Flight of the Bumblebee

2012-02-29T06:21:00.002-08:00

tis an unfortunate date to be born on.

2012-02-24T23:05:00.001-08:00

one does not simply stop playing scramble with friends...

2012-02-22T07:50:00.001-08:00

LOLLL

carelessness bears a heavy price

2012-02-21T04:01:00.003-08:00

burnt out x.x

'there's a hippo in my tub'. cutest album name everr

2012-02-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

retainers are, unfortunately, a good way to keep hunger pangs at bay :( i can see myself losing weight already. but, 1 year wearing them!? -.- and to think i believed i'd never have metal on my teeth again, ever.

2012-02-01T07:46:00.001-08:00

RIP Jack Starbright :((((

2012-01-31T06:02:00.001-08:00

strong rue's lullaby = ripped off kiss the rain with words...i am disappoint

2012-01-30T04:38:00.000-08:00

:( I was rooting for you, Gale! And who on earth names their child 'Peeta'!? And Prim...oh Prim :''''''(

march 23 zomg. come quickly

I think it's going to be really difficult porting over the entire story though...there's so much inner monologue in the books.

I've given up wanting to be doctor. or Auror. imma be a CAREER TRIBUTE

2012-01-21T13:25:00.001-08:00

This might finally, finally be the end of a very long journey.

And the beginning of a new one.

:)

2012-01-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

there is so much in this wide wide world we haven't seen 0.0

2012-01-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

There must surely be some magic in interviews, magic that can turn sensible answers into complete, utter nonsense.

:(((((

On the hand it was good to meet the other people whose talents, uh, weren't spotted by the nus medic interview panels. Oh, us sad bunch :)

2012-01-16T12:24:00.000-08:00

Ahh...that awkward moment when you order food in a pub, then realize you don't know what drinks to order cause they're ALL alcoholic.

We ended up getting pineapple juice - it wasn't on the menu and they probably only had it cause it's used to make cocktails, haha.

London is a pretty awesome place otherwise :D

2012-01-08T08:04:00.001-08:00

NOOOOOOOOOO

The BMAT nightmare isn't over after all :(((((((((((((

2012-01-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

Taking out your house key to tap when boarding a bus - evidence of taking lack of sleep to a whole new level. I survive today, by virtue of coffee. Too much coffee. Makes you nauseous :/

Oh and '10 people - we are outdone!

2012-01-04T06:42:00.001-08:00

Oh, my brain.

On the way home from work.

Brain: 'I've been wasting so much time nowadays. I should be researching the UK unis, reading more books, playing more piano, talking to others more. I need to learn discipline and start sleeping early and coming to work on time. Also, I should keep fit and go for a run at least twice a week. And eat less unhealthy food cause it's bad for health, weight and mwah face. It's time I stopped all this nonsense and start living a healthy, productive, life instead. Tonight I'll start preparing for UK interviews and read that book I bought Mum for Christmas...' *Brain rambles on with further good resolutions*

Night time, after shower.

BACK TO SKYRIM
PLAY TILL (censored time)
SLEEP LATE
WAKE UP LATE
GO TO WORK LATE
WATCH HOUSE
LUNCH ("No thank you!!" to the auntie dishing out vegetables)
WATCH MORE HOUSE
REPEAT

Oh yes, I do feel the guilt when relatives go 'Oh you're in NS now! Is it tough? Can cope anot?!' at family reunions. Okay so all that up there is massively exaggerated (or is it?) but there's some element of truth within. Like the 'weekend fallacy' where on Friday you tell yourself 'I'm gonna be so productive during this weekend and finish a,b,c,d,...,x,y,z,α,β...' and on Sunday night, you've got zilch to show for it. You know you've experienced it at least once!

2012-01-03T08:47:00.001-08:00

*Booking leave for more UK interviews on camp computer.*
*Fills up 'Country' blank with 'United Kingdom'*
*Unsure of what to enter for 'State'*
*Googles 'what state is London in'*

Yahoo answers' top answer, as voted by members: 'it's in a terrible state'

LOL

Or is it really

2011-12-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

"Blood alcohol levels should not exceed 0.02% of the blood volume if I want to drive. So, if I drink one glass of red wine, what will my blood alcohol level be?"

"Okay, I assume the human body has 5 litres of blood. And one glass of wine is 100ml. That means 100/5000...ah, 0.02%. Just nice!"

*perplexed gazes*

"OH WAIT 2%"

huh, I think I did myself out before even reaching the stage where they throw the really hard questions in.

2011-12-11T04:32:00.000-08:00

"What would you most like us to ask you in this interview?"

Would you like an unconditional offer?

2011-12-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

2011-12-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

Oh, Allott. You saved me from IB and BMAT; can you save me from this? :(

2011-12-07T03:26:00.000-08:00

Ohhhhh doctors! A good reading.

2011-11-29T07:41:00.001-08:00

Note to self: refreshing the inbox every 15 or so seconds will not cause an email from Uni to magically appear.

Or will it...

2011-11-12T04:26:00.001-08:00

Ahh, the sweet, fragrant and...slightly putrid smell of burning cheesecake. Made a New York cheesecake, taking extra careful steps to make sure it didn't crack. Made sure to set out the eggs and cream cheese to warm to room temperature before mixing the ingredients, and made the yummy - as always - digestive biscuit base meanwhile. Used the electric mixer to cream the sugar and cream cheese, then mixed in the rest of the ingredients with a spatula. I only used 3 blocks of cheese though - the recipe called for 4, but that's ridiculous! 2 blocks make a tasty enough cheesecake and I've seen other recipes call for 3, but 4...nah! Muhaha, Semi-Jewish NY cheesecake...

Though it didn't crack (the flour probably helped a lot), it did suffer from rise-then-sink syndrome; the middle of the cake rose till it peaked forming a dome, then it saaank all the way till only the sides were left raised. Leaving the cake's middle looking like it'd been punched in. It tasted pretty good- very fluffy and light, but was a lot more japanese than NY imo ._. I always thought NY cheesecakes were rich, thick, sinful...mm, shall try making a no-bake cheesecake again soon. Those seem to turn out a lot nicer.

Someone has to tell my brother NOT to be so overconfident for O's. Before IB we were all 'ohmygosh we're going to score so badly' 'I hope I get 40' 'I have NO chance at 45' and we all turned out with pretty fine marks. He's doing the opposite- counting the number of A1s that he's 'going' to rack up...gah, he's not just counting his chickens before they've hatched, he's freaking counting the GENERATIONS of chickens that're gonna be laid by the as-of-yet unhatched chickens. I probably didn't help by playing dota with him till 4 the other morn- oops!

In other news, the zodiac sign for the month is...that of the gamer. MW3, BF3, Skyrim all released in close proximity; I have no more human needs. Kidding.

Random: I have the awesomest piano teacher EVER :D

2011-10-28T07:18:00.001-07:00

Ahh. Signs that you haven't had enough sleep:

- you try using the calculator to switch of the air con
- you nearly lather shampoo instead of facial gel over your face
- you take out your key to tap your way out at the mrt gantries
- you lower the air con temperature when you feel it's getting too cold.

Oh, the last one.

'Uhh, so cold. Need to make it less cold.'
*presses Down button four times*

10 minutes later...

*shivering* 'Oh...higher is warmer.'

BMAT in 4 days :(

2011-10-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

That 'I can take on the world' feeling after you down a coffee just before night driving class. Mm-mm.

The inability to keep your eyes shut for more than a few seconds on the train ride back cause the caffeine's still shooting through your veins, when you usually drift off within a minute or so. Hmm.

When you're back at home lying on your bed, your body dead tired and ready to switch off, but your mind's still going hard at it thanks to that little cuppa you had...sigh.

I happened to drop by Khoo Teck Puat Hospital recently. It was a stunning experience- usually when you enter a hospital you catch a whiff of some kind of sickly, unnatural smell but KTPH was so open; barely any air-con, but so much breeze and open air. The greenery and open air concept made it feel like some sort of resort. It reminded me a bit of our school, a hotel and the zoo. You need to go see for yourself to understand.

In other (old) news: a page someone referred me to, long ago. An amusing read, though serious.

No, the person did not try for an internship at that clinic. Not after reading the page...

2011-10-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

alc, alc art thou lau?

The description pretty much says it all: 'The greatest song ever written'.

So simple but so soothing;

Awesome movie, lovely soundtrack. Hmm I seem to be one of those straying away from Classical to the Korean/Japanese side of melodic music. Zanarkand, Kiss the Rain, FF themes and so on. I don't find the Western pieces as nice as these :/

Edit: Okay, apparently it isn't from Spirited Away, but from another movie; Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. Oops.

2011-09-24T03:56:00.000-07:00

'I find it strange how Disney can make you feel attracted to princes, street rats, beasts, animals, and everything in between.

Strange...but not complaining.'

- Youtube user

2011-08-27T18:26:00.001-07:00

Worst nightmare EVER. Didn't Freud say your dreams show what you desire most, not what you fear most? :/

2011-08-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Banana cream pie, with plenty of leftover egg whites that I'm too lazy to use. It's so handy to use recipes from those sites like allrecipes.com - they're not uploaded by pro chefs (not that I know of) but there's often a long column of comments/reviews to read through and you can pick out so many adjustments from there before you try the recipe. Some of them are pretty fun to read too. Like these ratings for a recipe I was just looking through...

Rating: 2/5
'i must of done something wrong'

Rating: 5/5
'great my mother n law just loves these if i had known this i could have won her over years ago thank you fratcook for sharing' (fratcook is the recipe's contributor)

IB reunion tea tomorrow! :) looking forward to seeing everybody againnn.

2011-07-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

2011-06-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Level of terror in jobs (increasing magnitude):

1) Teachers
2) Doctors
3) ~~Catholic altar boys~~ HAZMAT specialists
4) Bomb defusers
5) Driving instructors

No, really. First driving practical lesson last Monday! It's quite thrilling and scary at the same time when you're behind the wheel - I remember grinning all the way once I got my hands on the steering wheel. But omg, the first time you accelerate and hear the engine revving, it's quite terrifying - I immediately thought OMGOSHnowaicanilearndrivingever :( Panic came close when trying to go forward and backward, but one wonders - who's more afraid, you or the instructor in the other seat? The fellow who was teaching me was quite stoned though, so that was good. On second thoughts he might've been drunk, but it was me doing the driving so no matter! But seriously, how did he maintain that poker face all those times I nearly went into lanes I wasn't supposed to.

But he did say my turning wasn't bad :) "You drive before right?" "No la, bumper car only!" *Disbelieving look flashes across for a second before reverting to stoneface*

Driving's so easy! Jumped into the driver's seat just now before my dad got in. "Hah! Manual's so easy, Auto's gonna be peanuts" *Jams in keys, starts engine, then pulls handle up* "Wow Mum, the handbrake's so easy to adjust in a real (non-trainee) car!" "Stewart, that's the handrest..."

Come to think of it, you need to push down the handbrake when starting a car, not pull it up. Oops!

2011-06-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile...

2011-05-25T07:28:00.000-07:00

ian/kh - Are you insane!? Well okay maybe not as much as I am but, no I didn't say all that during the interview. To be fair, they were stern but offered useful advice when I (I guess) didn't answer up to their standards.

A company has three jobs available - Service Medic, Photographer and Quartermaster. Three people are hired and are waiting to be allocated a job. Let's see how the company goes about designating the jobs...

A service medic's job is to tend to minor injuries (cuts, sprains) with delicate care - proper treatment must be given so as to avoid opportunistic infection. The company has two people to choose from: the first intends on pursuing Medicine as a career, is fairly compassionate, loves going hands-on and could probably perform a brain craniotomy blindfolded with both hands tied. Maybe not, but he certainly would do well in the job. The second fellow is perpetually found sitting in a corner, a PSP in his hands. He shows little competence in providing medical service - Recruit Wets once accompanied his upperstudy into the medical centre as the latter had a sprained ankle and a knee cut. After (over?)application of ice to the sprain by Second Fellow, the sprain got worse and Wets's upperstudy could barely walk. Wets's upperstudy remained lying down - in pain - on the couch as told to by Second Fellow; only 20 minutes later did PSP-wielding Second Fellow become aware of the rather prominent cut on Upperstudy's knee, and finally tend to it. Then he quickly returns to his corner. The company chooses Second Fellow over m- er, First Fellow. Why!? I'd like to know, too :/

Second job - photographer. The name says it all; he has to cover every darn event, shoot dozens of photos each time and sift through them later to pick the best for publication. First fellow - has covered a staggering number of events while at school, has had abounding experience handling DSLRs and (he admitted to me) would PAY to have such a job in the company. Second fellow - has zero interest in photography. Wants to become a doctor next time. Only camera ever operated is his teeny weeny point-and-shoot, which was mostly used to take shots of little bacteria colonies, rotting tomatoes and the like, not people. No experience with DSLRs at all. What does the company do? Shove a $1000+ Nikon DSLR into Second Fellow's hands and give him the job of course! And, expect him to take professional quality photos. What does he do? The first event he gets to cover, he spends precious moments fumbling with the DSLR when the 'Subject is too dark' screen refuses to go away - only to realize later that the lens cover was still on. Oops!

Third job - quartermaster. Easily the easiest job of the lot (cwutididthar). All the quartermaster needs to do is fill in forms when troops want to borrow some stores/weapons/equipment/ammo (o wait you can't borrow ammo!), which happens at most twice a day. Rest of the time, relac in air con room. First fellow - dislikes hard work. Wants easy job. Remains focused on PSP most of the time. Knows enough English to write, that is, fill in forms properly. Second fellow - previously nominated Chairman of his class due to outstanding performance. Able to juggle multiple tasks at any one time, has a constantly active mind and dislikes sitting still very much. Read University level textbook on Chemistry during Sec 4 holidays. Genius. Holds much potential to be exploited in other jobs, such as photography aka his one love/passion/obsession/you get the idea. Would be a waste if he was made quartermaster. Sadly, he was.

All job allocations are made by the company itself - no say is given to the employees.

Maybe that's why the company prides itself on being...a decisive force!

2011-05-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

2011-05-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

*S walks into room*

S: Good morn-

I1: Sit down.

*S sits*

I1: So why do you want to become a doctor?

S: I find that doctoring is...emotionally satisfying. *thinks: doctoring = earn lots of $$$ = makes me happy = emotional satisfaction!!*

I2: I see. So tell us, S- have you met with any major failures in life?

S: Uh...no. Not any that I can remember of.

I2: So you're telling us you're perfect?

S: Yes.

*I1, I2 and I3 exchange confused looks. Clearly no one's given them such an answer before. S notices, and cackles inside*

I3: So tell us - what would you like to specialize in next time?

S: Geriatric Medicine!! *thinks: actually, Plastics. But since everyone's going to have to pick up Geriatrics in the future, that technically isn't a lie!*

I3: Mm, noble.

*T2 glances at S's portfolio*

T2: I see you've been in this 'Odyssey of the Mind'. Could you tell us more about it?

S: It's a competition split into two parts- the long term problem and short term problem. The long term problem involves coming up with a play, casting actors and-

T2: Okay let's say a scene in your play were to be staged in the A&E Department of a hospital. Could you tell me some of the roles your actors would have to fill?

*S snickers to himself inwardly- he has been to the SGH A&E ward twice or thrice already during NS. One should always go there because: 1) Faster treatment, 2) The $90+ A&E service charge is covered by MINDEF, 3) Everyone's going to be skeptical when you produce a General Med MC but your MC has 'SGH ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY' printed on it, the army people are less likely to ask questions.*

S: Triage nurse, temperature-screening nurse, pharmacy nurse, A&E doctor, registration nurse...I think that's it.

T2: So what if three victims of a road crash accident were suddenly wheeled in, all bleeding profusely and in need of major surgery?

S: Then we'd...get the team of A&E surgeons to operate on them.

T2: Oho, so now there's a team of A&E surgeons. I wonder where they came from?

S: Err...same place where your accident victims came from. Hurhurhur...

*T2 glares at S, but T3 interrupts before anything else happens*

T3: So, tell us about your attachment at TTSH. I assume you learnt quite a bit about tuberculosis?

S: Yes.

T3: Right. So how does one test for tuberculosis?

S: Ah, okay. It's called the BCG test. The doctor injects a substance called BCG into a spot in your arm. After a day or so you return so the doctor can check the results of the test. TB or not TB...geddit? Hurhu-

T3: We're looking for doctors, not comedians.

*S falls silent*

T1: Did anyone inspire you to do medicine?

---

'Father Damien' probably wasn't the best answer for the last question. Well, it's over!

And on the bright side if I don't make it in...at least I'll finally be able to answer the 'Have you had any major failures in your life' question! Hurhurhu...nevermind.

2011-05-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

when i was still in acs
i asked aunt cynthia what will happen
will i do medicine
will i get in
here's what she said to me:
que sera sera
whatever will be will be
the future's not ours to see
que sera sera
vote for pap...wat.

Come to think of it, uni applications (actually, any type of application for that matter) and elections are kinda similar; you try to sell yourself as best as you can so you can get in, but can truly prove yourself only when you get in. Catch-22 much?

See those recipes for truffles you see online? They look fairly simple, straightforward and hassle-free. They're also all lies... more on that next time. Or maybe, a recount of the medicine interview to celebrate Monday's off-in-lieu holiday for my unit!!

2011-04-14T19:00:00.001-07:00

day of days

2011-03-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

never a dull day :)

there's just too many funny things/stories you hear/see in the army, too bad i'm too scared to post anything here :/ they scared us well; during BMT they showed pics of fellows who'd been STOMPed for smoking in uniform, fooling around in uniform and most ridiculously of all, one guy's photo got posted on stomp cause he was...sleeping in uniform, in the bus. i think you've got to be quite boliao to do that :/ but yeah, i'm scared out of my wits and don't jaywalk/sit in the mrt in uniform now. yeah, chicken, whatever!

BMT was ultra dry but it's pretty fun here in my new unit :D multimedia department! working with things that i've never handled in my life - DSLRs (or is it DLSR?), photoshop and a whole host of video tools/applications. but my upperstudy and colleagues are quite awesome haha, they make life in the office so much more enjoyable. got to watch the change of chief of army parade! omg it was the most freaking grand parade ever, there was...okay, shouldn't say, but our school's parades were NOTHING compared to the parade on that day. got to follow our future MP around and spam photos of him. he's quite a cute fellow :P (someone else agrees on this okay) (no homo) the whole event lasted quite long, but we got to eat from a tea reception and later, a dinner reception and omg, talk about lavish. it was quite shocking to think how much taxpayer's mon- nvm. we got a half day off for our troubles too, i think that was quite awesome :D

mm, NS really makes you treasure you free time.

2011-03-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

- D. H. Lawrence

2011-03-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

2011-02-18T05:38:00.000-08:00

the cousin has arrived in singapore; i am grateful to the other cousins for housing her so i get to keep my room for few more days :] i am grateful too for the krispy kremes she brought; not so much for the diarrhea it gave me in school some hours after having them for breakfast =(

His idea of a valentines day was the clapton concert - mine was not. terrible prices (one bottle of Snapple was $5; one can of beer was $10) and terrible music; my ears split during some of the electric guitar compositions. the two singers kept doing the same dance over and over again, deviating only now and then before returning to the ridiculously simple repetition of movements that probably even i could do, but won't because it looks utterly silly. the living fossil they call Clapton had only one thing to say to us in the audience when he wasn't singing - he'd yell, 'THANK YOU!' after every piece. that was it, and he'd move on to the next one without another word. soon enough my mum commented that he was a man of few words - i myself thought he was a man of, more accurately, two words. i was thankful, and a total grouch, when it ended. that was bad but i needed rest badly, and the next day i fell asleep at 6pm and woke up at 4 in the morning. such is a working life :/

teaching is over.

'sir, he took my seat!'
'sir, he took my one dollar!' 'no, it's mine!'
'sir, he molested me!' 'OKAY I'LL MOLEST YOUR FRIEND BACK FOR YOU'

okay fine i didn't say that but really, silly things like these took up so much time. i had five classes; they had quite disparate overall temperaments. they are, in descending order of awesomeness... :

Class 1: the dream class; so quiet. they were such sweet angelssss :D and okay they were quite cute too but that's besides the point. no, they were archangels. they were so darn obedient that it was unsettling; taking in everything without question for the most part, being wondrously polite, staying back to ask questions after lesson/practical if they had any, and at the end of one lesson one fellow asked me, 'Sir when are you leaving!' i replied 'end of this week' and they were like 'aw noooooooooo' haha my heart actually melted, i quickly spun around to write nonsense on the board so they wouldn't see that grin stretched across my face - as madam said when i told her about it, that made my day ♥

Class 2: the fairly good class whom i kidded around now and then - talking cock, stuff about starcraft, haha actually it was more lively than the first class, yet within control; i managed to complete what was required in the SOW by the end of the week, and still managed to have a good time during lessons; this was a fun class to teach :D

Class 3: the so-so in-between class; a good portion of them wanted to learn, a minor fraction weren't similarly inclined and the remaining one indian fellow who doesn't fit into either category was out to make me look bad.

'sir, what is the densest material on earth?'
'uh...'
'sir, is it Bose-Einstein condensate?'
'oh, that. ah yes, i think you need to hit sub-zero temperatures to get there. yes...' *begins to panic*

not long after, i explained the difference between mass and weight to the class. the indian fellow then triumphantly declared how he'd argued with his primary school teacher for an hour trying to prove his point. i think i was both glad and scared i had a student like him. his hand always shot up at every question i fired at the class - and when i didn't choose him he'd cluck his tongue in displeasure. no, really. but it was a manageable class, all in all.

Class 4: things start to get nasty here. not only was the class rarely ever totally silent, there was a nice fellow who had a mental disorder and kept fiddling with two 1.5 ltr empty coke bottles at the back of the class while everyone had their textbooks out. they'd say things like '____, stop drinking from empty coke bottles!' but he was so cute, i couldn't bear to scold him (seriously :/) but he did ask at one insightful question regarding what was being taught; i think he's way smarter than they think he is. with enough shouting and sending-out-of-class, this class was subdued...eventually.

Class 5: a nightmare come true. i don't want to recall much of it; it really was quite bad. i don't think i ever caught hold of them until the last lesson - before that it was talktalktalktalktalk like a bunch of girls, shouting was pretty ineffective most of the time so i ended up just silently staring at them till everyone kept quiet before teaching again, upon which the cycle repeated after about a minute or so. one was especially cunning - during practical i sent him out. he came in to ask a question regarding the prac, then nonchalantly walked back to his seat and sat down. it was unpleasant dealing with him, and i'm glad i'm free of this class. the worst part was a twist of that heartrending moment i had with class 1; 'sir, when are you leaving?' 'oh, end of this week' whole class: 'nooooooooooooo!' *thinks* 'have i done finally something right with this class!? they've barely listened to me at all' then one guy blurts out, 'no more free lesson for talking!'

and the most embarrassing moment:
'sir, why is your face so red?'
'sir, why are you sweating so much?'
'uh...i was doing practical in the lab just now!'
'but sir the lab is air conditioned!'
*fiercely scolds self for coming up with pathetic answer*
'oh, i ran down after that so i could teach you guys!'

ah, well. gave a can of Fox sweets to each of the more angelic classes. yes, i show bias, so there! after i left the first class after giving them the can of sweets, one fellow came out with a question so i started explaining the concept to him. not long after, two fellows dart out with blood trickling down a finger each. 'sir, your can is evil!' apparently three of them cut their fingers while grabbing for the can of sweets by cutting them on the sharp circular piece of metal that you have to pull out to get to the sweets -.- ended up removing those metal pieces for the other cans before giving them to the classes.

one sweet guy gave me a proper whiteboard marker after saying, 'your markers are so hard to see!' (he was referring to their dull ink). went to madam's office! it's quite cool, right in the corner of the deputy deans' area, it's so nice and quiet there. talked with her some days when i had enough time to drop by. haha it was quite cool seeing a teacher having a freaking aquarium on his/her table, all lighted up and filled with fishies and plants. thank you mr wong ting ee for consoling me at first when i was whining about the worse classes; didn't know that the classes i hadn't met yet were positively sweet ♥

met daniel in the sac on my last day. haha we actually went to sit in the teacher's corner - but after that i think i saw why most teachers prefer to sit outside, your voice really reverberates off the glass walls and echoes all over the place so it actually becomes quite noisy when three tables are all holding a conversation at once. we caught sight of cavan walking into the sac...haha he actually walked into the teacher's corner to say hi, he looked like a teacher anyway, the way he was dressed. got the attendance sheet signed at last, and fled after that. teaching is over!

but all in all, i'm happy i'm done with teaching for now :D the pay isn't bad at all, too. managed to find time to chat with slim, mdm reena, ol fazli and a few other teachers too.

now, sleep.

2011-02-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

'Nothing says "I love you" like dead vegetation and fat-saturated sugar products'.

2011-02-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

one of the unexplained things in life - why my dad is so good at scrabble. got thrashed the first time i played with him; the second game was so bad i was swapping tiles more than once in a row while he took the triple word scores. my mum joined in for the latest game; i started off winning, then began accumulating vowels and spending them in silly four-letter four-point words like NOON. then the father suddenly surged ahead of everyone and took the game. well it was less humiliating than the 1v1s, where i remember being pretty far behind at like 140+ points while he was closing on 200, then later i was reaching 200 and glanced at his counter and counted that his points were just below 200 again, and rejoiced - till i realized the counter wasn't nearing the 200 mark, but the 300 one :(

relief teaching at school :D man, had to invigilate some test today, and of all subjects, higher chinese. it was bad enough one guy kept whispering away half the time and i had to keep stopping him, but beyond that there was one fellow who raised his hand, called me over and told me there was a mistake in the paper and pointed to some characters. *blank stare* *tries to sound professional* "if there's a mistake, a teacher will come in and correct it!" well no one else found a mistake so i guess there wasn't any.

physical science! ended up having to teach topics i didn't have lesson plans for at all. rawr and the class's behind in the SoW, i ended up going rather fast and somehow covered about 3 topics in 20 minutes which i don't think was supposed to happen. oh and apparently the class was supposed to get a break after the test, while i kept them back for lessons...no wonder they kept complaining that it was break during my lesson. i thought they were lying. oops! nehmind 30 minutes only

after that 40minute lesson there wasn't anything to do. thank you rachel and wx for dropping by and keeping me sane - there really wouldn't have been anything to do till i found dr yong to sign my attendance log before i could leave. actually i didn't find him at all - found mdm yong at the swim meet, and she agreed to sign it :D the nearby ms chock: "wow you know all the right people!" well, not really.

teaching a class's really different from individual tutoring - and a lot more draining too. i r tiredzzz

and my phone has been acting up. if you're not receiving any replies please call me instead - my phone can completely neglect receiving messages; they just don't arrive at all. and this afternoon it deleted 700 old messages by itself, i honestly don't know how but this really means i need a new phone :/

2011-02-02T00:19:00.000-08:00

2011-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

!@#$%^&* so much travelling despite school being over :( i've spent more than $60 on transport since our student ezlink expired D: haha kh found a sneaky way to pay our old fare - wave the student ezlink card at the bus driver and drop 55 cents into the box. i tried that, but the driver made me tap my card and showed me what it said on his display panel: EXPIRED. gah.

went to nus yesterday to sow seeds for the future *crosses fingers* before that, went to return xintian the philosopher's stone and deathly hallows. haha it was quite funny, i borrowed the philo's stone from her for my brother to read and it ended up being my mum who read it instead; in fact she wants to read chamber of secrets next, after we settle down in our new hovel, which means i have to borrow it from someone then. thanks to everyone who lent me books :D arthur and xintian for harry potter; lee yang for tolstoy's novels; juno for catch 22; arthur again for wheel of time; and not to forget adrian for yours too :P yay, plenty to read during NS! bought a book from kinokuniya recently and borrowed one from the library too, reading is goooooood.

went to lan for awhile with fred & company before dinner at swensens last night with kh, pravin and yaseer. chicken baked rice never gets old! kh had some sourdough sandwiches which turned out way smaller than they appeared in the menu picture, haha. talked about pravin's work life, which turned out to be way more interesting than we thought, haha. and thank you so much, kh, for the treat :D

met some of the ventures today at school (the result of kegan's lastminute planning). played a bit of frisbee near the astroturf, consoled/helped kegan plan his way out of his fix and then had lunch at the SAC. SAC food never grows old :D though some stores didn't have some dishes because it was way past dismissal time already. met kevin! :D yay good times from sec 1 and 2, haha. watched (and shuddered at) the scouts and ventures rehearse for scouts day, decided we'd seen enough and left. met ken and the other ncc fellows at the bus stop, and joined them for a bit of bowling at westcoast where the lane always has one problem or another, haha. it was quite funny, in the middle of the game ken went "winner treats all to crab dinner!" fred glances at the scoreboard; "hey ken you're winning!" LOL and ken did win the first game, haha. samuel joined us for the second one after that. whew the day passed pretty fast :( haha or maybe because i woke up so late.

NTU talk with fred and yaseer tomorrow! haha two weeks ago they were telling me about this 'NTU medicine talk' on 'saturday at 2pm' so on the 15th i left for city hall at 1pm, and only found out from fred that the talk was two weeks later -_- oh well! music workshop after the NTU talk, might get to see the two bens there too :D

2011-01-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

renamed the blog after the wise words of a wise lady whom we had an awesome attachment with :D well, it does sound better than another catchphrase we heard a lot on our last day there: 'it's like that' *clasps hands and nods head repeatedly* :P

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...

- Ballad of Serenity, Firefly

just finished Firefly and Serenity - best series ever and awesome theme song. loved some moments in the series - Jaynestown was pretty funny yet sobering, and adored how simon took care of river♥

outing with 4.13 at seoul garden! haha keith actually showed up after leaving our class early in '07 and we had a good time hearing about his experiences in NS. uggh ate so much, we just kept going back for plates and plates of all those different kinds of meat, yet somehow most of us had room for ice cream later, hehe. talked, stuffed ourselves and left the place pretty late - mrt ride home with walter and henry, talked about, uh, interesting stuff haha. it was good meeting up with (most of) 4.13 :) still, pity all the scholars've gone back already.

today: sent mingann to do an attachment at my auntie's clinic, lunch/dessert with daryl and made another appointment to see the ENT tomorrow :( got a new book though, but i need to finish catch-22 firsttt but reading it's driving me crazy :S

mm, i have an email to be typing out soon.

2011-01-21T05:32:00.000-08:00

i have been lazy! outings passed; more to come. meeting 4.13 and daryl soon :D

yay attachment was fun :) the people at the TBCU were so nice to us. the consultants were a little busy at first but got to talk to us in the end - one of them also maintained that without connections, no one can get anywhere in med - and so nicole became 'daughter of _____' and i became 'distant relative of _____' haha it was quite funny, it was like we had no identity if we weren't tied to anyone renowned. met the just for mee auntie and her husband in the lift! haha yay they remembered us :D had a good long talk with a certain consultant about medicine, it was quite...interesting. but in the end mental preparation probably isn't going to cut facing the real thing. everyone seems to dread housemanship! grr, why're we moving now when med school's starting this year and we live less than 10mins away from NUS -.- then again NUS might station us somewhere other than NUH, and then again i might not even make it into medicine. but anyway the attachment was really quite worthwhile - saw and learnt a lot about med that might not be obvious to the public.

someone also bought two burgerzills (however you spell it), perhaps in an effort to choke herself so she'd be needed to be sent to the endoscopy centre!

2011-01-14T05:49:00.001-08:00

IMMOOOOOOOOORTAL

but still too lazy to learn how to play HoN properly.

2011-01-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

From the tip of his wand, his wand burst the silver doe: she landed on the office floor, bounded once acorss the office and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

snape♥♥

wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure!

2011-01-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

epic quote of yesterday:

sam's dad: so how much did you get?

sam: 45!

sam's dad: 45? that doesn't sound good...

congrats to everyone, our cohort did amazing, you guys especially: david, xintian, juno, tri, boonhwee, sandra, mingann (i'm gonna fail i'm gonna fail LOL), sam(antha), samuel, nicole :D and anyone else i forgot, there were so many high fliers. it was so gratifying to see naresh and mdm tay's faces beaming all over; mdm reena said mdm tay went to the lab and hugged her in the morning! i'm glad everything's over and that our class did so well and our teachers're so pleased :)

2011-01-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

omgg so exciting

master league coming out for starcraft 2!!

2011-01-02T02:19:00.000-08:00

oh look, it's 2011! and results are coming out soon! this is dedicated to all others who are striving for Medicine too:

2010-12-31T03:23:00.000-08:00

oops! looks like i forgot to finish off the post i half-typed out after xmas. nevermind, leave that for another time. finished Harry Potter! sigh, i teared when Dobby died. "Harry ... Potter ..." :( sigh, i think it's the best series i've read so far - beautiful ending too! rowling really blends the fantasy and coming of age so well. i no longer wanna be a doctor when i grow up; i am becoming an Auror. can't wait to try out all of them most powerful spells: Imperio, the feared Avada Kedevra and the even more feared Infertilus...wait wut.

cousins're here! :) haha they're so nice, got our family xmas prezzies and we didn't think they would so we had none in return arghh >< they got me a pizza stone and book - shortly after opening it, my cousin talked me into making pizza for dinner on monday, oh dear. the basic dough recipe calls for yeast, sugar, flour, water...we're supposed to mix them together and let it rise. respiration! :D i guess the carbon dioxide makes it rise...i think it does.

and my uncle helped me change our wireless network's security to WPA; we changed the network name too, so everyone had to reconnect. i pointed out the right network on my brother's screen; he was clearly unfamiliar with the new name of our network. 'Dobby'? he grunted.

2010-12-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

chocolate chip brownie-cookies, tollhouse cookies, coconut ice slice and a lemon cheesecake in 24 hours, uggh. the worst part was the lemon part of the cheesecake - grating for the peel and squeezing the juice out just wrecks your hand. and if you have any undiscovered little cuts on either hand, the lemon juice'll be sure to let you know, ouch. everything turned out pretty well though - even though i had to modify the baking time for the brownie-cookies and messed around with the butter quantities for the slice and cheesecake (who doesn't love a bigger cheesecake base! :D). now everything except for the cheesecake is gone. but the cheesecake's good :) although it's quite thin, it's fairly rich and was pretty liked all around hehe. yay for philadelphia cream cheese! and for the sake of doing it - i might bake more next week still, maybe something more christmas-y than what i've baked recently.

we had a little party here last night - a few uncles and aunties came. a 4 year old boy i barely knew somehow got me into playing racing cars with him, which only really involved us pushing toy cars along the floor to reach the finish line, which he forever changed so i could never win even if i'd gotten there first ("no! the finish line's over here!"). competition was fierce - he rammed his car into mine and i lost a wheel. then we went on to play with little green toy soldiers (which according to him were from a movie called 'Toy Storage'). he even designated a little cute chipmunk figurine sitting on a log as a 'bomber', and it was kind of...weird seeing the boy flying the smiling rodent over the little green soldiers and wrecking untold havoc among their lines, in other words using his other hand to topple them.

but it was fun all in all - i don't know how i actually managed to entertain him for the entire evening, haha i thought my patience would've given out way sooner. unfortunately for me, the boy still didn't know my name by the end of the party. he was pretty funny all the same - i remember when i'd taken out the two racing cars for him to pick one and leave me the other, he'd chosen one, rushed over to his mum and said in an overly loud whisper: "mum, i chose the faster one!".

the bali trip went pretty well. we touched down at night, around 9 or 10, and it was pretty dark. out of the dark we saw luminous sticks being waved in the dark to direct the plane to the docking site. you could tell it was an indian because... well anyway we got off with our bags and took a little shuttle bus to immigration, got through and queued under the sign that said 'Goods Not To Declare' which sounded kind of sneaky, but all of us got through all right. the resort people were really nice - they'd brought two cars along for our family, and had brought some water and snacks along for the 3 hour ride :/ i don't remember much of it, other than that almost all of us fell asleep and when i woke up the whole place was fogged up - seriously, you could barely see a few metres ahead of you, and it was night. we did reach the resort safely anyway; our villas were really nice. meals were in the nearby resort restaurant - it was dimly lighted at night, and there was one time during dinner my dad and i were exchanging what we thought were different types of meat and they turned out to be the same thing; we just couldn't tell in the dark.

there were also free foot massages, which turned instead turned out to be an experential discovery of how many acupoints there are on the soles of your feet. read lots of harry potter there! :D thanks arthur and xintian for lending them to me. my mum read a bit of the Philosopher's Stone, and commented that Harry should be more grateful toward Vernon and Petunia for letting him stay in their house. then again she thought spongebob was a block of cheese.

it kept raining in Bali! turned out to be monsoon season there. but since we spent almost all our time indoors (reading/telly) it didn't make much of a difference. still, it's good to be home - there's no place like home.

2010-12-08T03:02:00.000-08:00

"And then father, the Rapture dream was over. You taught me that 'evil' is just a word. Under the skin, it's simple pain. For you, mercy was victory. You sacrificed, you endured, and when given the chance, you forgave. Always. Mother believed this world was irredeemable, but she was wrong, Father. We are Utopia, you and I, and in forgiving, we left the door open for her."

- Eleanor Lamb

2010-12-05T03:29:00.000-08:00

omgg ♥

winnie the pooh = best childhood char ever. i love his slow, okay fine maybe sluggish, way of speaking and his grizzly-ish warm-ish voice (okay i don't know how to describe it but it's so nice luh) and his bemusing reactions and his obsession with honey hehehe.

lovely orchestral piece that plays early on in batman begins. sounds like its meant to be a prelude.

listened to pirates of the caribbean (black pearl) soundtrack once over. the motifs/themes (no idea what you call them) recur a lot but in a number of different ways, and are really nice. :)

2010-12-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

haha yes nic i saw your tag among the...mess.

prom was so fun :D :D haha everyone looked so good. planned to meet up with ian, tri and koon han at sunset way then take a bus. of course, nothing went as planned. kh and tri ended up finding their own ways there/sharing cab and so i took a bus to sunset way to meet up with ian. trouble was, the bus stop we were supposed to meet at was across the road where i got off from the bus. with my luck, it'd have been snowing; lady luck was kind this time round, and there was only a mere downpour, which unfortunately prevented me from crossing the road to meet ian. i ended up going to 7-11 to get an umbrella so i could cross the darn road. and the brolly was a terribly bright orange, normally it'd be fine but what, entering prom at ritz carlton with...that? yeah, i did do that in the end. and the dumb thing was we ended up taking a taxi because we were scared we'd be late. the dumber thing was, prom was far from starting when we arrived, goodness they weren't even letting people in yet when we got there. /facepalm

i wore a long sleeved shirt and long pants for prom. thought only a few people'd bother getting a suit. so when i arrived there...gosh, i felt TOTALLY underdressed. like omg everyone was wearing a suit? i think i can count the number of people i saw that night without a suit on one hand. even koon han wore a tie at least. to make matters worse, i thought i was wearing black pants. no, wth, only while looking through the photos AFTER prom i realized they were blue. seriously, they did look black while i was putting them on at home, but it was pretty dark then, gah. blame the colourblindness :(

everything else was fun though! so much camwhoring :D haha everyone was getting up and taking so many photos they had to make an announcement to tell us to get back to our seats because the next course was being served. though i only really enjoyed dessert, it was some vanilla...thingy with strawberries and strawberry sauce. it was amazing. what made it better was that some of the girls at our table (xintian? mingann?) didn't want their strawberries so...mm, okay they weren't very sweet but strawberries are always nice haha. but the food was a ripoff! there were only four courses (five if you count the coffee/tea which many people didn't finish before they chased us out...) and the tomato soup was like, normal. but they did have free flow of bread and butter, which was quite nice :)

♥

it was fun seeing so many old friends again, haha it'd have been terrible to miss prom night and not getting one last picture with them. my cousin tells me her prom in aussie was a lot different: they actually have to get a partner and dance! and they have dance rehearsals for everyone before that so everyone knows how to dance. what's better, their prom was BEFORE IB exams so...wow, funny timing haha. i was telling her if our prom was before IB many people probably wouldn't turn up.

still, it was a pity we didn't see astika and maharaj there :( meh this year was slightly different without them, though i guess all of us didn't really notice after some time. asked astika to come for prom but apparently she's traveling the world to see the mummies and then explore morocco, which is a country which i have no idea is in the world and sounds ulu enough to use as a real-world example in your econs ia. i guess she's having fun! i have no idea how maharaj is keeping but he seems to be doing pretty well and in fact has become quite rich...now and then over msn he kindly asks me if i want a free iphone 4, but whenever i reply to that he's already offline or doesn't get my message. still, it's quite generous of the fellow! and he seems so excited/enthusiastic over his offer, i always get his messages in caps.

lunch yesterday at marche/vivo with koonhan, xintian and juno. kh and i had a "rosti" - it's made out of potato strips which're fried together. both of us ordered sausage rostis; i thought they'd somehow incorporate the sausage into the rosti itself and i enticed kh with that so he got his. turned out they just cooked the potato strips by themselves then chucked a whole sausage on top. once kh discovers that: "you lied to me, stewart." and on and on he went...haha. mingann came later and we went to ben & jerry's, gosh that place is...see, i spent like 20 seconds thinking of a powerful enough adjective to go along with "expensive" and i couldn't think of one strong enough. haha but we had a good time - especially with kh and his 'special' habits (LOL both mdm reena and mdm tay separately noted how the lad is 'special') and my phone getting stolen and me being threatened to have my eyes gouged out, which sounds pretty scary but knowing the perpetrator, i'm quite safe ;)

went to central after that because xt and ma wanted to check out some k-pop dance class. it turned out to be quite small and all the walls were made of glass so you could see the whole class dancing...jumping...swaying...falling...faili- okay ima stop before i'm accused of being mean. central's quite a nice place though, very quiet and not-crowded :) we went to some japanese pasta place after that. can't remember it's name but i think it sounded a bit vulgar, haha. talked, kh and i watched the girls eat, and he refused to share a parfait with me (his obstinate "i'm full!"). fun day, but so much walking ): yay i'm fat and lazy. haha i've gained like 8 kilos since the middle of last year :D wait...is that something to be happy about?

envy this lucky fellow who found his place and purpose in the world.

2010-11-18T06:11:00.000-08:00

have gotten back to piano.

something different i find now is that playing hanon/scales seems to be a lot less...hurried, then before. i think previously, during ib, doing them felt way draggy; i just wanted to get them over with, and blazing through them'd make it easy as pie for my timings to slip up. but now, it just feels like it's a lot easier to be patient, and go through them slowly as if there's all the time in the world.

right, juno just messaged saying he's downstairs. or rather, on the way.

more another time i guess.

2010-11-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

yesss.

okay, maybe not so. last question: seriously, what the. had no idea how to calculate the expected values, cause we were all so used to using the GDC to get the expected values. my mind flashed back to last time- when i didn't even know we could use the GDC to get the expected values, and when i was doing the chiquared worksheet in the green book i calculated every single expected value manually. no kidding. then when fazli returned my paper he was like "stewart!! you know you can calculate the expected values using the GDC..." ah. and so i ditched the good ol' manual calculation method, and kept using the GDC to churn out them expected values.

and guess what comes out...

right, so i put in the most logical values that came to my poor confuzzled mind. the total was 100. so, what could go in the boxes? easy! 25, 25, 25, 25. but no, you say. the side totals are like 40 and 60 already, it wouldnt even make sense for you to enter values like 25 and 25 that don't add up to those values. oh, simple that. i changed the totals from 60 and 40 to 50 and 50. don't ask me why. yeah, i got the whole question wrong, rawr.

post-ib craze kinda hit me some past days. or rather, i began to feel it wouldn't be as great as it would be. and so it isn't, at least for me. but it's good, this calm.

ian: external graphics card!? that's for laptops only...and laptops are simply not made for gaming, ugh you could get one of those alienware/voodoopc/dell gaming laptops but their capability/value is simply blown away by desktops, really, stick to a real com for gaming, you won't regret it. the external graphics card juno talks about is, after some googling, probably an adapter that allows you to hook up various compatible video cards (that would normally be for PCs) to a laptop since laptop graphic cards are so shoddy. or most of them are, at least! build a com now, prices are really decent, you can snap up a fairly good gaming com at maybe 1k total? don't buy from retailers o.o it's way cheaper to buy your own parts and assemble them yourself (or pay the guys at the shop to assemble it for like $10 or maybe they'll do it free).

in other news, i have set my sights on an XFX R6870 1gb :O goodness i wonder if my psu'll be enough to handle it.

cheryl: ah, well, it's over. you know, i guess as long as we do well enough to get where we want to, it won't matter. whether that happens is another story :S wuthering heights is a big shift from the contemporary books around nowadays, i found it quite challenging to read at first, but it's really quite lovely, the writing style, once you get used to it haha. do read it!

got Dubliners from borders just now. james joyce! read a bit about him, apparently his writing style and Doyle's have some similarities. i read the first story- The Aunts - on the way back. it was quite hard to concentrate, the mrt ride and all :S but i found it pretty, satirical. it's hard to tell whether your suppositions are correct, and whether you're misinterpreting, but haha i guess that's all in the fun of reading.

more tomorrow, or another day.

2010-11-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

urghhh careless mistakessss. worst ever time to make them, period.

got blackops in preparation for monday. was looking at fuwell'sprice list- i think i'll settle for a GTX 460 if i do change graphic card. meh, the current 4850 is pretty decent but probably isn't going to cut blackops (at high settings!) and diablo 3, and so on. will probably get mass effect 1 and 2, and hopefully bioshock 1 and 2, and...okay fine i guess i haven't totally shrugged of gaming.

and reading. wuthering heights! long book, sometimes draggy, i think it's a lovely book so far though :) and a load of other free books off the iBooks store. yesss.

ahh, yesterday. chem p2 first question- it was an exothermic reaction, and i still ended up putting +222 kJ/mol, ugh, and chester and i only realized on the bus haha. two others in the bus were talking about the same question, and when they mentioned it was negative it froze me to hear such talk- seriously, getting these common sense things wrong, it's just such a lowering of me. po' little stewie!

2010-11-09T03:49:00.001-08:00

aaaaaaaaaaargh so many quotes!

and i received news, too, that someone did actually do "Bushed". kudos to the man.

2010-11-09T01:45:00.000-08:00

o.O english was interesting. at first sight the poem was ...omg. i guess it's one of those highly metaphorical ones, maybe close to hurricane hits england. there was actually quite a bit to talk about, on second glance- the anthropomorphic personification of the mountains and moon (maybe pathetic fallacy?) and the good deal of nature imagery that pervaded the poem. then again i failed to come up with an interpretation for it- though the last stanza pretty much represents death, i'm sure. maybe the poem's a metaphor for life- you could kinda trace how there're shifts in time (yeah, guiding question ftw!) from dawn to eventide (eventide sounds so much cooler than evening huh!). other than that...lightning smashing a rainbow kinda threw me off from the very start.

so yes, prose. i found it very literal- that this was a passage where you couldn't fish out literary devices and discuss them, i think you had to be very sensitive to the nuances and undertones embedded in there. the guiding questions did help a bit. i ended up talking about the setting, mood, atmosphere, interplay of reactions and attitudes, the evolution of the reader's impression of the rocks (and a weak attempt to connect that to the thematic idea of memories and their importance to some) and the shift in atmosphere in the last paragraph. i could be all wrong for all i know. whee but i think that was a lot more fun than other prose pieces we've practised before (; like the may 2005 one i practised, that one was way too obvious. okay come to think of it, this exam wasn't very easy; especially poem became pretty much a non-choice for many of us. i heard the HL exam was no better- one top student (who got 25/25 for some mid year p1 exam...) admitted it was the hardest so far.

paper 22222 :/ it should be open book, jim's quotes are unpossible to memorize. worried worried worried

2010-11-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

URRGH

worst papers to have on a single day. mindboggling number of quotes and examples to cram in by tonight.

2010-11-08T07:55:00.001-08:00

i feel stupider by the second studying siddhartha.

'You are Siddhartha and you are not.'

....!?!?

edit: yes, apparently it's the great gatsby that's going to be replacing huck- not Perfume.

i got a peek at next year's booklist for y5. our school will be offering the HSP- i think that stands for Humanities Studies Programme- and those lucky buggers doing it will get to do, among other works, waiting for godot, anna karenina and more. east, west has been moved to hl. hsp sounds funnn

2010-11-08T06:53:00.000-08:00

haha yes ian i did see his tuition advertisement. yay, whoever wants good math tuition should go there. the guy does know his stuff, actually- the eccentricities are a small price to pay for learning how stuff in math actually works.

i blame the bad foundation we had in sec school for our current math jeopardies- okay, maybe some of us are to blame, i still don't understand how i bluffed my way past sec 4 amath. i think they tested the concepts covered very superficially- like say box and whisker diagram, it's just something you can't make difficult right!

cheryl- no no no omg study for p3! i think i was the only retard doing stats on saturday and sunday -.- p1 and 2 were pretty trashy for me and probably for you too, so work on p3, janice said many people bank on that...i think it's a good idea, the prelim p3 was pretty manageable...pity i didn't prepare for that!

eng paper 1 tomorrow. sigh, the only trap i hope i don't fall into is being unable to decide whether to do prose or poem. hopefully i choose quickly. haha speaking of p1, our dear p2 english teacher set the year 5 eoy paper 1 prose passage. 95% of year 5s ended up doing poem LOL. he let me look at the prose passage- after glossing over it two times i managed to come up with the basic stuff that'd net you a pass, but when i looked at the markscheme it was like omgggg wth, not even hl people'd get that. but freak, the markscheme really elucidated the nuances and beauties in that passage, i think it's a lovely passage for appreciation haha. it's from White Noise by some writer. and it wasn't a short passage- about 70 lines. IB p1 prose passages can be as short as 35 lines- but tend to be very dense with literary gems for picking, apparently. i don't know, darn it i hope i can decide quickly tomorrow and not stall.

went to the ENT just now and ended up having lunch at ion orchard food mall. ughh their yam paste is as watery as anything, and totally not the right colour too. i like purple yam paste! and coconut milk. just like grandpa. vasudeva tried offering coconut milk to siddhartha after the son left, but he was sleeping. idiot. window shopped around ion orchard and tangs for awhile, stopped by a shop in ion orchard. a good day! this week will be pretty easy to get by luh. seriously, IB isn't that hard right! okay nevermind everyone is gonna laugh at my score next year, meh. or will they?

i have been persuaded to do english lit in uni- no, med still goes for me! meh the girl i see most often is the one on the front of the NUS med brochure they gave out during the med talk before prelims. she's holding up an x-ray printout. mustgetinmustgetinmustgetinordieeeeeeee

2010-11-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

disciplineeeeeee

got so restless last night i took a walk around the condo. the night air was nice- pity one side of my nose's blocked up bad. blowing it causes a good amount of pressure to build up inside- it feels for some time like my right nostril's about to explode- then eventually the air gets slowly left out, making a sound like a balloon letting out air slowly.

ran out of food- i spend so much darn time walking back and forth to the kitchen, opening the fridge, closing it and walking back to the room. sometimes, i succumb and grab a slice of bakwa, it's so good :/ i should be going to ntuc tonight to replenish my hoard of snacks.

ugh i should be studying

2010-11-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

...

2010-11-04T21:34:00.001-07:00

._. ugh. baaaaad. think i lost a total of at least 30 marks from section B already- and since i couldnt do the last two questions of section A, that makes for...a lot of marks.

someone should tell robin hood that the email displays the name he entered while setting up the account... but that was nice of him

after the paper: heard voices. david: easiest paper, first time i could actually try everything! (something like that) xintian: that was so much better! (than yesterday)

so i fled; no use hearing such things and getting demoralized. went to get a waffle and planned to go back and sleep, do some chem after that. met fred, yaseer, kevin, koonhan at bus stop then went to clementi for lunch...lo and behold, we met abraham and kishore at kfc! and some other acsians there and at macs, too.

enough wasted time. shower, sleep, and we'll see what there is to do when we get up. option A!

2010-11-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

hermaphroditic coral @_@

2010-11-02T06:44:00.001-07:00

the fun only really starts at 1:10. so cute, seriously :D

studying options is fun!

2010-11-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr

2010-10-31T07:47:00.000-07:00

ian: hm that time when i was with slim and rachel and kenric, he said something like huck finn might be replaced by Perfume. i know, i heard the great gatsby'd be replacing huck, so i ain't too sure now. good thing about huck, though, is that you can use it for an astonishingly large number of questions in paper 2, unlike sidd/pc which are not always an option imo...

feasting on the fruits of stress and procrastination!

nomnomnom. everyone is falling sick now.

so i need to study hard and become a doctor

i think father damien was pretty noble

hmmm and the only sad part about paddy is that Da leaves after putting on a fine show and teaching us guys how to treat women.

yes, women, heed the call of duty!

mingann, your birthday falls upon a hallowed day. for on that day, call of duty: black ops is released! even kevin the original cod hater ('cock of doody', he used to call it) is excited. i hope i remember to get it after math on the 15th.

fear not, ladies, for fate has been kind enough not to deprive you of your own calls of duty. get to making that sandwich!

in other news, i saw a feature for duke nukem forever on a game magazine while checking out of cold storage. it's quite funny how it's name got played upon a lot after it got stuck in development hell for years- not unlike how starcraft 2's original slogan (i think) was 'Hell, it's about time.' cause starcraft had been released in the 1990s, and there hadn't been a sequel up till now. not long after, fans started throwing back the slogan at Blizzard after the game was delayed. 'hell, it's about time!'

this one is still the best. every lady should know her role in life!

okay, no real misogynism intended alright. any more insults and, i'm told, 'my future wife isn't gonna give me babies in future'

2010-10-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

this is very, very, bad. i feel real fear now.

i am far behind time. the illness is sapping more time and, so is blogging.

there will be a lacuna in my posting for now.

all the best to everyone for ib.

2010-10-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

right, so things aren't going too well. went to the doc again on monday- this time, the old doc who knew all about what i'd been through for the past 2 visits was gone- guess what, guess what, she wasn't fat after all, it was a baby in her -_- darn maternity leave. so this wizened old fairy godmother took over her. no, i'm not being mean, she really was quite wrinkled and waved her hands now and then while talking to me. she actually called up another doctor to ask what she should do after i related the whole case to her...and ended up telling me i'd have to see an ENT in the end. in fact she said i should've gone to one in the first place. so she said best thing to do right then would be to see one on that day itself; 'nasal washout is very fast, takes only about 1 week to recover from!' '...i have final exams next week.' 'oh...' yeah and once she heard that she got all scared and didn't dare to give me anything 'special' in case it'd ruin my health or do something drastic in case i'd be rendered weak/dying and unable to take my exams in a somewhat coherent state. she ended up giving me even more antibiotics- this time, enhancin instead of clarithromycin. and i'll never forget the words she uttered as she ushered me out of the room: 'i just wish i could wave a magic wand and cure all of your problems!' and you thought i was kidding when i called her fairy godmother. haha, that was quite sweet of her luh, i think she felt pretty bad for me.

she did, though, neglect to caution me against the bonus side effects of enhancin, which turns out to be amoxicillin courtesy of wikipedia. i think i've taken it at least once before. i scored two bonuses: diarrhea and nausea. grumble grumble grumble. i kid you not, my ass was in agony the entire of yesterday morning when consulting fazli in school. oh fine so i've got myself to blame- i did, for an hour, somehow walk away to hand up an essay to naresh, found slim talking to rachel and kenric and joined them for...quite some time. and when i returned fazli'd gone; thankfully he'd been attending to another student previously, so i hadn't left him unentertained and empty-handed.

i'm beginning to think our cohort shirt is pretty egoistic. IRRESIST(IB)LE! i felt rather ... walking around clementi in that. it's looking more and more like a desperate attempt to follow the trend of enclosing an 'IB' within parantheses within the chosen word. future cohorts' attempts in dutifully following the trend will exhaust the pool of 'IB' words- ten years down the road, it'd probably be 'L(IB)RARY'. or, if the council's desperate (and the cohort lucky) enough, 'L(IB)IDO'.

went to the dentist aka auntie yesterday. grumbled about the sinusitis; she sympathized and agreed that seeing an ENT first would've been the prime choice. 'chang tou liang', i mumbled under my breath. her: 'huh what dialect is that' me: 'no, that's his name...' haha, she probably thought i was cursing in some hokkien dialect or something. she removed a little metal button at the roof of my mouth- hehe and she said that when i saw the ENT and he asked what was the depression in the roof of my mouth, to tell him i'd removed a palate stud. she did give me a contact for an ENT, too :D haha, awesome auntie. and what can a congested sinus, diarrhea, nausea do against rainbow coloured rubbers?

slept early yesterday. woke up earlier today. showered, had breakfast, called the ENT, fixed up an appointment tomorrow- tomorrow's actually fully booked, but i think they managed to squeeze me in before the first slot. felt good after that. it was 8am. then i fell asleep and woke up at 10.30am. watched a starcraft replay. looked at the clock again; it said 10am. looked at the computer clock; 10.55am. pity, it was the other clock that was spoilt. the darn alarm clock, too! i have not started bio yet; although i told myself yesterday that i would. then again, i told myself that again on monday. nevermind. i did finish paddy clarke, though, and had some thoughts on it.

just one thought on the book: at the end of the story, we see paddy boycotted and outcast from his friends, and witnessing first-hand the fissuring of his parents' relationship. it is indeed incredibly sad at first. but i kind of thought, throughout the book, we do see many, many instances of paddy's friends going through, or having had gone through, experiences that are not all too dissimilar. Liam and Aidan's parents; Kevin's parents; the (rather vicious) bullying of Edward Swanwick and the eventual (and ambiguous) fate of himself and his family; paddy's treatment of an unnamed Corporation boy (kicking him, throwing him of a roof before he is promptly forgotten); there are plenty of occasions where other kids seem to have gone through just as much, or even more, than paddy. so what is it that makes paddy's story so special? is it because he does take a far keener interest/concern in these events? we read of Kevin's and Charles's indifference to his parents' arguments, in stark contrast to paddy's own reaction- his train of thought becomes so much more frequently hijacked by the domestic issues unfolding at home, even when he is at school.

i had more thoughts about the book, but in the end i felt that deep down, paddy clarke is a book that centres around relationships- not so much at first, as paddy is indeed sometimes occupied with childish fascinations and obsessions earlier in the book, but toward the end of the book, it just seems these relationship problems are of greater bearing to him, and he devotes much more thought and time to them, only intermittently reverting to his previous 'immature' thoughts as some sort of defense mechanism when he comes across things that are rather uncomfortable for him to discuss, or when he his state of mind is feeling threatened at that point in time.

it's hard to explain, but i just felt there are many things that aren't easy to put in words when discussing the books. many things you could discuss are nuanced into deep undertones; it is difficult to pick them apart in a way that could be briefly summarized and elaborated on. it's a great book; i should sell this tony edition to a year 5/6 next year, and buy the real one to honour my bookshelf with.

slim says they are removing huck finn from the syllabus, and replacing it with Perfume. i have never heard of the latter. and...i need to get to the toilet. yay, bonus effect of amoxicillin. rawr.

2010-10-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

ahh fine double post, but i'm too lazy to do anything about it :D i think i saved it as a draft before continuing some time later, with added interpolations. then i somehow published both of them simultaneously, i guess. oopsie!

a modern rendition of Hamlet. haha, yaseer shared it with me last time.

the original is of course a lot more tragic and depressing than...this one. not unlike Lear, the bodies pile up at the end...i think i like Hamlet just as much as Lear, or even more. either of those two are pretty much his magnum opus.

the haze is bad! i regret going out on thursday night- even walking to the nearby botak jones to meet the korean was quite bad. it seems the entire...atmosphere was blanketed with dust or that greyish brownish stuff we call haze. all this reminded me of the subsistence farming or something like that we learnt in sec 1 geog, haha. and the Kung! bushmen- that was quite memorable. i guess those farmers need to do what they need to do to survive- even if it means...this. but why the sudden spike!..it was never this bad. i need to read the newspapers more. i wonder how long this'll go on; indonesia's a pretty huge place with plenty of burnable stuff. as wikipedia would say:

'At 1,919,440 square kilometers (741,050 sq mi), Indonesia is the world's 16th-largest country in terms of land area.'

i'm curious to how things are over there- the indons i met in boarding are fine people, i wouldn't mind going over there for a day or two (at most!) to check out indoneeeesia.

just finished an english p1 essay- i did the 2005 may one- on prose! following pt's advice, as mentioned in previous post. to any of you (if there is anyone...) planning to analyse rhythm or meter in poem- forget it. after a good time of preparation and reading the word doc on prosody david sent me long ago (it's quite the excellent), i kinda learned how to demarcate stresses and recognize rhythms. it's quite a lot of what a certain teacher taught in sec 3- only she probably never recognized that we were too lowly at that time for that- stuff like anapestic pentameter, dactylic hexameter, pyrrhics and so on. and here comes along pt and tells me that most IB poems tested are written in- the horror- free verse. not even blank verse! so there will most likely be no meter/rhythm to distinguish and discuss.

it's quite true- IB poems are quite contemporary. the closest i've found that dates back to older times is kipling's Way through the Woods that was tested for last year's FYE; didn't do that, though. but, i'm betting, no way will we see any sonnets, either pertrachan or shakespearean (or elizabethean, as pt calls it), or Romantic poems for that matter. which is quite sad! though those are probably a tad more difficult to grasp.

productivity levels are low. i am sleeping more and more ._. which isn't bad! but the guilt that pervades afterwards...haha. and still watching at least 3 replays a day.

oh and a friend shared this with me; haha it's really quite cool. look at the picture and see if you can spot anything out of place. and don't read the comments below yet! or you'll be spoiling it for yourself.

just three more weeks, fellows!

2010-10-20T22:20:00.002-07:00

happy belated birthday, nic! haha seriously la, after Ni and Co you can imagine how i felt when there was no Le or L and E in the periodic table. so...haha. look at the atomic number and Ar! they have significance :P

we are so overloaded with math worksheetssssss :S haha i'm glad i won't be having to go to school tomorrow; it does take some time travelling back and forth, even though i live close. i can only imagine how it is for all you people who live far away.

for some reason my mind drifted to an ancient vertical scroller shooting game i played about ten years ago- Raptor: Call of the Shadows. come to think of it, gaming was the only thing i was actually good at when i was young. the game had a catchy soundtrack anyway; turns out there're even remixes of it on youtube. and coincidentally a 2010 edition of the game's been released with updated graphics. this, however, is not the time to be thinking about such things...

missed the last two english lectures. not because i didn't want to go- but other subjects were just more pressing then. imo our dear teacher's lectures are intriguing and explore the texts in great depth; and, i suppose, we are left with a mess of details and allowed, or maybe intended, to derive our own interpretations of the text. while that would be fun, there is pretty much no time for that now. the lectures, imo, are a little heavy on supplementary material; this is also not the time for that. i confess we all need spoonfeeding now; that, however, is something our dear teacher will not indulge us. maybe the mentor leans upon the assumption that we are familiar with the major themes and concerns of the texts (and i'm quite sure we might not be so). either way, i enjoy those lessons very much- it is more of a 'proper' way of teaching, you could put it, to leave the texts' eventual interpretation and what you make out of it to students' own selves. that, of course, allows for a greater variety of answers during the exam rather than everyone blabbing on, say, about how 'I'll go to Hell' signals the apex of his moral growth because dadadadada. which, unfortunately, is probably what i'll be doing :/

i have partially weaned myself off big bang theory; now i spend free time watching starcraft replays (oh come on, why not?) and reading wuthering heights. the author of the latter has a beautiful writing style; plenty of rather archaic diction and historical mannerisms. it's distinctly different from any of the 'novels' that exist nowadays *coughtwilightharrypottercough* okay fine so i never read those books! biased ol' me :D

i wonder if this flu will ever...fly away. from before the holidays before prelims till now- i am buggered by this monstrosity. still, i've pretty much come to terms with the existence of the possibility of having to take IB in this stricken state. self pity isn't going to do much at this point, doing more math is! and with enough practice, we will all beat math into summation...i mean, submission.

back to english! i can't say i'm very confident for paper 2- i'm comfortable with discussing the text 'orally' (as an aged educator likes to say) but not penning down a whole argument under timed conditions. ironically, paper 1 is my saving grace- it's one thing which usually saves me from any paper 2 disaster. poems ftw! i remember preparing for prose all the way for english in midyears, then changing my mind during the exam because the poem looked fun. i guess that bred my passion for poems, which really helped a lot during ioc. still, pt convinced me to give prose a shot; who knows, it might turn out easier.

dinner with juno tonight; this will be the second last time i will be eating out with anyone before the exams.

study hard, too, all of you! don't worry, errbody gonna get 7 for math :D cuz math is the easiest subject and iz no kick. dreadnaught! i refer not to the class of battleships that followed the HMS Dreadnaught's launch, but it's literal meaning.

ahh before i forget, fazli is a great fellow, been pestering him to answer questions for a long long time and he didn't complain at all, just kept answering day after day. he really meant it when he told my father he's more than willing to help. he deserves something for that.

and i seriously think he looks Egyptian or like a pharoah. not meant in a bad way! someone else agreed, too :D those eyes...my opinion rests on those features of his.

oh no what am i doing here i should be studying

2010-10-20T22:20:00.001-07:00

we are so overloaded with math worksheetssssss :S haha i'm glad i won't be having to go to school tomorrow; it does take some time travelling back and forth, even though i live close. i can only imagine how it is for all you people who live far away.

for some reason my mind drifted to an ancient vertical scroller shooting game i played about ten years ago- Raptor: Call of the Shadows. come to think of it, gaming was the only thing i was actually good at when i was young. the game had a catchy soundtrack anyway; turns out there're even remixes of it on youtube. and coincidentally a 2010 edition of the game's been released with updated graphics. this, however, is not the time to be thinking about such things...

missed the last two english lectures. not because i didn't want to go- but other subjects were just more pressing then. imo our dear teacher's lectures are intriguing and explore the texts in great depth; and, i suppose, we are left with a mess of details and allowed, or maybe intended, to derive our own interpretations of the text. while that would be fun, there is pretty much no time for that now. the lectures, imo, are a little heavy on supplementary material; this is also not the time for that. i confess we all need spoonfeeding now; that, however, is something our dear teacher will not indulge us. maybe the mentor leans upon the assumption that we are familiar with the major themes and concerns of the texts (and i'm quite sure we might not be so). either way, i enjoy those lessons very much- it is more of a 'proper' way of teaching, you could put it, to leave the texts' eventual interpretation and what you make out of it to students' own selves. that, of course, allows for a greater variety of answers during the exam rather than everyone blabbing on, say, about how 'I'll go to Hell' signals the apex of his moral growth because dadadadada. which, unfortunately, is probably what i'll be doing :/

i have partially weaned myself off big bang theory; now i spend free time watching starcraft replays (oh come on, why not?) and reading wuthering heights. the author of the latter has a beautiful writing style; plenty of rather archaic diction and historical mannerisms. it's distinctly different from any of the 'novels' that exist nowadays *coughtwilightharrypottercough* okay fine so i never read those books! biased ol' me :D

i wonder if this flu will ever...fly away. from before the holidays before prelims till now- i am buggered by this monstrosity. still, i've pretty much come to terms with the existence of the possibility of having to take IB in this stricken state. self pity isn't going to do much at this point, doing more math is! and with enough practice, we will all beat math into summation...i mean, submission.

back to english! i can't say i'm very confident for paper 2- i'm comfortable with discussing the text 'orally' (as an aged educator likes to say) but not penning down a whole argument under timed conditions. ironically, paper 1 is my saving grace- it's one thing which usually saves me from any paper 2 disaster. poems ftw! i remember preparing for prose all the way for english in midyears, then changing my mind during the exam because the poem looked fun. i guess that bred my passion for poems, which really helped a lot during ioc. still, pt convinced me to give prose a shot; who knows, it might turn out easier.

dinner with juno tonight; this will be the second last time i will be eating out with anyone before the exams.

study hard, too, all of you! don't worry, errbody gonna get 7 for math :D cuz math is the easiest subject and iz no kick

2010-10-17T08:37:00.000-07:00

!@#$%^&* recipe!

anyway, i love studying <3

that is, when i'm in a studyish mood. that only happens when three conditions are fulfilled: 1. right after a shower, 2. after downing a can of coffee and 3. air-con! seriously, how'd we survive without aircon o.o think i've mentioned this before, but before i sleep i set the aircon timer so that it turns off after an hour. but, if i wake up in the middle of the night at mr bladder's urging, i have to turn the aircon back on for another hour before i sleep. yes, posh expectations ._. thank goodness i'll probably be a clerk and rot in aircon for my two years of servitude.

3 bottles of cough medicine, countless puffs of Ventolin and Nasonex, 1 full course of antibiotics, phlegm effervescence tablets and a mixture of medicine and my sinus infection thingy still persists. i visit the doctor tomorrow- again, for the fifth time. she's at harbourfront- it's a nice place, lots of shops, and it's connected to vivo...where there are more shops. a pity it is that there is no time for such frivolities!

recently watched a video and learnt how to counter 4gate pushes as zerg. 1 month to starcraft glory :/ i must be rusting away quickly. call of duty: black ops is scheduled for release on 9th nov next month. thank goodness i've kept away my comp or...yeah. i should hopefully be getting the game the day exams end, provided there is time. because everyone will be going mad! or then again, crying- the last paper is Mathematics HL Paper 3. then again, math HL is easy and everyone should 7 with no problem :D don't quote me on this one, though.

How many pi bonds are there are an N3H molecule? saw that question while looking through last year's chem FYE paper. didn't remember how to do it, so googled and ended up with this. then again, N3H turns out to be hydrazoic acid...and was first isolated in 1890. the answer is 2, anyway, and see page 5 of here for a more detailed explanation. it's easy to understand yet pretty interseting..

i am still burning far too much time on wikipedia, big bang theory and generally, slacking and finding an excuse not to hit the books. bad bad bad.

i can't believe i replayed this three times in a row while watching the episode, haha you won't get it unless you're familiar with the meme. which is one of, if not, the oldest around...

Ackbar ftw!

2010-10-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

:)

life is hard. the proverbial butterfly never has an easy time struggling to free itself from its cocoon; but when it does: bliss. and friends...make going through life possible.

fear not, ian, for i will not spend time on baking for Kegan; for i have, in my meandering thoughts, stumbled upon the perfect gift for him: we buy the shirt at Hard Rock Cafe. problemo solved!

it's quite amazing how things flare up and die down so quickly. the whereabouts of our past mentor seems to occupy the minds of few nowadays.

2010-10-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

i have realized that the one kick i get out of going on the com is checking my email. haha but no fb really helps, after deactivating it you seriously realize how much time you're not wasting now. oh wait, the other kick would be big bang theory. though i have only so many episodes now.

watched a protoss tutorial just now by Husky- learnt the basics of 4gate play. this is quite a terrible time to learn it, though, since it'll probably make me ache to play...which is something that's not going to happen, now.

i have finally started doing a fairly close reading of Paddy while simultaneously taking notes on the netbook. i had a previous theory which kinda concluded that you could save lots of time studying Paddy by cancelling those "random and unimportant" vignettes out of the book and just focusing on a few major ones. well, i've proved myself wrong- layered deep beneath pretty much every vignette, there is a gem to pick up. okay lousy figure of speech, but you get it. the only problem i'm having now is moving too slowly- i'm about 30 pages into the book and the notes have more than 1500 words. better hurry so i still have time for Huck.

i guess i should be pretty glad for my future- either i get into NUS med and my dream comes true, or i go into NS for 2 years. thing is, being the poor soul i am i got slotted into PES E- which is pretty much the lowest category there is. so i'll probably be tippety tappety on a keyboard all day long doing admin work. but, i'm hoping the admin work won't be too hard- that means finishing it fast will leave me free to do other stuff like reading, fb...i wonder if they block fb in military camps. and, i'll probably get to go home every day while all you lucky guys get to enjoy the luxury of a night's sleep in hot, humid bunks or even thick mud in the forest...before having your sleep interrupted at 5am+ by someone screaming at you to wake up and get ready for exercise. i'll be doing my own, walking to the bus stop to wait for the air-conditioned bus which will take me to my air-conditioned office in the camp. and i'll probably have free time after knocking off from work each day so fortunate me gets to do fun stuff like piano, reading, playing, going out! the future *looks* good. then again...anything could happen anytime.

then there is the far more distant future ahead, which is something to worry much more about.

2010-10-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

clearly this is a late reply- but anyway cheryl you have already gotten Zoo tycoon weeks ago and anyway, i don't have the game :D

i remember seeing the game, though, some time ago at a store. actually it was at...the zoo. when i was maybe half the age i am now? that was probably before they'd renovated the zoo and the mcdonalds was at a remember-able place. the whole place is now quite new-ish as i remember it. hey we should all go to the zoo one day :D

on a gloomier note: three visits to chang and my haggard body has gotten no better. both my nose and throat seem to be competing; at times the nose will push forward, flooding itself with viscous mu- okay nevermind you probably don't want to know. the bottom line is, three bottles of cough syrup didn't do much. they tasted nice though! finished a Nasonex spray too- didn't do much good.

so this morning my mum brought me to see the doctor at her workplace. our pilgrimage was not in vain- the benevolent doctor rewarded us with the holy grail that changi's denied me thus far: antibiotics! i think it's streptomycin. she gave me a little cocktail of tablets and capsules as well- sigh, totaling the bills for all 4 visits to changi and this doc, the flu is winning: $200:0. to celebrate, i'm taking the day off work. i'm seriously wishing i could play some starcraft 2 now- it's not a craving, but there's just nothing much productive you can do in this kind of state. reading eng p2 texts would be an option, but i like to take notes on the laptop while reading them- so no go.

i am collating the personal details and, in the future, university details of our dear 6.4ians. haha, that sounds like 'singaporeans'. i am grateful to ian for troubling himself with the birth of the google spreadsheet- howefver i must take it upon my weary self to complete the task, for i have done so little as Welfare Rep, you see. the journey is arduous; i assure you, however, that my my fingers and keyboard will not tire.

okay, my post just got interrupted by a 45 minute long phone call by the better half. then, dinner. so now it is some time after i started this post. the antibiotic turned out to be chloromy...chlorosomething la, it wasn't streptomycin, though. the instructions said to take it two times a day, after meals. just for fun, i took two instead. okay fine, kidding. i didn't do that. but it does make sense, right! more antibiotic floating around in your body, that should kill them evil bacteria faster. right. i think so.

and so i shall probably sleep before 12; haha this is one of the few days i'm actually wanting to stay up beyond 12 because i've restricted myself from work for the rest of the night. let's see what there is to do- big bang theory, ipad games...eh, no facebook. arthur and i deactivated it some time ago; it's quite liberating in some way, after you do that you realize you spend quite some time moseying around on fb doing practically...nothing. i don't play sorority life anymore- i've got a real life now :D- so, sorry to the awesome people who gifted me...gifts in the game, i will not be reciprocating the deed unless you ask me to, which i will of course.

school today was fun! spent quite a lot of time reminiscing about childhood with ian and yaseer. okay looking back on that now, i think we sounded quite silly LOL. with sam, xintian and even the rather faraway mingann giggling sometimes...oh dear. hey, but that was fun :D aw man, school's only for two more days. i guess it hasn't really hit many of us yet :(((((

aww panda so cute :D

2010-10-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

watched the dark knight again- it's serious mindblowing.

made a cheesecake. this one's terribly rich- 750g of cream cheese! it's one of the more complicated recipes i've tried. the biscuit base (my favourite part :)) was simple, blend 1 cup of mcvities, combine with sugar and melted butter, press into pan and bake for 10 minutes. they only asked for two tablespoons of sugar- my favourite ingredient. i modified it a little- added "heaping". sugar <3

the filling was quite messy. lemon juice, rind, eggs, sugar (yay!), flour, vanilla and of course the three massive blocks of cream cheese. it was quite sick, seeing them get sliced apart by the beaters. the mixture was ultra creamy & rich; it was still slightly watery when i'd added the first two cheeses but after the third, woah. poured it into the base, licked up the remainder. seriously, the filling was super rich. like my wife.

even the baking instructions were non-standard- it said to bake at 220 deg C for 10 minutes before baking at 120 deg C for 35 more minutes. it turned out okay at first, but when i loosened the springform pan some part of the cake tore- my heart followed soon after. it'd looked so nice at first, but the tears :/ probably happened because i hadn't wiped the sides of the pan before putting it into the oven to bake; the finished cake was "joined" to the side of the pan by the filling i hadn't wiped away before putting it in. still, made the glaze- lemon juice, sugar (huzzah), water and...cornstarch. the cornstarch really makes it gloop up after a while. mixed in an egg yolk- it looked quite disgusting for a bit, but after a while it turned out really lemon-y looking and fairly spreadable.

i guess we shall have it when we come home. hopefully i'll be able to bring some to school tomorrow. ah, this memory of mine!

the computer's graphic card is outdated. a HD 4850- powerful, three or so years ago. now, a lot weaker, but not quite obsolete by today's standards. fuwell's price list doesn't even list it anymore. maybe i shall get a 5850 or 5870 when the time is right- aka when the price drops. prices are always falling in the computer industry.

2010-09-30T12:33:00.001-07:00

cool it's 3.33am!!

2010-09-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

it's the marking days.

life is good- really good- now :D got slaughtered by math on tue (technically it's thursday now, since it's 3.20am). while i was doing the paper the main thought trailing in my mind was, "gah this's so easy, if only i'd actually practised more -.-" honestly, i thought it looked really doable; if only stewart'd worked harder for it. i kind of wasted the entire weekend, but spent some time well too.

went out with sam, mingann, david, mervyn, cheryl, xintian (omgosh!), ian, alison and tri after the paper- adrian joined us before we left school. had lunch at 313somerset was at some jap restaurant before browsing through some nail polish shop. haha a number the girls got nail polish, probably for prom. the sparkly nail polishes actually a lot more than the normal ones- like $7.90 instead of $2.90 for the normal non-shiny ones without glitter. the glitter is nice though :D the guys went bowling while the girls went...shopping, no surprise. bowling was fun! went to the arcade for awhile before joining the girls at starbucks.

played some board game at starbucks that mervyn and david taught us- gosh they seem to know how to play a number of these. mingann ended up wanting to paint people's nails/try out her new nail polish really bad, and being awesome i allowed her (after much persuasion) to paint my right pinky's nail. so she did...and somehow ended up painting all 4 other nails on the same hand. i was quite fine with it cause sam'd assured me it's water soluble- and after mingann finished painting the last nail sam burst out laughing and told me it's not -____- amazing. so they said it was alcohol soluble, but it turned out not to be, uggh almost resulted in an embarassing situation just now but luckily my mum turned out to have nail polish remover, and it went off in a jiffy, thank goodness.

a bunch of us ended up at my place for dinner (pizza!), movies, card games, and so on. juno came- for starcraft of course. watched batman begins during dinner. it is a stunner- so much was going through my mind while i was watching it, and though i've forgotten most of it by now, the plot was really impressive. adrian and alison left afterward, and tri, juno, mervyn and david stayed over. wasted the night- entirely. juno, david and mervyn took turns playing starcraft (duh). tri played Zoo Tycoon the entire night. i kid you not, he is the most hardcore zoo tycoon i've ever seen. i mean, it looks like the kind of game you'd play for at most 2 hours? he spent the entire...time at my place on it. like, from 6pm to nearly 6am? someone's going to know how to run a zoo well when he grows up.

i watched the dark knight- haha thanks david for bringing it. i think it's the best film ever made. it's just so well conceived. throughout the film you tend to sympathize so much with Batman- he just goes through so much and still has to maintain that playful facade simultaneously. it's painful at times- because at heart, the film is darkly tragic; Batman loses about everything he has. the twists, turns and ironies in the film are what make it so good. at one point the Joker uses burning wreckage to divert a police entourage into taking another route- and if you look carefully the burning vehicles are actually fire engines. all these little twisted, even black attempts at humour just drape the film in an even more dark, deathly shroud. the real star of the movie is the Joker- i did mention before why. he plays on uncertainties, morality, ethics- it's just so disturbing and frightening at times during the movie. but enough about the movie. i think i shall watch it again before the week ends.

most of us slept around 5am- i woke up at 2pm while everyone had apparently woken at 11 or so, oops. went to long johns for lunch, and by the time i got back and washed up it was 4. half the day gone! at least i got my nail polish removed, and my dad never saw it even after saying hi to me when he arrived back from the states. it's almost halloween there, it seems. he brought back some pretzels and goodies- the pretzels were really good, it's just so fresh and you can taste a really buttery fragrance when it's in your mouth. it reminded me a bit of freshly baked bread.

okay, 4am! i still feel awake :/ shall read for awhile and hopefully drop off.

2010-09-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

reading has its own gifts and its own poisons. i guess it's up to us to stay away from that which would...destabilize.

in other news, the Heinemann bio notes for options E and H are excellent imo- unlike clegg, it's actually useful. not that clegg is completely worthless- but Heinemann does go in-depth into some concepts while not straying too far from the syllabus objectives. usually i have to make notes or force stuff into my head after reading allott or clegg; this isn't the case with Heinemann. it's written in prose form, and that helps a lot- my brain seems to absorb it very well. in fact, it seems easier to recall entire processes or concepts after reading Heinemann only once over rather than hitting allott repeatedly.

it seems like a good choice would be to read Heinemann, then use allott as a quick ref once the main concepts are grounded in your mind. seriously, if you haven't taken a peek at the Heinemann printouts, skim through them at least- it's worth it. between the horrors of clegg (i believe the book itself doesn't cover Options- you need to play the CD which comes with it), lengthiness and complexity of campbell/reece and overly simplistic parsimony of allott, i'd choose Heinemann any day- the writing is lucid, and easy to absorb- think of it as glucose unlike the complex car- nevermind. bio is getting to me.

i started bio yesterday. i will have one day for math- tomorrow. hopefully this congestion goes away soon. it is keeping me from doing so many things.

2010-09-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

two more papers till end of prelims.

yesterday and today was a long break. talked with sam, astika, david and alison for some time at the sac after math. i found the math paper pretty much like paper 1- section A was doable (honestly, if i'm saying this, you shouldn't have had any problem with that) but section B just ruined everything, again. section A was surprisingly okay, really- although i kinda disappointed myself at that invNorm question where they gave you the probability inequality equation (could you call that an 'inequation'?) and i immediately thought "ah, one of the first questions they taught us how to do when we first learnt normal distribution. easy peasy." and i ended up stuck halfway realizing i didn't know what to do next, and felt silly. oh well! on the bright side, i actually managed to do the last question of section A- the one on differentiation, where you had to use the substitution they provided. credit goes to H2 Math Guide by Lois Chee- it really teaches some math topics well.

let me digress to studying subjects. i have a number of study guides/books- not all of which i spend an equal amount of time with- but this is because i find some teach some topics better than others. for math, you don't really want to stick with the Haese and Harris textbook that's listed on the IB school booklist by default; it is lengthy, thick and shaped very awkwardly. i dislike these fat books very much- you practically need to use one hand the whole time holding them open while you do a question there or annotate a page. the aforementioned H2 math guide teaches Vectors very well- it goes step-by-step, moving on smoothly from lines to planes. the book teaches differentiation decently as well. but there are some (minor) errors in the book, such as in the examples they provide- yet again, since i could find them, you probably will be able too, as well. the math study guide by CS Toh (who hasn't heard of this guy/(girl)?) imparts complex numbers and functions/inequalities in a clearer way, though, and more importantly some of the techniques specific to questions that come out in our IB math papers are taught inside there- about 3 or 4 of them, regarding complex numbers. gtg's notes on vectors are actually quite decent. haha, my ex tuition teacher had a good laugh when he found what gtg'd written; "by God's grace, i managed to prove that..." something along those lines, in the appendix of the paper.

i wanted to talk about econs, but wow, that's a long paragraph up there, maybe next time instead. one thing about econs paper 2- i find that reading the news and knowing what's going on in the world helps a lot regarding real-life examples (we all know how naresh loves them) and doing that gives you some sense of security before you go in and do the paper. the bad thing is time management, though- 40 minutes each question really pushes you to write fast. my hand stung after that paper.

i brought back my keyboard and mouse yesterday. haha, well i needed a break after all this- i think this is the hardest i've ever worked in my entire life, honestly. and i know it's not even that much. but i find quality > quantity A LOT regarding studying- really, it all boils down to finding the way you study best and sticking to that. some people- especially girls, i find- seem to relate better to graphical notes drawn with multicoloured markers. i tried that before- and failed horribly, because i am a stickler for neatness and perhaps perfection when it comes to notes :/ anyway, i found out no too long ago my 'optimal' way of studying is rephrasing and rewriting key points- of course, reading the whole chapter in detail first, referring to study guides now and then. painstaking, but it works for me! some people seem to like to listen to music while it works. i don't think it works very well for guys- haha, i remember what mr cheong said during the bio emergency briefing- girls are better suited to multitasking. i don't know how true that is but i am horribly, easily distracted by anything around in the immediate environment, and for that reason i don't often go out to study or listen to music while doing work. try that, guys! then you will be as awesome as me :D hehehe.

oh yes, i did say i brought back my keyboard and mouse. reconstructed my comp, played some games of sc2 with leeyang; we seem to be still quite a good team :D thaddeus joined in later and we had a good time. leeyang and i'd harass like mad while thaddeus macro'ed up and brought out the big guns later, and that usually got us the game. other times, things didn't go to well...our opponents'd counterattack and somehow i'd usually be the first guy they'd go for, and my base'd get utterly decimated. thankfully i usually migrated a drone somewhere else, then beg thad/ly to send me resources to start a new base, haha. other times that didn't work out and we lost. it was fun! all the more cause ly and i were on mic but thad was lazy to get his out. some time later i went back to 1v1 because they were both off- heck, i was really scared, platinum league is just crazy. i went on a losing streak (well, i've been away for so long!) and slowly, slowly, begain to win the occasional game here and there. eventually i kind of got a baneling bust order in my head and started winning consistently- even got the 5 solo hot streak :D okay so the baneling bust is a fairly cheesy, 'cheap' tactic but hey, you still need that bit of skill to pull it off. i felt sorry during one game where the losing fellow, after having the majority of his harvesting SCVs getting blown up by a few banelings of mine, started complaining how it was the 3rd time he was losing to the same build. i told him the answer wasn't hard- use double barracks to wall off. he said he'd had, when he'd hadn't- instead using a supply depot, which was why i busted in so easily. i tried to explain more, he ignored and left. so, with a wave of Nietzschean pride and fury i enveloped his base with an additional swarm of zerglings, and he left. and some how, some way, i am still in platinum league!

i received a little postcard from DSTA some days ago. it invites the recipient to a little morning tea and scholarship talk on the 2nd of october. i recall some classmates going for a DSTA talk before- maybe this is a second talk for the lesser plebians in the scholarly hierachy. they did, also, take careful notice to make sure that the card was made out to me- "For Greater Minds" is emblazoned on the front of the postcard. my mum saw it too, and though i said i didn't want to go, from the tone of her voice i knew that wasn't going to happen. she said it'd be a good experience since it was the first time i'd actually meet up with these people. i guessed so. the card said to RSVP to an email address. so i typed in the email address and title of the email...and accidentally pressed enter, sending the blank email to the person. well done stewart, spamming the first ever scholarship-offering person you've come into contact with. not the best start you could hope for. i sent a second email after that, saying i'd come and, well, was sorry for the spam. urggggh. anyway, free food!

tonight, i went out for a movie with a special person- the only woman i've held in my arms. yes, fine, it was my mum. her company was giving some treat to employees' families- so her friend and i went along with her. there was a nice buffet that started at 7pm- somehow, they expected to entertain ourselves till 9.30 when the movie started. the buffet was good, though- oven baked chicken with ham and cheese, braised beef (or was it pork? i do not know food well), sushi (they had corn sushi. that was weird), yummy sausages and yummier desserts. i love those little fruit tartlets that consist of a biscuit-y base, a custard filling and topped with fresh fruit like kiwi or strawberry, they're awesome :D anyway the buffet was at the top floor- they called it the 'Sky' level- which was quite funny since you could walk onto the roof and see other buildings towering way above you still, cause the top floor of the building was the 7th, which isn't all that tall. fortunately, the buffet was on the same level as 'the largest LAN gaming center in Singapore'- Colosseum, which apparently has 200 computers, sc2/dota/mw2 ready. i went in and watched a bit. some guy was using carriers- something i have never, ever seen in a single replay, ever. neither in pro or noob replays- i guess that means something. anyway i slowly started feeling like i should play, then felt stupid that i should pay for something i have at home, and went out. and went to coffee bean downstairs to grab a latte and read a book on the ipad.

the ipad's iBook store is really good- mostly because they have classics for download, which are mostly free since the copyrights for them expired tens of years ago. on the 'top downloads' list there was another free book called Dream Psychology- by Freud. i got it, wondering if it was another of those passing fads loaded with much alluring psychobabble that'd suck in the unsuspecting reader. my expectations were overturned- utterly. from what i gather, or remember, it's a condensation of Freud's work on psychoanalysis- i was in part interested in it cause last year and not too long ago i'd wiki'd Freud and much of his work, which is all very interesting. what i'd read before turned out to be an excellent primer to the book's contents- in some sense because Freud's vocabulary is varied, intense, strong- sometimes you can get lost trying to understand what he's trying to explain because his phrasing seems slightly convoluted, and with perhaps unnecessary interpositions within sentences. so having a basic understanding of Freud's work helped a lot- if not i'd be quite lost where i am in the book right now.

the contents of the book may, at some points, become painstakingly difficult to absorb because the pace Freud moves can be so draggy, if you will, at times. probably because he believed he was pioneering a new frontier of medical science- which is obviously nothing that can be taken with triviality. he carefully, deliberately defines many concepts that may seem unnecessary to; but i guess to remember, he'd come under so much criticism in his time and dream psychoanalysis had been all but treated with little regard by physicians in his era, and so Freud probably saw himself as the sole advocate for the case he was presenting- and so he took care to make it a solid one, leaving no stone unturned. right around page 64 or so, if i remember correctly, his tone suddenly seems to shift unexpectedly, and breezily, as he begins to expound eroticism in dreams. you'd think he'd be even more cautious around this subject, but it is at this point he seems to abandon treading lightly and just push his case forward. it is a fascinating read so far; i recommend it. i started Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte recently, too, but have only made it past a few pages; the protagonist seems intensely introspective so far, though. my mum's friend says it's a great book, and i am looking forward to reading it. i suppose this is what my free time's going to be spent on from now on, especially after marking days when my keyboard and mouse go on an indefinite holiday till after IB.

anyway, back to the movie. it was Wall Street, starring Shia LeBouf of Transformers fame. yes, a business-themed film- something i'd never voluntarily watch. the only thing it sparked in my mind was my dislike of the 'financial sector'- no biting thoughts here, i just...think there are better ways to contribute to society than pushing money around. i guess it still has to be done to some extent, though. in the past days, i've had a desire to watch The Dark Knight again- for the unaware, it's the batman film, the sequel to Batman Begins. i think the Joker is the best-conceived villian- ever, the only true psychotic. he just toys with so many minds in the film...and you never really know him, or what he wants. Alfred sums it up well:

Alfred Pennyworth: A long time ago, I was in Burma, my friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never found anyone who traded with him. One day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce Wayne: Then why steal them?
Alfred Pennyworth: Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

i must watch it again by next week ><

and in response to ian: haha, well it just didn't seem to me that every question was that doable. i guess it's how you interpret it and draw parameters within which your essay's contents will float. maybe i didn't read the questions close enough, hehe.

ah, it's 2am! what happened to sleeping early.

2010-09-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

mm, it's 3am.

nic: haha don't feel bad, you're one of the few (maybe only one?) who did that question, pretty much everyone else did the ezez ones: 5/the education one.

cheryl: yup, as long as you define it *reasonably*, and from what i've heard the teachers are quite lenient regarding that for this question. safe!

i pity the poor guy/girl who wrote this lament!

my sister has been going out often for some time, and she is changing! she goes to some 'city harvest' place- well since she seems to have fun there, sing, watch concerts etc. i guess it's 'city harvest entertainment complex' or something along those lines. man, going out to that place seems to be bad for her- ever since then, she's been treating my youngest sis badly, bullying her and all that. since going there, she's been getting so disrespectful to my parents too! ignoring them, disobeying them- not honouring them, in essence. i really don't know what to think. her friends who go with her to that place, i think they're a pretty bad influence. long hair, crude manners, so much swearing- goodness, i hope she doesn't get too affected by them, as much as she already is. it's just too bad that she has to be going to that place- why can't she be going somewhere else better!? as much as mum or dad might not really like the idea of it, i think she'd be better off going to a church.

2010-09-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

watch this first:

then watch this:

darn, that wasted so much of my time last night ._. haha couldn't stop watching it, it's so funny. well! the choices in today's paper were quite...limited. i ended up doing qn9; although i think i would've done better in q5, but i misread the question and thought 'mouthpiece' meant the writer's opinion or message. more on that soon!

5. All characters in a novel are mouthpieces for their author. From a consideration of some characters from at least two novels you have studied, say how far you agree.

the main issue here: 'mouthpiece'. i don't get that! does that mean writer's intention? or could you discuss how, for example, Twain uses the character Tom as a foil to Huck to better articulate Huck's moral growth thus far blahblahblah. or does the question specifically want you to talk about the writer conveying his message to the reader? i thought that was ambiguous. if it were the latter, Huck would be an obvious choice- Twain's skepticism of religion and issues with racism are known to us. between siddhartha and Paddy, i'd choose sidd; more of by elimination, because Doyle's personal message doesn't come through very clear. i think we did learn in class of an interview with him where he did express some distaste for Catholicism (i can see why) but then again, the pope did recently apologise for priests defiling kids, so maybe they're not so bad after all. maybe you could talk about how the aspects of childlikeness in Paddy might mirror those he observed in his sons Rory and Jack. but then, unfounded postulations these are since there is no evidence to back that up, and so that'd be a very weak case. in sidd, however, you can talk about quite a bit- largely because the novel is allegorical. how kamala may represent sidd's anima; elaborate on psychoanalysis and talk about hesse's own experiences with Jung. i don't remember much of that, though- only studied it last year. sidd himself can be discussed- he's *probably* an allegorical figure of hesse himself imo, going on his journey of self discovery etc. so, Huck and sidd for this question!

6. Discuss the ways in which at least two writers you have studied have used the imagery of light or darkness or storms in their works.

siddhartha is a clear choice for this one- mr lim went through a lot of that in class. and it's quite simple; light represents enlightenment, and darkness the opposite (unenlightenment?). i'd talk about the foreshadowing in the very first sentence of the book, then about how 'light and darkness' flowed through sidd's eyes somewhere in the middle of the novel- i interpret that as some milestone in his journey; he's halfway there. then at the end, how govinda mentions in passing that his way is 'often dark'. the problem, then, would be selecting the other text- there are no clear instances where light/darkness/storms come into play in those texts. or is there? the material is sound although it doesn't look substantial- but i guess if you elaborate sufficiently, it'd be enough. if only we could use lear, right.

9. ugh, not really in a mood to talk about what i wrote. mostly about structure, though. haha, i spent too much time thinking and on Paddy instead of sidd. yes, i didn't use huck in the end. man, my part on sidd was quite a mess :/ well. i mostly talked about how the reader had to be intelligent to grasp the nuanced meanings layered under the texts- and you need to be intelligent to appreciate that beauty. very troublesome approach. the question itself is rather vague, though, haha no choice but to blame ol' me for trying it.

10. All writers reveal something about themselves in their writing. How far and in what ways do you find that self-revelation is an important aspect of two or three works you have studied.

i think this goes quite in line with my interpretation for question 5. it's probably more dangerous though- i don't think anyone did it anyway. not something to talk about.

11. By what means have the writers presented the importance of education (whether it be provided by an institution or by the "school of life") in any two or three of the works you have studied?

without the statement enclosed in the parentheses, you'd probably fear that the examiners're only looking from education acquired from school; however the question takes the step to make things clearer- "school of life" is probably what you want to talk about. i think the question's still vague, though- what do you mean by 'education'! knowledge? moral education (wasn't that a subject from primary school)? either way, i'm not sure how i'd discuss that question using our texts...meh, i don't even feel like thinking about this question because it's just so weird imo. i'd dread doing this question. does anyone have an approach to this question? i am quite lost regarding it.

12. How have writers in your study used denials to create novels that interest or disturb the reader?

...unless you can recall specific, important denials in the text well, i doubt anyone'd want to do this. oh, i heard one guy did it. shaun ling? impressed :D the only denial i'd remember is Paddy's in response to the degeneration of his parents' relationship. he knows it's happening, but doesn't want to believe it. Freudian denial! i'd definitely write a lot about that. 'it was all well again. i'd made it like that.' i think that'd be good evidence. still, i guess it's one of those unpossible questions to do.

decided not to bring my keyboard and mouse home today! so no starcraft, and here i am on my laptop insteaed. i did get some gray's anatomy, courtesy of sam :D heh, at last, something other than starcraft replays to watch. and big bang theory! heck, i'll watch anything now, i'm feeling so free :D ah darn, PQ for naresh. delayed it by 4 days already- that's what he gets for misspelling my name as 'Steward'. and not failing to send it to the entire class, too D:< rawr i miss his lessons, though. if only i'd revised when i got home earlier in the year.

bach's prelude in C is nice.

2010-09-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

at last- some time for blogging. have had a terribly congested system over the past two weeks- it started with my throat, got to my nose and when pressure started getting in my left ear i decided to go see the doctor- that was on monday. doctor chang again! arrived there during lunchtime when no doctors were in. ended up walking around ntuc, popular and ending up at the clinic again when i remembered he has a nice bookshelf stocked with a variety of books- ranging from football to world war two to music to the brain. i picked one up and entertained myself till it was time to go in. oh, and i saw some mahler concert brochures at the counter. haha clearly he's quite the music fanatic.

anyway pretty much the first thing he did was take his little torchlight and shine it in my nose and say, "very blocked." so he prescribed cough medicine, a nasal spray (nasonex!) and antihistamine- clearly, he doesn't know about my stock of about 30+ capsules at home, heh. and it turned out he knows my music teacher and her husband- "they used to own Sweet classics right!" haha the music community in singapore isn't that big i guess.

nevertheless, i shall recover soon. hopefully! to quote nergal: i enter the ring with a Nietzschean attitude and I will leave it a winner as usual. just wait and see!

english on monday was manageable. prose looked easier, definitely. but some part of me wanted to do poem! so i did, meh. haha although it looked quite tough at first. but it was fun :) man, engrish is so enjoyable. i'd rather do more written commentaries than the rest of the exams ._. don't know if i'll do too well, though- i am just so bad at organizing my points and stating out what i want to say within a short period of time. yes, 1:30 hours is short!

econs was...silly. i did the question on macroeconomics- a lot of people did that too. so i'd planned: 25 minutes for (a), 35 minutes for (b). i realized i could finish (a) in 15 minutes..."but that'd be too short!", i thought. so i ended up digressing while writing (a)- i have no idea how i managed to end up talking about our dear MM instead. i started (b) pretty much on time- and soon found out i should've spent 15 minutes on (a) and chionged (b) cause it was so darn long. ugh. didn't manage to finish on time, wasted.

math was...bad, as expected. things weren't looking up when i got stuck at the first question...meh. and the vectors questions were rather difficult, i didn't manage to finish any of them completely. and vectors is the only topic i'm decent in for math! i might still pass p1, though. hopefully? i don't think i've passed math since...the first math exam last year, actually. i am just so bad at it.

chem wasn't too good either. mcq was quite fine- although i found out i had some incorrect answers after the paper. paper2...ugh, i just stoned and stoned at the first question. and didn't realize you have to take the point at which the lines intersect to obtain the volume which you use in the calculations. instead i used 20.0cm^3; it should've been 25, if i'm not wrong. and totally messed up 8 marks worth of part B questions afterward. haha but one thing i realized is that i've finally gotten into the habit of hecking the previous paper and just moving on. which is good! i remember in sec 4 when i thought i'd bombed the bio paper and did the next paper rather half-heartedly (oh, and that paper was math anyway) and it turned out that i was just one mark away from having my name appear on the screen during paper reviews. silly.

bio was...interesting. the mcqs were quite tricky- nevermind, i already know i got the action spectrum wrong, i don't want to know what else i did incorrectly. but p1 was manageable. paper 2...oh man, i remember how last night i was thinking "oh, i'm so sick of studying phytochrome and then having it not come out and all my effort goes to waste." so i didn't study it...good grief. at least i remembered the basic stuff about the long-day and short-day plants. but paper 2 was just horrible. everything was going fine till i turned to the first page. essay questions were even worse- seriously, whoever set the paper wanted to kill all Allott users. freak, i ended up choosing the lessers of the four evils- 6 and 7. and that horrible 8 mark on birth- come on, its so biased towards the girls ._. i bombed that last question- bombed it with everything i knew regarding birth- and unfortunately i could see that wasn't working out very well. oh well! on the bright side, xintian's cute history teacher collected my paper. gaspp that spotless face! (no homo)

and so tomorrow is engrish. i'm glad i wasted a day last week doing a fairly close reading of siddhartha; still, was quite lazy to note down all the points i made up about the book. one thing that stood out, though, was the transitions from one stage to the other- from mind to body to spirit/soul, this was mentioned in class but it really foregrounded itself when i read the book. you can note how siddhartha's transformation occurs ever so gradually; there are few sudden 'leaps' toward enlightenment. contrast that with Huck's moral growth, that may be seen as more demonstrated by particular incidents ("i'll go to hell", anyone?). hesse however delineates siddhartha's growth through a very much differing way- i'm not sure how to go about explaining it. anyway, that was quite interesting to me. then i got to the horribly bland ending and figured i'd wasted a whole lot of time.

and for some reason some things got me thinking about the proverbial butterfly, emerging from its cocoon.

at most, you'd just want to catch the cocoon just in time before it falls, if the butterfly's been struggling really hard and the cocoon's about to wobble off a cliff or edge. but what's important is that you eventually leave the butterfly to sort things out on its own...to grow strong for the world. because eventually, you will leave and if the butterfly's been depending all the while on you and isn't strong enough by then to take on the cocoon and the world; it might just die. you wouldn't want to see that happen, would you?

2010-09-07T07:40:00.001-07:00

and after one day- after countless revisitations to Clegg and websites, i finally understand gene linkage and more or less genetics. at last! after being in the dark for almost two years. i don't know why i'm so bad at genetics. and math! haven't started yet, and i've been avoiding all the papers fazli gave out. even in class...i tell myself i'll go home and do it, and what happens. urgh, there's a sizeable stack of them behind me, i shall start on them...tomorrow. hopefully.

i digressed from genetics slowly, however, and ended up reading a bit on richard dawkins. then i moved on to the watchmaker analogy, arguments against it and somehow wound up reading the wiki page on John hopkins university. i remember in sec 4 how i was talking about uni choices with my then-tuition teacher, and how he was saying JHU's probably the best for med...if you can afford it. i can't remember if he said the fees were half a million or a million, but either way, no way am i going there. random- JHU's motto is 'The truth will set you free'...which is taken from the book of John! pretty cool.

mrbrown is pretty hilarious, heh. oh, i finished the english essay for nov03 too :D writing an essay is quite fun- i guess there's some kick of creation, that you're making, moulding something you can be proud of when you're done. at least, that's the feeling i get.

math, math. how! once again i recall the foolish thinking in sec 4 that brought me this far- it goes along the lines of...: "IB'll be easy la, just study everyday then can ace everything. i'm bad in math so i'll take math HL for a challenge" and so i am getting that, big mistake. sigh, and youtube sometimes takes ages to load on the ipad. i do, though, like how you can watch HD videos on it and it goes so smoothly, too.

somehow, i'm reminded of paul cheong's emergency briefing on bio. PANIC! it actually worked- once the briefing ended, rheza turned to me and said, 'let's get those notes' (in reference to the notes pc offered to email us if we asked him after the lecture). come to think of it, i have those in my inbox- i shall look at them soon.

there was a bird that came and perched on my window grille this afternoon- for a few hours. honestly, i couldn't understand what it wanted. i put some pieces of bread out on the sill- it ignored them. i talked to it- it ignored me (okay, so i shouldn't have expected it to understand me...). i stretched my open hands out in warm welcome- it merely eyed me. as it had been doing so for so long. so i drew the curtains, peeping out now and then...it was still there. then in the evening i heard a fluttering of wings, pulled the curtains open and lo, it was gone. what do i make of this?

maybe i shall make a cheesecake soon.

EDIT: the uni name is Johns hopkins university- not just 'John'. chubby hubby is one of b&j's lousier flavours, too :/

2010-09-06T02:31:00.001-07:00

well firstly, thank you to everyone for their birthday cards/surprises/brownies (yum :D), although i've said that so many times, it really means more than words can express! clearly madam isn't the best at surprises, though. every time something unexpected was said, she'd say "is that the cue?" yeah, so i was wondering...possibly something could be up. anyway! the cake was nice (though my face didn't quite agree) and the rachel's almond jelly, too! the last few days of school were fun- toying with the ipad (i've been using it too much- felt quite stupid when i was using my grandpa's laptop the other day and used my finger to press the Start button on the screen), lunch@ikea on teacher's day (we met mr soo there- and forgot to wish him happy teachers' day -_-) and discovering xintian's amazing minesweeper skills- probably at the cost of her eating speed (heh, first to be served at last to finish :P) i've read through all the cards (multiple times!) much thanks to you people who took the time to do that (i am terribly lazy at writing/making cards so i know how tedious it is :/)

i rarely talk about my dreams, but i had one recently on saturday night/morning. i was at a harbour, maybe waiting for a ship that never comes. i'd been at that harbour in a previous dream- it's a peaceful place, with rafters overhead. i don't mind going there again. last time i was there with a certain brown math teacher (one of those 'scouty types' as someone likes to call us) but this time, i was with three friends- two classmates (i do remember who they are) and one scout (i don't recall who). one classmate was saying how difficult it is to get into NUS med while the other was scolding me, saying i was playing too much starcraft and at this point in time i should be mugging so much more. which is ironic, since i've already stopped playing for quite some time. i've wondered what dreams are for quite some time- been interested in them too since sec 4 when i read about lucid dreams (there is a growing market out there that offers services to help you get into those dreams), out of body experiences etc. i guess in this case the dream allowed inner fears to surface...ah nevermind, i am lazy to elucidate.

speaking of dreams, i had a good read some time ago- you can read it yourself here. it seems to be a jungian interpretation- freudian ones are quite constricted and restricted in some manner imo. go, destroy your childhood!

i am re-reading siddhartha now- it's not so much a pain if you do close reading, formulate your own interpretations and see how they all add up (if they do) with the annotations you've taken in class. i find that it is incredibly hard to comprehend in depth the complexities (i am sure) that are tucked deep inside the book. i don't see how we're expected to do that without having a basic understanding of the precepts and aspects which the book revolves around- hesse's life, hinduism, buddhism and perhaps pantheism. i think looking into hesse's life would help a lot in understanding the book.

oh well! i plan to do pt's assignment tonight- it looks quite fun. nov 03 paper 1.

must watch.

2010-08-28T04:39:00.001-07:00

i take back what i posted about queens being a less viable option against void rays- just watched a replay some time ago where TheLittleOne used about 5 Queens to counter a vr rush by WhiteRa in some HDH invitational match. still, though, you need to scout early- TLO had 2 queens up by the time the first vr was out, and starting pumping out even more soon. since vrs will stop being produced once your opponent sees about 4-5 queens out, you're probably good to go and that means 5 queens out will allow to you to safely progress to a Lair. obviously, 5 queens from 1 hatch will take far too long- no problem for the usual zerg player since he expands early.

2010-08-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

someone suggested using queens to counter void rays- but there are still issues with that imo. queens as a choice to counter aa would mean pumping them out before you lair- which is quite funny since you're building queens probably to stall the rays before you transit into hydra or even muta if you're playing aggro. thing is, since you're using your hatch to build the queens...you can't lair. unless of course you somehow manage to lair ridiculously fast then start queening once your lair pops- but that'd mean sacrificing building a queen before your lair, and that means you forfeit the extra 4 larvae queen pump out every now and then.

solution? imo, throw down an evo chamber and some spores. scout, of course...i'm quite lazy at that. once you spot that quick cyber, out comes your evo chamber and there you have more or less quite a bit of time to scatter some spores around your base.

thanks to mervyn for telling about about the sc2 competition at iluma on sunday in the afternoon- probably wont go anyway, little me needs much practise before i'm even on par with the usual gold league players -_- well, slowly i guess.

2010-08-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

how does one counter a voidray rush when playing zerg? i am losing matches unnecessarily. but i made it to 1v1 Gold league recently :D progress.

this r interesting

2010-08-21T07:10:00.001-07:00

been playing quite a bit of sc2 during the past days. teamed up with leeyang to 2v2 even more, but kept losing as terran. then one time as we were searching for players i was fooling around, clicking Zerg for my race and was going to change it back to terran and suddenly...the game started. well, i panicked and so on but slowly went with the flow...and did much better than i did as terran -.- in fact we broke our losing streak and went on a winning streak- at least 4 wins haha. he'd m/m/m and i'd rush mutas and wreck havoc on their mineral line, and usually we'd take the game just by that. there was one particular game which dragged longer- the enemy terran got thors, so i pumped out roaches, burrowed them under and...pop, surprise!

and so the piano concert is over. my saddest apologia (hehe) (no i'm serious :/) to those i invited but whom i told at the last minute that there wasn't any more space- koonhan, janice and rachel. it was so unfair, too! apparently priority went to 'parents and siblings'. funny, i saw a maid at the concert...sigh, anyway. my dad was supposed to come, but didn't make it. very bad situation: my phone wasn't working properly and wasn't receving smses. and the YMS building has multiple concert venues- long story short, he went to the wrong room and watched the wrong concert. :( well he tried to call me a few times but i was in the darn concert room, how could i answer!! and i was smsing him over and over again trying to get him to sms me...he'd been replying to every single one of them. MEH. so no one came, rawr. but the concert was fun!! the two ben ngs were there, we talked quite a bit :) a lot of rubbish actually hehe. benedict and i make mistakes- i stalled for awhile during the second part of my piece but my stone face > all so i looked pro all the way. haha i think my teacher was quite happy, she was beaming at me when i was walking back even though i'd messed up a bit.

i tried calling my dad after the concert- i think he was in the car on the way home after watching the wrong concert, and he probably didn't pick up...oh well i didn't mean to annoy him that badly :/ meh. my music teacher's husband (who is also a music teacher...) took some of us to kap macs for supper :D hehe, that was quite a treat. he talked a lot about ns to me and the...stuff they do there :P but still, i'm going PES E where life will probably be easier.

prelude op 25 no 15 aka raindrop prelude- chopin. quite melancholic imo, but still beautiful. it somehow reminded me of paddy clarke.

song without words- wagner. i like this :D

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endless love, shared by daughter :] thanks! it's lovelyyy. this version's different from the one i have, but it's nice!

for whoever's read/watched hamlet before. quite epic.

2010-08-17T09:59:00.001-07:00

weak ib servers, honestly. no luck getting tok uploaded.

i'm still in the post-ioc mood! :D shucks, did no work yesterday and today. still in denial that we're in 'that phase' where you've completed all your ias and all you have left is to muggg for prelims and final exams. speaking of ioc- it was fun!! the poem analysis especially.

anyway if year5s asked me for ioc advice, i'd tell them this:

find one interpretation you're comfortable with and STICK WITH IT. no use wasting time and bumbling around with different possible meanings you're unsure of. just find one...and let it be. keep the other interpretations in mind for question and answer. ideally, i think we should analyse every single extract/poem ourselves and practise the whole thingy (20mins writing, 12mins ioc) twice for each poem/extract. that's a lot but quite a failsafe way, eh :P

shall now dedicate a paragraph or so to...starcraft 2!! lemme see, i shall review it.

i found the campaign a lot more stimulating/exciting/exhilarating than many other recent RTS games; although the storyline rather elastic, it's definitely way better than similar RTS games that allow 'choice making' in campaigns- say dawn of war 2; the maps are repetitive and you get horribly bored of them after a while. one thing about sc2- its campaign maps are rarely (if ever) 'kill all XXX on the map'- there's always some distinctly unique objective (eg. burn through door with laser drill, destroy trains before they pass) as compared to, say, red alert 3 or tiberium dawn? sc2 shames them all! the cutscenes, additional goodies in campaign mode and awesome campaign make it worth all the money you pay :D multiplayer is pretty fun too- i started just now, heh. played 2 unranked beginner games but never actually got my army to engage the enemy base directly, they left before i got a chance -_- still!

started playing ranked games just now after i got bored with unranked ones. teamed up with lee yang for 5 games or so, got beaten pretty badly in 2 or 3 of them. urgh! but learning the hard way is gooood :D i found it the same with dota- i learnt far faster through playing online and getting owned before that silly AI version came out and all the newbs went crazy for it. anyway, finished sc2 campaign some time ago- nearly cried at the end, it was a great ending ;) the cutscenes are nice okay.

mehhh work. work! tomorrowww

2010-08-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

*rachel looks at timetable*
rachel: i have only 3 more periods!! <-- honestly, she was begging for it
me: ...to menopause!!
yaseer: hahaha high five!!
*we slap*
me: OWWWW

apparently, yaseer was holding an uncapped pen in between his index and middle fingers when he gave me five.

2010-08-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

you know you've been trying one too many times when you realize you've memorized your IBO PIN and access code. honestly!! internal server 500 for the umpteenth time. that's a pretty weak server they have there- you can only imagine how it'd be obliterated by an actual DOS attack.

urgh, i can taste the cucumber in the juice. haha but it's not that bad, actually.

2010-08-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

i love the retarded conversations i have with my parents.

we'd just got back from dinner outside, and my mum was telling our maid to make some fruit juice.

mum: oh, and add some cucumber inside too.
me: i heard that!!
mum: they're deeelicious!
me: yeah right...
mum: truly! truly...THIS IS
both: HOME, TRULY!

unfortunately, we shut our doors as we sang 'where i know i must be', haha.

and the equally sarcastic crossfires with my dad.

dad: why are your pants so loose? where's your belt?
me: absent.
dad: what, and you've got how many belts in your bathroom?
me: only two...
dad: well, how many belts do you wear at once?
me: two!

fine, so i should've said three. meh, our conversations don't make sense but haha they're fun x)

my phone has been acting up again and i've just received messages from ann and juno yesterday o_o i haven't received any of the 4 messages my dad sent me yesterday. did anyone else's messages get lost en route to my phone? i really need to delete some messages. silly old sentimental stewart. ah, 'old' broke the alliteration.

2010-08-14T10:06:00.001-07:00

honestly, i think at least 10 zits dried up once ioc was over -.- my face got a WHOLE lot better ever since it passed, haha. z, and how did so many people guess that i had starcraft 2 by the next day -_- i almost didn't- after the post-ioc outing sam, astika and i went to funan to get her xbox and my sc2 but pretty much all the stores were closed, so we went home. and pleasantly, when i reached clementi, there was one game shop still open- selling sc2 for a cheaper-than-usual price of $92!! (fine, so that's a lot. it's 109 at other stores!!) haha was quite happy when i got it. walked home in the dark, saw many cockroaches near the hdb. some guy was taking his dog on a leash- it stared at me as i walked past. clearly, it was jealous that i had sc2 in my bag :D kay i sound like the speaker in the wood pile. so i got back and msned a bit, decided to sleep and ended up trying out sc2 for 'a little while'. well, it was pretty good...there's a reason why i overslept the next day and woke up 10 minutes before national day ended :/ heck, i think it was all the exhaustion and excitement from ioc and the outing, haha. 3am isn't that late a time to sleep!

speaking of ioc, most of us .4 citizens are done and over with it :) it's quite relieving- also, i find the more effort you put into it, the greater your relief later :P haha seriously. kudos to those who actually took time to appreciate the stuff we had to study- lear is a great tragedy (oxymoron much?) and the poems were just as fun to study, huh. especially Frost!! i found myself reading stopping after woods on a snowy evening after ioc hehe. played badminton on friday with y axis family and had (a very late) lunch with daughter and plant afterward :D seriously, it was close to 6. haha tapaoed wahchee friedrice to broadway too, aircon ftw!!

an old classmate (and room mate too, actually) came over for a homestay afterward- haha it was quite fun, we watched return of the king (in 1080p!!) while munching on macs :D ohman lotr is just. so. epic. i love the soundtrack! and there're some scenes that never fail to send (not necessarily scary) creepy feelings up my body:

1. theoden mustering the rohirrim and calling the charge at minas tirith's threshold. a sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises! *eowyn offers hope to merry* theoden: DEATH!!! *rohirrim echo* Theoden: forth eorlingas!! and the sweet sweet music after that- is it a violin/viola solo? whatever it is, it ALWAYS sends that chilly feeling up me. it's so good, i've played this scene at least 7 times. that's alot, k!

2. aragorn, outside the black gate, after decapitating the mouth of sauron. "For Frodo", he murmurs before leading a probable suicide charge against sauron's forces. his forces all follow in his lead afterward- merry, pippin, gandalf, gimli, legolas, eomer- all charging on foot, it's quite a sight.

3. very soon after 2.; when the ring finally falls into Mt Doom, and the eye of sauron comes crashing down. Merry (or is it Pippin?) shouts Frodo!! and everyone stares in joy as sauron's forces crumble. or rather, the ground below them does. the music here is really nice :)

hehe we should have a lotr marathon one day and convert all the lotr non-believers.

my friend, however, fell asleep about 3/4 way through (we were watching the 4-hour extended version) so we had to finish the rest this morning instead. talked, and went to clementi to get some moisturizer!! hehe i got Garnier Aqua Defense Gel-Cream. i was planning to get the essence initially after reading positive reviews on it online but the ingredients listed denatured alcohol as one of the first ingredients, which is bad! too much of that is drying, and i think my skin's quite sensitive o_o so i got the gel-cream instead which doesn't have alcohol, heh. it smells too good- obviously there's fragrance inside, which is unnecessary and likely irritating/comedogenic, rawr. i also switched from Dove shampoo to my brother's posh herbal one- only recently did i read the ingredient list of the Dove shampoo and it turned out sodium laureth sulfate is a primary ingredient -_- gosh that thing is horrible for your skin. i guess my forehead comes into contact a lot with the shampoo as it's getting washed off, and even that minuscule time plays a part controlling the breakouts in that region, so i dumped the dove shampoo. good time to do that, too, i'd pretty much finished the whole bottle so no waste :D

hey it's late! and i got back from the piano concert some time ago. hm, more another time.