Now Playing - Sooner or Later (Soren's Song) - Switchfoot

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

bing crosby

Went to the new Cathay cinema in orchard, the one beside plaza sing. The theatre was nice, although it felt a little like esplanade concert hall. The classical music they played before the movie enchanced the feeling. Lucky me and dom got The Grand Cathay(thats the theatre's name, the rest are 2,3,4,5,6 and the picturehouse, or something. Picturehouse, according to dom, is for art films.), which i suppose is the biggest theatre. Pretty nice though, and we watched Ice Age 2.

Finally ate katong laksa today, and bought a WoW prepaid card. The warlock's coming back.

-

Strange enough, the migraine's still around after the CTs.

Ouch.



The top 15 nicest skylines in the world.

http://www.diserio.com/top15-skylines.html

Singapore's in it!



Since I've already declared CTs over for me after the first day, paper1 of history was pretty insignificant to me yesterday. I spent most of the time mulling over the sources in my sbq, taking my time, and finally pressing myself to think up of some intelligent answers for 3 essay questions which I dont know much about anyway.

About 3/4 into my sbq essay, or 1hour into the 3hour exam, I saw Mark already catching some shut eye. Throughout the next 120mins, the only thing he did was to make himself more comfortable. According to sengkiat who was sitting beside him, that "stressed him out".

Oh, as to the Industrial Revolution topic that was coming out, Joy told us to study France and Germany but the question required us to give examples from Britain and Germany. When we confronted her after the paper, she said she'll mark according to what we gave(even if we used france as a case study), but the problem was that since we were trained to ANSWER THE QUESTION, the likelihood of anyone using France as a case study and ignoring the demands of the question is close to nil.

On the other hand, GP in the morning was extremely hard, tough on my weary brain to try and process answers to the type of questions I've never encountered before. I was mortified with myself even before the paper ended, and should have thrown myself over the parapet when I could before I disgraced myself further by getting back my already confirmed dismal results.

So I decided to take my mind of things, and to have sushi and teppan yaki and Sakae Sushi in Changi Airport. They have relatively good teppan yaki there, and although the price is a little steep, its worth giving yourself a treat once in a while. Original people who was to go was ailing and sk, and I saw phoebe afterwards and asked her to come along as well.

Sakae sushi has this thing with their buffet, which takes place from 3-6pm(i think). For people who dont know, it includes free flow of sushi for all plates except the red ones, and complimentary noodles of some sort which I advise you all not to try, and 2 mochi dumplings. Due to certain accidents before they had, they didnt allow ailing who wanted to go ala carte as they were afraid that she would try and steal some of our sushi to eat. Ailing had the same experience at another branch in suntec, where she ate one plate of sushi, but the manager in charge insisted she paid the full price of the buffet($13.90 excluding gst) instead of the sushi(a paltry $1.90). Perhaps he thought she stole more of the sushi. Ailing swore that she'll never go back to that branch in suntec anymore.

We saw 3 of sk friends separately in the airport. One of them was called xiao pang(fatso), and the other 2 was a waiter at sakae who looked like a kiddy paikia, and the other some part time engineer or something.

-

Soundbite of the day

"No one!"
When I asked mark who did the girl's voice belong to which I heard in the background while talking to him over the phone.



Like its predecessors before it, this common test is going to be a fluke as well.

-

N06, A level Qn.

In your opinion, which is the most important factor as to the continuous failure of Terrance in his CTs? [25]



Thought i'll say good luck for everyone taking the Common Tests starting tomorrow. Either way, its probably you're well prepared, or you've yet to prepare.

I sense an impending holocaust, when the results are released.

-

And here we have, people who have shallow views on the world, people who think they're misunderstood. As I grow up, I meet more people who think they're special, more talented than many others. Disillusioned as they are, they've sought to criticize everything, doing so, perhaps to place themselves at a higher, more eminent level(this is my own judgment and yes, i am judgmental.).

I meet more judgmental people.

I checked the spelling to judgmental. Interestingly, its not judgemental.



For those waiting to hear me admit, "Yes, I've been studying secretly behind your backs, and now Im confident for CTs" will be disappointed. I've not started, only a little, and that wont help me significantly.

Note to self: Stop being so interfering. You'll get pissed off in the end as well.



I smell potato soup, at this hour. That cant be right.

I must be hungry.

Craving for stew, and potato soup.

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog.Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights.A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time.You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

Added new link: yiling
Updated: huini.jie

For those that still dont know, the place where houses all my links, tagboard, description of myself is in the sidebar hidden in the right. You'll have to scroll right to see it.

Cheers.

-

To my utmost horror, I realised that I may not be able to find enough notes to study for my history. For SEA history, the notes that I could dig out was those powerpoint slides that had 4 points at most per slide. Even if I could remember those points, I would be hard pressed to produce even a 2 side essay. In European history, it wouldnt be so bad if Russian Revolution is coming out, but its not, and instead, there would be French Revolution, which I know nothing about. Of course, Industrial Revolution is coming out as well, but my hope for studying that is quickly crushed as the teacher told us to concentrate on France and Germany, and the bulk of the notes I have mainly covers Britain.

I am ruined, by my own complacency.

-

I cant help but say this. I feel that the STD is drifting further apart, getting caught up with our respective commitments.

In visions of a dark night
__I have dream'd of a joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
__Hath left me, broken hearted

-

soundbite of the day

"Dao lor."
Phoebe, when I walked past her after school today without saying hi.



I finally felt the sinking feeling today, the feeling that I might not have enough time to actually accomplish what I want to do, which is to study enough for the upcoming Common Test. I think this feeling should be bottled up, so I can inject it into myself during regular intervals throughout the year to make sure I do consistent studying instead of leaving everything to the last minute.

Now I'll have to stay up late, to study, which results in me being tired and not being able to pay full attention in class the next day, which not as if we all do it in the first place anyway.

-

My HT called my parents to tell them she worried about my apparent lack of motivation for my studies. "He's yet to start studying!" Note i said parents, meaning calling one is not enough, but she had to call both, separately. I think at this stage, calling our parents is simply not going to work. We're already turning 19, some 20, and even 21, and practically becoming too old for our parents to actually nag at us. My parents do not tell me what to do, and you telling them to make sure I study is so...ineffective. I already have the freedom to do what I want, and they trust that I am mature enough to fulfil my responsibilities. This has been the unspoken arrangement since mid secondary school, and while I appreciate my HT's concern, but she is honestly in no position to try and interfere and change the balance of things.

Just mildy irritated at how too much concern can become a nuisance.

-

I heard TTC actually gives their students french, latin, spanish, whatever terms to memorise so the students can actually use those terms in their GP essays. Personally, I would not agree with such methods as having one to learn those terms and actually trying to use them in essays to show that they can put it to use so as not to waste their time learning it gives off a very false, hypocritical feeling.

Its good if they can learn to implement it into their sentences and make it sound natural, but if they cant, which Im sure most cannot anyway, the structure of the sentence would sound awkward, hesitant, and sometimes, even the wrong usage. Writers are not made, they're born. Its an innate talent that I cannot explain, but I can assure you all that most of us are definitely not eloquent writers.

Stop trying to be what you cannnot be.

-

Fun Fact

MI boasts the proud rate of 100% A level passes in Literature for the past 2 years, and individually, JI and OI might have 100% passes as well further back, I do not know. What I know is that somehow of the 3 papers that all lit students have to take, we do not even have a 100% pass rate in all papers. This actually means some people fail one paper, and pass the other 2 well enough to scrape an A level pass.

-

Soundbite of the day

"Aiyer, the A levels system is not for me."
Dominic, on finding out that he has yet another paragraph of economics DRQ corrections to copy.



The School Fatigue.

I realised that quite a few(alarming number actually) of my classmates are suffering from this. After a week of break from school, some of them actually contemplated taking Monday(today) off as well, claiming that they had to declare self extended holidays due to the dread of returning to school. Writing their own letters, taking MCs from doctors, just to delay the return to the inevitable for a brief reprieve - 24hours.

I think I would try to guess why school is so dreadful. Personally for myself, I've never skipped a day of school in secondary school or even thought of running away. Probably because school was fun, and that there were no divisions in my class. We were much more close knit, although the size was bigger(40 of us give or take). The only time me or my classmates would not turn up for school would be because we were genuinely sick. Btw, my secondary school is not some goody two shoes school, its St Andrew's, where there are many slackers and a rapidly declining standard of discipline.

Starting school in MI, I've to say that the school itself gives a sort of jaded feeling to its students. It might be the architecture, the timetable, the subjects, the teachers(ha!), or perhaps, a combination of the above factors. We get tired of some subjects, mainly because of how its being taught, to the extent that some people strive to skip as many of the classes as they can. And im not talking about the tough PE regime here. If you think my classmates can help get me through this, you're wrong. My class, although smaller than in sec school(18 in total), is much more divided so much so that the uneasy alliance between the Allies and Soviets during WWII against the Nazi Germany shines in comparison. The culture of the school as well, is lacking due to the negative attitude of most students(I shouldnt be here in the first place, I should have went to poly/lasalle/nafa/mdis/etc), that builds an overall anti-MI sentiment that hangs over our heads, and I did not even include the mutual distrust between both campuses' students.

Or maybe, after talking so much, the problem lies herein with the students themselves. Now that we're older, more daring to do what we didnt dare back in secondary school, we finally break the rules, trying means and ways to escape. Its probably a phase, to try to run away from our responsibilities as students.

-

A bomb was dropped upon us today, when Mdm Nim mentioned casually "Your common tests is next week." I dont know what came over me, but I've neglected to keep track of the dates of stuff like this, presuming that CTs were some 2 weeks later or something along those lines. Looking at the horror struck faces of my classmates, I realised I wasnt the only one feeling that, well except maybe for Sk, who said in his righteous responsible tone of voice, "Ya what, you dont know its next monday?" And he's starting to study now, just read his blog. I forsee others will soon follow in his footsteps.

Hopefully, its not too late to salvage something.

-

Soundbite of the day.

"Huh? Sonia? Whos Sonia?"
Mark said today to substantiate his claim that he was over her. Last week, he was crushed when bert told him that he saw her holding hands with Fariz just outside his house. It has been disputed over the past 2 years whether Fariz is truely her bf. The majority accepted that they are, with Mark forming up the minority.



What an appalling loss in form.

Ouch. Headache.

Mosaic Music Festival feat. JASON MRAZ

His only stop in asia, Singapore.

Fantastic evening, fantastic tunes, Jason Mraz really shows why he's hailed as one of the best acoustic singers/songwriter of today. With his powerful vocals, he brought the whole concert hall up the scales and down. Every song he sang felt like it deserved a standing ovation.

And as how he aptly puts it, "I am the wizard of oohs and aahs and falalas, and its all just about the wordplay." With Toca Rivera, the talented percussionist, the performance made my 70bucks worth every cent.

I dont think there'll be another like him.

Mi casa en el me leo de la calle.

Expecting to hear about my bintan trip? Read sk's blog at www.ericthomasclarence.blogspot.com or alternatively, you could visit ignatius's photo blog, or dom's flickr, or sk's multiply to get an idea of what went on. I cant put them up here though, because I cant remember the exact htmls, so you'll have to ask the respective owners.

Mosaic Music Festival tonight. Cant wait.

Vestiges of past memories, lost regrets.



A very interesting puzzle.

8 people were stuck on a side of a river and they had to get to the other side with a boat. The 8 people are Mom, Dad, 2 sons, 2 daughters, a policeman and a thief. Only 3 of them could operate the boat, Mom, Dad, and the policeman. The boat could only take 2 people at any given time. Mom couldnt be left alone with the sons if Dad is not there, and Dad couldnt be left alone with the daughters if the Mom is not there. The thief cant be left with any of the family members if the police is not there. You're supposed to shift all 8 people to the other side adhering to all these rules.

If you're interested, try solving it.



Whether good news or bad news for some, I made it back from Bintan in safely, without being worse for wear.

Except for a mild longing to go back to the agro resort, Im pretty glad to be back to "civilisation". I still miss some of my creature comforts.

Im home.



Packing my bag at this time, when the reporting time at school is supposed to be 7:30am.

Gonna be away from today, tomorrow and returning on sunday.

Happy Holidays!



Welcome my friends, to a world of contradictions. And with this contradictions are reasons as to why they happen, which coincidentally, I might add, increases further confusion and contradicts the current contradictions. I've never seen such a bad bad situation, I dont know whether to laugh, or to shake my head in disbelief. This is related to the sentence in italics.

Did i tell you that biasness exists within you? Its so prevalent.

Oh and yes, as if admitting you're wrong would excuse you from the wrongdoing. If this works, everyone would be cleansed of their sins, and join the ranks of the angels.

-

Go any more towards the right, and we'll have a facist regime.

-

The antagonistic element in you.



The Teach Less, Learn More concept

Implemented by our beloved Ministry of Education, this aims for the teachers to teach lesser but paradoxically, makes the students somehow learn more during the course of study for the syllabus. After close to 1 term of studies and from my personal observation, I find that this concept is an absolute and utter failure.

First and foremost, it hides the incompetence of our teachers. They now have to teach less right? Less work to do, more work done by us. I have teachers now just asking questions, and then waiting for the ever elusive answer. Some teachers do adopt this attitude like "Hey, if you're not gonna give me the answer, Im just going to move on and you all are going to lose out since you're all the ones taking the As, not me." when answers are not received, while others lose their tempers. SO...tell me, If we are the ones giving all the points and answers in lessons(because the teacher actually uses our points MOST of the time), why do we bother to even have teachers? We could just get a set of questions from the school and do self study among ourselves.

With their ineptidue, they thrust readings upon us, expect us to read everything, know everything. When people screw up in exams, they say "Oh, because they didnt study." when in actual fact, its been a long time since I had a teacher that aroused my interest in the subject. Everything I've done for examinations, I could say about 80% was by teaching myself the subject, 10% was asking friends for some explainations here and there and the other 10% is by teachers, which 90% of that 10% is given by us students anyway.

So MOE, fuck me if this new concept you came up with is to screw your students, the next generation of leaders.

-

Sometimes, I just love being in the '87 batch. My batch is what you call the bridge between the over pampered and the non pampered generation. Being in this batch offers me a first hand insight into how each generation changes subtly, gradually, into one that is infinitely more spoilt, more arrogant, richer, and hopeless.

In secondary school, my batch in sec1, utter and hopeless greenhorns, came without parents and survived on the new harsh reality(if you do compare it to the relatively friendly primary school environment), and came out being better people. In my secondary school band, my batch went through endless suffering; running, push ups, the works.

Imagine my horror when i went back and found out that some (whiny) kid complained to his parents about the tough regime in place who in turned complained to the MOE who in turned asked the school what was going on who in turned pressurized the uniform group in question. So now, new rules are implemented. No more than 20 push ups a day, no more than 30mins of drills. Ahh...the absolute bliss of being pampered.

My batch was also the batch that got cellphones at a relatively late age, about early sec for some, upper sec for me. In fact i got my first cellphone in sec4. Now, we have kids getting one expensive 3G phone at primary 2 or 3, and jabbing away at the phone almost all the time when they're out of school, probably keeping in contact with their friends. With this technology gives rise to a new group of people, overly reliant, dependent, and in love with it, and wouldnt be able to survive without having the technology around.

Today, I witnessed again how hopeless the younger generation(only 2 years younger) has become. At the age of 16 turning 17, the parents obviously couldnt feel confident enough of dropping their child at school, seeing fit to accompany them till assembly. I admit that MI might not look like the best of places to send your kid to study, but staying and accompanying them? I mean, What the Fuck? They're 17, almost adults, Im sure they would know how to think for themselves. Please stop pampering them if you dont want them to grow up to become misfits, who dont know how to think for themselves.

Ahh. The wonders of being in the transition batch.

-

The coming of the Third Age

Whats worse than the ice caps melting, moon colliding with us, some rogue asteriod crashing into earth and getting crazed confluxed, the sun exploding and swallowing up the whole solar system, we now have the Third Age.

I would briefly run through the first 2 ages for the benefit of the ignorant. At the beginning of time, in the First Age, where everything was created, nature was fine and in balance. Come end of it though, some were lost due to the first war, while others participated in 2 wars and came out unscathed. In the second age, new frontiers were discovered, new alliances forged and broken. It would mark the age where the Cold War and Nuclear Meltdown happened.

And finally, we have the Third Age. Just arrived, and there are a couple of highlights about it, mainly the great divide, the great falling out, nuclear winter and the best of all, the shifting of continents. Normally a hard thing like shifting an entire continent will take milleniums to do, but of course, this is not a normal world, and in the space of 8 weeks, continents have shifted to the other side of the world, first from North, then to the east, and gradually to the south east.

Will this mark the advent of the end?

-

This might make up for the past few days of not blogging. Cheers.



So long after the release of the A level results did I only recently get around to message long forgotten classmates, you know, those people on your msn that you have not talk to for ages. Besides that, I went to blogs not oft visted by me to see if they had put their grades online. They did.

I have friends that scored spectacularly well(3As1B A1 for gp), friends who scored well but got d7 for gp, friends who scored hanging grades(cant go foward cant go backward, people in MI will know that feeling), friends who scored like shit. What is amazing is that most of my SA classmates retained, with only a handful who took their As last year. Those who did scored pretty well, able to make it to some top courses. The rest of my batch mates, I wouldnt say they did extremely well or bad either. Its just those kind of grades that creates a taste in your mouth that leaves much to be desired, making you wonder if maybe you should have put in alot more effort.

Our GP teacher said scoring 3As will put you at the top of the cohort taking As, and since each cohort taking As would be the top 20% intelligent people(NOT exactly true, BUT thats what the government says), that means 3As will make you the best of the best. She went on to say that not alot of people would get 3As. Then may I ask, why does RJC have a 59.2% statistic in people scoring 4As? I must emphasize, 4As, and not 3As. The fact that there are THAT many people performing that well seems to make the rest of us look stupid, useless, and foolish to try to attempt the examination.

Im not being pessimistic here, saying that we wont be able to perform. But being the top student here in MI would only make you one of the average performers outside. Dont look at the small perspective. The world is big and competitive. Quit complaining about how this is a paper society, and how the stupid education system kills ideas. You cant change it. You want to break away from the flow? Then go somewhere else and be a farmer.

-

Long long saturday, going out for sara's birthday celebrations, and ended up reaching home just before 1. Happy 21st birthday.

Short short sunday, and again, I procrastinated in going for my haircut. I dont know why I keep doing this.

Tiring Monday. Sigh, why do I have such a lousy timetable.



Goodbye opportunity. Hello disappointment.

-

lenice.tay

addi.chee

agnes.lin

andrew.tau

aj

amanda.loo

amanda.tan

amanda.faith

amy

auntine.jas

alicia.ng

avril.phua

bert.lee

bryan.sim

chitra

ct

deon.toh

dominic.julian

ghim.kui

goh.huishan

elly.sim

hanis

huini.gao

huiee.low

ignatius.aaron

jade.chen

james.leong

jean.tan

jincheng

justina.lee

khairuz

layne

loke.kokhoe

lynette.choong

liangshi.tee

mark.wong

neil.sikorsky

ong.junhong

phoebe.wong

raudhah

sajc.band

seng.kiat

selina

shan.shan

shimin.chong

xiuli

yiling.du

yingwen

ziyan

Memoirs of a geisha
Fearless
Jarhead
Underworld Evolution
Munich
Ice Age: The meltdown
The art of seduction
Mission Impossible: III
X-III: The Last Stand
The Omen
Silent Hill*
Superman Returns
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's chest
The Lakehouse*
Singapore Dreaming
The Banquet
Miami Vice
John Tucker Must Die
Stay Alive
Rob-B-Hood
The Departed
The Prestige
Death Note
The Guardian
The Covenant
Step Up
Casino Royale
A Battle Of Wits
Happy Feet
Open Season
Eragon
The Holiday
Death Note: The Last Name
Curse of the Golden Flower


Maybe I didn't treat you quite as good
as I should have,
Maybe I didn't love you quite as often
as I could have,
Little things I should have said and done,
I just never took the time.
You are always on my mind,
You are always on my mind.
Maybe I didn't hold you all those lonely, lonely times,
And I guess I never told you,
I'm so happy that you're mine,
If I made you feel second best,
girl I'm so sorry, I was blind.
You are always on my mind,
You are always on my mind,
Tell me,
tell me that your sweet love hasn't died,
Give me,
give me one more chance to keep you satisfied, Little things I should have said and done,
I just never took the time.
You are always on my mind,
You are always on my mind


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