This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Wednesday, January 31, 2007 |
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Public transport in Singapore is getting weirder and weider by the day. The following incident happened to me on the SMRT bus 852 yesterday, but i was too busy to be able to squeeze in a post b4 i went to bed. :( So i was with Glendon (another HSSRP member) on the bus, seated rather close to the front. There with this lady in her 40s standing a bit in front of us, beside the driver's seat. She looked more high-class than an auntie, though almost as old, which is why the term "old lady" seemed to be more appropriate for her. At the bus stop outside MacRitchie Reservoir, the bus went into the bus lane, but apparently seeing nobody with the intention of boarding, the bus just sped by. It paused a few metres away from the bus stop, waiting to cut back into the main road, when the lady walked up to the bus driver to inform him politely that there was this boy at the bus stop whom the bus had missed. The bus driver got irritated, retorting in Chinese, "What do you expect me to do? I'm already past the bus stop!" To which the lady replied (in Chinese), "No, I was just informing you that you didn't pick up that boy." There was a sudden surge in ager levels as the bus driver suddenly started spewing a mix of Hokkien and Chinese vulgarities at the lady. She kept silent this time, for what could she have done against a raving mad driver? Yet the driver continued insulting her, calling her a "crazy woman", among other chains of quick-fire words. He even shouted at the lady to "get off the bus and go take a taxi home, don't come and create trouble." By this time, the bus had reached the next stop (with everyone awake from all the shouting) and the bus driver lashed at the lady for supposedly obstructing the entrance, harshly telling her to "go to the rear, I don't want to see your face." To which the lady coolly obliged, with a hint of resentment in her eyes. She then whipped out her mobile phone and called the SMRT hotline to complain to them about the rude driver. The bus driver appeared to realise what she was doing, and this infuriated him ever the more, causing him to yell profanities at an increase rate. Probably not quite a good move, since he could probably be heard on the other side of the line. At the next traffic junction when the bus was stopped at a red light, he got out of his seat and stormed towards the lady, who was still talking on the phone. Again he reiterated his demands for her to get out of the bus, except this time with a tone more of exasperation than fury, probably since his job was at stake. But the lady completely ignored him, and he returned to the steering wheel in a huff for the lights had changed. Yet for the rest of the journey, he did not cease his ramblings and continued hurling abuse at the lady, who by this time had retreated quite far towards the back of the bus, more so due to passengers piling into the bus than out of fear of the bus driver. It was only when the bus was jam-packed with commuters that he finally realised that it was pointless for him to continue on with his rants. Talk about promoting courtesy in Singapore, when the promoters themselves are rather crude. I won't be surprised if the bus driver operating TIB 365 E (yes its an easy combination to rmb) at about 5.30 pm on Tuesday is sacked. In fact, i will be very glad if that happens. I'm sure the bus operators have sufficient resources to hire staff with much better attitudes, or at least put them through courses to mend their uncouth ways. Of course, this is not to say that there are courteous bus drivers out there; rmb the driver ive just talked about in the previous post who actually bothered greeting passengers? However, one black sheep could easily ruin not just the image of Singapore's "world-class" public trasnport system, but the face of Singapore in general as well. Imagine if there had been tourists or foreigners on that bus at that time. They would likely be put-off by that single incident, and leave with the notion of ugly Singaporeans. We definitely don't want ourselves to be stereotyped in such a negative way. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:22 pm.
| Monday, January 29, 2007 |
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Today was a really weird day. But, YES! At least I've completed my Creative Arts Portoflio. It's over and done with. It's a concluded chapter of my life. The sense of relief of finally being able to not worry over it any more is just...satisfying. Wait, would the judges accept a blue file for my portfolio? Maybe their favorite colour is pink and not blue... D: Anyway, let's just brush those thoughts aside first and get down to what happened today. In the morning, the bus driver greeted us commuters with cheery "Good Morning!"s, but he only got blank stares and everyone dao-ed him. The same scenario repeated itself at every bus stop. So much for trying to brighten someone's day. And then, for the first time in secondary school history, hubert got seriously bonded. Seriously, as in not just playful slaps of backsides *glances at hubert suspiciously* or humping while fully-clothed, but as in seriously serious. I mean, 3 or 4 people got on top of him to try to remove his shirt, like how we torment zachary. And hubert was really furious after that and kicked ben for hiding his show somewhere (which ben didn't know the location of either.) And Ben was slightly pissed off by hubert's reaction. Finally, when walking past the TV at night, i saw Xian Bin (from 3O) in school uniform on Channel U, being interviewed by two local celebs. I paused in my step as i thought, "WTF?" But the scene was over in barely 10 seconds, during which he was referred to as "小弟弟" xD But that's all insignificant compared to the bus ride home. I was on bus 74 with ben, and we had just sat down at the back row of seats when this greying old man squeezed in between us. The first thing that struck us was his pong - he stunk of sweat and other unmentionable substances. He was clutching a Sunkist orange juice carton filled with water, and his appearance was rather haggard. The old uncle started rattling away in Chinese (the only words i could catch were "新年") and out of the blue, suddenly asked if we had $1. Ben didn't have small change, so being the kind person that i was, i thought this uncle here didn't have enough money to pay his bus fare or something, so i obliged. After slipping the coin into his pocket, he muttered some words (which i assumed meant "Thank You") before resuming his mindless banter again. A while later, Ben and i moved over to a vacated seat, not very comfortable with this foul stranger sitting between us. the air smelt like perfume then. After some obsevration, we realised that that uncle was actually going around chatting up other people on the bus, presumably to ask them for money. His modus operandi would be to grab a seat close to people who had just boarded, then start talking to them. We couldn't see or hear the conversation very clearly, but it looked like he would ask for small denominations of money. And then we realised: it was all a scam. But i must applaud the craftiness of the uncle to come up with such a con, dressing up to appear like a poor guy, then taking advantage of the sympathy and bulging wallets of Singaporeans to collect some free money. Then again, the uncle might be a real case of someone in poverty. But a poor guy would probably focus on making ends meet, not spending extra money taking bus rides all around Singapore. Heck, he probably wouldn't have enough money to spare for bus fares anyway. Besides, the way he acted on the bus didn't seem like he was that desperate for money after all. In the end, however, me (and all the other people he scammed too) didn't bother making any noise about it, for its not really worth spending the effort to kick us a big fuss over $1. Besides, no one wants to embarrass themselves in public. One might think such begging scams never happen with Singapore's track record of "low crime", but you'ld be surprised. Unfortunately, you're more often than not scammed first before you realise it. That's 5% of my weekly allowance wasted. Stupid untrustworthy uncle. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:46 pm.
| Saturday, January 27, 2007 |
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*drumroll + clang of cymbals* Wow, Mr. B.Lee took just one day to mark our Maths test, whereas Ms Tham (3O's maths teacher) have already delayed the return of hers for more than 3 days already, and counting. But the lack of suspense is just about the only good thing. The very first test of the year, and the class has screwed it up already. From the outset, the maths test looked like it wasn't too hard at first. Most of us breezed through the first page... ...and then we turned over to the second page. WTF. The final question, worth more than 10 marks, was chao difficult. The bonus question didn't help much too. The question was: "Find the highest power of 2 and the highest power of 3 which divide 536 - 1." What you're supposed to do is the keep on factorising it. I attempted to do it, and eventually even one whole line was not enough for the equation. According to the few people in 3M who actually managed to do it, the whole process is extremely tedious and takes more than 10 minutes, so if you make just one careless mistake along the way, GG. ALl that for a measly extra 2 marks. =.= Before i continue, though, i would like to state the fact that despite the following rants and complaints, i did achieve an A1, with a score of 32/40. Thus, you may wish to discount all my opinions of this test, in which case i would suggest you stop reading and close this browser window immediately. I don't want people spamming my tagboard with the argument that "You already got so high marks, why are you still complaining?" Apparently, the number of A1s in 3M (who is also taught by Mr. Lee) is double that of our class, but then again, the have derek and tiansheng, the two pro-est maths students in the entire level, in addition to 3 PRC students who are already learning university-level maths. And i think their test is easier, because even Ningyu said their was manageable. For us, the whole class was like "ARGH WE'RE DOOMED" at the end of the test. But Mr. Lee has much better theories regarding the disparity in results between the two classes. Out with the "3M's test is easier" theory! Out with the "Humanities class sucks in Maths" theory! In with the "It's all about attitude" theory! So Mr. Lee blames the class's poor results on our attitude, and was even so bo liao as to go spread the news to other teachers. During the Chemistry lesson, Mr. Loh suddenly said out of the blue: "I heard you all did very badly in your Maths test...better buck up your attitude arh." Well, Mr. Lee should buck up his own attitude first before expecting us to change ours and give him our respect. IMO, the test was rather unreasonable. For example, one of the questions was:  With the exception of those from Maths Quiz Training, i doubt any of us knew what f(x) meant. (For those who don't, it means a function in x.) Which was why out of the whole class, only julian (who is from MQT) got that question correct. Heck, even Wei Qi, also from MQT, didn't get the supposed answer because he didn't know that we were to find f(x). He ended up getting just 1 mark out of a possible 4 because he didn't specify the final answer, even though his method was correct. Considering that we need achieve 80% out of the possible total marks each term for an exemption from Maths for the final year exams, it will be really tough for me to be exempted this year. At least i scraped an 80% for this first test, but future tests look set to get way harder. This year, Maths is going to be utterly horrid. |
'Twas teh winnar at 12:30 am.
| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
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Oh, woe behold! The first test of the year befalls upon thee tmr, and its the evil B.Lee who brings about such misery. In sec 2, the maths tests set by Ms Gwee were 40 marks (with a bonus question), and we had 40 mins to complete the paper. Now, the paper is again worth 40 marks with a bonus question, but we're given 70 mins to compelte it. Sounds good? NOT. Knowing how sadistic Mr. Lee is, he will probably be setting an extremely tough paper. In fact, he's already hinted that the solution for the bonus question will be half- to one-page long, whereas last year, the bonus question could be solved in 5 steps. And the common student (that excludes derek) already found Ms Gwee's tests to be generally quite difficult. I think that despite the extra time, many of us still won't be able to complete the paper. And yes, half his class failed his first test last year. Yet he's trying to act like the saviour, saying "I'm giving you all an extra 10 mins, the paper is actually only 60 mins long." Well, thanks for the generosity, but doesn't that mean we'll die even more horribly in future tests? Argh. I think this year's Maths exemption might just go down the drain. In fact, 3N students are already getting very confuddled with revision, what with surds, "completing the square", Vieta's Theorem etc. All that information being churned around and around in the brain has even resulted in some coming up with their own theories, like this one: "if...you see her, she's chio. she's your friend's, she's ugly. if she's yours you're blinded. the zack-and-clara theory." |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:45 pm.
| Monday, January 22, 2007 |
.jpg) Haha, got that cute joey plush toy as a gift from the Adelaide exchange students from 2N. Thanks a lot to Bing and Hubert for buying (most of) us 2N06 people stuffed toys back from Australia. On a side note, though, the gift's kinda belated, considering the exchange programme was back in October last year. Thought you guys said you had already lost/forgotten about them, but guess they reappeared again in some nook or cranny. Not that im complaining in any case - as the (inappropriate) saying goes, better late than never. =P I think the joey will be permanently perched on my speaker from now on, lol. Maybe it'll give me inspiration for new posts whenever i glance into its eyes or something. Or probably because it's just way cuter than Zachary. xD |
'Twas teh winnar at 10:50 pm.
| Sunday, January 21, 2007 |
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This post shall commemorate the opening of YYY's new blog @ http://pendraval.blogspot.com (Link under my "Links" section). Rejoice as another blogger rises from the dead. Hurrah! Visit it for wacky posts, guaranteed to make you ROFLYAO. Long live the new blog, unlike the old one which spiralled down into the Dead Blogger's Society a long time ago after its password was resigned into the realms of Forgottenness. =D [Ends blantant advertising] |
'Twas teh winnar at 7:25 pm.
| Saturday, January 20, 2007 |
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A bunch of us sec 3s, sec 4s and councillors went over to the studio at Caldecott Hill today to support our Hwachong team at The Arena Qurater Finals today. We were up against RI, strong rivals as usual. The first thing we realised when we went in was: "Wah, the studio's so small?!" It consisted only of a tiny round stand with two red buttons in the centre (the one the debaters stand around), encircled by some white wooden steps which acted as benches. Managed to sneak a few photos during commercial breaks (even though they said no photographing or video recording devices allowed, else they would confiscate it.) So here's how the studio looks like:  (That's the host Adrain Pang putting on makeup at the corner of the pic.) Its amazing how they manage to make the area look so big on TV, eh?  The honourable judges. Note that the brightly lighted "pillars" you see don't actually reach all the way to the ceiling, but are in fact just translucent plastic cylinders which sway quite a bit if you hit them. Before we started, we had to do some cheers, then repeat them again twice for the sake of national TV. And when the contestants and Adrian entered the studio, we had to clap loudly and cheer again. So for the first 1 hour or so it was nothing but retakes of cheers, applause and miscellanous clips of us pretending to look very excited. Perhaps the worst thing about it was that whenever Adrain made a blooper, we had to retake everything again. Like there was this time when he said "The winners of the grand finals will walk away with The Arena championship trophy and a grand...mother." It's really funny what people say when they screw up. So the opening 5 minute intro you see on TV had to be taken 5 times before the director was finally satisfied. And we have to wait up to 5 minutes between each retake for the crew to set up the equipment again. <_< After all that later, we finally got the debate started. The notion was "Singaporean youths are politically apathetic", and HCI was on the opposing force. For the first round, we trounced RI 20-0. A great start. =D After that was the commercial break. It's seriously much better to spend commercials at home than in the studio, because the only thing you can do there is to stone around being hypnotised by those swirling lights, while the makeup lady goes around brushing up everyone's appearance with face powder. Sian. When we "returned", we had to "UPROAR!" very loudly for the resuming of the show. And just for that mere few seconds of breainless whacking of palms together, we had to do muliple retakes again. D: For the second round, HCI faltered a little, but we still managed to draw the score for that round at 12-12. So far, the scores were 32-12 to Hwachong's advantage. Still quite a good lead. We'll skip the break and appluase section and jump to the third round - the team rebuttal round. I thought both teams didn't fare quite well in this, with snappy questions and rebuttals flying all over the place. But considering the stress of the situation, i guess that's understandable. If it were me, i probably would have died of nervousness. The judges didn't reveal their votes for this round, so as to lengthen the show with a "Results Show" later which consisted of about 75% of recaps. Waste of time. Finally, the fourth round. RI sent out their famous Kartik (thanks to Andrew for pointing out how to spell his name), known for his cuteness and wit. I thought he concluded and summed his team's arguments up better than the HCI team though. Again, the judges did not reveal their scores, for the sake of suspense for the results show. After that, the first part of the recording was finally over, and the judges went out to take a looong break and have a discussion over their decisions, leaving us poor students sitting around in the studio. Time for more photos.  Watch your back! It's a steep drop down behind those benches. ("Oooh, Brownian Motion!" Mr. LeeF.Y. commented.) *fast forward past all the random chatter, sudden outbreaks of cheers and one-minute rounds of applause* The recording for the Results Show began at last. The main part of it was just quite a lot of crap, reviewing video clips and all that stuff. After the judges made some comments about the performance of the teams, the result for Round 3 was revealed. The score: 21-7 to RI. That makes the score 39-33. Oh damn, they caught up. If we managed to tie for the last round, HCI would win. Otherwise, if RI scores 3 or more votes out of a possible 4, then they would win. And the decisive results for round 4 were released. 21-7. To RI. The final score was 54-46, with HCI barely losing by 1 vote. At this point the Rafflesians were cheering like crazy, whereas we simply sat there and followed the monotonous beat of *clap. clap. clap.* And so we lost. But then again, i think the HCI team should still be able to make it to the semis through the wildcard round, just as how RI managed to get to the quarter-finals after being beaten by Loyang Sec School in the prelims. I guess now i know how much effort goes into producing a show, and how innocent supporters are terribly victimised with the three-letter word "Cut". Even a small bottle of New Moon Chicken Essence with Collagen doesn't make up for it, though i appreciate the marketing ploy of sponsors. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:35 pm.
| Thursday, January 18, 2007 |
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After being released late for lunch at 1.45 pm by Mr Cheng today, i have made a few revelations about secondary school canteen queues. Luckily i had 15 extra minutes since Maths Quiz training starts at 2.15 pm, but i pity those who have afternoon lessons at 2. Any undumb and efficient canteen stall would have at least 2 queues. Unless, of course, the stall has 1 queue but has a few helpers serving it, in which case is too bad for you. The following amateur's guide will teach you the tactics of spotting when you should queue-hop or move your butt over to another stall. So whip out $2 and get ready to save some time. Amateur's Guide to Hwachong Canteen Queues There are 2 groups of high-risk targets which you should look out for: the blur sec 1s and the cunning sec 4s/JC students. 1. Sec 1s Avoid queues which are massed by these dwarves. On the outside, they may look cute and innocent, but the inside holds a very calculative soul. Fresh out of primary 6, they are used to taking their time in canteen queues since there is less competition in primary school queues. These dwarves have a habit of taking their time to scrutinize whatever is available in order to make an informed decision. Some might go to the extent of enquiring about the products offered. After which, they will take their time to pick out the exact change. After mental sums, if they find that they do not have enough bullets, then they will hand over guns in denominations ranging from $5 to $10. Returning their change can be quite a hassle. Potentially dangerous in large numbers. However, they are not as large of a threat as the next category... 2. Sec 4 These cunning creatures often carry the arsenal of two or more of their type. Having developed strong bonds with each other, they entrust each other with large amounts of ammo to help them take down their prey and bring the prize food back to them. Once, there was this sec 4 who had an entire written list of orders, and he took out much of my time, since i was right behind him and all i wanted was a bun (BAO). Worse still, these creatures have a habit of barging into queues to gain tactical advantage in the battlefield. Be alert for any sec 4s alone in a queue. A large group of them may not be as dangerous since they would be carrying their own ammo and what you see is what you will face in the queue. On the other hand, if he is alone, it often means that he will either have backups cutting off the queue soon, or he may have more arsenal than it looks. 3. Safe Routes If a queue contains minimal threat, then it is deemed to be safe even if it might seem to stretch longer. Threats have been known to disguise themselves in shorter queues. Of course, if a long queue contains these threats, then obviously don't go into it. 4. Plan B If all else fails and threats have swarmed the entire battlefield, then retreat to alternative grounds like those beside a swimming pool. However, be warned that you will have to spend more ammo to get your kill, since there is less competition in that area. 5. Plan C Don't have enough ammo to spare? Then get a mate of yours to pop around and get you some chow, claiming that you will return him the spent ammo sooner and later. Of course, you never do and simply hope that he will forget about it. DISCLAIMER: This guide was made under the presumption that readers actually have sufficient common sense. The author of this guide will not be held responsible for any botched plans arising from the above generalities and stereotypes, and its side effects including (but not limited to) lashings from commanders like Mr B.Lee. |
'Twas teh winnar at 9:45 pm.
| Monday, January 15, 2007 |
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Gah, been so busy over the past weekend with my Creative Arts Portfolio and all the random worksheets, so the amount of free time i've had to blog has been falling like the rain. But i guess the influence of Gunz is also at fault - so many people in my class suddenly started picking up this previous game again. And its quite hard to resist the temptation of gaming a little with a friend. <_< No, i haven't broken my leg, it's my maid. Last Wednesday, when she climbed up on a stool to clean the higher cabinets, the stool suddenly slid on the parquet floor and he had a heavy fall. Not to mention she was rather overweight, so her ankle took the weight of all that flab, and the impact broke her right foot. On a side note, she had just waxed the floor one week earlier, so i guess that unfortunately led to the floor being overly smooth which probably also contributed to her fall. Rather bad luck, but who would have imagined there would be such a side-effect, eh? So she's been on crutches even since, and my mother has had to help out with the housework after she comes back from work and i do some simple stuff like helping her bring stuff around. Yeah i know, that really isn't much of a chore, but im a slacker when it comes to such household duties. Perhaps if my mother paid me like how bing's mum gave him cash rewards for every chore he did, then that would make a slight difference. But im not really money-minded, and i don't really need alot of spare cash anyway, so i suppose that'll need some consideration after all. Thankfully my maid still isn't totally immobile and still can do most of the work, like cooking. I guess this incident had let me realise how dependent we are on domestic helpers, if we've employed them. Ours having been with us for 4 years already, i do have a certain bond with her, so i really pity and sympathize with her to see her limping about in pain.  That's her very badly swollen leg due to a fractured bone. You can't see it very clearly in the pic, but it does looks pretty disgusting. At least the cast covers the rest of it up. Hopefully she can get well soon and, er, resume fully working for us again. It's about time i went back to the thick stack of 50+ pages of notes that Mr. Docherty prescribed us, for the sake of some Oral Participation points from the discussion tmr. =X |
'Twas teh winnar at 9:38 pm.
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 |
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Gah, i really have no mood to blog today. Homework's pouring in like the rain (which forebodingly hasn't stopped yet), and Mr. B.Lee was sadistic enough to let some of us miss his afternoon lessons for Maths Quiz Training BUT we still have to do his assignments. Which are always to be handed in on the next working day. Plus, he gives some time (usually about 10 mins) every lesson for us to do his assignments. And that 10 mins is worth 1 hour because, if you're crafty enough, you can get your groupmates to do different questions then come together at the end of it to copy the other answers. Teamwork FTW. So missing his lessons ain't that good after all. Anyway, on to the main topic of this post. I take back most of my words in the previous post about Mr Docherty. Main reason because that was just the "introductory" lesson, and first impressions are deceptive. So on his second lesson yesterday, he walked casually into class. Our hearts skipped a beat when we saw that he didn't bring any notes with him. After the greeting ritual he went over to the computer and spent a few minutes logging in, finding his files and starting up the Powerpoint slideshow. Yay, slack lesson ahead, we think. Then we saw his slides. They were all black-and-white, as in the very basic black Times New Roman on the default white background. And oh, horror, chunk after chunk of text crammed every single slide. Furthermore, his sentences are riddled with typos (cos according to him, he used a French keyboard when typing it out.) And he has this weird habit of CAPITALISING a lot of the stuff. Maybe it was his way of emphasizing the point or something, but he could really just have used bold text. Or maybe he lost control over Caps Lock and it was behaving wildly. Gosh, i suddenly realised how much better Ms Foo's powerpoints were. At least she puts some background pictures (there was one of a half-naked man underwater, in relation to humidity) and includes a little bit of animation. Though the file sizes of her slides could run up to 10 MB or more due to all those pictures. And since there were no handouts, we were set to work copying down the slides word-for-word. Well, at least that's what most people did, in the spirit of "Copy First, Understand Later." For me, i simply read through his points and just scribbled down those which i had at least an inkling of, which turned out to be half (or maybe one-third) of them. But at least its better than people like Yu Xuan who pratice the habit of "Don't Listen, Don't Copy, Don't Understand? Don't Care." And he was ticked off by Brian for talking to Huangji twice. At least Docherty verbally explains some of the points a little. But his voice is so soft that he cannot stand any background noise - he even requested for the choppy ceiling fans to be turned off. And even when the entire classroom was dead silent, we still had trouble hearing him. Not that we would bother to, anyway, since most people were too busy copying down the "information" to listen to him. Eventually he got the hint and said at the flashing of a new slide, "Fine, I'll let you guys cpy down the slides first." (Note that I haven't included his accent cos its too troublesome to weave his pronunciation into the words.) Who said you won't sleep in his lesson? Well, I did, but I didn't realise we would be spending History periods simply copying down everything there is (even if we don't understand) while vague sounds which sound like words with a Scottish accent play in the background. The only thing that would possible keep you from falling asleep is the writer's cramp you get from copying down so much stuff. To Brian's credit, however, he did ask us if we understood what he was saying, since there was a very puzzled or defeated expression on many of our faces. But since we didn't quite want to hurt his feelings or anything, we simply just shook our heads and said "Nah, I'm OK." Besides, i doubt our level of understanding would have been raised much anyway even if he had wasted some extra time by explaining the concepts. Towards the end of the lesson, he had Ben go and collect his notes. And when Ben returned, there was an audible gasp from us, whose expreession had turned from =S to o_O!!!!!!!!! To think that we had even imagined there would be no notes. Here was a very thick stack of them planted on the teacher's table for all to gawk at. To give a rough idea of how tall the stack was, it would have been 2 or 3 hard-cover Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix books stacked on top of each other. About 1/4 or 1/3 of Ben's height. So in concluding his lesson, Docherty told all of us to digest the notes back home (about 20 pages of reading to be done for each), write an essay on a question based on those notes, and understand the concepts for a class discussion on Tuesday. We had thought he might have let us off a few minutes earlier as he had done in his first lesson, but we ended up being dismissed 5 mins late instead. Like i said, first impressions are deceptive. I guess ang moh teachers are less slacky and are determined to finish what they had planned to teach, at the expense of the students' time. But i heard its even worse in mainstream History lessons. Mr Samuel Lim makes the memorise almost 100 pages of theories abotu history, even to the extent of remembering useless facts like who the historian who said that quote was, and when. I mean, not like that will help us or anything, right - even if we become historians in the future, there's always Google to rely on for your research papers. And Mr S.Lim also demands an answer the very moment after he asks a question, else he will get mad and scold the students for "wasting everyone's time." Not to mention his tight deadlines, lots of self-study and memorising, and how he expects everyone to be fully prepared for every single of his lessons. In conclusion, History is the suckiest subject. And because of that, History teachers suck (Ms Teo CM, anyone?), except some suck more than others. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:26 pm.
| Tuesday, January 09, 2007 |
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Here's one entire post dedicated to our new History teacher Brain Docherty, who hails from the faraway land of Scotland. It's my - and most of the other 3Ners (except for those who were/are under 3rd language) - first time being taught by an ang moh teacher, so you can imagine the reaction when he suddenly stepped into the class. So here was a demi-giant (relatively) with big eyes and bushy eyebrows coming into our class for the first time, 4 minutes early. Except that half the class was having their break at the nearby Poolside Restaurant. Luckily he didn't mind that the others were later than him (not like Mr B.Lee), and they still came in 40 seconds before the bell rang due to the unexpected circumstance anyway. There's hardly any issues understanding him though, even though he speaks fast with the stereotypical ang moh accent. "what" turns to "wot", "folder" to "fol-dah", "good" to "gad" etc. At least his accent isn't that thick like that of native Americans or British. But the problem is that you can understand what he says if you can hear him in the first place. Sitting almost all the way at the back of the class, i can only catch half of his words. One habit Mr. Docherty has, though, is that he likes to stroke his hair when he is thinking through something. The only problem being that there is a lack on the top of his head in the first place. So its quite weird to see his running his hand over his almost-bald head once every so often. But at least it's better than those who keep a beard solely for the purpose of fidgeting with it subconciously, or pluck at stubble on their chin. The good thing is that he seems rather enthusiastic about teaching, in a no-nonsense sort of way. But i doubt he will ever remember those of us with Chinese names, and even if he does, he probably won't be able to roll his tongue over the syllabuses anyway and thus pronounce them horribly off. Maybe he'll stick to addressing us by our surnames instead (like they do in America), so Chun Wai can still keep his coveted nickname of "Lam" instead of something which sounds like "Chan Way". One last note: I will probably never get to doze off in history lessons again, what with the novelty of having a foreign teacher talk about imperialism in Africa. |
'Twas teh winnar at 10:43 pm.
| Monday, January 08, 2007 |
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In conjunction with the worksheet on writing styles that Mr Cheng went through today (or maybe not, since he never got past the first page and pretty much none of the info there was new), here's a post on my blogging style. Actually, this post is more prompted by several comments out of the blue regarding my blog these few days, so it's essentially more of a short compilation of comments i've received. Here we go: 1. (A remark made by a friend of mine over MSN) "Your writing is very factual and journalistic-style, lol...it's like, mature and intellectual without coming across as trying too hard, hence giving the impression of psuedo-intellectual. I can't stand those that obviously try too hard, with words that you can't even understand...you can be a good journalist, you have that ability to make yourself understood and respected by the wide masses haha." My response: Argh, the influence of The Straits Times, mrbrown, and columnists like Cheong Suk-Wai and Colin Goh. This is the result of your mother forcing you to read the papers daily, since it's supposedly a better alternative than "sitting in front of the computer the whole day." Me as a journalist? Possibly just a freelance writer or something (if i can even attain that calibre), definitely not so hardcore. Journalists have to work everyday and often slog late into the night when there are mistimed breaking news. And they only get a rest on days after public holidays. Wouldn't it be weird if you were working when everyone else is having a good time out or at home, and then only having a break when everyone else is at work? I'd feel pretty bored on those holidays, lol. But good to hear that people can actually understand me, unlike that cheem-looking quote above. 2. (Remark made by Zachary on the way home) "Your blog is narcissistic." Nar·cis·sism ['när-s&-"si-z&m] nu. 1 : EGOISM, EGOCENTRISM 2 : love of or sexual desire for one's own body WTF. Does my blog have any connotation of sexual desires to you? Do you get an orgasm whenever you load my blog on your browser?! I sure hope not, else there's something seriously wrong with you and your reproductive organs! Anyway, Zack later went on to explain that he thought that little "blatant advertisment" on the blog intro about my blog appearing in Digital Life before was a little too egoistic. Phew...so that was what he meant. Its a small personal pride for me and a feather in my cap, but if you guys hate seeing that small notice every time, i don't mind taking it down either. 3. (Remark by Hubert) "Your blog posts are too long, i don't bother reading them." This is one point i can't deny, since im much too used to just keep on typing and typing and forget about the time. Will try to see if i can refrain my fingers from overworking and have a bit more paragraphing, though. 4. (Yet another remark by Hubert on bus 74) "No one posts on your tagboard, so boring." Which is why i appeal to everyone to tag more, not only on my blog, but also on every single blog you view. It makes the blogger happy, you see. =) 5. What i think about my own style: It's become a habit for me to type in (almost) complete and proper sentences most of the time already when im blogging, just like how Yi Yong always capitalises his first letter and ends off his line with a full-stop in MSN conversations (unless the reply's soemthing like "xD" or "o:" of course.) It might be quite a strain for those who are too used to short sentences and 13375p3@|<, but then again, it's just my style and habit. It's true that my posts are usually rather verbose, since i lead a relatively average and boring life. Humour is often lost on me; i have a more sombre attitude. So don't expect a good laugh or anything like that when you read my posts. They're more of short essays about daily occurences, and if you do gain any insight or inspiration from them, that would be even better. Though i doubt it. Oh, and one last thing: if you haven't already noticed, i use emoticons a lot. =X If you have any comments or whatever, just post it on the tagboard over on the right. It's obviously self-explanatory. And remember to spam it - its the inverse of junk mail, the more tags there are, the more satisfied i am. But just try not to spam too much about unrelated stuff too. =P |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:40 pm.
| Friday, January 05, 2007 |
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The first weekend of the year is finally here, brining with it some free time to blog. I'm in sec 3 already, and I'm taking the Humanities Programme (HP) in HCI this year, which comes packaged along with nine compulsory subjects. I also opted for Biology, so that makes a total of 10 subjects: Triple Humanities (History, Geography, Literature), Triple Sciences (Chemistry, Physics, Biology), Double Languages (English & Chinese), Maths and finally a new addition to the HP syllabus this year: China Studies in Chinese (CSC). And for the shrinking group of third-language takers, that will be a total of 11 subjects. We'll also have to face the horrors of afternoon lessons this year, and the wrath of hardworking teachers like Mr. Ben Lee (our maths teacher) who insist on not coming late for his afternoon lessons and expects the whole class to follow suit. And teachers have the privilege of cutting long queues at the canteen during lunch break, whereas us poor souls have to endure queues which strecth up to 20 minutes long. That's 2/3 of our lunch time gone. Alternatively, we work on an empty stomach until the lessons end at 4.40 pm, an enormous feat for those of the likes of Zhaoxing who find it necessary to eat 5 or 6 full meals a day. Now take the sum all of that and multiply it by three afternoons, and you get And then the sadistic teachers torment us some more with the information of how much more difficult the examination grading system will be this year, under the guise of passing remarks like, "Half of my students failed my first test last year." (That, by the way, was quoted from our dear Mr Lee.) And some teachers go even further, by revealing to us the mind-boggling syllabus for the entire year, with the sec 4 syllabus being incidentally positioned right beside ourselves in the same Excel spreadsheet such that curiousity forces us to realise what we will most probably be doing next year as well. Again, remarks like "Don't complain, your sec 4 seniors are doing twice your workload" surface. It can only get worse. To kick a dormant mind which has processed nothing but movies, Counter-Strike and EPL for the past 2 months out of the holiday stimuli and back into the mugging gear for yet another school term is one of the greatest post-holiday challenges faced by teachers and students alike. So teachers solve the problem by cutting "orientation" for seniors to only one day, if an entire day of listening to talks, past accomplishments and future goals can be even called that at all. But one thing they all share in common: they always begin with a sinisterly cheery "welcome back to school" line by the teachers, when we all know they don't mean it at all. And on the second day, they quickly dump all the homework, anxious to not let the brains "rot" any further. Oddly, we had 2 compositions (one Commonwealth essay and one Chinese) and quite a few miscellanous worksheet as homework yesteryday, but for these weekends, we only received some worksheeets. That's 1/3 the work for 3x the time. And yet the teachers still talk so much about "time management". It's going to be one tough year ahead. Everyone doesn't seem too pleased with the prospect of being piled with worksheets, tutorials and worst of all, assignments from 10 sources. Even the Bishan Gay (the paedophile who likes to stare and smile unnervingly at young vulnerable children at bus stops and in the bus) seemed to be affected by the downcast mood of the students. For the first time in history, i caught him not smiling, but instead frowning and looking around the bus stop. It's really unforgivable because forwning is not good for his jaw muscles. Then, he spotted me looking in his directions and grinned widely. I chuckled and turned around, and realised my bus had arrived out of nowhere. In the end Bishan Gay didn't follow me up the bus: i guess there were too many XL-sized sec 4s who were complaining about how hot they were in their uniform, with long sleeves and and full-length pants. And with all these work and commitments, i'll probably have to re-categorise blogging into the "not important and not urgent" list. Which translates into about 2 or 3 posts a week, unless the teachers suddenly explode with kindness. No wonder the newspapers ran an article about experts predicting blogs will die out soon. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:04 pm.
| Tuesday, January 02, 2007 |
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Ahh, it's not been a very happy new year for Asia this year at all. Before Chirstmas, the monsoons brought days of consecutive rain and unpredictable weather, flooding many areas in the region, and in Singapore, washing lots of plants and money down the longkang (i.e. drain). Then, we had the Taiwan earthquake which severed the undersea cables and caused havoc in the cyberworld to both heavy gamers and businesses alike across Asia, when people were stranded with laggy and unstable internet connections if they could even be established at all. There was some cause for celebration, though, when Saddam Hussien was finally hanged, although some people believe he could have been tortured for all his evil sins before he was hanged. However, i think that would be almost as inhumane as the terror Saddam caused during his reign. And now, The Wicked, a popular riddling site set up by Singaporean Tay Wei Kiat, has suddenly shut down, with a weird notice saying, "Brought to you by V-IX". It's quite a coincidence that this unexpected closure occured just a few days after an offer to take over The Wicked fell through (view the related posts on Wei Kiats blog here and here.) Currently, the Wicked community is in chaos, since a new batch of 30 levels had been released on New Year's Day (a day before the V-IX message appeared) with a promise of an iPod Shuffle for the first player to solve level 100. Players are reportedly going crazy after being unable to proceed with solving the levels, to such an extent that certain players have imagined that Wei Kiat had been kidnapped by coins. Word has it that it was V-IX who had wanted to buy over Wicked, but they hijacked The Wicked since the deal did not work out. On the other hand, suspicious members have speculated that this was all a set-up by Weikiat, cleverly designed (or perhaps not so cleverly) to fool people. Whichever the case is, it is anyone's guess. There have been many PMs from puzzled players sent to my account, 1CentCoin, on the Wicked forums, where i am a moderator, but I do not know what is going on etiher. The other active forum mod, woonie, appears to have no knowledge about this issue too. In fact, it looks like the players are delving deeper into this mystery, with weird files and folders dug up on the V-IX server, and already know more information than I do. I have even sent Weikiat an email regarding this issue, but have not yet received a reply of any sort. It's really unfortunate that this V-IX incident just had to pop up on the last free day we have to solve the Wicked, since the long weekend and school holidays end tomorrow and we will hardly have much time anymore to spend on the Wicked, what with school and work. But then again, when were New Years ever perfect? |
'Twas teh winnar at 1:52 pm.
| Monday, January 01, 2007 |
 My sentiments exactly. Looks like even a turtle is smarter than some humans. All the hype and parties just to bring in yet another year of stress and suffering, not to mention resolutions which are hardly ever fulfilled. Im writing this post as the countdown party's being telecast on channel 5. This year's one's at VivoCity, a change from the usual Siloso Beach, but i think you need tickets this time. The performers have just finished doing their stuff (Gurmit Singh did a breakdance move - Worm - on stage while acting as Phua Chu Kang! xD) and it looks like there's less than 1 minute left to the final countdown of the countdown. Ok, they're starting now...10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...HAPPY NEW YEAR! And then the entire estate suddenly erupted in loud cheers, whistling, party poppers and a bit of grumbling from the few who actually slept over New Year but got roused anyway. I'm leaving the computer for a bit to join the rest of the folk in the living room to do a bit of shouting too. 2 minutes later, all the noise finally abated. Oh wait...fireworks! It's an almost unobstructed view of the dazzling lights from the balcony, although it's too far away to hear the bang of the fireworks exploding. Tried to take a photo with the handphone camera function, but its too grainy and i only got one crappy shot before the fireworks stopped as suddenly as they appeared. I returned to the computer, where i was immediately bombarded by about 10 mass conversations by spammers (or should i call them "well-wishers"?) wishing everyone "Happy New Year!" Usually the greeting comes along with a few emoticons too, and i hastily reply "same 2 u" before closing the convos, as more pop up again. Not to put you guys down, but try to spam less yeah? And try not to overly express your excitement, we all know everyone's anxious to grow older by a year. Hey, perhaps people are actually using new years as an excuse to party and revel. Or in the case of Carlsberg, to earn extra revenue from tickets. Because seriously, we're going to have to celebrate at least 50+ new years (if you're a normal human not suffering from extra limbs, that is.) Come to think of it, we're only celebrating that one moment: the transition of time between 31th Dec 11:59:59 and 1st Jan 00:00:00. And there's an adbundance of moments out there. Heck, there's 43,200 moments every day. And we just have to get excited and worked up over that one tiny moment which is just a blip in our lives, even tinier than Singapore on the world atlas. In short, what im saying is that New Year's Day is no big deal. But the extra public holiday we get from it is nice, though. =D But simply for the sake of tradition and adding an extra line to this post, i shall exclaim once again: Happy New Year! |
'Twas teh winnar at 12:00 am.
