Friday, January 23, 2004
Tuesday
For PE today, which was double-period, they made us go to Macritchie and run 5.1 km. O_o Wassup with that? Yeah, anyway, I was running for the most part with Joshua. Completed it in about 30 minutes... I better complete it faster than that on the actual Cross-country day man ...
Yeah, so once the whole class finished the route we were dismissed. We had to then take bus back to college. O_o. Imagine that, so many of us crammed into a single deck 156. And just after completing a 5.1 km run. whoa. Pity the people who were originally on the bus. =)
Yeap, so once I reached college I rushed to the showers... cos I kinda expected a mad rush to the showers. On my way there, my classmate Michelle was happily strolling towards class, having missed the run. Convenient, eh? Lol, and she is the PE rep some more....
Yeah, after the break, had a massive headache. I think it's the sun lah.. Cos we all had to run this about 2-3 km stretch of road... and the sun was blazing hot. Anyway, I sometimes get mild headaches after I run. So yeah. Told Mdm Goh, was planning to ask for Panadol or something. Then she instead asked me to go sleep at the sick bay. Wahaha. Lol. So I spent two hours sleeping in the office on a confortable bed while my classmates were busy doing chinese essay and attending a Maths lecture. =) Ahhh, the good life. =)
After my nap, had a Maths tutorial. Not bad, managed to catch up despite not attending the lecture. Then had lit lesson. We were going through this poem which was a little confusing. Finally someone managed to decipher it. It was quite impressive..
After Lit lesson went out to the CJC bus stop to hand in the Time Magazine subscription form to this guy. Turns out that I know the guy who was collecting the forms. Had a little chat on JC and all, and he was telling me how JC is the funnest part of life, how he hated to work, and fretting about his impending A level results release.
I then caught a bus to Coronation Plaza enroute to Jonny's house for the CCU CNY dinner. Met Aston at Coro. We stood there for about 15 minutes talking about our new JCs. Andersen doesn't seem as bad as it was painted out to be. He told me wuite a few funny stories. Lol, that Aston, always armed with some anecdotes. =) After a while, when weiqi who was supposed to meet us at coro failed to turn up, we walked there ourselves. All the NJ and RJ bangers were all there already. =P
It was really swell to see everyone again... haha. Got a nice warm feeling seeing everyone for the first time in a while. Especially ppl like keefe, omar, yangwei, weiqi, etc. Then we went outside to Jonny's lawn to kick the ball around. Lol. Lost my touch a little. hehe.
At around 7 we finally started eating. The food was okay... definitely not worth $12. Haha, sorry weiqi, but catering is a bad idea in my opinion. =( All throughout the dinner we were busy recounting interesting moments in our respctive JC experiences so far. Lol. There were some funny ones, like Richard accidentally pulling the shower cord when he intended to pull the flush cord. haha. Got more than he bargained for eh?
Then gaius and gerard showed off their NJ dance. Haha, it was damn weird cos it was actually a guy-partner-girl dance. So gaius had to be the girl. Hahaaha. it was kinda funny. But credit to gaius and gerard for being brave enough to dance and for remembering the dance steps. Lol. Cos we cjc guys couldnt remember the dance moves at all. So we didnt show tem the dance. Besides, it would have been weird dancing with ppl like eddie mat and ching. Yucks. Especially ching. =)
Then the RJ ppl, yw gareth sara max ben and daryl, showed off their dance to the tune of It's going down by the executioners. Wah, their dance looked really difficult, a lot of complex footwork. It looked really tiring too. Must really give credit to them , they must have spent a lot of time practising. Lol, maybe if u wanna see the videos of the dances then go to the ccu blog.
Played murderer later. lol. I was murderer. Gave myself away. Dang. Haha, should learn to play it more cool next time. Although I was a little proud of one moment. Gaius kinda figured out that I was the murderer and kept saying 'Gabriel is the murderer!' repeatedly. So I killed him off the next round. LOl. Conventional logic would state that I killed him off to silence him. But some ppl were saying that I wouldn't do something like that, cos it was too obvious. But my behaviour gave me away though. Argh. I can mask myself as well as some of the other guys can. Lol, looks like I am not murderer material. ;)
Went home after that with Gerard. Reached home and went to sleep immediately. T'was a long day.
Wednesday
Went to school in the morning with my sister. She was going to attend the CJC CNY mass and visit some of her teachers. Went to mass. Lol, was a little lively, especially the choice of songs and all.
After mass we headed to the Auditorium for the performance. We got to sit in the gallery. YAAY! Throughout the performance Reina was peeling oranges and passing it around. Haha. The symphonic band performance was good. Was very entertaining. :D
But there was this girl who went on stage and performed a chinese song. There was something distinct about her that I didn't like. Then it was further substantiated when she joined the rest of the choir for another performance. She and another girl was supposed to sing solo. And then I reallyreally got the feeling that she was trying so hard to outshine the other girl. Could even see the girl looking at her bewilldered, as if saying ' what the heck are you doing?'. Haha.
They sch invited a lion dance troupe to perform. They looked really amateur. Haha, I remarked to Josh that I bet one lion was gonna mount the other or smth. I was that bored. =)
After the performance we went back to class for the potluck. Lol, our class had so much junk food compared to the other classes. Was walking around persuading people to eat the cake I brought. I think they liked it. =) Then Brother Paul came in and tried the cake. Lol, he said it was good.
Then my sister came to my class, ostensibly to say hi to me or something. But the first thing she said was 'gimme the pineapple tarts, I'm hungry!'. ... Anyway, Brother paul was so shocked to find out that we were siblings. He said something like ' I didn't make the connection!' and looked so distraught. Hehe. Like, come on lah.. how many Olsens do you know? =P
After the whole potluck thing I banged over to SJI with fok. Lol, met up with some ppl like ben and yw in the staff room. Got to talk only to mrs tan and a little with mr heng. Mrs Tan was like so happy that me mat ching and cedric were in cjc. Lol. She said we must go there and 'pull up the standard'. Hmm. Whatever she meant. =)
After that went out for lunch, but go separated two or three times and ended up at Lucky Plaza Macdonalds with Gareth dwayne terence kumar shaun and gang. Lol, traded some cool stories.
Went home with Daryl and Mat. Saw Lee siew lian on the train. Didn't dare say Hi to her. Lol. Awkward lah. :P
Came home, slept like a log. Went out with the whole family to My grandma's house for a steamboat reunion dinner. As usual, the soup was good, the fish and prawns were fresh. But there was a conspicous absence of chicken. Bummer. That's like, my favourite meat. Oh wait, my second favourite meat. =) AnyWaaay..... Spoke a little to her... It's a pity that we aren't close.... but what do you expect form seeing her once a year only? *shrugs*
Came back home, and my mother made a hilarious racist joke. Although it was unintended. Haha. Me and my sisters were like laughing like crazy, my dad was trying hard not to laugh, while my mom was utterly puzzled. =)
Thursday and Friday.
Bah humbug. Nothing much happened. Watched a lotta TV. OOH! Saw paradorn srichapan totally whoop gustavo kuerten's ass! Way to go Paradorn! =) Did an alphabetised, complete class list. Haha. You can tell how bored I really was.
Feeling a little wonky nowadays. You know how teenagers go thru a period of angst and loss of self-esteem? I think it's coming
right
about
Now.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Happenings...
Yup... CJC is okay... not as slack as I thought and feared it would be... Plus it's funnnn... =)
My class
My class is okay... lotsa fun people, and they aren't like, total slackers either... I feel they've got a good balance.. Thety are kinda zany outside of class but when it comes down to work and lessons they are quite serious. I made lotsa new friends, and got to know dan and peter better. Oh yes, there is this girl, eunice, who looks soooo similar to xiangzheng! The resemblance is uncanny! Even their mannerisms are similar to an extent! Maybe I should get the two of them together one of these days. =)
The facilities at CJC
Well... let me just say that the facilities aren't first class. Lol. Little things, like the canteen benches being of uneven height, make the place seem a little run down. But one thing that stands out is the cleanliness of the toilets. They are spanking clean! Really! They make the SJI toilets look like cesspools! =) The floor is sooo dry and clean, I really wouldn't mind sleeping on it! Although I have one gripe... The urinals are too low... lol. And you know what might happen when urinals are not high enough... =)
The staff at CJC
Lol. So far I must say all the teachers and staff I have come across are reasonable. Except for the chi-ko-pek discipline master who keeps looking at girls. Lol. Oh, and the Dm also made me the newest member of the Gillette club! Lol. Bro Paul called out my name during assembly on monday and asked me to see him. THen he sent me to the dm to shave. Lol. But quite a few ppl said that I look better shaven. Lol. So shaven it is! =)
Work. -sigh-
Lol. Lessons have started, although I can tell they are not full pace yet. Nonetheless, they have started! =( From now on it'll just be more and more work. Gaah. Welcome to reality, JC style!
I'm a little lost during Lit, to be honest. But I think if I work hard enough and ask for help, I should pull through. Lol, and I just found out that Maths at A level is a li'l different than at O levels. Can't afford to be overconfident and think I know everything anymore. Damnations. That was always the funnest part about Maths lessons. =)
Teachers
My Home Tutorial teachers are Mdm Mary Goh and Mr Aljunied. Mdm Goh is rather nice, although people tend to laugh at her due to her foreign accent. The first few econs lectures were hell for her. Practically everynoe was laughing at her different pronunciation. Even I could not help myself. But after a while it died down.
Mr Aljunied. Hmmm, he strikes me as someone who is very passionate about history. However, he is a little... for lack of a better word, freaky. Sometimes the looks he gives you... is just weird. And I hope it's not just me. LOL! Btw he teaches Cold war history to us. Mrs Narindar, the SEA history teacher, is very stern although she can be funny at times. Comes across as a hard taskmaster.
The lit teachers are okay. The Chan fellow strikes me as a little uptight. Glascow is funny, although, I'm not sure, he sounds, maybe, a little condescending sometimes.
The Maths teacher. Mr Yee. Yee as in, " YeeeeeeeEEEEE!!!! ". First lesson. What does he do? Boasts to us that he was from RI, then HCJC, and got 4 As for A levels. Like.. watever dude, just tell us how to do the inequalities sum already! Now we've resorted to calling him the Man-B*tch, the He-wh*re, and the Yee-diot. =) See what you've done to yourself? Tut, tut, tut.
PE
Yucks. PE is so hardcore, especially Mass PE on tuesdays. Shall neglect to talk about it. And the PE teachers are so sadistic.. They'll routinely ask 'How many more? ' , and you are expected to answer ' Many many more! '. If they are feeling mean they might just oblige you. =(
Today
Hrrmmm. PE at the end of the day. Ran 2.4 km. Lol, the thing is that the cjc track is about 330 metres instead of 400 metres. So that's 'seven rounds and a bit'. Managed to keep with my normal pace of about 13 minutes. LOl. I know lah... I never was a runner anyway. :S At least I kept to my normal standards. I actually feel quite proud, considering the 4 or 5 months of physical inactivity. I felt a familiar adrenaline rush while I was running. Somehow I psycho-ed myself to say ' I'll stop running the next round ..' and then keep repeating that after that particular round is up. Lol.
After that my class went to Serene Center for Lunch/Dinner. And guess who I saw there? Gerard! Lol. So me and my classmates sat down , ate and chatted. There were a lotta gross jokes going around, of course helped about by Peter... :P Like the guy who played with his pet... and erm, nevermind. Apparently Joy got a bit upset by what we were saying. Wah, feel like an asshole.
Anyway, afterwards, I brought gerard over and intorduced him to Eunice. His first reaction was to burst out laughing, cos as i said earlier the resemblance to xz was uncanny. On hindsight, it was rather insensitive to ... subject her to such... whatchamacallit. Wah, feel like an asshole.
Today I also made fun of a gd friend and made him feel awkward. Feel like an asshole. Forgot something that was important to someone else. Feel like an asshole.
I'm such an asssssshooooollllllllleeeeeeeee !!!!!!!!!!!
Thursday, January 08, 2004
WHoa nelly! The orientation from monday onwards was a blast!
Monday
On Monday, we were split into our classes. I got into 1T08. That's a class doing Maths, Econs, Lit and History. Yup, Turned out that Peter and Dhanesh are in the same class. lol. Oh, and there are two other SJI guys, Benjamin Inami and Thomas. So that's 5 SJI guys out of 9 guys in the class. And there are 18 girls. That a 2:1 ratio. Oh yes, and there are also 5 retainees in my class. Lol. It's really useful to have them around.. especially if you don't know where the LTs are and all... lol.
So we had WET GAMES on monday. Haha.... the first game we played was water volleyball. We were supposed to use thrash bags to catch and toss water bags... I teamed up with this girl called Joy. From the start the other team lobbed a water bomb, and we caught it. Then we flung it over and the other team couldn't catch it! haha... We went on to win that game. There were a few more games... although I can't quite remember. =)
Oh yes, Me Dhanesh and Peter also taught the Hey Baby cheer to our class and to our OG family. Haha. Looks like it's quite a versatile cheer eh? =)
Tuesday
Tuesday... Dragon Boating! Lol. We took a bus to Kallang sea sports centre. When we got there I was personally quite disappointed that there wasn't any like.. Dragon motifs on the boat... It instead looked like an elongated sampan. =)
However, we had real fun and I think our class did well, especially on the coordination part. I think we did okay in the race near the end of the session.
We then went back to college where we were given some talks on CCA systems and what not.
We also found out that the Facils from our OG family had chosen OUR class to do a skit. Like wth?! Yah, so anyway we went along with it. We had ONE day to prepare a 10 minute skit to perform in front of the whole J1 intake. gaaak. I wrote the script, Dhanesh helped with the script and got all the music and sound effects ready, and Peter gave quite a bit of advice. LOl. What's the common link? CCU. =)
Wednesday
We were first up, and when the MCs called us up on stage, we were like, HUH? We didnt even know we were performing at that time. So the MCs and Facils helped us to stall for time by starting a round of all that bombing stuff. When we finally got on stage, there was quite a bit of improvisation. lol. I think we just couldn'tr remember what to do.
Of course, we couldn't do it without Gerard, our Facil (SJI guy). Without him, we would have realllllyyyy sucked. Thanks Gerard. And my classmates were amazing. They were a little lacklustre during practises, but they reallllly came to life during the performance! Special Thanks MUST go out to Silert, Se wei, May, Fiona, Joy, Xiaoling, jasmine, Thomas, Adeline, and not to forget Dhanesh Peter and Gerard. You guys really rock!
The skit was an exam one which spoofed the LOTR, matrix . I must admit it was pretty lame, but as I say... Who really cares? We just went up there and gave our best shot. That's all that matters.
Afterwards there were some more performances by the other families. To be honest, I felt the one after us, ( Mathew's, ching's and eddie's class ) was good. But after that it just went downhill. =(
At the end of the day the whole level performed the... Mass Dance! Haha, after countless practises, we finally did the real thing. Haha, we danced along to four songs. SOme twist/mambo song, Don't Stop by S club 7 , Sway by Michael Buble and Chori CHori something something. LOl. The dance was real fun, especially the last two songs! =D
After that we all went out to Youth Park. We sat around playing some lame games, before we went to this place which Gerard showed us to. It was really cool, there were blue lights on the floor that reflected onto the 'ceiling' above. It was actually a sort of bridge between two adjacent office towers. We played some games like Truth or Dare etc. We also played this game where we had to pass this thing around in a circle using oly our mouths. Yucks... My only regret was sitting in between two guys... -yucks-
Thursday
We were given our timetables today. Everyone in class was like... happily checking out what their free periods were. But I didn't have any since I was taking 4 subjects. So we had intorductory lectures for History, Economics, and tutorials for Lit and GP. Our Economics lecturer was so poor thing... she has this accent and can't pronounce certain words properly. People were laughing at her pronunciation. so bad. :p We have two teafhers for HIstory... Mrs Narindar and Mr Aljunied. Mrs Narindar is the HOD for humanities... while Mr Aljunied is plain scary. He has this weird, intense look on his face sometimes... he's reallly freaky. =S Almost fell asleep during the lectures.
Had PE at the end of the day. Lol. Never felt this tired before. Must be due to that long period of inactivity. lol.
Oh yes, another thing. My sister happens to be the former facilitator to Gerard, who is now my facilitator. lol. cool huh?
The Orientation was fun.... And the skit item our class put up really bonded us together, in my opinion.
I think I'm staying. =)
Friday, January 02, 2004
First day of JC life... got off to a rather ho-hum start, to be honest. Met Ching, Mat, Eddie, Dan and Choy at the gates. Walked into the school and saw so many sji guys there. :) We went p to the auditorium ( which is actually a hall ) and gathered in our groups. Brother Paul gave us a talk, then we played some ice-breaker games. Went for break, had some talks on the subjects. Played some more ice breaker games. Some of the games were quite fun, interesting. However, I had a feeling that my group didn't really bond well. The facilitators didn't hlep much either. They were trying, but they were just too timid/indecisive. It's quite frustrating lah. As a new student you would expect some strong leadership on the first day but instead you get ... never mind.
Decided to go ahead with Maths, Econs, Literature and History. It's a bit of a risk, I admit. I actually wanted to do one science, but after an admonishment from Bro Paul... hahaha. You know what happened.
Hiya. At least we are going Dragon-Boating on Tuesday or Wednesday. Should be fun...
Gabriel, feeling reallllly apprehensive for the first time in his life.
