Saturday, October 18, 2003
Paraliturgy ceremony
The Paraliturgy ceremony is a yearly affair, which has a purpose of sending of the Secondary Fours.
During assembly, ben wang was wearing the sji tie, after two years of wearing the prefect tie. Lame. Then when Cedric received first prize for an art competition, we cheered louder and longer than we ever cheered. Even some 401 buggers joined in. Goh poh kenn looked a bit startled and was staring at out class. Magical. =)
Then in class, there was a mass frenzy of picture taking. Forgot to bring my camera. =(
Went to the hall for the commencement of the Paraliturgy. Had to sit on the floor. First time sitting on the floor since end of sec 3. We had a reflection period, and were asked to think of 4 people who made a positive impact on our lives in SJI. Then CF came up to us and gave us a talk. Not a lecture, a talk. And his tone of voice, was like nothing we have ever heard before. It wasn't stern, it was kinda affectionate. I could see tears welling up in his eyes and could hear his voice faltering. He told us about how the SJI school culture was totally unique in Singapore. He also recounted about how one SJI teacher who was transferred to another school. He spent the first day crying in the new staff room, as he could not adjust to the cold atmosphere of the new school.
Wow.
Had a prayer service, and then sang some songs. 'Keefe and friends', and the 'friend of all friends' zenas lead us in some songs. One of the highlights of the day was the form tutors of all 12 classes coming up on stage to present a song, ' I hope you dance ' by Lee Ann Womack. Though lacking in quality =), it was not lacking in sincerity. It was amazing to see the responses to Kwang and Tcp singing solos. =) They were real sporting.
Then came the pinnacle of the celebration. The form tutors went around to pin our graduating badges on our collars, to mark us as graduants from SJI. I really expected to burst out bawling right here, but managed to keep my emotions in check :) Gave a big hug to fam and kwang. haha, might as well lah. For tolerating with all my bullshit. =)
The sec ones to threes streamed in to the hall. We had the normal stuff, like giving out of INterhouse awards, and stuff like that.
I am proud to announce, that 402 is 3rd place in the Inter-class sports championships. How we got it, I do not know. But we beat 404! Yaaaay!
Then Lui gave his speech. Normally I just zone out when he speaks. But this time, I was looking at him. As usual, the school was making a lot of noise, not giving him respect. Then, for the first time, I sympathised with him. Yes. The look on his face when he paused... I can't forget. Shit, I feel so guilty now, for not listening to his speeches all this while. I mean, he IS the principal... ...
The Josephian of the year (salman) and lasallian serice awards were given out again. Then after the ceremony was over, we were lead by the prefect exco, and the 'Friend of all Friends' to a rousing round of Hail Hail Alma Mater. I've never heard it sung so loud before. While I was shouting myself hoarse, to the tunes of Hail Hail, a real weird feeling came over, and goose pimples sprouted all over my skin. I felt my voice box constricting, and my eyes welling up with tears. I really felt so proud of myself, of my school, of my friends. I know SJI can never measure up to some schools academically, but By God, I WILL NEVER TRADE MY SJI EXPERIENCE FOR ANOTHER.
Then, the time of reckoning came. The prefect's guard of honour formed a sort of line, and we Sec 4s were ushered out of the hall, accompanied by the ringing of the school bell. When we entered the school in Sec 1s, the school bell was rung to welcome us. Now we were being sent off by the school bell.
We have come full circle.
As I started walking down the tunnel created by the prefects, I felt an overwhelming emotion sweep through my body. I tried not to cry, but after ten or so paces, I had to bow my head and bite my lip 'till I was out of the Founder's Hall.
And then, we were free. =)
I felt satisfied with the 4 years, but yet reluctant to let go. But the journey was good, and it was reallllly worth it.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Eh, that guy on the tagboard, can you please stop impersonating me? I know it's harmless and all, and if I was someone else, I'd probably find it amusing too. Well, bad news is, I am not someone else. To those who know me, I am pretty easy-going with many things.
But I don't like people using my name, even if it's just for honest ( or maybe not so innocent) fun.
So Stop it.
Friday, October 10, 2003
Papers, papers, papers, and then some
Can't recall what happened recently. It's been a haze, a haze of weird school crests and the strange feeling of writing your name down on the AMaths paper of a girl's school. I wrote down 'gabrielle olsen' on some of them. Hahaha. =p
On wednesday Tracy Goh went thru the english exam. As Kong said, our third English lesson in two years. =D I felt that she just went rambling on and on. Well, at least she got her points across. Erm. More than two, there was.
Also went thru my history prelim paper with miss mara. She said that my p2s weren't comprehensive enough. I comprehend. Oh yeah, so I just stayed behind in the annex to do the crescent girls school AM paper. Tsh and one of her students sat down next to me and begun discussing physics. We often hear tsh screaming at the top of her voice in the adjacent 403 class. Her screaming voice makes her sound like a witch. Surprisingly, her voice ( in normal tone and pitch ) is actually quite okay la. Very soothing and melliflous.
Today was a another sian day. Before chem lesson, Kwang gave out our results slip. I got A for RME! Haha. That proves that I am a religious and moral person. Unlike some ppl, who clearly have No Morals. =) Me and Gaius had fun messing up each others' form tutor remarks by adding or editing words. Gaius' edited version stated that he was 'decomposed' and was 'unintelligent'. =) Oh, and Mrs Fam wrote that I am ' Warm and friendly, and is a fierce team player. ' What-up!!!!!!!
Went thru some chem assignment. kwang was being lame again, asking ppl for answers and then asking for 'second opinions' if they got any wrong. During history, miss mara got pissed with us again. I think her main grouse is that the class is unresponsive. That I agree. But I think she was a wee bit touchy. =S
Tried to do the RGS Englsih paper during 'Free period'. It's damn ******* hard. The questions are ..... designed as if there wasn't meant to be an answer at all. Managed to complete most of the questions.
Went down early for recess again. Bong got saddled with all the desert bowls today. There must have been at least 11 or 12 bowls in the stack. haha, we have a thing where the last guy to finish the desert will have to clear it for everyone. So after finishing our deserts, we just pass it on the the guy nearest to us who is still eating his desert. So today Bong was slower than 12 other ppl. =)
Apparently mrs tan had an ulcer in her mouth, and she was talking with a funny kind of lisp. Then the whole class jumped at the chance, and imitated the way she was speaking. So evil.
Went thru bio prelim paper. There was a question on the male reproductive system. Then there was this question which asked ' Which labelled part will change its size significantly during certain physiological activities?' =D The second part to that question was ' Briefly explain how the structure mentioned brings about the change in size.'
When she went thru the question, she said, " The question asked for you to explain changes in size, not changes in state! "
At this point, she breaks into laughter, and the whole class too. The normally straight-laced lim siew mei actually laughed so hard that she was tearing, and had to dab her eyes with tissue paper. Then someone asked 'Change in physical state? As in solid liquid gas?'. Then I went like " Yah. Evaporation! " =) Eeeewwwww. Shudders.
At the end of the period, she gave out some bio papers. Crap. That day alone, we received quite a sizable stack of prelim papers. And that's without our good friend bryan poon. Amazing!
For PSE, we slacked around, as per normal. Kwang was sitting at the table, doing some admin work, while fam was walking around talking to her favourite students. =S Looks like Mrs fam is leaving quite a lotta work to mr kwang. Weichi said that he bet Mr Kwang would feedback next yr that Mrs fam should not be a form tutor. =) So bad.
Stayed back after school. We wanted to 'celebrate' James' birthday in class, but were foiled by Kwang. He noticed us standing menacingly around James, and said that 'noone was to touch james'. Awww. Apparently it was Porky's birthday too. I heard that his class ganged up on him after class, keeping with the new sji tradition. He reportedly got hoisted at waist level by quite a few of his classmates [ he's bloody heavy, fyi. more than a hundred kgs ] and got rammed loin-first into the tree outside their class. The damned tree actually shook.
The poor tree.
JonCon went thru the history prelim paper with us. Learnt a few useful things that I never learnt from two years with miss Mara, in a compact 45 min session. I'm not saying anything.
Came home, have not done anything much, really. Rugby World Cup! Gonna watch Australia vs Argentina later. Argentina!! Argentina!!
Guilty by Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb
Shadows falling, baby,
We stand alone.
Out on the street everybody you meet’s
Got a heartache of their own
It ought to be illegal
Make it a crime to be lonely or sad
It ought to be illegal
You’ve got a reason for living
With the love you’re living on
You gotta be mine
We’ll take it away
It’s gonna be night and day
Just a matter of time.
Chorus:
And we’ve got nothing to be guilty of
Our love will climb any mountain
Near or far, we are
And we’ll never let it end
We are devotion
And we’ve got nothing to be sorry for
Our love is one in a million
Eyes can see that we’ve
Got a highway to the sky
I don’t wanna hear your goodbye
Pulses racing, darling
How grand we are
Little by little we meet in the middle
There’s danger in the dark
It ought to be illegal
Make it a crime to be out in the cold
It ought to be illegal
You’ve gotta reason for living, you bad girl
With the love you’re building on
You gotta be mine
We’ll take it away
It’s gonna be night and day
Just a matter of time
Chorus:
And we’ve got nothing to be guilty of
Our love will climb any mountain
Near or far, we are
And we’ll never let it end
We are devotion
And we’ve got nothing to be sorry for
Our love is one in a million
Eyes can see that we’ve
Got a highway to the sky
I don’t wanna hear your goodbye
Don’t wanna hear your goodbye
And we’ve got nothing,
And we’ve got nothing to be guilty of
Our love will climb any mountain
Near or far, we are
And we’ll never let it end
We are devotion
And we’ve got nothing to be sorry for
Our love is one in a million
Eyes can see that we’ve
Got a highway to the sky
I don’t wanna hear your goodbye
And we’ve got nothing to be guilty of
Our love will climb any mountain
Near or far, we are
And we’ll never let it end
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Prelims!
I know I am a bit lagging ar... But here are my prelim results. Nothing great, should have worked harder ...
English / 79 / A1
Chinese / -- / B3
A Maths / 83 / A1
E Maths / 75 / A1 ( the teacher missed out on marking one whole question here =D )
History ( world affairs ) / 70 / A1
Geog + SS / 74 / A2 ( argh! almosttttt... )
( here comes the massacre )
Chemistry / 67 / B3
Physics / 62 / B4
Biology / 56 / C5
Hehe... They say to save the best for last ... Obviously someone forgot to tell me.
Well. Can't complain about my results. Didn't work hard at all for Physics and especially Biology. Did work harder for Chemistry, but made a lotta careless mistakes. Ah well. I am happy with my 10 points.
Tuesday
For P.E. on tuesday, we had to run relays. Irwan made me run 600 m. The first 400m was tough, but I could handle. The last 200 m was hell, especially the last 100m where I could literally feel my muscles burning. Yikes. That's what happens when you run a race after months of inactivity. Had a headache the rest of the day. :$
Gotta work hard. Must get 7 points for Os.
Must. Reach. Target. aacccck!
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Graduation Ceremony
Here it was, the day of reckoning.
The day I would go up on stage in front of my parents and the entire SJI cohort.
The day I would receive my CCA records and my SJIOBA membership card - cum - cashcard
The day I would wear my only White, not gray, pair of shirt
The day I finally shaved. :)
Got off to a good start to the day. Shaved. After shaving, My face and neck area felt dammmnnn weird. Now the stubble is beginning to grow back and it feels real itchy. *scratches uncontrollably*
Reached class at 4 plus, went to 401 to help them take pictures. Yea, I was taking a drink at the water cooler, which was spoilt. So I had to drink from the spout from which we are supposed to fill our bottles with, as did everyone did this year. Suddenly dicky comes along and tells me to stop ' frenching the water-cooler'. haha.
The hall looked real good, with white skirting on the chairs and all. Maybe so we could camouflage? =)
Spotted my Mom and my younger sister in the gallery. When it was time for all the parents to read the letter we wrote to them, we could hear a collective 'rriiiiiiipppp'. =)
We sang everyone's fave 125th anniversary song. Of course, Zenas, the 'friend of all friends', as introduced by CF, sang a solo for the song 'Friends'. He sang really well, has a nice, melliflous voice. Some guys got really loud cheers. Pocki, Zixin and salman. I was saying, Zixin should have got the distinguished Lasallian Service award. I mean, he's done a lot for the school in terms of entertainment, yah? ;)
After the ceremony, we headed down to Swensen's. I had a Beef Burger and a Black bart. Throughout the dinner various ppl messaged Aston and Mathew, updating them on the score of the Arsenal- Liverpool match. Eventually Arsenal won 2-1. =(
Went home soon after that.
Where do we go ffrom here? Os in three weeks time, a close to one chapter of our lives.
It's been great. =D
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Come as you are
" And I swear that I don't have a gun. "
In April 1994, Kurt Kobain, the lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana, was found dead in an apartment room with a self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound.
Maybe that is what gives this song a weird kind of ... allure?
Freaky stuff.
Anxiety. Now I know the meaning.
Sigh. The past few days have been really tense. Teachers going thru prelim papers, pointing out mistakes... Maked me wonder whether I really did as well as I initially thought I did. My supposed A1 subjects ( English, History, AMaths and Emaths ) are really shaky now, and is 50-50 either way. Wah lau, these few measly marks can make a difference between NJC for first 3 months or CJC .... Aaaaccck!!!
Oh well. Worst come to worse, I will have at least 10 yrs and three months of catholic education. =)
Went to the PAC after recess today to go over the English paper. Tracy Goh basically just condemned everyone who did the narrative question. And she said that those who had done the topic 'Failure', as I had done, did well. She proceeded to give some guidelines to answering the question properly ( praa-perr-lee ) and I think I did quite well for that.
Next Bro. Mike went through the Comprehension. It was kinda funny, as he pointed out some really stupid mistakes. But now I feel really unconfident for my Comprehension. *bites fingernails anxiously*
After that shell-shocker, went back to class where we were supposed to do some work. Couldn't bring myself to, so I settled on playing UNO with gaius, choy and the gang.
St. Wilfred - Patron saint of football
Went over to St. Wilfred's sports centre after school to play soccer. You know those thingies they hang on the busses nowadays, and you are supposed to 'Please Take One' ? Well, I took one and hung it on the back of mathew yeo's bag. Lame, I know. Then Salman and Aston joined in. Mathew only realised it when we got to St. Wilfred's. What a blur wanka.
I am proud to say, that I was joint-top scorer today. Considering I was joint with ppl like Gcx, Dwayne and Salman, AND that I spent half the time playing keeper, that wasn't too shabby at all. =D Of course, I realllllly have to give credit to Mathew and Bryan. Chun xiang's 'Triangle' formation worked well indeed [ Bryan and Mathew played upfront, with me in midfield ]! Good on 'ya Chunny!
Took a bus back to toa payoh after that with Gawet ( gareth ), Max, and Salman. Got a drink at the value shop ( 50 cents for one canned drink! ). Met miss Mara there. Oh yea, she railed at Thomas today for ' spreading rumours and anxiety on the eve of the history exam.' =O
I am super super super tired. But Damn, it was worth it!
Because I'm worth it! - Laureal. =)
