2klever

2012!

2011-12-30T11:52:00.002+08:00

Hi all,

Aiyo, blog seems dead again :P

anw, first post from me here ^^... Hope everyone has had a merry christmas! :).

I can't believe how fast time flies. It seems like it was just yesterday when I enlisted. Just a while back, at this very same time, some of us would be enjoying our weekly(actually more like daily...) dose of dota/bw/random mmos/wc3/whatever. And moving back a little further, we would have been busy 'grinding' on rev and even KoL (lol=_=). Yup, those good ole days :P. I can still remember wentao's: "Other people 3 days to A levels, I 3 days a level".

Fast forwarding to today, i think most of us(save hyrum) are starting/midway through their uni life. I don't really know much abt you guys, but for me, entering uni kinda caught me by surprise (after essentially slacking for ... quite literally the past 10 years). about 6 weeks into my first semester, i was pretty damn sian alr and somehow lost almost all motivation to study. Studying wasn't just extremely boring in terms of content - it isn't nearly as bad as A's... Its more of the environment. At some corner of my mind, theres always this not-so-random thought: What if i fk up my studies? What now? Can I do well enough to distinguish myself from the rest? etc.

Because, at least in NUS, it doesn't really matter if you've understood the subject matter well (because almost everyone does). It really boils down to your performance when it came to exams relative to your peers. And having more than a third of the cohort being PRC scholars who have been studying for the past 1-2 years(while you've been learning to say "Yes, Sir" in the most sycophantic manner in order to protect your weekends) doesn't really help. So while I did fully understand virtually everything i was taught, i was never really confident about getting good grades. So what transpired was basically a rehash of A's. That is, bring out the 10 year series and start grinding. Practice, practice, and practice. Do every problem in 1/3 the normal time required. Don't get me wrong, I expect uni to be tough, but not in this way... So anw at the end of the day, thankfully, i did pretty well. But really, i don't know how much longer i can tahan this kind of life lol.

lol, i can't believe i just ranted for 2 paragraphs, when i'm supposed to be planning what to study in the next semester(a massive PITA, i assure you :) Actually, i only have to take one more module, but even thats damn troublesome alr, assuming you don't intend to screwup ur grades).

Anw after exams i was pretty bored(still) and so tried to rekindle some interest in what i used to like... CChess and SC:BW....Recently, i went to watch a Chinese Master simul'ing some dudes in sg. I also had a chance to attend one of his talks, which was kinda interesting. While most of us would be under the impression that chess masters are like ... old (and withered?), this one was young and ... reminded me of a hispter lol. Apprently chess masters enjoy karaoke too. Anw at the end of the day i felt pretty nubbish and don't quite feel like playing chess anymore.

For some reason, bw (starcraft:brood war, yes, i'm refering to the one which was released in 1998 and piss old graphics) doesn't seem to captivate me any more. My mouse accuracy is like complete shit now, which means that its virtually impossible to TvZ, unless i'm playing against someone whos just started. As for TvP, idk, but everyone seems to be so much better than before (ie, 1 year back or so). No longer can I just 3 base 200/200 and win just like that (at least for D levels...) :(. And I never understood TvT. Anw bw in korea is damn sad now also, not only are teams disbanding, terrans are losing left, right and center... and i only support T's :) Sry to those who dun understand what i'm talking abt ==.=.

Oh yar and i also started playing weiqi for 2 days until i gave up :P. Well.. at least i have an idea of what ko situation is....Yar and i also went to do some projecteuler and uva onlinejudge problems to hone my computational thinking. Feel pretty nubbish now also but oh well.

Looking back at what i've just written... this post suddenly reminds me of shida back in J1/2. More like a personal blog :P

So after that brief respite from studying, i'm er... back to studying, again. Sianz.

Anw, hope that most of you are carrying on with life just fine ^^. Have a good year ahead!!

CK.

spam

2011-12-06T10:21:00.003+08:00

ahh ok i see no one posted here for awhile so i shall restart the momentum again!

ok firstly, exams ended on 30 Nov WAHAHA so after all the 8hr a day studying, i suddenly find myself with nothing to do. thus now spending most of the day at home, playing the piano or playing my ps2 games for the 10th time or playing weiqi on kgs

speaking of weiqi, the smu mindsports (aka weiqi, cchess, ichess club) encouraged us to sign up for some weiqi competition, which i so foolishly decided to sign up. everyone in the competition needed to play 5 rounds, and my first round was against some japanese 6 dan woman (aka VERY FKING IMBA) so it was quite a horrible start to the competition. my losing streak continued as i was trashed 2 more matches by another china guy and one of my frens. however, i actually managed to win the last 2 games (one of which was against a china guy muahaha)

exam results gonnna come out later this week or next week, so i cant wait to see my awesome results :)

Random Comments after completing Maths Homework

2011-09-21T09:45:00.000+08:00

As the title implies. Spent like another 8 hours doing maths homework. Mainly because it has to be typeset and I was on the wrong track for one question. Haiz.

Indeed, in reply to Shida's post, I really won't mind seeing that kind of fashion continue as more of those "sightings" can really brighten up a gloomy day. However, I'm not sure about the "very young" part as I am already starting to feel old, tired, and worn-down.

Random thought 1: Fries + chocolate + chips are really not good for your throat

Random thought 2: Computer games are fun but distracting. Just went to re-download LoL and spent 4 or 5 hours playing it in the past 2 days.

Random thought 3: Sleeping at 3am is shiok but the hangover is not.

Random thought 4: I wish I had air-conditioning :(

Random thought 5: Blank

Random pickup line by wentao: You must be Math because I'd do you everyday.

Cheers~

A trivial observation

2011-09-18T22:20:00.002+08:00

Been commuting daily to work for close to 2 months now. I have observed something that is interesting, at least I hope to the group of us lol, but really rather trivial. As I commute all the way to and fro Harbour Front from Sembawang during peak hours, I have gotten to see quite a lot of office workers everyday.

The observation is on dressing. Clearly, over the past couple of years, there hasn't been any drastic changes in the way males dress for work. It continues to be dominated by typical shirts and trousers. The only significant difference may be that now there are more guys wearing relatively tight trousers, and also brown shoes to work. (I know this is freaking lame, but on a very crowded train, there really isn't much else to do other than people watching)

It is with the ladies that a more distinct difference can be discerned. To my amusement and I suppose delight, at least about 10 to 20% of the female on the morning and evening peak trains are dressed in a manner fitting for a night out at a club. However, sadly there doesn't seem to be too much variety within that group. Most of them simply wearing really short and tight skirts, which by my estimation can barely cover their bottoms. While I would certainly be delighted to see this fashion continue and spread as a very young man, I have to wonder if it is a source of distraction in the workplace. At the very least, it certainly distracts me lol. Of course if they are engaged in frontline services, corporate communication and public relations, I can perhaps see where it's coming from. But from what I hear, it seems that this is really prevalent among at least one more group, legal clerks and understudies. Well, I suppose in a way they are in the Corp Coms and PR business as well lol.

And indeed this fashion in not limited to merely the workforce. I think it would be fair to say that Singaporeans' dress has converged in a large way with the other global cities in the world, at least in the CBD and city centre areas (i.e. not so sure about my neighbourhood shopping centre at Semabawang lol). Gone are the days of tshirt and jeans, with hot pants, short skirts, tight shirts and 100 buck slippers being all the rage in town. Pretty amusing and I suppose heartening change.

Only thing that puzzles me is what triggered this change. I mean income certainly hasn't seen any sea change over the last couple of years, and neither has it seen greater accessibility to external information. For the former, I would think that the financial crisis and the continuing uncertain outlook of the global economy would reinforce the pragmatic tshirt and jeans combination, while for the latter, I am under the impression that trendy tv shows, magazines and all have been readily accessible for a long time since the advent of the high speed internet. Oh wellz.

Sorry if this has been too trivial a musing for you guys but hope that you are somewhat entertained. Let me know if you are aware of what triggered this change in attire though haha.

Hope everyone's having fun and yeah pls post something here so that we can all keep in spiritual contact haha. :)

Castle in the Sky

2011-09-15T10:42:00.000+08:00

'Fairytales live in me
Fables coming from my memory
Fantasy is not a crime
Find your castle in the sky'

Where is my castle? Hm..

post

2011-08-10T18:16:00.002+08:00

hey if lz never remind on facebook i probably wont have checked the blog for a long time lol. glad to know its still alive haha

hmm so schools gonna start pretty soon...studying at SMU of course doesn't require you to stay at the hostel, but i had a pretty close shave there...cos my scholarship terms actually say "staying 1 academic year at an approved hostel" so i had made my application successfully and was seriously ready to stay there haha. at the last minute, i checked to confirm that the hostel would be sponsored (SMU single room hostel seriously very ex lol about 6k i think) then it turns out they made the rules more flexible for people studying at SMU cos the hostel is off campus and kind of defeats the purpose of the social interaction they wanted to foster. haha so of course dun stay lor! altho i was thinking if stay at hostel means playing basketball with the scholars there everynight or something...

haha lz so cool got a pet cat...the only pets i had were tortoises in P4 -.-

Of Cats and Catastrophies

2011-08-08T21:23:00.003+08:00

Today marks a new milestone in the journey of 2klever. Indeed, it is the unveiling of the newest blogskin in the succession of 2klever blogskins. Remember the blue, plain, and not-so-interesting default blogger skin that we first used? Remember the black haunted trees with the creepy music? And then the recent 2 column skin with the rather-provocative Rei Ayanami header?

At least I managed to check one item on my things-to-do-before-school-starts list, even though I can say less about most of the other items. Anyway, I was determined to complete this even though I know not many of us visit anymore because I guess I really don't want it to completely die. Now that most of us are busy nowadays and we don't really have much chance to physically meet, I really hope we can maybe post some updates now and then. Lol. And no, facebook is just not the same. I'm gonna quit facebook soon. Death to all fakey farcical facebook lovers. Muahahaha.

Alright, now that all the formalities are done with, let me proceed with some interesting?? stuff? Ok so not-so-recently my parents adopted a cat from some friends and started a fairy tale of a happy family with a nice fatty pet cat living under one roof. Yeah as you can see in the picture. Obviously. But things started turning out for the worse after 1 year and a few odd weeks. Well firstly it was discovered that the cat has an annoying habit of dropping fur everywhere. Literally. Meaning to say if you huggle it and then go out you spend about 20 minutes dusting off cat-fur from your clothes. Ouch. Recently, though, things got really ugly as my mother, to cut a long story short, got scratched(quite deeply) by it. And with China being a country which has not eradicated rabies, the doctor recommended her to get some jabs. Alas, all was not well as the scratch-wound got infected and became highly painful. So, to all potential cat-owners out there, my advice to you: forget it. Get a freaking hamster.

What else? Oh yeah...I must really complain here that pre-university admin is really giving me a royal pain in the ***. And I think, sadly, that it is really just my sheer dumb luck. Firstly I am getting huge problems with my course registrations because of one tiny oversight in my application, which, to cut a long story short, I put English as my second language, an option which I don't really even recall, to my detriment, as I am unable to take a necessary writing course immediately and have to take a basic English course first instead. How great. Next, because of the fact that I am overseas and have a slightly different itinerary and because of a dumb irresponsible travel agent, I faced immense, and I mean immense, troubles in booking one simple air ticket to the States. Sigh...

Oh well, I hope you guys are having somewhat more fun than me. Lol. Oh and feel free to add cool little accessories like visitor counter/links/photos/whatnot in the template. And do you guys think a comment form should be added? So much trouble...haiz.

Squeak!

2011-03-20T21:16:00.006+08:00

If you haven't played Osu!, then you don't know your mouse. This is what I realized, about 2 years after that fateful day when I discovered it while looking around the interwebs for MMORPGs.

Through googling and random experimentation I've learned quite a fair bit about mouse input in general. It's certainly not everything, but it's enough that I am afraid I would forget some of it. So here I have decided to put down a few points for my personal future reference, as well as for anybody who might wish to get to know mice better.

*I originally wanted to post the software part together, but it seems that the hardware part is quite lengthy by itself. Maybe I'll post the software half later, maybe I'll be too lazy to do it.

EatNow's guide to Mouse Input

What this is (and what this is not)
This is a short collection of pieces of knowledge I have gathered about optical mouse input. It is based on what I have learnt from the music game Osu!(basically a music game involving clicking on lots of circles, and the closest you can get to a mouse test), and it is of particular relevance to real time strategy games and any other . Since I do not play first person games in general, the things I say here may or may not apply.

This also has very little to say on wireless mice, which may be your preference. As far as I am aware wireless mice are subject to the problems of weight (due to extra batteries), latency and other connectivity issues. However I haven’t used one myself and therefore do not know anything beyond this.

********************

Hardware

Do a simple google on “optical mouse recommendation”, and you are bound to find lots of forum threads with people posting things along the lines of “it’s the skills not the mouse” and “any 5 dollar default mouse will do”, etc. Well to a certain extent this is true (see under DPI section on small screen resolutions) but after trying out Osu! with different mice I believe I can safely conclude that the mouse does matter, and quite a fair bit. The difference is extremely obvious on Osu!, and probably not as noticeable in more complicated games, but a better mouse definitely makes you a better player (or at least it is an important prerequisite to your improvement) in any top down game involving clicking with moving cursors. For mouse input hardware is what you will be spending money on, so it is probably much more important to look at the following sections first if you are looking to buy a mouse.

Friction

The reason why I put this section first is the tiny amount of attention it gets relative to all the other “specs” (such as DPI, refresh rate, etc. which will generally appear somewhere on the product packaging), when it is actually one of the most important limiting factors to input accuracy. Because of this (and the fact that you can’t feel the friction of a mouse through the packaging) it is a little difficult to make judgment in this aspect of a mouse. Now a little on the physics behind friction (you may wish to skip straight to the section on practical tips if not interested):

Firstly, there are two kinds of friction: static friction and kinetic friction. Static friction applies when the two surfaces in contact are not moving relative to each other, while kinetic friction applies when the two surfaces in contact are moving relative to each other. Static friction is higher than kinetic friction, which in the context of mice means that it would take more effort to get a mouse to start moving than to keep it moving. This gives a sticky feel to the mouse when you start moving it, as well as when you try to reverse its direction or do sharp turns (there is a brief moment during the reversing of direction where your mouse is stationary). This is bad for your mouse accuracy, so you would want the static coefficient of friction to be as close to the kinetic coefficient of friction as possible. This is quite a bit more important than having an extremely low kinetic coefficient of friction (which combined with a high static coefficient of friction, will just result in a lack of control with the cursor overshooting the target most of the times).

Secondly, the coefficient of friction between two contacting surfaces depends on the material and texture of the two surfaces in contact (pretty commonsensical and obvious to you I hope).

Thirdly, the actual force of friction (or more accurately the magnitude of the force of friction) is given by the coefficient (either kinetic or static) of friction multiplied by the normal reaction, which is basically the weight of the mouse plus the amount of downwards force your hand exerts on the mouse (which may be negative if you are lifting the mouse, or very positive if you press down hard on the mouse).

What the above 3 points translates to in actual scenarios:

Point one: If you happen to have access to sample hardware for testing, what you want to look out for is both the static and kinetic coefficients of friction of the mouse feet/mouse pad contact. Take the mouse, move it around quickly in circles, and see if it glides well. Then move it left and right on a line or as if to draw a star, and see if the mouse tends to “stick” at the ends of the line or at the points of the star. It may not be easy to feel a difference, but if you experiment enough you will find some surfaces (like if you are using sandpaper as mouse pad for whatever reasons) which are obviously not suited for gaming.

Point two: If you have dirt/sweat/sand/dust/whatever bizarre substance between your mouse feet and the mouse pad, then obviously your performance will be affected since it is not just the mouse feet and mouse pad in contact anymore.

Point three: The “feet” on optical mice are, as far as I am aware, made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), or as more common name goes, Teflon (yes the same stuff that keeps eggs from sticking to frying pans). Look out for the thickness. From the cheap mice I have used, it seems that the biggest problem is not that the mouse feet are not slick enough, but rather they are too thin, or the groove they sit in are too deep so after a while the portion protruding gets worn out and you have the plastic body of the mouse in contact with the mouse pad. When that happens if you want to play games you will need to replace either the feet, or the whole mouse. There are such products (mouse feet replacement Teflon stickers) around, but generally they are made for certain popular gaming mouse models. Of course, I (and anyone who plays Osu! with pure mouse) abuse my mice way more than average users, so it may also be the case that your buttons/optical sensors have died long before your mouse feet.

Point four: Another duh point, when you are gaming don’t press down your mouse with all your strength as if there is a cockroach between your mouse and the mouse pad trying to escape . If you can’t control the mouse while lifting it a little, then at least keep your hand relaxed. Also, this is one of the reasons why heavy mice suck, it increases the normal reaction force, and hence the friction. In fact a while back when I was using a very heavy Diamondback clone I had to consciously lift it a little, and even then the loss in performance was extremely obvious.

Optical Sensor

Once upon a time, I believed that all optical sensors on mice were equal. I was so very wrong, it turned out that some are more equal than others, and there are also those which are outright horrible (and not equal).

Optical Sensor: DPI

Years back when I first tried out optical mice, I thought that 800DPI was more than enough for anything, and those people who bought anything above 1000DPI were all idiots. It was an understandable mistake though, firstly because I was comparing with ball mice (which I can’t imagine using now, but am still forced to use), secondly because the standard screen size then was 1024x768, and lastly because I didn’t know that turning up the mouse sensitivity in Windows beyond the middle notch badly affects the mouse accuracy (further elaboration later in the software section).

For now, just believe me when I say that your Windows cursor speed settings should always be at the middle notch. With that setting constant, change your screen resolution down as low as you can, then move your mouse around to feel for the cursor speed, then change your screen resolution to as high as you can and do the same experiment. You should find that your cursor moves much more slowly when you are using a higher resolution. The reason is simple. Given any mouse on a fixed DPI setting, it will move the cursor a certain fixed number of pixels for each centimeter you physically move the mouse. If you use a bigger screen, this number remains the same; however it is now a smaller fraction of your total screen area. Noting that objects in games such as units in RTSes usually scale up in size together with the screen size, and that the number of pixels your cursor moves doesn’t, you may not be able to move your mouse across the screen in one clean swipe in a big screen. Lifting the mouse introduces inaccuracies, and should be something left to office workers using ball mice.

So as long as the DPI number is big and fat, the mouse would be awesome, right? Not exactly, it turns out that quite a few of the random mice I have tried (all with big fat DPIs) have problems with their optical sensors. For example, the cursor is simply not accurate, or it jumps around once in a while, or the mouse doesn’t work on a significant number of surfaces. It may not be obvious when you play RTSes (especially so when you don’t have another mouse for comparison), but it is a solid wall that stops your APM from improving any further (you lose the cursor too often or you have to do a second readjustment after trying to point to something, etc). You can open up Microsoft paint and try drawing circles. If you find that it is very difficult to draw smooth circles, or if the cursor jumps around periodically, chances are the optical sensor is not as good as the packaging boasts it to be.

Optical Sensor: Mouse Refresh Rate

Take your mouse for a spin (literally). Open up Microsoft paint; draw big circles as quickly as you can. Depending on the refresh rate of your mouse, the curve of your circle may either be smooth or have kinks (see below diagram). Standard mice have a refresh rate of 125 Hz, meaning that the mouse updates the computer on where it’s moving 125 times every second. If you can draw 10 circles a second, then your mouse only has time to update around 12 times while you draw 1 circle, resulting in around 12 kinks.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll109/p06513w/untitled.png

Now I can’t say for certain whether a high refresh rate makes a different in your Starcraft 2 or DotA games, but it does make a difference in Osu!, especially if the frame rate and the refresh rate of your mouse are both low.

Most gaming mice support higher refresh rates than 125 Hz (will usually be advertised in big words on the packaging), but even for mice that don’t there is a way of increasing the refresh rate through software methods. However, whether or not the mouse can deliver the higher number of updates is another issue. I tried it on one of my cheap mice before, and could only get it to around 250Hz.

Mouse Buttons

I’m not very particular about mouse buttons; though there are people who prefer their mice to have 10 buttons, all reprogrammable so that they can do things without touching the keyboard. I only use the right click button, left click button, and the scroll wheel. Great grand total of 3.

There are nevertheless a few things to take note, if you play Osu! like I do. Firstly, the mouse click shouldn’t be too “deep”, requiring you to take too much effort to click. This is especially important if your finger is short and your fingertips are not at the far side of the button. For certain mouse button designs, you need a lot more effort to click at the middle of the button where it is closer to the fulcrum of the button. The mouse click depth should also not be too shallow, and would preferably be deep enough that there is enough feedback for you to know that you have clicked it. (So that you know for sure you have clicked even though you can’t hear the click sound because you are wearing headphones)

I average up to a million (EDIT: actually should be closer to around 200k, a million is grossly over estimated for most typical weeks) clicks a week just from Osu!, so it is also important for the mouse buttons to be durable.

Ergonomics (weight and shape)

There are some huge, heavy and cool looking gaming mice out there which look absolutely bad ass. Guess what, chances are, a lot of these mice are designed for bigger and stronger Caucasian hands. A simple application of Newton’s law of motion F=ma would tell you that with a more massive mouse, you would need a greater force to achieve the same acceleration.

As for the size and shape, it depends not only on the size of your hand, but also the type of grip you use. I’ve seen quite lengthy descriptions of the different kinds of grips such as palm grip, fingertip grip and claw grip; you may want to Google them up. Feel for yourself the size and shape, but just keep in mind that lighter is usually better, as mentioned previously.

chinese new year

2011-02-02T07:45:00.003+08:00

eve of chinese new year eve. slacking in my room listening to chinese songs despite a backlog of reading and essay to do. lol. think my mental de-gen has reached a new height. somehow good things hardly last, but working for the good things never ends. disproportionately poor returns. and my friends pointed out to me recently that i'm no longer capable of speaking in complete sentences. suppose it's quite apparent here, typing mostly in phrases.

desperately want to come back to sg for a break and see my dearest 2k friends. haha. :D

anyhow, happy chinese new year and hope everyone has a good time!

Italy trip day 4

2010-08-30T00:19:00.002+08:00

long day today. Woke up sort of late in the morning, had breakfast, then went to the milan west area. the old castle, park, a small fair with medieval themes. Haha. Weather was helpful, cool but relatively sunny. Morning's good huh. strolled along and took some photos, then went on to the brera area, atas shopping place. Lots of art galleries and fashion labels, mostly look fantastic, prices even more fantastic, none of which i recognise. Lol.

took a train to Genova at noon, and hence commenced my planned cheap and cheerful day trip. Had lunch, which was my self-made sandwich with italian bread (don't know what it's called. Lol) stuffed with cold meat. On that note, i think italians have a way with curing pork. Haha. Nice results. Also, somehow i love raw stuff. Not raw as in bloody and unprocessed, but more like not excessively heated. Somehow juicier and more flavourful. haha.

Melted on the train. Actually not much sweat, just internal heat. somehow the train didn't have aircon, and mid-day temp was 32 degrees, and i was in direct sunshine. bleahz.

endured it for two hours, during which the heat reminded me of army field camp and route march days. Suddenly realised route march got quite easy and cheerful towards the end, much more enjoyable than field camp. Probably got to do with the fact that route marches were mostly right before bookout. Haha.

So reached Genova. Really hard to describe. It's a coastal port, but immediately blocked by hills to its north. So the whole city is built on slopes, undulating terrain throughout. a lot of giant villas built by the rich merchants. Lots of vertical narrow alleys that connected horizontal roads on different levels (height). After seeing the grandeur of those buildings, got to say that the money's really in commercial and financial trades, as early as the 16th centuries.

Walked on, and then got disturbed by an urge to shop. Things got quite stupid after that, i spent the largest single sum ever in a single shop on things that i won't ever need. I guess that brings balance to my whole year's frugality. Shall not discuss what i bought, but suffice to say that my cheap and cheerful day trip was not longer cheap after that.

Felt a sense of catharsis after swiping my card. That was a major virtue down the drain. But i believe i had a good personal reason , and so pardoned myself. Oh wellz.

Walked on some more and something else dawned on me. The place feels like shanghai! Not the shanghai now, but the one that i spent my childhood years in, the one that no longer exists. The bustling streets, and heat, the long evening with the setting sun, buses, wired trams with neo classical buildings, the sort of temperate trees. It's a really intangible thing, and i don't dare say many would concur with me. in a way, i'm exceedingly backward looking, i pseudo-yearn for the imaginary past with absolute passion. So the nostalgia's there, and the cheerful bit left sort of evaporated too.

Reached the other train station on the other end of the town, and realised i missed the train by 5 minutes, and hence got to wait another hour for the next one.

So here i am, sipping a sludge of frozen cappucino in a cafe, writing this post on my phone. So kudos to my qwerty keyboard! Haha. Should reach Milan at 930 to spend my last night there. Tmr's gonna be venice and at last, crowne plaza, not as cheap, but much more cheerful. :P

Italy trip day 3

2010-08-30T00:17:00.000+08:00

Finally woke up early this morning and caught the buffet for the first time. Very basic and standard fare. Some cold meat, eggs, assorted breads and pastries. Mostly low quality stuff, but I was quite surprised by the variety of cakes, and that the staff actually make cappuccino with the heart-shaped foam if you request. Haha.

Took the free shuttle to metro and went to train station. Some hiccups there, entirely my own fault, but managed to catch my morning train nonetheless. Decided on the route and mode of travel in Turin on the way, and caught a little shut-eye in between.

Reached Turin near noon. Wonderful place with brilliant sunny weather. It has quite a small old town centre where most of the sights are, and so I opted to travel entirely on foot. Chanced upon a market, which is exactly like Singapore’s pasar malang, but cos it’s sunny in the day and not too hot, things seemed to look better. Very pedestrian friendly place. So basically spent the late morning to early afternoon strolling the entire town centre, took quite some pictures, and just appreciated the sort of semi-Mediterranean holiday mood. :)

Was in a really good mood for most of the day. Had lunch at one of the recommended small restaurants. Paid 10 for serving of cold roast veal with tuna paste and capers. Flavours were wonderful but portion was rather small. Luckily I had a heavy free breakfast. Lol. Cheapo right. Wanted to have a gelato from the acclaimed palour, but it didn’t seem to have it today. Weird. So because of the relative small size, and the fact that I didn’t enter a single museum, I was mostly done by 3.30, quite a bit earlier than I expected. Oh. And I paid 3.5 to take a lift up 85m in a synagogue to get a panoramic view of the city. Cheap thrill I suppose.

Took another 2 hours to get back, after which I was really quite shagged, mainly from the heat. Sweated enough for salt to visibly crystalised on my t-shirt with obvious white lines. Rather embarrassing actually.

Returned to hotel, took a good shower, bought some cold meat and sausage and bread to make sandwich/panino for tmr’s lunch, and went out for dinner.

Searched all over for a place that’s not too touristy, but also not so Italian that I understand nothing. Managed to find this gem of a fish restaurant. Had the best spaghetti mariana in fresh reduced tomato and seafood jus ever. (well I guess it doesn’t say much cos the previous best was probably pasta mania). Was really good, the spaghetti was nicely coated with the sauce that was sweet from tomato, lightly spicy with chilly, and absolutely delicious with the taste of the sea, which I assume to have come from some sort of seafood stock that they have or the juice they had from cooking the mariana stuff. Anyhow, vastly better than expected. Not cheap though. A single plate set me back by 15 euro, but the portion was reasonably generous.

Came back feeling happy and contented, and probably will go again tmr after coming back from Genova.

Basically, I quite enjoyed travelling alone today. Totally own time own target. No worries about taking repeat paths, or resting more or less frequently. Everything at a comfortable pace, no pressure. Also proud that despite the last minute nature of the whole thing, everything’s gone sufficiently well so far. Haha. Feeling cocky that my trip’s probably better than most of the rest being made by my peers over this summer. Lol. But then again, it’s the third day of being totally alone, and it’s taking a slight toll even as I am getting used to it. Haven’t held a single meaningful conversation since London, and somehow, especially with food (which is truly one of my greatest passions, and one of the few things on which I am willing to spend), savouring things alone isn’t as fun or feels as complete as sharing it with a loved one. Oh wellz. Give some, take some.

Alright, tmr’s gonna be a long day, since I’m going to make up for the lost day 2 of Milan in the morning and go to Genova in the afternoon and evening. So it’s off to the bed for me. Oh. Pls go to my facebook photo albums to take a look if interested. I will be uploading the relevant photos, and hopefully they will help to make the droning text above come alive! :)

Italy trip day 2

2010-08-30T00:15:00.001+08:00

Ha I’m at it again. Doing what I do best, which is writing mundane posts that are not very interesting to others, but worth tons of fun and joy when I read them again years from now. Alright. This series shall be about my solo Italy trip. 9 days and 8 nights. First 4 of which are in Milan.

Just had some peaches actually. Not the sweetest granted, (that honour is bestowed upon the nectarines I once bought from Waitrose near Russel Square), but certainly the softest, most succulent and ripen I’ve ever had since leaving Shanghai more than 10 years ago. (oh. Just realized that means I’ve left Shanghai for just more than half of my life now. Lol.) Spanish peaches bought from an Italian supermarket, 6 for EUR1.69 (btw, all prices from here on are in EUR if in Europe, and GBP if in UK). Wonderful stuff and totally beats the crappy ‘ripen at home’ UK stuff (which, incidentally, is more expensive).

Anyway, today’s my second day / night in Milan, the fashion capital of Italy and perhaps some say Europe. Must say that the people here do dress very trendily, and most people look pretty good. Guess the fact that it’s summer, and people are wearing bright and thin clothes, help as well. Point to note is that there is a disproportionately large number of really chio girls here. Oh wellz. Good for all the pervs like Christy I suppose. Lol. Jokes.

Today started out badly and stayed at that low for the rest of the day. Lol. Trusted the hotel’s receptionist and drank the water from the tap. Promptly came down with diarrhea this morning and missed the buffet breakfast. i.e. I was hungry. Decided to sleep in after that, and slept. More diarrhea, more sleeping. And the whole day passed. Lol. Went to the supermarket nearby in the middle to get bottled water (which indeed cured me of my diarrhea, confirming my suspicion of the water), and lunch. Lunch was interesting. Bought a baguette, a small pack of cold meat (i.e. raw cured thin slices of pork), and a box of roasted chicken drumsticks. All of that, plus water and the peaches, for just 7.55. haha. Really good value for a tourist I suppose.

Got so bored in the afternoon that I watched an anime movie, Whispers of the Heart or something. Not bad. But pathetic given that I am travelling and supposed to be touring instead of hiding in my hotel room. Diaoz. But ok la, it’s reasonably comfortable and big, so I liked it in here. Haha.

Tmr’d be better. After sleeping in for a whole day today, I am finally rejuvenated and will go to Turin tmr for a day trip. More on that tmr!

Italy trip day 1

2010-08-30T00:13:00.000+08:00

Alright, notice I started from day 2. Cos the idea only came up today in my infinite boredom. Lol. So I shall fill in the gap for day 1 as well.

Had patches of sleep on 1^st June in preparation for my early morning budget flight from Luton to Milan. Sucked. Not enough sleep, plus I planned the pathetic excuse of an itinerary and changed euros, skyped parents, packed, and borrowed travel books all on that last day, made it far more hectic than I was hoping for. And in a desperate and stupid attempt to save money, I booked things such that the timings were extremely tight, raising the legitimate fear in me at 3a.m. in the morning that I may miss my flight. LOL. So after running around anxiously for the morning, I reached the boarding gate to be informed that due to heavy fog, flight is delayed by half an hour. Lol. So much for the rush.

2^nd morning. Cramped but short 2hr flight to Milan. 2 teenage girls probably 1 2 years younger sat beside me. One of them was blonde and reasonably cute. Spent half the time debating whether to chat them up, the other half giving up and sleeping. Lol. Reached, came out, and immediately regretted not talking. The airport to city shuttle bus had a 3 for 2 offer!!! The 2 girls plus me would have made 3, and that’d be equivalent to 1/3 off given the offer. Diaoz. Reminded self to be more active and sociable, and bought the ticket for 7.5. Reached city, and topo-ed on foot with suitcase for 1.5km to hotel. Haha. Could have reached by public transport but decided to walk to get to know the place.

Hotel’s out of city centre, but clean and reasonably well equipped. Holiday Inn Express Milan Bicocca. Recommended for gang of guys or travelling alone, on budget. Got it at 32.5 a night for double room with breakfast, with a half price deal that I found. Haha.

Rested a bit in the room and went to the city. Bought a 2-day transport pass for 5.5 (really good value, given a single trip on London tube costs 4 pounds), and went to the famed Duomo. Saw the magnificent cathedral and the cluster of famous sites around it. Also saw the infamous gangs of friendship band and feed-the-pigeon-corn pushers. A few approached me, but managed to refuse. The huge police presence helped I think.

Also saw the various fashion label boutiques in the so-called golden triangle. Most were closed for the public holiday though. Just as well. Any single piece of whatever (from scarf to suit to bags to necklace to bracelet to wth is that) costs upwards of several hundred, and thousands are easily the norm. diaoz. The financially poor and fashion-wise tasteless me had no interest and moved on.

Oh. Had lunch at a street-side café, with an overpriced tuna and ham panino at 5 euro. Also had a gelato at 2.5 or 3.5. can’t rmb exactly. Had lemon and milk flavours. Really nice, especially the milk flavor. Must try if ever in Italy.

Dinner became pathetic, as I left the expensive city centre back towards my hotel. Almost all shops were shuttered for the public holiday (I only realized then, didn’t really notice that boutiques bit), and oh no, only a Chinese restaurant is open (as is usually the case everywhere. Lol.)

Had the worst spaghetti and ravioli ever (10 euros together, so that partly explains the lack of quality), but still ate every bit since I was hungry enough. After that was back to hotel and slacking. And waiting for the disastrous diarrhea to come. Lol.

A wise man says

2010-08-01T12:32:00.002+08:00

"A lazy man always says he is busy. A busy man says he will make time".

Doesn't matter who said it where or when. I just think it's something I should keep close to my heart.

And why are we so childish, greedy, selfish, or mean sometimes? I don't have an answer. Perhaps life is indeed a punishment for the damned. For us to see the ugliness within ourselves, to take a tantalizing bite from heaven's fruit which gives us a feeling of what it is like to be alive, and then have everything stripped from us, ashamed, bare, naked, ugly, dead.

texas hold 'em

2010-06-01T10:57:00.002+08:00

first time poker player. buy-in 5 pounds, took over from my friend when he has 6.30 pounds, cashed in at 14.30 pounds. net win by me - 8 pounds, more than 100% :)

on fitness and health

2010-05-30T18:20:00.002+08:00

If running is indeed a good exercise to improve one's fitness, then my nose must be a world class athlete by now, since it has been running since yesterday.

Also, a world of wisdom to those who may be tempted to follow my path of great fail: do not eat spicy shaker fries (or whatever they're called) and go to bed with the taste of the spicy powder still in your throat. A world of pain, agony and URTI awaits the next day.

on bravery and stupidity

2010-05-26T09:17:00.002+08:00

doing something that is dangerous, and that you know you have the skill to overcome, is bravery.

doing something that is dangerous, and that you know you have no control over, is stupidity.

sometimes, people in the latter went in believing they were the former, or out of pure desperation. that perhaps can be forgiven.

but if you knew you were the latter, and went ahead anyway, that's just pure stupidity. there's no excuse.

i had no excuse. but no regrets either.

on chinese sayings

2010-05-25T15:23:00.003+08:00

something i frequently find particular resonance with chinese idioms and stuff like that. probably because there are so many of them that there's one for every occasion. lol. most of them have roots in the ancient chinese military or royal court, but i tend to identify with them over my personal life rather than work. pretty weird. so here's one that i am feeling quite strongly for now. :)

天下不如意，恒十居七八，故有当断不断。

translation (roughly) : of all things, every 7, 8 out of 10 don't go according to your wishes / expectations, or smoothly / with favourable conditions, hence the dilemmas are always faced and there's indecisiveness. 语出《晋书·羊祜传》：“会秦、凉屡败，祜复表曰：‘吴平，则胡自定，但当速济大功耳。’而议者多不同。祜叹曰：‘天下不如意，恒十居七八，故有当断不断。this one much more complicated so i'm too lazy to translate. lol.

apparently, life got tougher as time went on in china, and the 7,8 out of 10 morphed into 8,9 out of 10, i.e. 不如意事常八九，可语人言无二三。 so, that means 80,90% of the stuff are always screwed, but not even 20, 30% of them may be shared with others. so things apparently took a turn for the worse huh.

alright. i have a dilemma. there's something that i really want quite badly, but i know the cost of getting it will be extremely high. probably got to make all sorts of funny compromises, and lay down my pride and be reasonably shameless as well (sobs. that's painful)

and, the worst thing about it is i cannot be sure of success. unlike some sort of work, where extra efforts are generally matched by some degree of returns (no matter how disappointingly disproportionate), this thing can be all sunk. so i'd be a clown for quite nothing. haiz.

bleahzzzz. i wish things can be easier. i think once there are two parties with non-aligned interests and unclear objectives, decision-making gets fuzzy and things just become difficult. hope i'd decide soon and stick with it. but whichever way i choose, i can't afford to fail. :)

note to self

2010-05-17T00:47:00.002+08:00

find out why girls with chinese names like to give themselves english names when they are abroad, given that guys seldom show the same tendencies.

newly acquired good friends on chilly summer nights

2010-05-15T08:39:00.003+08:00

Yet another sleepless night

2010-05-14T08:47:00.002+08:00

0147, london, uk.

Can't sleep again. Can't even count how many times this has happened in the past 2 weeks. Hugely depressing and frustrating. I know I need to rest, but another part of me just refuses to lapse into slumber. RAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR. Feel this urge to be with someone. A strong desire for some sort of physical presence. Nostalgia. Introspective.

The hours past midnight are strange times. Listening to ipod, appreciating how good my earphones are. And then sinking again into that pool of sensations and emotions that I have grown to know so well. Sounds, music, powerful stuff. Reminds you of the days that you associate them with. May not get the details or events right, but perhaps pure emotions - the fears, the excitements, the joy, the tinge of sadness. Not recommended for a poor anti-social guy abroad.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone finds resonance in what I feel. Or am I a weirdo who's in desperate need of a psychiatrist?

The good days gone by..

Will be working at MOM this hols. Volunteered for it, to give me something concrete and hopefully useful to do this year.

Entire year gone by and did nothing relevant. How ironic.

Interesting song lyrics

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save

Pretty hard state to achieve. If a relationship fails, it either means you didn't manage to get what you wanted, or that what you wanted wasn't there at all. Often both. Takes either great wisdom or an appalling amount of bliss (i.e. ignorance) to not feel sorry about that.

Get on with life. Stop wasting time, energy and everything else. Do something that's really meaningful.

What's the point???

Want to be totally alone, and be back with everyone, all at the same time.

Happy incoherence. Thoughts wandering randomly. Musing over past choices, brilliant moments, stupid mistakes. Haha. I've had my share of fun, as have everyone else.

Life's never equitable, but actually fairer than we realise.

Can't help but wonder what have I really done all these years. And I conclude I did so little of value that I probably can't even justify the fertiliser used to grow the rice consumed by me. LOL.

And to think that I have always arrogantly thought that I am a wise and useful guy. HAHA.

To end off, just to show how ancient I am, songs that I listened to tonight include, among others: seasons in the sun (happy days in RI),

raw sugar (happy days in J2),

road trippin (???),

room on the 3rd floor (more RI),

she will be loved (NS, poor A lvl results, caina overseas, so on...),

your ex-lover is dead (a special someone from RI days, but no worries, RI days, not RI boys. lol.),

passage (by vienna teng, brilliant voice and singing, highly recommended, ignore gothic lyrics but otherwise poetic)

I think it's time for a gin and tonic and some sleep.

signing off, 0213, spiritually secluded self-world, lala land.

Depression

2010-05-01T22:46:00.002+08:00

i feel so tired
so empty
as trance music pounds relentlessly on my hapless ears
i sit, pondering
what exactly has happened
nothing, nothing

the same train ride
the same bus ride
the same faces
the same music left on endless loop reverberating through my eardrums
what is happening
nothing, nothing

life is like an old videotape
its age old dust disguised as a veneer of shimmering splendour
life is like an empty bottle left in a glamorous kitchen
i fill it up with interesting juices and elixirs
one day, the videotape crashes onto the floor
broken, broken
rolls of plastic splattered like entrails on the cold cold floor
the juices go wild, revolts
they explode
the bottle shatters into a billion tiny pieces, floating, floating
what is going to happen
nothing, nothing

musings

2010-04-26T22:51:00.003+08:00

hey hey. noticed that the blog has died again, despite wentao's recent attempt to re-skin and re-vive it. :( so if you read this, pls leave a comment on the chatbox, just so that we know this thing's still alive and kicking!

just came back from a week's vacation at my friend's place just outside London. about an hour's train away. a really comfortable, cozy little place. comes with a full kitchen with oven, grill and hob, so did some cooking and stuff. haha. think i ate enough roast lamb leg / roast lamb shoulder / grilled beef rib steaks / grilled lamb chop over this week to make up a whole animal. lol.

alright that aside. what i really want to talk about is the train ride back. came back cos my exams start in 2 days' time, so it's a really good idea to return to london, settle down, and cram some last minute revision in. lol.

the train ride was quite magical. i just sat in the train, taking in the scenario that whizzes past as the train crossed the countryside. small plots of pastures for horse / sheep / cow grazing, larger plots of staples, greenhouses for the vegetables, and patches of hedgerow from time to time. there are even vast expenses to flowering plants, and blossoming trees along the tracks. there was greenery, there were flowers, and there was life! the sun was shining very generously over the entire stretch, giving me this feeling that 'wow, spring / summer is finally here.' ok, that probably sounds extremely lame to everyone. but you'd really appreciate the warmth and the sunshine if you have to go through an awfully long, hard and bitterly cold winter, as in the uk and especially london. i just really really liked the feeling that everything's coming alive again, things are getting better and all will be well. haha.

most of the time, i enjoy being a bystander, or more accurately, a spectator. it's interesting to just stand aside, watch things as they proceed, learn, and feel the whole thing, yet not be a part of it. the withdrawal helps seeing more clearly, and gives a sense of safety and security as well, away from the centre of the flurry of activities. so i rather relish just standing on the sidelines observing, rather than jumping in and doing. a strange trait huh.

so as i sat there taking everything in, listening to the old songs on my ipod (which kovan sent me over msn when we were in sec3, supposedly his entire holding of rock/pop music then), i suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia. the music and the warmth and the hope just remind me of the good old days, when there really were not much worries. it reminds me of singapore. haha. i could feel how i felt then, days passing filled with fun and laughter, and most importantly, full of hope and wonder, a rather stark contrast to the pragmatic and realistic outlook nowadays. oh wellz. all part of growing up and growing old i think. somehow i believe that i missed the teen years, spent them being too tied down by what i needed to do rather than what i wanted to do. of course i get results for that, but the price to pay wasn't that cheap as well, especially on retrospect.

and, lastly (amazing that i did so much thinking over a trip that's barely an hour huh), feeling utterly comfortable with a tinge of nostalgia but not really a hint of regret, i did a bit of review for the past year. as whoever that visits this place (which i assume to be just the few of us in 2klever anyway lol) probably knows, i have screwed up my a lvls quite significantly, which in turn screwed up my university course and stuff like that. so i spent the past year sorting myself out, withdrawn from the larger community and stuff, just doing the basics of what i need to do, and resting, recouping. it feels horrible, to be honest. generally isolated, without much to look forward to, coupled with the first real winter for me in many years. but after a long hard year, i feel that i have finally sorted myself out. i have taken sort of a sabbatical leave from everything. and now, as summer finally returns and the academic year is drawing to an end, i am ready to go back and start working. i have lagged behind all my peers by a full year, and it's finally time to do some catching up. feels as if i have suddenly awoken from a long dreary dream, that grabbed me since april / may last year, whose spell finally lifted as a full year passed.

alright. so i shall end on that positive note. i know this has been quite a boring post, and it's meant more for myself than for anyone else. so pls bear with it and i'm sure something interesting will come up soon. :) and pls write something in the tagboard just for the sake of encouragement and support! thanks! :)

New Skin

2010-04-14T22:27:00.004+08:00

It was a moment of darkness - the once magnificent 2Klever blog on the verge of fading into oblivion. It was suffering from disuse and a dysfunctional blog skin, much like a diseased man dying from hunger within him and maggots chewing at his rotten skin from without.

I am reminded of ancient temples fallen to ruins. Beautifully composed blog posts which were once the pillars of the blog have been rendered invisible by the tides of time (which also destroyed the failed geocities service). It was a terrible sight which brought despair to those who once basked in the divine joys this sanctuary offered.

Moments of darkness always bring great suffering. Yet, it is also during these moments of darkness that men and gods shine with their greatest brilliance. Just as prophesized, a savior rises to restore the blog to its former glory.

Behold, all!

Happy CNY!!

2009-01-26T01:07:00.002+08:00

it's been another year and happy CNY to everybody! here's wishing everyone a smooth and pleasant year ahead! =D

2009-01-24T00:19:00.003+08:00

alright. since the blog has been stagnant for so long, i shall just write something here for fun. finally booked out from camp. of course ns is supposedly sensitive so i shan't talk too much about that, other than that i think it's really quite a positive experience so far. i mean really. since i don't know exactly what i can say and what i can't and since i am a very humji person, i shall stop here. lol. ok la. i am just quite ok with it so far, which surprised even myself. i thought i really won't like it inside but everything's better than expected and things went pretty well. and i think it's a great opportunity for me to really work on my personal fitness anyway.

i'm tired. my limbs feel wobbly. but i stubbornly refuse to sleep, even though my brain has stopped functioning. weird huh. but anyway, the ns experience, the whole war thing, has gotten me to think about some things in life. things that i am certainly powerless to change since it's built within human nature, but things which i believe are simply not right. anyway, the exact same piece of empirical evidence or moral judgment can lead to diabolically different intepretations and solutions, none of which is absolutely superior or inferior, and due to their parallel existence and yet mutual exclusiveness in execution, causing the absence of an absolutely dominant strategy.

am i still making sense? maybe not. maybe yes. it's just the simpliest of game theory (hope i got the logic right). actually a lot of times in a lot of scenarios different parties just keep trying to one-up one another. i really wonder how they manage to keep such delicate balances going. maybe the indirect or fixed cost of any operation is so high that even if you one-up another, you won't really want to make a move, since the benefits may not cover the costs. belahz. i should really stop stating the obvious and get ready to go sleep. i need sleep. i am tired. diaoz diaoz diaoz.

to end this post in the spirit of randomness, i hope i will be sufficiently competent in my skills as a soldier. :D

see you guys soon, in camp or outside. :))

2009-01-04T14:23:00.003+08:00

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Group Photozoid

Hm...did I miss something? Oops.

"Shitin Timberda" Not shy boyz?? Keke.

Anyway if you all wan the photos, save from the links below...higher resolution.
Group shot
Sitting down group shot
me Christie and Hyrum
Jord CK and Ben
Chairman Wang...our great leader!!
To sum up the outing, in Cks words, 80% was talking about Shida and ahem, and the other 10% was about how ahem resembled Wentao. Lollol.

review?

2009-01-01T01:24:00.005+08:00

this is a rather odd time for a review. it's 1+am on 1st jan of 2009, and i shall give a super broad review of my 2008 experience, on this blog that somehow suddenly got deserted by everyone at the start of december. lol.

2008 is plain amazing. to me, the most striking thing about it is it's length. it's incredibly long. i had solid things to do from 1st jan all the way till 31st dec. in that way, because the things i have been preparing for and doing continue straight into 2009, the new year is not even obvious or significant to me. lol.

2008 has had its share of ups and downs. i think i had some ups, especially in terms of studies, as well as getting closer to my class and all. plenty of downs too, since at the end of this school year, i'm beginning to taste failure, failure due to my inabilities contributed by my years of slacking in the system. lol.

actually i thought i had a lot to say about 08 since so many things happened. but i realised maybe there are so many that there's not much to say after all. things just keep coming and i just keep clearing.

i think my friends, the teachers, and my parents have really been critical to me this year. couldn't have pulled through all the stuff this year without the support and help from everyone. :)

and of course, benX2 really really pulled me through everything. got literally. haha. and so i really owe whatever success i may have to everyone, especially benX2. :)

2009 will be a totally different experience. it will be the year of ns, completely fresh, and totally enjoyable. ok, the last part is a bit weird. but like my senior said, it's good to enjoy ns. otherwise, you will just have 22 months of crap. lol. yeah. so ns will be enjoyable. 2009 is the year of results too. or rather the first quarter of 2009. we will probably get all our academic results as well as scholarship and uni app results back. i really hope that we all get what we really want. and i mean what we really want as in the things that our hearts desire and where our passions lie, not where our peers or society desires and where the money lies. lol. yeah. it's not very fair, but at the age of 18, we are deciding on our future career, which will in turn shape our lives. i just looked at an A*STAR scholarship today. it's really long and it basically dictates your life till 33 for girls and 35 for guys. and after that, you are probably going to remain in the industry and in the system. to me, it's scary. because a single signing event at 18 leads you down this path, which is not set-in-stone, but will cost quite literally a bomb both financially and in terms of future career prospects and stuff if you decide to change track mid-way. but of course that's looking at the happy scenario of actually having a scholarship in the first place. haha. okok. this is really getting weird. i think i'm brain-fried now.

ok i'm tired. so i shall sleep. hopefully someone reads this. and pls tag happy new year if you do. :)

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T01:24:00.001+08:00

Happy new year to all :)

Hope our time in 2009 (consisting mostly of army life) will prove to be fulfilling and enjoyable!

Going awaaay

2008-12-14T10:37:00.000+08:00

I'll be away from today until 29th Dec in Switzerland and Austria. Everyone have fun and don't miss me too much! (:

if i am a bank, this will be my intermediate report for Q4

2008-12-13T00:49:00.003+08:00

external environment remains hostile, not expected to recover in the medium term. inter-bank default risk rose drastically overnight, to levels unseen in history. balance sheet deteriorates significantly as key investments were written down or generated lower returns than expected. no layoffs planned for now but a hiring freeze has been imposed. asset to debt ratio remains robust, but may be expected to worsen in the short term due to further write-downs in the next 2 quarters. raising fresh capital for commercial loans is impossible for the short term as all windows for this year have been closed. the inter-bank market looks volatile and faces severe uncertainties in the short run but the bank remains cautiously optimistic over the long run, believing that the market will recover, assisted by both a more benign overall market condition in 10 years and expected returns from major investments that may come by Q3 next year.

M&A talks with the biggest partner have stalled due to key differences over operational doctrines. costs set to rise and funds required to fund M&A suffer from higher central bank benchmark rates. the board of the bank remains committed to the M&A operation and is seeking to resolve the differences and proceed, with complete integration expected by 2017.

prom from a different perspective

2008-12-06T16:11:00.003+08:00

heehee. felt like blogging about prom after kovan's done it.

i didn't have a headache finding what to wear at all. :) after all, with my truly exceptional fashion sense and totally bulging wallet, i had the choice of becoming the black-horse prom king.

ok. not really. my fashion sense is exceptionally poor and my wallet's bulging from the tons of coins and lack of notes. so i spent a grand totally of $5.45 on prom, including $0.50 for mrt to the hotel, $4 for the cab to shenghao's house, and $0.95 for the bus + mrt ride home the next morning. yeah. so i spent literally 1% of kovan's budget. proud of it! wheeee!

now here's the breakdown of my outfit for the day. from the top: jacket from dad (from like 20~30 years ago? luckily jackets don't look out of date too easily. heng ah.), my own shirt (recycled from the morning's interview, more on that later), tie (bought in bulk during co concert) and pants (black pants again recycled from co concerts, and re-used from the morning interview), and finally black shoes from my dad too. yuppie. so in stark contrast to kok, nothing, except .. erm.. the water i used to wash myself, is new. :P

oh. and since i don't have that much hair anyway, i made do with some moisturiser that i put on and just combed it in a different direction from which i usually do. doubt anyone realised it though. haha.

now a bit more on the experience. food was not bad, but given the steep price i expected better. i mean, at 85 per person, you'd at least want free flow of beer. come on stanford. if you provided beer, i bet the girls could have saved some money on make-up since they won't need any foundation and / or blush. LOL. instead, we got miranda (which they happened to label as orange juice??!!) , coke and sprite. diaoz diaoz. >.<

while the guys looked pretty recognisable and familiar, the girls were just totally different. it was like wow. i had difficulties recognising any of the girls i know, which is impressive cos i don't know that many to begin with. ok la. i concede that for those i know, i am not that close to them anyway and hence it's perhaps not too surprising that i don't recognise them after all the dressing up and make up and stuff.

ok. decided to be an idiot and continue my comments on the girls. firstly, i must declare that all the girls looked completely stunning. but they stun you in two different ways though. one makes you want to get stunned again, while the other causes you to pray, and pray damn hard, that you'd never get that stun again. lol. ok la. not so bad. actually everybody looked beautiful and are all queens and princesses. :) (ok i don't know what i'm saying that for, since i doubt any girls come here anyway.)

post prom for me was much much lamer than kovan's. but i shall not spill the beans since i've promised not to. the official record is that we went to shenghao's house, down-ed 5 bottles of beer and polished off a black label, became roaring drunk but maintained our sensibilities, and went home in the morning. ok. that's it.

and yeah, cannot drift apart lah. i mean pls, singapore already not very big, if drift somemore than don't have anything left liao. ok. that's not very funny. but anyway, we'd certainly meet up. :) all of us are serving ns anyway, so we are bound to meet up on weekends and stuff. i'm thinking of a gathering near the start of next year, after lz comes back. :)

and on a side-note, interviews can get pretty tough, as i've found out from the various negative results that have come to hit me. so good luck to everyone and have a great holiday before we all head to tekong. in fact, wentao's almost on his way there? :P haha. but no worries, we will join you soon enough and then we can all have fun on the weekends after we book out. :D

RJC Prom '08 @ Swissotel, The Stamford

2008-12-05T15:52:00.003+08:00

So prom is finally over! Wonder whether you all had the same headache as me finding what to wear...you know everything single thing I was wearing (except socks and underwear) was new and cost $500 in total zzz. Not to mention I got scammed and paid $70 for makeup (pluck eyebrows, foundation, powder, lip gloss) and hair (spike and glitter) at some Hollywood Secrets place which is just slightly less than girls' price only but oh well its once-in-a-lifetime and it was really fun :D

I think the programme itself wasn't too good, especially everything to do with the Prom King and Queen nominees part but luckily got other good performances and dances to steal their limelight. So sad that none of us won anything during the lucky draw! But nvm the important thing was an opportunity to meet everyone in their most glam outfit for a final time and take tons of photos wheeee :D but eh we didn't take a full 2klever photo shot sigh. This was the closest i got with shida and chris in the picture ><

Hmmm btw wonder if this happened to you, but the guy serving our table didn't have brains...everyone was forever walking around so the plates were still full and when then next dish came out he would take away all the full plates (even though there's still space on the table). So my council table ended up with lots of hungry people.

My post prom activity was quite lame...We booked 2 hotel rooms to share amongst 20 councillors and stoned in there (got complaint from next door) then went out to walk around Esplanade and to the Macs at Boat Quay. Lol then returned to the hotel about 4 plus and talked until 6 then everyone collapsed around the floor and fell asleep until 10.30. It was still quite fun lah to be amongst friends and talk lots of nonsense. Oh did anyone here go clubbing? :P

Yup anyway so back to the present and now there's really nothing much to look forward to, we're going to drift away from our friends (hopefully not 2klever gang) slowly and make new friends in NS. Finally everybody is growing up :(((

back

2008-11-28T22:55:00.003+08:00

whee. back from hols. generally enjoyable, except the bad news i received regarding the rejections after interviews. lol. just i have to work a lot harder i suppose. hope to see you guys soon. :)

holiday

2008-11-22T21:56:00.002+08:00

hey . i will be in malaysia from tmr onwards till about next saturday i think. since i will be overseas, i probably won't answer calls (if any) cos of the prohibitive costs. pls sms me if there's anything. thanks! :)

day 7

2008-11-12T18:24:00.002+08:00

erm. feel rather confused now. so i don't really know what to say. on one hand, i am somewhat relieved that econs is over, but the fact that i put up such a mediocre or even less than mediocre performance isn't really very comforting. the paper today isn't really very difficult, but it isn't that simple either. a mediocre response to a mediocre paper. hard to see how an A can come from there. haiz. and walking home in the rain sucks too. it feels somewhat apt though. lol.

guess i may have to make some modifications to my plans for my studies, after taking into account my poorer-than-hoped showing for the exams. shall see what happens bah.

meanwhile, the good thing is that there are really very few things left. for the physics people (i.e. most of us here), there are only 2 mcqs left. lol. and if i'm not wrong no one is taking moe h3 here? unless junren is taking math? don't think so though. haha. yeah. anyway, the bio people (i.e. christy and i) still have bio paper 3, which is widely hoped to save the disastrous paper 2. yeah.

but for now, it's time to take a rest. i really couldn't sleep last night and kept having nightmares. lol. and they were totally not related to econs but just a jumble of scenes from thrillers and horror movies. lol. whatever. shall go jogging tmr morning if it doesn't rain. time to start preparing for NS. i'm expecting myself to clock a way too dismal 13++ minutes tmr, since it's really been ages since i last ran. tried out pull-ups today and managed 7, which is pretty good considering how long it's been since i last trained. yeah.

so have a pleasant day ahead and hope you guys feel better for econs than i do. :)

day 6

2008-11-11T17:55:00.000+08:00

chem was fine i suppose. one of those easy but come out saying '^E@#$&^&*$% what did i do??!!' papers. lol. checked answers with a few pros and realised i lost quite a bit of marks here and there. a lot of nitty gritty stuff like all answers to 1 d.p. and counter-ion for the diamine silver compound (which i suddenly realised may not require chloride since in solution in exists as an ion). but mostly embarrassment and the damage is more or less under control. think everyone handled this chem paper fine? so if paper 1 goes smoothly, chem should be reasonably secure too. :)

unfortunately, the same cannot be said for econs. found it really challenging. the questions were not straightforward and there were significant difficulties deciding on what the questions were asking for, as well as the appropriate structures to answer them. as usual, time was a huge factor and i couldn't really finish doing the paper. used the same strategy as prelims, which is to do well for two questions and do whatever i can for the last, such that they can average out and be decent. risky stuff and i don't think it worked out well this time because i am not really confident of my first 2. lacked breadth i think. or maybe for some i went too broad and didn't focus on the specific issue. don't really have a good idea now. guess only the grade next year will tell. since it's by percentile then i suppose it's all relative and thus hard to predict anyway.

alright. for econs there's obviously one more (and one last) chance tmr with the case study. traditionally i've been much better with case study than my essays. hope this holds true and i can do well tmr. will be mugging a bit more before the exam tmr. yeah. good luck everyone. and hope we will all get our As for econs and all the other subjects. :)

interlude

2008-11-10T18:14:00.002+08:00

tmr's the almighty econs exam! *fanfare, cheers, boos, rotten tomatoes, flowers, essentially a mix of responses*

yeah. so for all science students (which unless i am very mistaken include everyone here), tmr's the imba day with chem p2 in the morning and econs p2 in the afternoon. life's tough huh. i think i may speak for everyone here when i say that econs is the most dreaded subject in this exam series. for many of us, we've almost never ever seen an A in the econs row in our 2 years in JC. in fact, econs has consistently been my worst subject in every single exam in JC, with the exception of prelims. so, it's time for all of us to hope for a miracle. haha.

but anyway, we have econs pros here too. kovan's a pro, and then christy's pro too. in fact, lingzhang's made it to the dean's list for promos if i'm not wrong. yeah. so with all these formidable expertise, we can look forward to some smiles at the end of the afternoon tmr. :)

alright alright. enough crap from me. since i didn't do well for chem p3 (by losing tons of random marks all over the place), it's quite imperative for me to spare chem some time tonight as well. so i shall go wrap up my econs for today and proceed to salvage my chem.

so good luck to all of us for the papers and hopefully we'll all be smiling happily (not maniacally) tmr. :)

Econs drive people mad.

2008-11-07T19:37:00.002+08:00

No prizes for guessing who the dude is.

day 5

2008-11-07T14:38:00.003+08:00

hey i'm seriously getting lazier. almost didn't want to blog but i suppose since i said it's going to be a daily thing i've got to keep that promise think today's math is even more manageable than yesterday's chem? yeah. but of course easy papers have their traps too. you don't come out saying 'oh man, that was damn hard, that blah blah question totally cannot do', which can actually be a nice thing because it's academic / intellectual. instead, you come out from easy papers saying 'oh crap. &^$%^#$%^* how the hell did i do that wrongly? &&%*()(*%^$%^'. yeah. so that's the general concept.

pretty happy though, cos i learnt my lesson from the 10 mark garden question and didn't seem to have made any major mistakes this time. if everything goes favourably, math should be secured. :) i think the same should be true for a lot of people bah.

of course, next week's the really exciting one. with the exception of bio paper 2 which i have described earlier in great detail, all papers this week were expected to be within range anyway, supposedly sure-kills for many science students. but alas. come tuesday next week, and all of us will really be fighting for our lives in that 135 minutes, desperately struggling to come out on top of the econs essays. ok. ben's the happy man here, since he doesn't take econs. lol. but jap's tough too?

for the rest of us, tuesday will probably mark the climax with chem paper 2 and econs paper 2. following straight after is econs paper 1 on wednesday. after that, i think most of us can let out a sigh of relief since most of us will be left with only chem paper 1 and physics / bio papers, which we can then focus on without other worries.

at the end of the first week, i can only say that while the end is not yet in sight, we are certainly near, if not already past, the half-way point. looking back, this week had the not-so-good gp papers, the i-made-stupid-mistakes math paper 1, the *&^%^%*&%# bio paper 2 (which according to a tutor is now the subject of discussion for the entire department. p.s. advice from the tutor: work hard for paper 3. lol.), and the manageable chem paper 3 and math paper 2. yeah.

so good luck to everyone and let's all just do a pull-up over the weekend for econs. :) (explanatory note: pull-up cos it's supposed to pull up your grades. lol.)

yeah. so here's to a fruitful weekend ahead for everyone! cheers! (heehee, my dad's coming back with brandy, wine and chocolates tonight. wheeeee.) (ok fine. i can't touch the first 2 until A lvls over, but just plain fine dark chocolates are already sufficiently enticing. lol.)

day 4

2008-11-06T16:54:00.002+08:00

feel particularly lazy today. don't feel like talking too much about the chem paper. i think everyone who did it should know roughly how it's like right? haha. reasonably manageable and of course i never failed to lose significant quantities of marks, but i suppose overall should still be fine bah. :)

yeah. math tmr. got to make sure i do it right so as to balance the unba performance for paper 1. lol. alright, way to go people. after tmr, we are almost half done. as in gp and math are totally over, left with 2/3 of chem and physics / bio, and the whole of econs. quite scared for econs actually. but shall not discuss this now. yeah.

good luck everyone for math tmr! and if the passer-by passes again without putting down a name then... erm.. ok i can't think of a solution now. but yeah. lol. mysteries are baaaaddddd.

day 3

2008-11-05T17:17:00.002+08:00

omg. the epic battle that is called bio paper 2 - core paper just ended this afternoon. out of the battlefield came shell-shocked soldiers (i.e. stunned students), outraged at how poorly equipped they were and how the enemy (i.e. the paper) could be so cruel to us.

the first evil signs appeared even before the soldiers marched into the battlefield. as zero hour approached, the sky darkened, eventually turning into torrential rain, forcing all our troops into a column, seeking shelter from the rain, as we waited for the doors to open. perhaps we should have sensed then, as we have realised now, that a great massacre was about to begin, starting by arranging us into neat columns for slaughter.

they lured us in.

the first question was deceptively simple, asking for really obvious things that didn't require much of anything. smiling, our troops holding elite pistols gunned down these things with ease.

they shocked us.

the second question can be described as an air strike. from the middle of nowhere, a fleet of bombers came in and shelled the hell out of us (i.e. application question which we've never heard of any of the terms in it). armed only with pistols, we valiantly but futilely tried to fight back, only to be shocked by the power of the bombshells. (not sure if this is the correct question, as in whether the weird application question was question 2, but let's just assume it is for convenience)

they destroyed us.

the next few questions deployed a combination of the tactics of confusion and annihilation. while most of the time not even knowing where our enemies are (i.e. don't know what the questions are asking for???) we got hit left right and centre. having been forced into a tiny square and set up our peripheral defences, our little comfort zone is only to be destroyed by rolling tanks. (i.e. yet more weird questions which gave very little information and required a lot of deductions)

they forced us onto a road of no-return.

the final essay question was supposed to be a 2-choose-1. but for most of us, it was hardly any choice at all. one of the routes looked omnious, but the other is so blatantly ridden with road-side bombs, landmines, atomic wastes, bio-hazardous materials (i.e. ultra difficult not-taught-in-rj and difficult to explain and phrase questions) that we didn't have to waste time evaluating. in fact, i heard that from my entire class, only gerald toh was brave enough to choose that other question, though we may never know the outcome. fortunately, by then we are already hardened ruthless killers and as we tread the omnious path, we took what we could and just went on.

the battle is not over.

while we (i.e. i'm making a generalisation that's not actually qualified. so pls forgive me, those who aced this paper) may have lost the strategic stronghold of bio paper 2 - core paper, there is still a glimmer of hope. our fortunes may yet be reversed. all shall be revealed on the 17th of Nov, bio paper 3 - the last stand.

may our troops rise above this bionic monster.

Auspicium Melioris Aevi

day 1 and day 2

2008-11-04T18:59:00.002+08:00

ok. since kovan asked for it, i shall just do it for fun. lol. didn't want to do it this time cos it's A lvls and thus a bit sensitive. also, i bet everyone wants to hear good stuff but i don't have much good stuff to say. lolz.

day 1: GP
ok. it certainly wasn't anywhere near good. but i don't think i did that badly. should be hovering between A and B? from borderline B all the way to borderline A, which is quite a big range i must admit. didn't do well for essay and AQ so these two will be the guilty ones should i get lousy results. anyway, the whole thing doesn't feel very real, even now. not very real in the sense that i don't have the 'the results of these exams will determine my fate' kind of feeling, which it is actually quite true. haiz. felt ok after i got home and relaxed and slacked a bit. yeah.

day 2: math
omg wth ^%$$&^#&*&*$%&^#&* totally punished me. i felt it was significantly more difficult than expected, in that the questions are really different from the usual stuff that we get during exams. and i made a minor mistake at the start of the 10 mark question which will prove to be my downfall since everything else that followed had to use that equation and were hence wrong. gg. now i'm just hoping that they have error-carried-forward, or method marks, or sympathy marks, or whatever, as long as it'd give me something other than 0/10. yeah. guess now it's time for damage control. cannot make any more mistakes on friday. yeah.

will be mugging bio later today and tmr morning since it's an afternoon paper. bio has traditionally been my weakest subject among the sciences, so have to put in some extra effort for it i suppose. i think chem paper 3 will prove to be a nightmare but i shall only elaborate on that tmr. yeah. now i'm only in the mood to salvage whatever i can by mugging bio. lol.

alright. good luck to everyone! don't know about you guys but i think i need it. haha. and hope physics p3 went well for everyone this morning. :) jiayou guys! :)

2008-11-01T10:00:00.002+08:00

hey hey. forgot to add this last night. we've got to go out and play after A lvls alright. i suggest cycling at ECP in the day and finding someone's house for a stay-over at night. bet it'd be lots of fun. wheee. ok. just a suggestion, since we can basically do whatever we want after As. haha. alright. all the best!

2 days left!

2008-10-31T18:55:00.002+08:00

hey guys! it's 2 days left to start of A lvls! wheee. here's wishing everyone the absolute best and good luck for everything! just 2 days left le, so it's time to relax yourselves and cut some slack really. :) don't get too stressed it over these last few days le. i think it's a better idea to not know a few tiny details which won't even be test and feel totally relaxed and at ease, than to know that few more points but feel anxious and nervous throughout. yup yup. so, take a break (as in study less and get ample sleep and entertainment) for these 2 days and full charge for As on Monday! wheee! haha.

this week's rather terrible for me though. got double negatives so that'd make me a real noob. lol. fundamentally it's still about not being good enough so hopefully i will be better in the main cycle for the other stuff. yeah.

so have a good friday night along with a great weekend! drink plenty of water, eat well and sleep! we will all ace As. (heehee repetition in sound intended). =D

Random

2008-10-30T10:43:00.003+08:00

i'm a noob

2008-10-28T20:43:00.001+08:00

wth??!!

2008-10-25T11:01:00.004+08:00

this is amazing. i just received a random chinese call to do a survey? diaoz diaoz diaoz. unbelievable. super random lah. must be some latest scam so i said sorry and hung up. lol. everything's becoming weird nowadays. haiz.

wish i can focus on my studies too. bleahz. have fun mugging everyone, and good luck to kovan and i for this afternoon. :)

Mugging is fun (:

2008-10-25T00:31:00.003+08:00

Mugging is quite fun after all. Sitting in the quiet library with aircon and friends, doing paper after paper as time goes by and only stopping to eat lunch and dinner...it becomes a clockwork routine everyday with nothing much to stress about (except A levels in a week's time). If only time could stop!

Hope its the same for you guys...just stick to your mugging plan and don't worry too much, everything will be fine and over in 3 weeks!

coffee powers

2008-10-24T13:35:00.002+08:00

oh man. can't begin to describe the stupid feeling now. lolz. i have a headache and i'm really tired but i am wide awake of cos some coffee that i drank earlier. i guess my nap isn't likely to be successful. haiz.

anyway, tmr's cambridge's tsa. after semi-messing up my interview, it's quite a good idea to do well for tsa tmr. lol. and good luck to kovan, who's taking it too. :)

as usual, good luck to everyone and hope we all get what we want. :D

time to do a pull-up

2008-10-22T17:56:00.004+08:00

lol. wanted to take a nap but couldn't sleep. pissed myself off instead. haha. wonder if any of you had similar experiences, like really want to sleep but cannot fall asleep. lol.

ok. i don't really have anything to say, except that we must all work hard and give ourselves the final lift (hence pull-up. haha.) for this last lap. :) yeah. so jiayou and good luck everyone! haha. see you guys around in school.

p.s. lol. and i feel highly retarded. whee. i'm a retard. haha.

Eggs?

2008-10-16T21:46:00.002+08:00

That reminds me of something i saw a while back...

For those who cant read japanese, the thing on the label reads, "egg of godzilla".

Dinosaur Egg

2008-10-14T23:10:00.002+08:00

@ Hyrum : Lol one step at a time I guess. We shouldn't be thinking about anything else except A levels now. Which is precisely what I am not doing. I should eat some of my own medicine...

@ the RI thingy: Yeah now it sounds really weird and stuff but people will not care/will be used to it in 1 years' time and soon we'll be the only ones who think its really weird since we were there at the time of change.

Anyway, my mum bought some interesting prunes(shida told me they're called that), or 李子 in Chinese. They're nicknamed Dinosaur Egg(恐龙蛋) because they're super huge(going by prune standard). I just consumed one and found they are just as delectable as they sound. Actually that's a lie since I found that out when I was consuming one the one before yesterday. But oh well...

I don't know why I'm posting this actually...think I'm just too damn bored. So bored that I ponned econs mock paper today. LOL!

Dodos, dinosaurs and yellow traffic lights

2008-10-14T20:27:00.003+08:00

To think that just a few years ago, we were among the last to eat at the old canteen and study in the old admin block classrooms. I can still remember the flaking paint on the doors and the crumbling cork noticeboards (I think i had a good time pulling pieces off it). We were the last to walk around in a campus without plasma TVs hung at every turn of the corner. We were the last GEP students to be put in different classes. We experienced a change in headmaster in RI and a change in principal in RJ. And now this.

We are the group fortunate and at the same time unfortunate enough to witness the physical and abstract structures of education being revamped. In the eyes of the optimists we are the harbingers of change and the pioneers of a new age; to the pessimists we are but guinea pigs of failed experiments, marked for extinction just like dinosaurs and dodos were.

Let me first point out that a merger can have its merits. Look at NUSHS. Their school system is what i would call "seamless". They don't have rubbish like PW, and their syllabus is adjusted and evened out so that they learn more stuff, but at an overall leisurely pace.

Has RP been doing that? I'm afraid not. The evidence is obvious, at least for the subject of physics. NUSHS students learn the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian equations which we do not even begin to mention in our most in depth "enrichment" activities. Our H3 syllabus is to them, cake. And here is why: their syllabus is spread out, rather than doing some superficial separation of science into "o-level" and "a-level" science. A further merger is hence an exciting opportunity to fix this. Merge the corresponding departments, or at least maintain a good level of corroboration such that there is a smoother transition.

Unfortunately, the decision makers don't seem to want to go to the trouble of doing this. They would rather keep the 2 institutions separate, and put in place a superficial name change which, ironically, only makes its students feel out of place. The essence of the system and the problems caused by it remain. The "changes" that already took place and the "changes" which are about to take place are really convenient excuses for failure, the "changes" are then masqueraded, repackaged and resold as a remedies for the same failure they caused. It seems that "change" and its abuse is becoming increasingly fashionable.

Sometimes change is important and essential. At a junction, a green light has to change to yellow and then red, such that cars traveling in the perpendicular direction could pass. There may be a greater frequency of traffic accidents in the duration the yellow light is lit. People would try to rush past the junction before the red light lights up. Yet the yellow light is still essential in this case. It seems that the people at the top are randomly installing extra traffic lights in the middle of road sections and hoping something good would come of it. The cars, already moving slowly due to congestion, are forced to slow down, stop, and wait-- for nothing.

post A's

2008-10-14T12:47:00.002+08:00

cant wait for it. im too bored studying econs, so decided to blog abit since i havent wrote anything here for quite some while. well hope no one's dying from the mugging. how i wish alvls will be over by next week then can start playing again man. anyways im looking forward to post a's fun haha. k i think i run out of things to type already so i shall end. mug mug

hyrum

(i think the change of name is quite dumb too. but doesnt bother us anyways cos we'll be out of the school by then!)

Raffles Institution

2008-10-13T19:20:00.002+08:00

So that (points upward) is to be the new name of our junior college AND secondary school starting from 2009 onwards. I have no idea who was the first person who came up with this idea, just that the whole thing seems highly illogical and I do not understand why anyone would push for this, what more manage to make it come true.

I fail to see how the 'merger' will benefit the new students, especially if RGS is not part of it, and since we are already under the same board of directors and are already supposed to have a 'seamless progession' in the Raffles Programme. Whatever benefits there are supposed to be, I find that either these 'benefits' already exist now, or there is little to be gained from merging under one name.

The school website claims 'since early this year, we have been consulting groups of key stakeholders, including staff, students, parents and alumni of the three Raffles schools, to share the rationale and benefits for greater collaboration, and seek their views regarding the merger. Overall, the stakeholder groups were aligned and excited about the vision for the Raffles schools.' I wonder which students they consulted, for I was certainly not one of them.

So far, reactions from my friends vary from surprise to mute acceptance, but nobody seems to welcome it. The girls obviously do not like it, the guys do not like it, and yet it is going to happen. I remember not so long ago when I was laughing together with my HCI friends at the change in name of their school, only for the same thing to happen to us now.

The school website goes on to claim that 'the merger will also allow the Raffles family to draw pride and inspiration from a rich and common heritage, thus anchoring students to a bigger community and instilling in them a strong sense of social responsibility.' Perhaps, but then RI and RJC are not exactly the same, and thanks to the merger, I somehow feel that I have lost my own heritage from both institutions and now belong somewhere 'in between'. ):

whee!

2008-10-12T19:30:00.002+08:00

hey. felt the gathering was great, albeit a bit short overall (since i turned up late. :( ). but nonetheless, so happy to see everyone again and it was fun. and i promise i'd break my pool curse the next time round! let's meet up and have tons of fun after a lvls! :)

outing on coming friday

2008-10-07T21:52:00.003+08:00

venue: kovan's house
time: after farewell assembly till night
activities: bball, swimming, pool, dinner, anything you want

we will meet at kok's class lockers after farewell assembly. lunch will somehow be settled on the day itself. if you have some class thing, can just go kok's house straight after that. :) dinner is now at new york new york. will decide on the branch and book tmr. :)

confirmed afternoon + dinner: ben, jord, hyrum, lz, kok, shida
confirmed afternoon: wentao, junren, chunkai
confirmed dinner: chris

junren may be joining dinner but not confirmed yet. so everyone is attending this some time in the day. lol. ! any objections / suggestions pls just sms me. thanks! see you guys then

outing on 10 oct

2008-10-03T22:50:00.002+08:00

alright. 2klever outing on 10 oct at kovan's house! pls bring whatever you want to play i suppose (but apparently play stations and things like that will be out). wonder if we can swim. the weather's been warm so it'd be nice to swim. haha. so we will meet at about 2 in school after any post-farewell assembly class activities. we'd probably be having dinner together as well.

pls confirm attendance by smsing me. for those who don't sms me by tuesday, i'd call you up and haunt you till you agree to come. lol. have an enjoyable weekend! =)

of course things can be better...

2008-09-29T22:09:00.002+08:00

got back my econs today and am really very grateful for the result. managed to clinch a much-desired A. phew. glad that my efforts paid off and of course i will continue to work hard for the subject and improve on my weaknesses. so overall, with the exception of gp, i did reasonably well, or in fact pretty good for this exam. of course some subjects showed deprovement and so on but everything's still within range. felt rather sad this evening. was thinking how nice it'd be if cai na can be here to share my happiness. instead, i almost had to have dinner alone outside, but was thankfully saved at the last moment by my mom who agreed to come out for dinner together. so of course, things can be better. i could have gotten better grades and cai na could have still been here with me. but still, i am extremely grateful for all that i have now, and i believe everything will work out nicely eventually. i have faith, and i am supported by all my dear friends. onward.

what can i say?

2008-09-27T17:57:00.002+08:00

a part of me left with her today. for the uk.true both literally and figuratively. i hope and i believe that it will return, and together with the part of her that is left with me, make us both whole again, melding into a new entity larger than the sum of its parts. we will work hard, for our future.

really fortunately, prelim results were reasonable. though rather far from ideal, especially considering the exceptionally poor gp grade (i almost failed my essay, the marker failed my content), everything is more or less within control. yeah. so instead of getting totally devastated by her departure, i am ready to take on whatever comes, armed with the confidence that i did ok for prelims even though i did lots of things that i shouldn't have done during that period. lol. shall do a more thorough review of prelim performance after i get back my econs paper next week.

anyway, wonder if everyone's free on the evening of farewell assembly. we can probably have a nice little gathering over dinner or something. pls tag to indicate interest bah.

good luck to everyone(especially lingzhang with his SATII) and hope prelim results are within expectations for everyone. :)

real-time update: on the evening of day 11 (sequel)

2008-09-20T20:22:00.002+08:00

oh well. thought i'd just post something since i said i would. haha. read a few brainless books as well as peanuts today. peanuts is really cute! all the kids and snoopy. wheeeeeeee. feel like being a small kid like them. lolz. suppose that's a luxury impossible to attain now. yeah. and then i slept and slept and slept, from about 3+ to 7. missed yifei's call for ucas. luckily i woke up in time to see the msg and handed in my ucas app online. phew. almost missed the dateline. subsequently, i went for dinner with my parents at the nearby hawker centre and strolled back home. lol. yeah. so it's been a really relaxed day for me.

now, i shall go give my lazy body a good scrub, followed by a call to my dear and then the movie 'cars'. heehee. wonder how everyone else is doing. hope you haven't all started mugging yet. a few of my classmates claimed that they will start mugging real soon. that's so disheartening right. i really believe should take a few days off to take a break from the whole year's work so far. (alright, that's a bit exaggerated since it's not as if i haven't had a break since start of the year. lol.)

so, hope everyone's having fun and i look forward to seeing everyone for a gathering some time soon, though i have no idea how i'm going to be able to turn up for it. lolz.

real-time update: day 10 (delayed)

2008-09-20T09:42:00.002+08:00

yeah. so sorry about the delayed release of the last issue of the real-time update series. so, prelims ended with a bang on friday morning for me with the difficult but managed to pass chem mcq and for the rest with the i-have-no-idea-what-it's-about physics paper 1. hope it was better than chem at least. haha.

anyway, met with caina and spent the day with her. shall not indulge the details since i'm certain such trivialities do not interest anyone here.

so, let me sum up my thoughts and emotions from prelims. i think of all the major exams in rj, i ironically took this the easiest. not because i was so well-prepared but because i'm really getting tired of the whole thing. so instead of giving it my all and pushing myself to the fullest like i should, i just cruised through the whole exercise. will soon know over the next 2 weeks how much this attitude is going to cost me. and as all of you probably know, caina's leaving really soon. so if i am emo or weird or unreasonable, pls just bear with me for a while and i'd be fine after some time. so sorry about this and thanks for all your understanding.

simultaneously have a lot and nothing to say. i'm already getting a bit emo, early in the morning. alright. shall take the weekend off and just totally chill out. hopefully i'd produce a cheerful sequel to the series this evening. =) meanwhile, hope everyone's enjoying the post-prelims break!

real-time update: day 9

2008-09-18T19:31:00.002+08:00

alright. this is the penultimate issue of teh real-time update series. bio paper 1 today was, well, just ask the rest. i suppose it's one of the highlights of prelims since either than a few ambiguous questions, there weren't anything particularly tricky or difficult in it. really pretty manageable. so hopefully the bio score'd be great overall. yayyyy. but wish the same can be said about econs. haiz.

anyway, as usual, nothing much was done in the morning of an afternoon paper. slept a great deal after i returned home. like from 5 (was reading peanuts before that) all the way till now. lolz. been sleeping plenty but not sleeping well. life's pretty tough huh. got to buck up a bit more tonight for the dreaded chem paper 1. after all, having been killed rather consistently for chem papers over this exam, there's hardly any reason for paper 1 to be an exception. (sorry lingzhang, this sounds gloomy again. :( )

anyway, won't be able to join you guys for the lanning or overnight stay although i'd really really love to. caina's leaving the next weekend so gonna spend more time with her. miss you guys as well though, since it'd been real long, like june hols or something, since we last met up. bleahz. guses i'll have to wait till after a lvls. we can probably stay over somewhere or maybe go for a short overseas trip or something. anything actually.

alright. gotta go do some work. so good luck to everyone for the last 1 / 2 papers tmr! liberation's at hand! (even though i'm not so sure whether getting liberated is a such good idea in the first place. lol.)

real-time update: day 8

2008-09-17T17:48:00.002+08:00

alright alright. the real-time update series is coming to an end soon. i am absolutely confident that everyone's totally sick of this lackluster series already. haha.

alright. slacked around today again. in fact, i was so sick of slacking around, i picked up a wire gause and happily scrubbed away at the family stove. lol. must say the stove was really rather filthy. years of oil and grease, combined with layers of dirt and the occasional pieces of meat and veggie, make the stove an absolute monster to conquer. when i must set my sight on it, my breath was taken away by the guagantum task that awaits. poorly armed with just some household stove cleaning liquid and a weak-looking piece of mesh, i picked up my courage and led a death charge! waves of attacks were launched and thwarted. my hands took on various colors of rust, dirt and grease, with skin wrinkling and eventually peeling from the highly corrosive cleaning liquid and the relentless scrubbing. alas. hardwork prevails, and i managed to use so much of that intensive cleaner that one of the rings underwent oxidation of the 10th order in terms of reaction kinetics, with rust forming right in front of my eyes! lol. more scrubbing and cleaning followed, until finally everything was sparkling clean and shining more brightly than when they were new. applause for my achievement please! *claps claps claps claps (polite at first, then picked up momentum to become a thunderous applause)*

alright alright. i confess that i exaggerated. but i hope that did provide some entertainment. still, i did spent 2 hours scrubbing the stove until my hands turned raw. really hard work man. pretty sure no one who reads this has ever done that before.

ok. so now i shall be a good boy and take a look at my bio mcqs like i should. and hope all of you did great for physics today. =)

real-time update: day 7

2008-09-16T21:27:00.002+08:00

alright. today brings the conclusion of the writing-based papers. both the math and bio papers were reasonable. not too difficult and not too easy. everyone's banking on these 2 to balance out earlier disasters. lol. hope that'd do the trick.

anyway, been slacking around since i got home. cut my hair, started adn finished reading a short fiction and just lazed all over the place. haha. life's feeling rather relaxed at the moment. will probably rest really early tonight and hope i'd get a good night's sleep.

and good luck to all the physics people for tmr! =)

look forward to meeting up with everyone after a lvls. we play some ball, lan and stayover at someone's house or something. sounds pretty fun right? haha.

real-time update: day 6

2008-09-15T21:18:00.002+08:00

alright. everything today was just fine. not good not bad, perfectly mediocre. the papers were neither outrageously difficult nor exceedingly easy, which is not to say that i did well. everything just seemed to go reasonably.

now, i am tired, so i shall go hit the bed! :) good luck everyone for math tmr and hopefully bio paper 3 won't be too crazy. see you guys around.

real-time update: day 5

2008-09-12T11:16:00.001+08:00

alright. don't know how many people share this state. but chem p3 just died. or rather, i died in chem p3. lol. the paper was really difficult for me. can't pinpoint a single ultra-difficult-impossible-to-figure-out component but each part took time to do and my rusty chem just couldn't handle the load that came. couldn't finish the paper and couldn't do some of the parts as well. so sum it all up, it's baaaaad.

okok. enough of that. luckily everything can still be salvaged. there's still paper 2 for chem and paper 1 for econs. assuming i get full marks for these two, i may still get As after all. lol. okok fine. i really shoudln't harp on past failures anymore.

will be picking things up over the weekend. hopefully next week turns out well and the stupid sore throat that i when doing the chem paper goes away soon.

good luck folks, hope you all fared better than i did.

real-time update: day 4

2008-09-11T21:33:00.004+08:00

hey wentao, beg your pardon but headcrabs are seriously disgusting. i get a literal headache when i fight them. they are just so so so eeeewwww-ish, jumping onto your heads and all. and the stupid thing with the long tongue that sucks you up too. the whole game's plain disgusting.

anyway, today's are totally not exciting day. slept till pretty late, read up on inorg chem, revised physical chem, had lunch, read the news, played some games, took a nap, had dinner and read the n07 paper ans. so, life's pretty peaceful. hope everything goes well for chem tmr and pls pls pls don't ask me to draw beta pleated sheet or alpha helix. lol.

alright. so good luck to everyone as usual! hopefully we'd all be in a good mood after the morning's paper. =)

oh. and i forgot to add. pls don't ask me to plot kinetics graph too. pls pls pls don't let me see a piece of graph paper on the table tmr.

ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH

2008-09-11T20:57:00.003+08:00

And so, as the rest of the gang work away frenziedly, i am yet again caught up in the latest internet meme.

I guess even with the famed doomsday device activating (LHC), the world is not going end--from black holes or strangelets-- not with gordon freeman and gman watching over us (oh yeah Rei-Lilith too, how can i ever forget that *baps self*). Also, headcrabs are cute.

real-time update: day 3

2008-09-10T17:54:00.002+08:00

thanks kovan! :) glad i was of help. anyway, that's what good friends are for right? i mean life is pretty tough nowadays since everyone's getting really competitive over stuff, but it feels really pathetic if everyone just smiles and then back-stabs each other. ok. shall not comment further on such sensitive issues.

on to the update for today. as usual for an afternoon paper, the morning was essentially wasted. just slacked around, ate, did a last-minute revision on differentiation and graphs. (of course they didn't help and whatever i mugged didn't come out. so predictable) lol. so went to school, had lunch, chit-chatted with yifei, lester, yonghan and yichen before taking the paper.

actually i felt pretty ok while doing the paper. cleared things systematically and had reasonably ample time to check. was feeling quite confident by the time the paper ended. but alas, things are not what they seem, once again. checked answers with several people and realised that i made some rather serious mistakes. some are glaring while others i simply ignored. lol. but still, the fall's within range and it's not yet disastrous.

went to see my civics tutor with lester and yifei after that to change the initials thing on the cambridge form, got to know that we can look forward to passing our econs essays and finally managed to get my psychometric assessment report back. didn't do well but it was reaonsable as well.

feel tired. :( shall go and take a nap (if it can still be called one) soon. tmr's a break for me so that's pretty great. going to spend it looking at my chem, which has recently falled into such a deep hole that i haven't figured how to fish it out. lol. alright. so this is it for today. good luck to everyone for physics tmr.

may the Force be with you. (pun intended. :P)

Thank You

2008-09-10T00:53:00.003+08:00

Hmm its getting late now, but I'm really tired of mugging so decided to post something...

Anyway the last few days have been really hectic and stressful for me, having to cope with last-minute mugging and application to Cambridge (personal statement!!!) at the same time. Being a blur person, I am somehow always the last person to find out info on signing up for stuff and its only by chance if I overhear others talking about it. The same thing happened for Cambridge app and I only found out about applying through the school the day before the deadline, and even after that I still didn't know tons of stuff like which college to choose, how to fill up the form, what to include in personal statement etc. (you will understand if you know what I'm talking about)

I just wanted to thank Shida for helping me throughout this entire process. You have voluntarily told me every single thing you know about this right from the start, calling me to make sure I meet the deadlines and not forget important things to include, even if it disadvantages you (after all I'm a fellow competitor in a way). You've sacrificed your mugging time and even got scolded for using the phone for too long just to help me, all these without expecting anything in return.

I was just thinking how lucky I am to have a friend like you to do all these for me so I am able to apply to Cambridge (getting in is another matter of course ><). I am 100% sure I would be hopelessly lost if I was left alone to do it myself and would probably do everything wrongly. I am deeply indebted to you and touched by your friendship and kindness.

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Thank you. Really.

real-time update: day 2

2008-09-09T20:36:00.002+08:00

hihi everyone. sorry. today's update's a bit late. but then again, i don't think anyone actually reads this now so i suppose it's ok. lol.

ok. today's rather fine. morning's bio paper 2 was generally reasonable. there were quite a few tricky questions which i wasn't sure what they were asking for. but still, the paper as a whole was ok and i don't think i did too badly for it. quite a key morale booster after a disastrous econs paper. just hope that my optimism isn't misplaced and i indeed did well for this paper.

stayed around in school for a while to chit-chat after the paper. talked about the questions and some other random stuff with vicky, yifei and shih ee. lolz. then came highlight of the day when i had lunch with cai na. :) talked a bit during and after lunch and returned home at about 1+. felt pretty happy. :)

yeah. then it was time for my nap as usual and i remained unconscious all the way till 430. started doing nj math prelim paper 1 at 5 and just completed it. did pretty ok for that too. so the general feel is quite comfortable now. going to go on to paper 2 and finish it tonight, leaving some last-minute reading of transformation of graphs to tmr morning. hope we'd all do well for tmr's math paper! :)

sad to say that i foresee the good days (actually only from last evening to tmr afternoon) are ending soon. after math will be the much dreaded chem paper 3. another one of those horrendous papers. lol. shall really mug very hard for chem over the next 2 days and won't touch it again even for paper 2. after all, there are even more dreadful stuff like econs case study and bio application syllabus to take care of over the weekend.

but anyway, whatever the future holds, i feel at peace and blissful at this moment. so all the best to everyone and this whole prelim exercise will be over before we know it. :)

real-time update: day 1

2008-09-08T16:56:00.002+08:00

alright. suddenly had this idea of recording prelims stuff for each day. so this is the first of a 2-week long series.

morning was uneventful. slept till 0930, had a last read of some essay outlines (none of which came out), had lunch outside with mom and went to school. happening things happened after 1pm. first did question 1, as i believe most people would have done. it was not that bad, but i spent too much time on it. so it's like the first battle of a campaign and you just enjoyed winning the battle and didn't care about the time. second question got tricky. i picked qn 5. wrote only a page on the 8 mark part to secure some basic marks, which proved to be a not-so-smart strategy as i couldn't score in the 17 mark part either. the last question was the absolute killer. picked question 4, which look deceiving manageable. but half-way into writing the 25 mark essay, i realised everything's not what it seemed. the focus was off, the breadth was too narrow and the depth was non-existent. by then it was too late to turn, and with barely 10 minutes left, i wrapped up what proved to be a crappy piece of work that didn't answer the crux of the question, and got ready to face the consequences of a not-even-glorious death-in-action.

lol. so that sums up the traumatising econs paper for me. sorry for ranting but i suppose it'd make an entertaining read. came home with lz, wentao, dongz and rong bing after they had lunch / dinner.

while everyone here rests at home tmr, actively building up his forces, christian and i will again brave the fire, this time in the morning, for biological warfare. being the core battle (i.e. paper 2, with the highest weightage), it is one that we cannot afford to lose.

so will we once again be slaughtered by the viruses and lethal genes as happened for common test 2 or will we rise up to the challenge and digest the paper to pieces using our restriction enzymes?

find out tmr in 'real-time update: day 2'

update

2008-09-02T23:25:00.002+08:00

oh well. since the last post is over a month ago, i shall just write something here. apparently, prelim is probably on everyone's mind now. can't believe how close the whole thing is. being adequately prepared is pretty out of the question. now it's about how to salvage the situation with the limited time and energy left. as usual, i'm hoping to maintain and improve upon the last set of results. who doesn't? lol. quite a few things are starting to take their toll on me. haiz.

anyway, let's all meet up after a lvls! must do that before people start leaving though. yeah. haven't managed to gather since june hols i think. and i recently found out on mrt what a perilous situation i was in that night i slept on lz's bed. shivers. haha.

alright. good luck to everyone and hope we all get something to cheer about a month later. =)

p.s. is junren alright already?

Drinks

2008-07-30T21:16:00.001+08:00

Upon returning home I would bounce into the house and empty the contents of my bag onto the table with much zeal. “Today shall be different”, I tell myself, congratulating myself on the positive change. The irony of this line soon presents itself to me as my enthusiasm starts sputtering and dying like a fluorescent tube nearing the end of its lifespan. The most important looking piece of assignment or worksheet is placed onto the center of the desk with ever growing reluctance, and then I pick up my pen with sluggish movements. I stare hard at the paper for a few seconds; scratch my head furiously, and attempts writing some things. With accuracy in timing unmatched by even Cesium atomic clocks, the bloody ballpoint pen runs out of ink after 3 words. I shake it and spin it around my fingers to no avail, and not long after I give up altogether in disgust. And so my typical afternoon begins with determination and ends with two extra lines on a piece of foolscap and a slightly longer exp bar on my revelation account.

Yet in a way today is indeed a different day worthy of some celebration, for I have been sufficiently inspired to blog here on 2klever, and that means doing something which has fallen out of my routine. Ah, how funny it is that man fears, abhors, needs and longs for change, all at the same time! But I shall leave that topic worthy of some discussion for another day, when my whims bring me back to blogging again.

Having recently read Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece Dune, the issues that revolves around drinking is still pretty fresh in my mind. This primal need for drinking is a constant reminder of man’s mortality. Considering this and the plight of the Fremen of Arrakis in the book, I am very much thankful of the government’s efforts in securing water sources. In this aspect at least it has done an excellent job in maintaining the status of drinking as an action of want rather than of need. Of course, a large portion of this unexpected admiration comes from the reclamation of human waste for drinking—a process utilized by the Fremen to solve their shortage of the precious liquid, and a very bold idea considering the potential feelings of repulsion that it might cause in pampered citizens.

I agree that the drinks one consumes at different stages of his life can reveal much about his psychology and character. The first carbonated soft drink which I ever tasted was Sprite. It is one of the few memories which have remained in my mind after so many others have been washed away by the sands of time. I was only a toddler then and did not quite know what to make of the clear, foaming liquid that looked like water. I tasted it, and immediately came to the conclusion that I both liked it and disliked it. I liked it as it was sweet, and I disliked it caused the characteristic scalding sensation common to all fizzy drinks. Such was the simplicity of my instincts! There was neither sophisticated evaluation nor unnatural psychology at work. I liked and disliked based on what my nerve endings told me. In a way, such simplicity of perception is something I have lost and am attempting to rediscover, this time without any guilt of over-indulgence and under Hedonistic justifications.

The next soft drink of significance would be Cola; that delightful blackish substance which the red and blue brands hold a duopoly over, constantly battling for dominance through primarily non-price competition. It not only tasted good, but its medicinal properties also made it a nifty little potion. On separated occasions it has miraculously managed to alleviate backaches, colds, tardiness, and even sore throats; I am not sure if I should attribute these seemingly powerful effects to pure chance or science, but at least the trace amounts of caffeine inside have proved extremely useful to one unaccustomed to the bitter taste of coffee, such as me.

To me the rest of the fizzy drinks are all quite insignificant both in terms of taste and personal meaning, but two of them deserve an honorable mention. The first is an unnamed brand of carbonated mineral water which tastes ridiculously bad, but has a nice durable green bottle which I use as a water bottle upon emptying its contents into the toilet bowl. The second would be Mountain Dew, which was the only fizzy drink we could find in RI in the good old days. Perhaps it would be interesting to note a rumor regarding the drink; that it was removed because of its effect of reducing sperm count. A rather unlikely story for RI to care about its students’ manhood(s) after it has made them all gay from deprivation, but nevertheless interesting.

Speaking of the effects of drinks on the reproductive organs I find it impossible not to move on to the famed and highly popular soya bean milk. After hearing unsupported claims that it contains a generous amount of estrogen and then that it is somehow good for the prostate glands, my curiosity was very much aroused (in case the reader’s mind is in the gutter, I assure you nothing else inappropriate was). What would be its actual effects? I recall Shakespeare’s comment on beer (and similar alcoholic drinks in general) in Macbeth: It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. Perhaps soya bean milk would work in the opposite manner, the positive effects on the prostate glands providing for great ability to perform but the estrogen destroying the urges. I wonder who is worse; willing but unable or unwilling but able?

If soya bean milk comes from the “cow without bones”, then equally important would be the nice white liquid (actually emulsion) that flows from the mammary glands of a cow with bones. Yet I have never ever liked this drink which is supposedly so wonderful for healthy growth. I absolutely detest calcium enriched milk for the bitter aftertaste; I hate skim or low fat milk because it doesn’t taste smooth; this was the same even for fresh, full cream sweetened milk that came in cartons I could only bear with for a few weeks before growing sick. To be fair it is probably due to my lack of appetite in the early morning and dislike for any liquid served above room temperature more than anything else, for I also disliked hot Milo and Horlicks in the morning. To a certain extent, this simply reflects my arrogance and great lack of regard for the nutritionists. I give little care to health concerns which are not immediate.

I should also briefly comment on the various drinks with solid or jelly like substances. These fulfill two basic needs at the same time, namely the need to eat and chew and the need to drink. A few years back I was introduced to the drink known as bubble tea. Though I was initially cynical of its popularity, when the general price level fell to below a dollar I soon developed a habit of grabbing a cup every day after school, sipping at it while I was engaged in mortal combats with other mages wielding powerful decks at the magic shop, which was strategically located next to not just one, but two bubble tea shops. With the recent inflation however, bubble tea has again become a “once in a while thing”. This just goes to show how consumers do indeed decide at the margin; a mere difference of about 20 cents is enough to change my decisions. For much of the last year I liked Chin Chow with nata de coco, but after realizing the fact that it is pretty much just sugar water I have lost most of the interest. That’s not to say that the original interest was born out of its nutritional value or anything, though. Its very name formed much of my motivation to drink it; it seemed only right for a xian (heavenly immortal) to drink xian cao shui. (heavenly grass water)

Having tasted so many flavored drinks, I find that the drink which is the most refreshing and which I am most used to is still water. My favorite drink was for much of the past, is now, and in the future should still be the plainest of all beverages. In many ways this is rather desirable, since it turns every second at the water cooler into quality time filled with much pleasure. It is indeed fortunate to be wealthy enough to afford expensive gourmet coffee, but isn’t it much better to like the very accessible tap water? I remember Dumbledore having told Harry Potter when the latter was looking into some magical mirror, “The happiest man in the world would be he who sees himself just as he is in the mirror” (or something along those lines). Wouldn’t a love for plain, tasteless water be a very real example of this ideal?

untitled

2008-07-30T14:15:00.003+08:00

well. call me incompetent or something. but after spending an hour searching online, i still didn't manage to find a fact regarding philosophy of science. haiz.

so, on my way to attaining insanity and since kovan complained about his post being the last post to be seen on the blog, i decided to drop by for a post.

realised my preference for drinks sort of traces my development / degeneration as a person. as a small kid, i was one of the few who didn't like coke, cos it's gassy and made my stomach feel really bloated and weird afterwards. so when all the rest drank coke straight out of the bottle, i shook the bottle hard, let out all the gas, and then drank something that was basically caffeinated sugar water. lol. that was the care-free and tender me, at a really tender age.

as i grew older, i began to be able to take the gas and after a hot day out running about, i learnt to appreciate the chilled fizzy drinks and all. at about the same time, in a feeble and naive bid to put up a sophisticated facade, i started to drink coffee and english tea. amazing stuff. i used to add so much creamer and sugar that they turn out to be nothing better than caffeinated sugar water again, something reminiscent of the shake-till-no-more-gas coke. lol.

then life got tougher, or perhaps my tongue grew less sensitive, and i began to like chinese tea, with its exceptionally clean and clear texture as well as the tinge of sweetness that lingers in the aftertaste. note that so far, despite the reducing sugar content, beverages remained beverages, consumed for the sake of satisfaction instead of utility.

recently, or to be precise in the past two years, i have a growing fondness of coffee and english tea without any sugar or creamer. clean shots of espresso easily became my drink of choice unless i'm totally relaxing and just want to take a break. preferences for tea changed too. bitterness is now a refined flavour that i looked for, since somehow it has the effect of jerking me out of whatever melancholy or chaotic state of mind that i am in, giving me a clean frame to work on things again. so beverages now take up the heavy responsibility of making me of utility when i am sinking into non-functionality. lol. what a pathetic degeneration right.

oh well. so much for that. actually all that i've written above are not entirely true all the time, in that for example i still regularly order mocha or latte or tea with sugar when i'm out. but the reasons have changed and the transition has been made. always feel that i am psychologically older than others of my age. maybe i do that on purpose, just to make self-pity easier, or maybe i'm just tired.

alright. it's time to look at the wretched philosophy of science and the internet again. till next time..

Rawr!

2008-07-23T00:41:00.001+08:00

I feel emo and angsty :( where, where is everyone, are you the person I'm looking for?

post common test reflections

2008-07-16T17:52:00.002+08:00

i know i really should be doing my gp essay plan or 3 best achievements write-up now but my brain just seems to be stuck and nothing coherent is coming out. so i decided to warm up the engine here before i give those daunting work another try.

so, talk about the CT. with the exception of math, every subject suffered significant dips in score, especially in light of the fact that most people improved in absolute terms, making my deprovement even more pronounced in relative terms. lol. start from the not-so-bad ones. econs fall by just 2 points, which is still bad since it's 2 case studies which is supposed to be easier than essays. chem fall by 3 points, which is really rather disappointing, since a lot of people had marked improvements and i was confident of obtaining a significantly higher score. gp fall by 4 points, which i felt is reasonably and perhaps reflects my standard a bit more realistically. bio is the ultimate failure. fall by a precipitous 11 points, eventually saved to the bare minimum for an A only by a miraculous moderation.

i think the drop in standard can be explained partly by my arrogance. was very confident about chem (due to relatively consistent performance before CTs) and bio (because i spent sooooo much time mugging it over the holidays). so of course chem died because i just forgot how to do a few questions on the spot and made weird mistakes elsewhere. really should have given chem more time and practice, especially closer to the test. bio was simply disastrous. despite the time and effort spent to memorize and internalize facts and points, my poor answering technique and comprehension of the questions simply wiped my marks out. lol. really got to brush up on that by practising more or at least reading a lot more sample answers.

GP's drop is pretty normal to me as it can be attributed to mid-year correction for my over-performance during CT1. lol. but still, i'd just continue to steadily do the work assigned by my tutor which has so far proven to improve my grades. =)

econs is rather disturbing. as i am thinking of pursuing my tertiary education in econs, it reflects really poorly on me that so far, it has consistently been my worst subject in terms of score for all the major tests and exams. =( i think i have problems structuring my answers as well as reading the demands of the question. will be seeking consultation with my tutor to clarify matters and learn how to decipher what the question wants.

ok. i think my writing skills have degenerated significantly. the whole thing just reads like a laundry list and there's hardly any insight or interesting point. bleahz. at this rate, it'd be tough to come up with an impressive 3 best achievements write-up. but whatever it is, i have to give it a try. shall go do it now. haiz. as things draw nearer, competition intensifies and weird things start to happen, i really miss the time we had together in secondary school, when everything seemed just that much simpler and more benign. oh well. good luck to everyone and hope we all achieve our goals! =)

I just lost the game

2008-07-08T19:21:00.003+08:00

%^$&^%*

2008-07-04T05:14:00.001+08:00

DAMNIT i got a D-round-up-to-C for chem man.

life's great

2008-07-01T20:13:00.003+08:00

whenever i feel tired, down, irritated or helpless, i draw motivation from this inexhaustible well which keeps me going. eventually, i will definitely prevail, since i simply cannot afford not to. lend me strength..

Rawr

2008-06-30T23:23:00.003+08:00

I typed quite a long post here. Then my friend asked me to see something on youtube, I clicked on the link, and poof there goes everything i typed! ><

Anyway CTs are over, our class took napfa today (lz and i both passed!!!) and we're getting back our CT papers over the next few days. Good luck everyone!

final term resolution

2008-06-30T22:49:00.001+08:00

waiting for results of common test now. econs has been confirmed to be dismal by my tutor, who gave a rough estimate of an average of 16/30 for the first case study for my class. at that rate, the overall average will be a fail, since the second case study was much harder. haiz.

very touched by nelson today. i jokingly told him to email me the bio mcq ans after his tutorial and he sms-ed me right after he got his answers. again, sadly, the score was rather dismal. lolz. got an unprecedented number of wrongs. was supposed to get back chem tmr but the whole thing got postponed to don't know when cos my tutor's out on course.

basically, this CT is quite screwy for me, judging from the information made available by this moment.

but anyway, i have decided to totally cut down on com games, and reduce my stoning and slacking periods. getting pretty desperate to do well. lol. after all, a high bar has been set by my dearest and i've got to try my best. whatever happens, i won't give up. it's really effectively the last term of the year, so it's time to 全力以赴。don't think my don't-want-to-put-in-everything attitude will work anymore. yeah. so it's all-out-and-hardcore time. 机不可失，时不再来，我抱着必胜的决心，此次不成功即成仁。ok. for those who don't understand what those chinese characters mean, it's alright. it just spells my determination. =)

hope everyone gets nice results for CT2, especially our 2klever gang. after all, we are supposed to be clever. haha. good night guys.

common test 2 tmr

2008-06-22T19:17:00.002+08:00

haha. feeling quite weird now actually. on one hand, i'm actually quite happy that common test is finally due, which means that the misery'd be over really soon. on the other hand, must admit that even though i've spent quite a lot of time at home, my mugging hasn't been half efficient, so i don't feel that prepared for my weaker subjects(econs and bio).

but anyway, whatever it is, by now i suppose almost everyone would have done most of what he / she can to prepare for the tests. otherwise, i think it's probably still advisable to stop now, have a good dinner, take a comfortable shower / bath and just rest for the night.

alright. shall not rumble on here. wish everyone the best of luck and hope all of us can do really well. =)

RE: CT2

2008-06-22T17:29:00.002+08:00

Haha kovan im more dead than you.....................................................................

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XD

CT2

2008-06-22T17:27:00.002+08:00

Last day of June hols. CT2 starts tomorrow. Completely unprepared for everything except for failing. :(

nostalgia

2008-06-19T23:14:00.003+08:00

oh well. actually this is really rather stupid. i went to my class egroup to check on some bio notes that they uploaded. decided to look at the photos section of the egroup out of curiosity. and surprise surprise! there are actually hundreds of photos uploaded there, when i expected almost none. lol. just looked through some of them. haha. miss the happy, cheerful and confident smile i had in J1 or the calm and settled look i had at the start of the year. recent photos all look a lot more forced. haiz. guess it can't be helped and things would get better after this phase is passed. interestingly, i looked really happy in the ssef photos. was wondering why i was so cheerful when i remembered feeling extremely screwed up over the judging. then realised that the photos were taken on the second day which was the slack day and i was meeting caina after that so was feeling really happy. lol. anyway, good luck to everyone mugging for common tests. look at it in a optimistic way, the whole thing'd be over in slightly more than a week's time. lol.

lolz.

2008-06-09T20:36:00.002+08:00

amazingly, no one seemed interested enough to post anything during the hols, even though all the exams during june hols are already over if i'm not mistaken. alright. so i decided to update everyone about things that are happening to me. (cue: start dozing off)

the best thing that happened in hols so far is band concert! haha. so happy to see almost everyone (with the exception of christy and junren, whom i later saw at raffles cup). really proud of lingzhang for his great performance. haha. envious of all the band people and want to learn a band instrument too. lol. guess that's got to wait till after a lvls. chester, paul, yiding and wen chong were great too! haha. totally loved the whole concert and everyone. i think i am super biased towards band. haha.

alright. revision's going ok. mostly done with math and chem. but those are the relatively easier subjects. the horrendously-tedious-to-memorise bio and the totally-no-idea-how-to-score econs are the stuff that're going to kill me for the rest of the hols. still lagging behind for tutorials too. didn't touch all the tutorials that won't be tested.

anyway, life looks like it's going to be tough. an extremely unfortunate ban on outings have been levied on me after my parents got rather dissatisfied with my performance. haiz. guess that's just the way it is and i've got to live with it.

hope all of you are having a good time. lingzhang's SAT II should be over liao so i suppose he can breath easier now. but must start mugging for CT so it's not that easy too. wonder if hyrum's having fun with his newly-purchased PSP. haha. the games should be fun, since jordan gave him some supplies. kovan's finally free from council commitments so now can focus on academic stuff and have a good rest? junren's preparing for math O? or don't need to prepare cos too pro already? haha. no idea what christy, jordan and wentao are doing though.

so people, pls pls pls update and post something. doesn't have to be anything significant. i suppose you guys talk to each other over msn but pls pity the poor kid here who doesn't use that thing anymore. so tag / post something! =D

shall go have dinner now. bye guys.

A great determination to mug is born

2008-05-23T20:46:00.004+08:00

[drama]
OMG H3 final exam is next week i still don't understand anything OMGOMGOMG IMMA DIE >.< :S D: X(
[/drama]

Excuse me, was merely attempting to enjoy the mortal joys of being limited by pseudo-disabilities. I think i deserve to be forgiven for wanting that once in a while.

As i was saying, I actually have a test next week. And then next next week is SAT subject tests. Yeah i know this wouldn't sound all that convincing but I erm... might need to study. probably. when i'm not playing comp, that is. So no vball or whatever nonsense!

wait i mean...
"I WILL be studying."
that sounds much more convincing right?

No? Bah.. forget it...
*aside* sigh... mortals.

you reap what you sow...

2008-05-22T17:38:00.002+08:00

haiz. just checked my SAT score. a rather dismal 2180 for me. =( must admit that i am really really disappointed. wanted at least a 2200. ok. looking at it from the bright side, it's at least a really minor improvement of 20 points over my previous seating, but then that can be attributed to random error. lol. alright. nvm. shall go on looking at the bright side of things and tell myself that i can go to UK to study and then SAT won't be that important.

anyway, to tie in with what the title of the post, i have to concede that i've not been putting in sufficient effort into my studies. for this, i shall blame it on CO (rather irresponsibly, since it's evidently my own laziness that got me into this state), and hope that now that concert is over, i can focus on my academic work again. =) anyway, i think SAT's just the start of the string of far-from-ideal-results that will be coming. GP common test was pretty disastrous as well. okok. i really should stop this stream of ranting lest i talk myself into a depression. lol. so what's important now is to do some concrete work, which is why i'm going to continue with my math revision worksheets.

we haven't met up for quite some time. let's find a common slot and meet over the holidays. see most of you guys at band concert then. =)

long time no post

2008-05-11T17:53:00.002+08:00

yeah. i think it's really been a long time since i last wrote something on this blog. in a way, i don't really have anything to see. been pretty busy with co and school work. oh. shall post an advertisement here. haha.

PLS COME FOR RJCO CONCERT ON COMING FRIDAY, 16th MAY AT SINGAPORE CONFERENCE HALL! TICKETS @ S$10, pls contact me via sms at 91725039 if you want any tickets. thanks lots!

haha. it's possibly going to be my last time playing on stage. feel excited but at the same time a bit sad. will be performing a duet concerto this time so it'd be quite interesting. =)

anyway, we should meet up in june hols. been really long since we met up as a group. don't mind playing some games or doing some sports, but am ok with lanning or pool or whatever else too. lol.

wanted to clear some work today but only managed to do 2 math tutorials so far. at least managed to be ahead of math tutorial again. phew. chem's way off though. still 1 tutorial behind so should be clearing another 2 chem tutorials after dinner. haha. surprisingly, it's actually pretty enjoyable to just sit there and systematically do work. suppose that's cos the miscellaneous stuff that co's been throwing at me got too overwhelming.

alright. shall now proceed to blog something on my wind section blog then go take dinner. cya guys around during math lectures. haha.

2008-05-03T16:55:00.002+08:00

finally h3 is over. and vball season too. sort of sad that we got kicked out so fast, but maybe if we got past group stages i wouldnt have time to study for h3. oh well.

hey i was thinking maybe we should all go out again. been quite a while back since we went out, but cant help it everyone is so busy the past few weeks. haha we should go sentosa and play vball! since got ben and jords as well haha will be quite fun. and take some pretty pics to post here cosi realise this place is quite void of any of our faces.

anyway to those out there who still got their h3 going on, let me laugh at you/ HAHAHAAHA x 12134545321

sorry i couldnt resist. happy mugging to yall.

cya around

Fulfill

2008-04-12T22:06:00.002+08:00

Ah, the drama that was my physics H3 term test (episode 2) is finally over. The reluctant procrastination repelling me time and again from studying; the ominous feeling which immediately followed later that night as i realized that my brain was as empty as a bamboo basket filled with water; frenetic last minute mugging on the day of the test itself; the escalating fear as the hour approached; breaking out in cold sweat as my gray matter attempted to recall things i never remembered in the first place; and then the relief as the test paper left my hands and the adrenaline left my head. Life is such an wonderful thing that even its worst sufferings are simply so... invigorating. Life's imperfections perfect the imperfect perfect life. You really have to experience it first hand.

Of course, i shall, in the spirit of the game, whine like everyone else. Yeah, life sucks. Life is tough. Exams can go to hell. Or it can go to heaven. I don't care where it goes, as long as that somewhere is a place which is conveniently out of my sight. In fact, i would rather it go to heaven. I know i haven't been a good boy, making blasphemous comments on my blog and never being a "conscientious learner"(aka bloody mugger). So i would probably go to hell. Since that is a very real possibility, i certainly would not wish for exams to end up in hell. Let those muggers mug all they want, be the good boys they want to be, and when they die and go to heaven they can mug some more. Yeah, same applies for books, worksheets and all the things commonly associated with hard work. They are good things and deserve nothing less than heaven. On the other hand, computer games, TV and unhealthy fast food are among the worst things that happened to the earth. These nefarious demonic artifacts create negative externalities by being evil temptations, and deserve nothing less than the 18 levels of hell. The place that i will go to when i die. And so the ranting continues as i expound on how even hell could be a decent place, especially when i take into account this horrendous life i am living.

Deep down inside though, all of us are simply hypocrites. We really love this "torment" more than any rock we see lying on the roadside. Despites the complaints we are alive, and we always make our best attempts to stay that way. People like to label the masochists as abnormal and perverted. Yet (though most would deny it) they fail to see that it is born of the very optimism which they promote so strongly.

Life sucks, but contrary to popular belief, stones and vacuum aren't mutually exclusive. Life rocks because it sucks.

Common test!

2008-04-07T18:55:00.003+08:00

all right. have gotten back all the results for common test I. have to say that i got real lucky this time. =) got 69 for econs which is just plain amazing for me and managed to grab an A for gp as well. so really did pretty well this time. 3 H2 As, 1 H2 B and 1 H1 A. =) whee. and all the individual results are largely satisfactory except for bio. hope everyone else managed to get nice results too. =)

pretty weird though, don't really feel very happy about these results. after all, it's the real A lvls that's going to count and like all disclaimers say, past results are not indicative of future performance. so must work hard and hopefully make these results reproducible. (with the exception of econs and bio for which i hope to have a bit more improvement. =P)

finally, have to bitch here about the H3 lab report. seriously don't know what to write. i mean, its really hard to discuss about 1 agarose gel with 2 lanes and 1 SDS-PAGE gel with another 2 lanes. wonder how these 4 lanes are going to produce 2 pages worth of discussion. phew. plain amazing stuff.

random thoughts

2008-04-06T11:17:00.002+08:00

hihi! seeing how this blog's post section seems rather stagnant, i decided to write something. anyway, i haven't been posting anything here recently for 2 reasons. firstly, i don't really know what to write and secondly, i don't dare to write. some things have turned a bit vicious, even though that's only to be expected as things become more competitive. Still, can’t help but feel frightened. Maybe I’m just weak. Really miss our sec 2 year when everything seems so benign and fun. Perhaps I was just too lousy to be in the competitive sphere then or perhaps I was simply not sharp enough to detect the ‘undercurrents’. But anyway, I suppose things can only go downhill from here, since the workplace is even less likely to be benign. The only solution is to toughen up somehow and learn to do things the right way. =)

generally did well for common test even though bio was somewhat disappointing. But I have to concede that I didn’t really focus while revising for bio so that score’s probably a good reflection of what I deserved. gp result's not yet out as well. Econs was a genuine surprise. Lol. Managed to top the class I think, but that was really more luck than anything else. Still didn’t manage an A though. Thought I got an A cos the weightage was 60-40 but the actual one was 50-50. Haiz. But my standard didn’t warrant an A anyway so I suppose that’s fair enough. Lol.

Been slacking a lot these few weeks, essentially just sleeping and doing things that are due for submission. The handling of quite a few things was evidently far from ideal but I really don’t have the 精力 to care.

Finally I want to thank all my friends who’ve been supporting me all the while, and my special someone for giving me strength to go on. =)

mid-CT reflection

2008-03-18T16:57:00.003+08:00

alright. chem was quite a bit worse than expected. shall see how things turn out in the end. haiz. left with math and bio. hopefully math will give a boost that carries over to bio. good luck everyone and have fun. =)

Common Test 1

2008-03-16T22:01:00.001+08:00

common test's starting tmr! (not considering gp) good luck to everyone and hope we all do well. =)

alright

2008-03-13T21:11:00.002+08:00

just came back from dinner. had a wonderful evening today. but rather sadly, just like a lot of other people, my revision for common test isn't coming along too well. finished maths and most of chem. but i've had that much even before hols started. lol. didn't progress much since.

watched half of the musical adaptation of les miserables on dvd. quite a nice performance. don't really know what i want to say here. lol. getting a bit confused. but anyway, the main purpose of me writing this post is to publish my conservative forecast of CT1 results.

GP: 50
Econs: 55
Bio: 65
Chem: 70
Maths: 80

hopefully everything will turn out better than this forecast. still left with most of econs and slightly more than half of bio to study for. Good luck to everyone (including myself) with revision. Things are pretty dreary but I guess we’d just have to hang on. Let’s meet up some time after promos. Been quite some time since we last met each other together. =)

Mugging

2008-03-13T02:45:00.003+08:00

CTs are just round the corner, 5 days away (4 actually if you count it as Thursday now). Somehow this time round it just doesn't feel right. I haven't really gotten into the mugging mood yet, brain's still super slow and keep procrastinating and getting distracted. Still have Physics and Econs plus the whole lot of inorganic Chem left. And somehow, my body clock is messed up, I wake up at 11am, feel sleepy from 1pm onwards, take a nap at 3plus to 5, still don't feel right and only from 11pm onwards then my brain starts functioning. That's why you can expect to see me up until 3am these few days. Who cares about day and night? After all, its the holidays! Mugging takes top priority over everything...or does it?