ( It's just a manner of expression, he did not really bring a cake along... sheesh... ) Imagine my amazement when I saw him whip out a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a knife. !!!!!!!!!! Haha, I was like , wtf! That's not the way...
Went in ' The pink room' ( there is a little background story here, it's okay if you don't know it) with gerard, peter, daren and a few others. We chilled out in there away from the noise of the lt, and we even managed to lie down and catch some shut-eye. Gerard kept playing with his bb gun ( no, i do not mean anything else, i really mean a bb gun! ). I bet they could hear it from the lt man... Read chris' mag in there... there were a few interesting articles, eh? ;) After that I went back out into the LT where gaius max pravin andrew and me were trying to solve some word puzzles. Quite fun. I got some really quickly. =D Again, when Michael Chin released us, there was a huge roar. As if the O levels were over. After that I headed down to the PAC for teacher's day concert rehearsal.
Teacher's day concert.
After quite a few rehearsals, the day finally came... and went. Arrived early in the PAC to get ready. Soon the teacher's day concert was on!
The items were quite good really. I liked the Two dance items by 301 and 401. Good job you 01 buggers, you guys did great! 'The girl was bad, the girl was Dangerous!' Don't forget, MJ loves you.haha, =D Spunk, well, Spunk'd the lower sec, but their coordination was a bit off. The lower sec guys didn't really appreciate them too, I think it would have been more apprapriate for them to play for the Upper secondary instead. But Spunk still rocks! The Trash item really stank, but good try anyways. The teacher's band comprised of Mr sirhan, CF, bro Jason and 'mina-cheena rock' janet kwok. They sang songs like 'knocking on heavens door', and 'Runaway train'. The prefects band was real good too, esp with moses and ben on the guitars and sheldon on bass. Moses and ben were great, it sounded real good. Good job guys!
Ah, of course, there are the MCs. Agent P and Agent P, Pradz and Prak. Nod ya head! =D Their material was really good, they really 'suan'ed some of the teachers yah? I expect some of them may have been rubbed the wrong way. Maybe it was a little too much lah guys..... Anyway, it was an honour to be part of your act, as one of the the lame-ass guys at the start and later on, Agent X. A pleasure. =) Ah, who could forget pravin 'kapsa' raj's role? I swear, that role was tailor-made for him. I can't think of anyone I know who could have did that better than him. Good on 'ya mate!
After the concert, we hung around in the PAC 'cos we didn't want to do the ACES workout. When Rosnye came over and asked us whether we had to the wourkout or not, we were like, 'err...'. We thought that he would chase us off. One of us said that we didn't want to do. Then he said ' Don't want to do ar? Okay la, nevermind, stay in here!' Rosnye rocks! PACman rules. I really thought that he would be really uptight and all, because we always see him shouting at people in the PAC. But he really is very patient and cool.
After that, went to give my teacher's day gift to my teachers. This year it was chocolate cookies with hazelnuts. Deviated from the usual Brownies. :)
Went to the street soccer court to play soccer. There were a lot of old boys who came back to play. My team beat one team, but the next one was just too good for us.
Came home and felt too tired to do anything. Went to sleep. The bed was so inviting. Some people have weaknesses for Drink, some for Drugs. I think mine is my bed.
"When you keep pinching them but they refuse to wake up, what else can you do?"
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Biology Practical Exam
The day started off well. Slept for a luxurious 11 hours ( 8 pm to 7 am ... heaven! ), after which I revised a bit for the practical exam later on. Reported to school at exactly 9.15 am.
Once I stepped into the lab, I heaved a sigh of relief, for the samples they gave were familiar to us. And for the first part we basically had to do a few food tests. Simple. But the second part was the killer. Had to measure the width of twenty leaves and construct a histogram. The thing is, the phrasing of the question was kinda ambiguous, and thus most of us measured the length.
One question. WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST PHRASE THE QUESTION IN A CLEAR FASHION? ( by people, you know who i am referring to. ) It would be so much easier for everyone! From the top of my head(s), I can think of at least two ways the question can be re-phrased so that 90% of the bio cohort does not get screwed!!! PLease la, even aylwyn goh got that one wrong... How can it not be ambiguous??? YOU THINK THE PRELIMS ARE VERY FUN TO PLAY WITH ?
grr. bah. don't bother. *deep breaths*
As you may tell ( don't really have to read between the lines yeah? ), I seem agitated. Yea, so during the quarantine period after the prac exam, I couldn't do any work. So slacked around, spent hours with gerard, paul and gang trying to disturb zenas in 'the pink room' ( actually its the space between the two LT doors at the back). In the end he vacated it, and aston, sara, gerard, me and later xz and justin *winkwink* moved in. We had quite a nice goof-off in there. ( goof, not any other word okay.)
Many interesting things happened in the LT. Some of which cannot be mentioned here. When Michael Chin released the whole lot of us, there was a huge roar of glee. haha. Took the 132 home with daren and gerard. Within 5 mins of getting on the bus they were both asleep. Amazing.
Came home, couldn't do much. Starting reading this book, called The Reptile room. It's kind of like the opposite of a fairy tale, where everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. Quite a tongue-in-cheek book. I personally do not like how all the stories, movies, etc. always have these saccharine sweet endings. Yucks. Once in a while it's good to see the bad guy triumph. Sometimes it's nice to see the hostage situation going totallt wrongo! *evil laugh* You should check out 'Without a trace'. QUite a nice show, I think it's on saturdays channel 5 11 pm. About how ppl go missing. Most of the time its endings are realistic, i.e. the likeliest outcome. Very kewl show.
Argh. Don't feel like doing anything today. Depressed..... ................................
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Today wasn't very exciting. At least it was a thursday, which meant that the school day was incredulously slack. Two periods of full humanities, one period of physics, and we are done for the day. Can just go home. =D
The RME today was interesting though. The last few weeks there were talks by various religious dudes( and dudettes ), so today, to cap off our whole 4 year RME education, *sniff* We had a talk by a married couple. The guy is an ex-josephian.The two of them were quite cute, relating their dating experiences and all. They met in CJC, and they met under the influence of Tembusu. In case you are wondering, no, Tembusu is not a drug. It's a tree. :o
They were saying how this kind of thing can only happen in CJC. right... ... Now I know why every year sji guys flock to cj, at least for the first three months. But with Brother Paul there now, you'd be better off looking for romance in a prison cell. ( You know, those really nice guys who always seem to knock the soap out of your grip? ) =D
They have six kids too. Spent a lot of time talking about their kids. I gathered that they had a few motives giving us that talk. 1, to consolidate the church's no-contraceptive stand ( six kids? yikes ). 2, To encourage us to go to cjc. 3, To allow us to [quote] " Ask questions that you never dared to ask your teachers."[unquote]. hehe, I'll get to that soon, no worries.
After they concluded their talk, they said that the main reason why they give this talk year in year out is because of the interesting questions we guys ask. The lady, ying is her name, told us not to disappoint her. Hell no we didn't. ;)
As usual, yangwei went first, cos no one else dared to go first, and he probably thought 'what the hell' and went for it. can't remember his question :P Then I asked a question. " How different is your marriage now compared to when you were newly married. And I mean all aspects of your marriage". Then the whole LT burst out laughing. yea, apparently my reputation preceeds myself. Actually, I wasn't thinking what the whole LT was thinking... It only dawned on me after a while. Then I was like, hey..yea, why didn't I think of that? of all people? Quite disappointed really. Yeap, the guy (bernard) kinda responded to my question with an analogy. He said something about how when you first drive a car, you get real nervous, and you cant really drive straight, etc. Then he said after a while, you get the hang of it, and you will be cruising at 100kmph with no problems at all. Wah lau, sick bugger. =D Anyway, I think they answered my Question, yeah guys? =)
Yup then after that Ronald addressed a rather controversial question to them la. I thought it was very brash, bordering on in bad taste la. That's what you'd expect from him, anyways.
Spent the periods after that doing ij amaths prelim paper. wah lau, they actually print out the formulae on the paper. I wish they'd do that for our physics exams ... ...
History test tomorrow! Chinese civil war. Civil war eh? How can you justify calling a war civil?
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Sign my new-look guestbook!! I just deleted all the entries, spruced it up a little to give it a more effervescent look.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Took my O level English Oral yesterday. I feel it went quite well, I did not freeze up like I normally do. The theme of the whole thing was about sport, and losing. Yea, and for the conversation, the examiners asked me to describe one time where I had lost in a match. Bluffed my way thru, I think I was quite believable. Oh yes, while we were waiting, APA ( francis low ) 'accidentally' let us see some 'confidential' piece of paper stating that the O level chinese results will be released the next morning at 10 am. When he 'found out' that we saw that, he put on this look of fake shock, and gasped "You mean you guys peeked?" and he look so outraged. lamer.
Today the results were released. From those few of us, the news had spread like wildfire throughout the whole level. So when the announcement chime rang from the PA system, a huge collective groan emanated from the sec 4 block. Then when kwang finally came back to class with our results, the bloody -toot- purposely tried to kill us with the suspense. He was like, asking ppl from other classes whom had already gotten their results to go back to class, anbd making a real slow show of it. What's more, he even took his time to give out a chem woksheet. The whole class was like, screaming at him to get on with it, but he just took his time and gave his stupid sadist smile, which seemed to say "Make me." Once again, I emphasise, that -toot-.
Once he finally started to give out the results, our reactions were quite amusing. From downright disappointment ( noel ) to jubilation ( David and keefe " We passed!" ), but the most funny one of all was Ruby's. He looked down on the result sheet, looked to the rest of the class with this quizzical/forlorn look, and then suddenly put up one finger, to signify an A1. heehee.
Quite a few other ppl got A1. Matthew Kong ( good job matt! ), Chun xiang, stanley, zenas (unexpected) gerard ( who was skipping down the corridor from 04 to 01 ), jonny, and many others.
The real surprise of the day for me was getting a Distinction for Oral. I saw a D on the results sheet, and assumed that it was the normal grading system ( A,B,C,D, etc). It didn't hit me that I had gotten a distinction until someone remarked that he had only gotten a merit. My friends were all saying "Woah, get distinction for Oral and an overall B3... ... must have really screwed up you paper. ". Wah. What an ego deflater. :(
Overall, I am pretty happy with myself. =D
Friday, August 08, 2003
Annual Parade
Event though I am not a part of it, I can tell that a lot of heart and soul went into the AP for all the members of the six uniformed groups in sji. I was especially impressed by the band. The bagpipers fused very well with the main band, a very interesting musical effect was achieved. When the band marched past the audience playing the school rally, as the different sections passed me, I could hear this real cool progression from the loud percussion instruments down to the lilting flutes. Really cool. :D Saw James carrying the school flag, Yuying and yangwei among the colours procession, Weiqi being named Outstanding Sec 4 cadet ... Was a very interesting experience to see my friends get all these honours. After everything, the band sort of got together in the canteen and performed this really rousing cheer. like, really. Whoa. So cool. Then they performed a toast to the outgoing Band major ben lim, and there was this collective puncture as everyone opened their cans at the same time. Way cool.
Annual parade? More like girlfriend parade. There were like, thousands (a little exaggeration here) of girls at the parade. All have boyfriends taking part in the parade i guess.
As usual, peter yap was making all these lewd and obscene comments. I'm no angel myself, but there were mothers and children all around... and there he was talking about -beep- and -beeps- ... that's not the way man.... Took a few piucs with the indon scholars after the parade. They are a real nice and friendly bunch of people, wonder why I never made the effort to get to know them earlier?
Earlier in the day, me gareth benkong and miss mara ( yes, the lady i helped to make cry, view previous post) had a nice little chat about the state of affairs in sji. We all kinda came to a sort of consensus that there was no strong student body in sji, and that there isn't much avenue for feedback. Which I find to be very true. The students body, apparently, is a white elephant. Ahh, hair check on monday. Should i shave my facial hair off? I don't think it's much, but miss mara said that CF would probably pick people like me off one by one. :( argh, decisions decisions... ...
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Ayayayay... the stress is building up. In the last three days, two teachers have blown up in our faces. And in both cases it had to do with me somehow... ...
Mrs tan the maths teacher threatened to walk outta class after me and choy were joking about something in the middle of her class. Although she was actually scolding choy, I felt really guilty... :( Then earlier today miss mara cried in history class because many of us didn't do our homework. Felt really bad after that. Got a massive headache, wonder if it had anything to do with that whole episode? or maybe i just didn't sleep well the night before.
Oh yes, lately there has been some foreign exchange students from Finland. Funny thing is, though it's supposed to be an exchange program, noone from singapore went over. Talk about unfair deals ;) Yah, so they are following the sec 3 classes, mainly the top classes. I think I know why they are following the sec 3s and not the sec 4s, as you would expect. It's probably because the sec 3s look like angels next to the sec 4s. =D Don't know why, but this year we have some astonishingly well-behaved sec 3s, while we sec 4s..... well, ... *shakes head* Anyway, I am probably one of the many noisemakers and what-have-you. Many teachers have been complaining about our class being very ill-disciplined and not serious, but I beg to differ. I prefer to see all our ruckus as... ...a form of stress relief.
Ran 2.4 on tuesday. It started raining halfway while we were running.=( crap. I didn't do too well, got about 13 minutes. I think I completed the first 3 rounds in something like.. 5-6 minutes. So I wuz thinking, I have so much time, why run so fast? So I started to walk a bit, and pace myself nicely to come in at around 13 minutes. yes, i know, slacker. But then again I don't think I could have come in much earlier even if i hadn't started to walk. No way I could have kept up the pace of the first three rounds. I admit, okay, my running is pretty bad. At least I passed. Before the run I was really afraid that I might fail, seeing as I have been effectively physically inactive for the last what, 4 months? Taking that into account, I think I performed okay. After we ran, 401 took their turn to run. Ben wang was leading, then suddenly moses began to overtake him. My buddy Peter's peter ;P ran quite slowly, about 13 minutes. If you are wondering why I said he was slow while I did okay when we got around the same timing, He used to be one of the fastest runners in our sec 2 class. Guess his body fell prey to disuse :p.
Today during assembly, awards for cross-country were given out. The top 20 got some nice medals, although they were chipped around the edges. Have they not heard of bubble-wrap? You know, that cool packaging they normally use when packing fragile objects? The one everyone likes to pop? (including me =D ). Yeah, anyway, we knew that Choy was getting 20th position, so when his name was read out, the whole class went "Choyyyy!!!" in that low, accusing tone we do all the time. =D It's sort of like a class thing. That reminds me of this thing we ccu wankas like to do... to suddenly accuse someone of something totally absurd out of the blue. haha, its really stupid, but it's real hilarious when everyone gangs up on one helpless guy and barrages him with unfound accusations. Really fun =P Oh yes, then after the prize presentation ( in which james got 7th, and Darshananth's timing was faster than yiming's 2.4 timing), Brother mike gave us a little talk. The good thing about brother mike is that unlike a certain someone, he really captivates his audience and is a good speaker. He was talking about hair, and how there was to be a 'hair check' after National day. I think by hair, he meant all kinds of hair. e.g. armpit hair, toe hair, nose hairs, etc. Haha, no, actually he was referring to head hair ( is that a proper term? ) and facial hair ( let's just say hair above the head, head as in the one on our shoulders ). =o I think he was referring to me, amongst many others. But I really don't think my facial hair is too thick or anything... and if I start shaving it'll just get worse and worse, and I don't want to shave twice a day like my father now has to.
Wow, this post really lived up to the blog title....
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Happy birthday to me!
Gabriel's a big boy now. Last thursday, 31st july was my birthday. As with other years, my birthday was rather low-key. My cousin colin called to wish me happy birthday and told me about the sum 41 concert he had just attended at fort canning. He really enjoyed it, by the sounds of it. ;) He asked me why there wasn't any birthday celebration. see, my cousins' birthdays are occasions, and they normally hold parties. haha, I don't think I'll be holding any sort of celebration. I'm not the kind to.
My friends got me a rather tongue-in-cheek present. :p If I am not wrong, about 11 of them pooled their money to get me a rather expensive present. When I saw the emblem on the bright red box, for a moment I thought it was motor fuel or smth. :) Thanks guys, I will put it to good use. =D
SJI X-country
Straight after school we went to Gerard's house, stopping at Macs on the way. At gerard's we played soccer on his small front lawn. Many funny things happened while we were playing. One, max was just walking out the balcony into the lawn when suddenly matt kicked the ball right into his, erm, balls. The way he folded like an accordion and rolled around on the floor was hilarious.I know we shouldn't have laughed, but it was just so damn funnyyyyy.... Then later on daryl and justin were going for the same ball. They reached the ball at the same time, swung their legs, but both missed the ball. It ended up that Justin kneed daryl in the groin while daryl kicked Justin's shin. They both fell onto the floor and were groaning in pain, while the rest of us burst out in laughter, and fell down to the floor alongside them in laughter. It took us a good minute or two to compose ourselves and continue with the game. All the while jonny was fretting that we should get going. He was proved to be right....
We took quite a long time to get going, and even thought of stripping yiming and locking him in the house. But we never carried out the plan ( darn! ) Just as we were approaching the bus stop, the bus came and went. We waited a good twenty minutes for the next bus.
We reached macritchie late, and promptly got shouted at by nathan. bloody hell, he was just shouting at us. please lar, do you think we are still in sec 1? Do you think we will quiver in our pants just because you shout in our face? Gimme a break lah. JC also screwed us, but at least he wasn't shouting. We ran all the way to the starting line, and then started running soon after. I was running with Justin, xz, and david ( who had run competitive earlier) accompanied us. I was careful not to run for too long at a stretch, 'cos my right ankle ( which i had sprained during church camp a month ago) was starting to act up, esp after the round of soccer at gerard's. Had to slow down once I hit lornie road, cos it was starting to hurt. In the end my timing for 4.8 km was about 30-35 minutes.
We had to stay back to clear up the place. We didn't have much to do, as three other full classes stayed back too. After that we went to 7 eleven where me max and gerard got a super big gulp full of vanilla coke. we met some of the scholars ( iwan, suhandy, christian, etc.) at the 7eleven. took 162 home with max.
When i reached home, i watched the Manu vs Juve match which i had timer-recorded. Woohoo, Manu spanked them 4-1. They have scored 11 goals in 3 friendly games so far....
Glory glory man united!
Confirmation mass
Today went out with Kong to a friend's confirmation mass. stupid kong was 15 minutes late. In the end we were 5 minutes late for the mass. The archbishop gave the exact same homily he gave for my confirmation mass. :l Me and Kong where trying to guess which word the archbishop was going to say next, since we had heard it before. Also, we were making fun of his pronunciation of 'category' ... it was sort of like 'ke-teee-ge ry'. it sorta sounds like APA's pronunciation of temperature... 'tem-pray-ture' ...=D
Come to think of it, their voices are quite similar too... ...
After the mass went for the reception. We were like.. waiting to go say hi and give her the present we got for her, but she kept taking photos with like, everyone in the whole church. So we went to get something to eat first. =p When we finally caught hold of her, we chatted a while, took a few photos, hung around, took some more photos, took photos for her friends and her, hung around some more. The parish priest was behaving like a child, running around and punching this guy. :l As Kong said, Deprived childhood......
Finally went off when the rain started to subside. Then we noticed that this grp of girls( one of which Kong had taken a fancy to ;o ) were right behind us. They got on the same train as us. Kong was saying that they were stalking us. :s Then we bet where they would get off. Turns out kong won, they got of at toa payoh, which was nearer to his guess of novena than mine of bishan. :(
Just beat yiming and kong twice at minesweeper flags. :O
