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.
| Sunday, April 29, 2007 |
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Only one week before D-Day! D: Yep, im leaving next sunday to brunei, where ill spend a wtf-ing 11 days in the dense mosquito-infested jungles of some foreign palce ive only heard about in history lessons. (That mean almost two weeks without updating my blog...nuuuuu T_T) Anyway, got my parents to drive us to beach road (that's where all the army stores are) today to pick up some equipment for the camp, then to junction 8 later for a new pair of shoes and dinner. Spent a total of 5 hours out, heh. Here's the list: 1. Torch - $7 2. Insect Repellent (small tube of gel type) - $2 3. Solid Fuel (the stuff the scouts cook their maggi mee with) - $1.50 4. Sunblock Lotion (Guardian) - $13.80 (o.o) 5. Dettol Wipes (Wet tissues thingy from NTUC) - $2.44 6. Hand Sanitizer (Watsons) - $2.00, lol. 7. New pair of shoes - $71.10 after discount (zomg!) 8. Piece of rope and powder i salvaged from my dad's army bag - Worthless. Total: $99.84, that's almost $100 for the camp equipment itself. Plus $480 for the camp fees (the school's already subsidising $450, heh.) Pretty expensive stuff to ensure i come back in one piece, though there's still a $250,000 payout in event of death. :o We'll be departing at around noon on 6th May and flying Brunei Air (eeks), though i hope ill be able to squeeze in a bith of time before flying off to blog using changi airport's free internet booths. :) Well, at least there's one good side to it - we'll be returning on the 16th, which means we get to miss 2 or 3 days fo school. :3 |
'Twas teh winnar at 9:50 pm.
| Friday, April 27, 2007 |
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Now that this exam week's finally coming to an end with Geography tmr, you may be interested in how ive been spending my time (or lack thereof) mugging. Here's a quick screenshot of the processes that were running in the course of my Geography preparation:  Ack. I am an easily distracted fool. (In case you were wondering about the Space Cowboy part, i merely left it running in the background while i afk'd in the bazaar...no, i wasn't playing SCO while chatting on MSN and reading up on the case study of China all at the same time. D:) But well, still. I should try making more efficient use of my time. Especially since i took two naps today and STILL am blogging at 1.20 am. Despite the geog test and the history essay (which i haven't done =X) to be passed up tmr. Now you know why self-made timetables are utterly useless to me. >_< |
'Twas teh winnar at 1:16 am.
| Wednesday, April 25, 2007 |
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Hwachong's getting more economical these days... Here's the evidence: Re: Our letter dated 23 Apr 07 addressed to Parents/Guardian Wow, the school actually shows concern over saving our parent's money But still, that's quite substantial if you mutliply it by the student population (almost 2k)...giving us a total savings of around $350 for the school. Hey, that might be enough to buy the portable street soccer court for us! =P Re: FairPrice Used textbooks Project 2006 I wasn't involved in the project, so i don't know how much those students received...though even an average allowance of $10 would mean an extra $1160 in the coffers (Which is more than 3 times of the savings from the yearbooks!) Though now Mr. Hon is asking the students to give up virtually their only other benefit from the project other than CIP hours - the small sum of money they received. But heyheyhey, as they say, a little help goes a loooong way, right? And here's the catch, though it's not explicitly stated in the message: You don't deserve that money. Give it to us or else! (...or else your NRIC number will be entered into our blacklist and you can forget about receiving any future benefits/awards from the school! MUAHAHAHA) The school must have been receiving too little donations from the prize money of competition winners or smth. You evil guys D: Though there was one thought which surfaced in my mind: Do they get more CIP hours if they donate their prize money? After all, it's an act of charity which potentially benefits the society at large. Sadly, that probably won't happen, considering how economical the school is with everything from money to grades to CIP hours. I mean, im sure that warm and fuzzy feeling you get after doing a good deed is reward enough, after all. >:3 |
'Twas teh winnar at 10:38 pm.
| Tuesday, April 24, 2007 |
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Looks like the oggix tagboard ain't working again - messages can't be posted. Worse still, the past 2 wks' worth of tags have disappeared - the horror! At least that gives you more incentive to tag so that these old tags get pushed into the realms of the archives again. That is, if they ever fix the submit system first though. But still, let's not dwell too much on the crappiness of free stuff, considering there's a history test tmr, its already 1 am and yet i haven't covered all the topics yet. Ho-hum. (I fell asleep while reading the notes, though. It's the thought that counts, i hope D:) Hopefully things clear up tmr. Wish we luck for the tests, and hope that the tagboard's restored back to normal. Else i think im gonna hafta change tagboards (again). =/ |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:20 pm.
| Monday, April 23, 2007 |
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i realised how much our hair can affect our looks today =P cos during the announcements, the cross country team went up to share their "commendable results", which wasn't that good considering only the JC boys got 1st (i think, i wasn't really paying attention), while the other divs were ranked 6th and below D: and they apparently followed judo's tradition of shaving the competition team bald, so all of them ended up with spiky hair of the same length. and all also so dark, like just came out of NS liddat... i went, "huh? how come they all look alike de?!" especially since there was this sec 4 guy who tried to AP me a couple of days in the canteen, threatening to report to jefflim about dunnowat - i ap'd him back and he shut up. then i realised that almost all the cross country ppl standing in front all looked like him o.o eventually i did manage to pick out that guy though - he was the one with the darkest skin who looked the most guai lan. but that's completely insignificant and irrelevant. at least the JC girls were saved from the barber though - lucky them. and somehow, they looked so...different. moral of the day: don't shave. unless you want to contribute to the monk population in hwachong *coughjaycough* xD |
'Twas teh winnar at 7:03 pm.
| Friday, April 20, 2007 |
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Is probably the best remedy. Gets your mind relaxed and free from worries, at least for the few seconds when you're in a daze after waking up. Down with laughter and sugar! Though its often untimely, considering i dozed off from 9.30 to 11.30 pm ytd. According to my mum though, she tried to wake me up at 10.30, but i apparently mumbled some intelligible stuff about "having nothing much to do" and promptly fell asleep again. So i awoke with a fresh mind and a dark sky... ...To the realisation that i had not yet memorised the ci2 yu3 for the chinese test today. Whee. Well, nothing much to say about it at elast, compre was hard, the cloze was around average, and the paper sucked in general. We almost got to miss the chinese test thoguh, since we had some HSSRP Symposium and were excused from lessons after 12+. Too bad Mr Chng insisted on us staying for the test... =( And the symposium, held at NUS (again), was largely a waste of time. The GOH's opening speech took like half an hour, 15 mins over the schedule time. And he devoted his "speech" to citing random figures - anything from press freedom to income gaps to mental health - which showed that Singapore was declining overall and we're doomed to a society of extreme class stratification, poverty and mental patients who contribution to thousands of suicides each year. Which is completely irrelavant to the symposium - for heaven's sake, its the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Programme, not Hailing Singapore Society being Run to Phail. Heck, he even mentioned the Wee Shu Min incident too, in his point about racial harmony. Despite his warped logic (or lack thereof) though, there's at least something to take heart: he probably isn't a supporter of PAP. I mean, not a single part of his speech put the governance of Singapore in a positive light, so...;) And we missed the only highlight of the day - attending our seniors' presentation - cos the venue was apparently too full. So we went home after the tea reception. Which makes me rmb one other thing too... CHOCOLATE. I realised i have an addiction to it, after eating the brownies (which were *gasp* the best part of the refreshments). UBER <3! Milk, Ferraro, Mars, nuts. Anything but mocha cofee, which is a tad too thick. Though hot chocolate would be great too. Enough of cheesecake! Choc's the new in! And to wrap up this light-hearted post (stark contrast with the previous post, heh - i told you sleep was effective), Bak Chor Mee is back in town! >> http://www.mrbrownshow.com/?p=845 << Spread the |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:05 pm.
| Thursday, April 19, 2007 |
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Would you sacrifice yourself for the wishes of the people around you? I mulled over the thought today upon receiving our marks for the maths retest. Why an overall retest? cos the class did quite badly for the original test - the class MSG was above 3, which means most got around B4 (24/40). The idea of a retest arose due to the fact that we were also given such a retest in term 1 for history - though that situation was much more dire, considering less than half the class passed and everyone did badly, so there was no opposition at all towards being given a second chance then. Now you would probably be thinking: Why the hell would those getting A1s want to scrap their marks and take the paper again? Cos we're greedy bastards who will settle for nothing less than 40/40? No way, dude. There being only 5 A1s in the class, who wouldn't already be satisfied by scoring among the top in class? It's cos of the fact that Mr. Lee gave us an ultimatum: either the entire class agreed to a retest, in which everyone's original results would be replaced, else if just one person opposed the decision, we would not be given this "second chance". And eventually, reluctantly or not, all of us consented. And our fate was sealed. Such is the influence of herd mentality. Any of us, including me, could have simply stood up and refused a retest. But would you do so at the expense of your class? Would you want, for the sake of your own results, leave others in the lurch? Are friends or personal achievements more important? By choosing the latter, you run the risk of being labelled a "selfish mugger" who doesn't give a damn about "the welfare of the class" and thus doomed to be a social outcast - though one might say that the issue would have faded into the recesses of our minds by the time the next test came along. By choosing the former, you run the risk of scoring even lower, especially in my case since ive got little to gain (i was already happy with my results) but everything to lose. And it's not as if you get any recognition or benefits out of giving up your achievements, cos that's what you're expected to do for the class; for the sake of your classmates. Much less would you be hailed as the saviour of the class, if anyone would even be grateful in the first place. However, if you did not conform, expect a lot of abuse to be hurled your way. The lesser of two evils. For the voice of the majority leads the way. I made the second choice. 7:22 PM) ♫ l|[ zx ]|l♪---: and in case you've forgotten what that term means, here's zx's elaboration: "(7:23 PM) ♫ l|[ zx ]|l♪---: making a decision by judging the majority of ppl is happy but at the same time sacrificing some of the minority or upset morality" I've had a history of scoring either very well or relatively poorly in past maths papers, thanks to careless mistakes. In the end, the results turned against me. It was a 50-50 chance which i got lucky on for the first time round. But perhaps i was too overconfident - naive, even - in thinking that it would turn in my favour again. When Mr. Lee handed out the scripts today again, the option was presented once again. Should anyone protest, everyone's scores would be reverted to the original. But I chose to stay silent. So did the few others who performed worse than expected. Perhaps I am again, too hopeful that the second test this term would pull my grades up to my expectations, if there would be even one in the first place, considering that we're altready lagging in terms of syllabus coverage. Not that im blaming this on anyone. Call me a narrow minded mugger to which grades are everything, or whatever you want. But please, at least let me know that it was the right choice, especially after all this shit's that been happening recently. |
'Twas teh winnar at 8:14 pm.
'Twas teh winnar at 1:00 am.
| Saturday, April 14, 2007 |
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So i woke up ytd with a sore back and biceps, in addition to a nagging headache. Probably due to the fact that we just had our napfa tests on friday, then some rigorous physical activities thereafter, called EP3 + a bit of classroom soccer + wushu lessons at night. Not to mention the fact that i still stubbornly slept past 2 am. Though the migrane cleared after i looked thru the OB Brunei booklet - especially the bit on insurance coverage. That's gonna be 11 days of hell in some malaria-infested region - we were issued malaria tablets leh! - with Uncle Toh and Blee, our ever so caring maths teacher. Bleargh. Yet the booklet's so inspirational, with all the quotes from this guy called Anonymous... "There will be times when you will be wet and cold, hot, exhausted, dehydrated and probably quite frustrated with yourself and others around you. However, when you put in your best efforts to overcome the obstacles, you will by duly rewarded." -Liek zomg! D: Though the stuff in the booklet's nothing compared to the news this few days. I'm damn sick of reading page after page of justifications about the ministerial pay hikes, about how its for the good of Singapore, about how Singaporeans are so not being brainwashed, yadaa yadaa yadaa. Not that im the only one who thinks that way - even Elite Girl thinks so too, in addition to mrbrown (as usual) and lots of other ppl out there - 47.9% of Singaporeans, to be exact, according to a poll at asiaone.com. Yep, we're entering the forbidden realm of politics here - not that i haven't criticised the gahmen b4, heh. So now we know where all the extra GST goes to. I've taken the liberty to skim thru most of the reports in the Straits Times - and the most glaring fact that has never come out once is that PM Lee's salary will be 5 times that of Mr. Bush, the president of the wealthiest country in the world. (It's already 3 times now, and Bush earns roughly US$400,000 a year...do the math.) But then again, as PM Lee says, we shouldn't compare our gahmen with that of other countries since the systems are essentially different...so there. Even the most "balanced" article so far (Insight, 14 April, Sat) only went as far as to consult professors and lecturers from various institutions, who expressed the view that the PAP timed the pay hikes just after the elections so people would forget about it by the time the next election comes by. No street poll of the common Singaporean, hardly any coverage on the speech by opposition member Sylvia Lim, nothing. And 5 out of 7 quotes displayed in attention-grabbing giant font right smack in the centre were from surprise, surprise - MPs. Not that we Singaporeans have a say, in any case. They say they have a debate in parliament, but how come we only see supporting views from the PAP? Heck, they even banned foreign speakers from speaking at an SDP public forum, saying that "foreigners should not abuse their privilege by interfering in our domestic politics", as reported by CNN. (Again, i don't think this was reported in the Singaporean media.) At least for once, the headlines of today's Sunday Times was a report on how two coast guard officers died after a high-speed chase. Finally, a hint of environmental conservation by not wasting ink printing out useless propaganda. Saves our eyes too. God bless those two "heroes" who "sacrificed their lives for the security of the state"; and god bless PAP too, when their electorial percentage drops even further next General Elections. Assuming your aims for the "long-term good of Singapore", as reproted in the press, are truly genuine, then what will become of Singapore, under a government made up of selfish ministers who only go for the pay? An extra $1m won't garner you ministers of higher quality; though they will certainly come in greater quantity. In fact, the PAP would probably gain more support if all that money went to aid packages for the needy instead. Thought not like that would ever happen. Ugh. The hike up will be a tough one, especially in the dense jungle of Brunei. Yet, we have no say against the commanding officers, who nevertheless try to manipulate us using inspirational propaganda. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:39 pm.
| Thursday, April 12, 2007 |
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gah, so much things to blog about, so little time >< been sleeping at between 1-2 am for the past few nights again - an improvement from last week, though it still doesnt eliminate the tendency for em to fall asleep in class. =X hrp. Hrp. HRP. its always HRP at fault. (Young, 2007) 'cos the 2nd submission (intro + lit review) is due on friday...and i don't think mr chng will give an extension. well maybe he will, except it comes with a penalty...but ohwell. gotta envy those under mr. chEng, they got an indefinite extension thanks to his slacking *coughasusualcough*. im sooo gonna get him as my mentor next year. but, woot! im finally done with my first draft (kinda) of hrp. may well be my first AND final draft though. see how things go first. D: but still, I GOT INTO CAP!!! wooooooot. too bad bing didn't get in though. =( but on the flip side, shaun didn't get in either, which is a good thing, heh. at least we'll have one less source on involuntary nasal expulsions during the lectures there. more on that at a later date. i seriously need sleep. x.x |
'Twas teh winnar at 12:35 am.
| Sunday, April 08, 2007 |
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In a recent move, our math teacher pledged to lighten our homework load by shortening our assignments to no more than 5 or 6 questions each. Of course, ignoring the fact that we still get assignments almost every day, that's still about half the work we do usually. And so we rejoice. Hurrah! The maths department seems to have followed such a policy too, in order to ensure a better quality of school life, with the utopian aims of minimal stress and to deprive the canteen uncle of money from canned coffee. So now, our online assignments only have 5 questions each. --orly?-- The presentation looks so deceptively appealing - after all, the questions are only numbered up to "5." and for once, there are no horrifying letters encased in double brackets! (Seriously, we once had a maths test with questions that had sub-sections all the way from (a) to (f). "Very easy, 4 questions only!" our then-maths teacher would say.") --no wai!-- ...And then you get down to reading the questions. Here's a sample: 1. If x + 1 and x - 2 are factors of x3 + ax2 - 5x + b, find the values of a, b and the remaining factor. Come on, if you want to give us 15 qns rather than 5, can you at least make it more blatant? Even separating it into (a)(b)(c) would let us distinguish our workings more clearly between each part. What's the use of cramming like, three questions into one? Maybe as maths teachers, you want to be economical on numbering - though i don't see why you would, since we're already going to cubic equations here. Or maybe someone finally realised the importance of environmental conservation and decided that making us print a few less characters would save the world sooner or later. But perhaps the better explanation would be that the teachers are just plain sadistic. And that's what school really is, a sadistic world beneath the guise of conjunctions. Hence, comparing the coefficients to the problems, this implies that nirvana will always be an asymptote, therefore, triple-pyramidal-dots, we are doomed AND caught in a self-perpetuating cycle OR a(mugger)=y(ou). [10] |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:31 pm.
| Friday, April 06, 2007 |
Ack, my Nokia 7610 screwed up after barely 4 months of my usage...<_< (That had to be taken with my sucky webcam, btw.) All i did was leave it on overnight, as i always did...and when i checked it the next day i with greeted with just a blank.white.screen. Tried taking out the battery and i there was a dazzling display those coloured strips upon startup, before they slowly faded away into permanant whiteness again. Oddly, the phone seems to be running as per normal, with the strangely reassuring usual Nokia tune on startup - which means that the problem probably only lies with the display. Good and bad in a sense, i suppose. The only symptom before this was the signal icon (at the top left) being replaced with this irrtating blinking "G" - but i doubt its even related to this catastrophe. Fine, so my dad was using it for almost a year before he passed it on to me...maybe its time for the phone to retire already. >< If it doesn't get fixed or i don't get a new phone, then that probably means ill have to switch back to my previous phone - which is so outdated i can't even rmb the model - with a cramped keypad, limited games and NO CAMERA FUNCTION. Argh... Gosh, if that happens, that means i won't be able to take photos on the go anymore. It doesn't help that i didn't win that cybershot digicam. ohwell...=X But worst of all - NO ANICENT EMPIRES TO KEEP ME AWAKE ON THE BUS. zzz... |
'Twas teh winnar at 10:33 pm.
| Thursday, April 05, 2007 |
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Surviving on 12 hours of sleep for the past 4 days isn't a good idea. Especially since im still online and blogging at 1.30 am. All that, thanks to Project's Day and our vunderfoul mentor Mr. Quek. It's like, in the past week leading up to the prelim, he piled us with notes and made us improve our slides every day. And when it came down to the big day of presentations today, guess what? We had 30+ slides to cram into 5 minutes of incessant rattling. Unfortunately i suck at impromptu paraphrasing and summarising of slides, so i ended up taking 4 minutes of our time to run through only half of the slides (my portion). Leaving less than 1 minute for YYY to present. Sorry, Yi Yong. >< So unsurprisingly, the judges seemed rather unconvinced - Mr Cheng was one of them, and he didn't seem like he quite managed to understand the purpose of our project, and considering his influential charm (*ahem*) we may just fail the prelims. And the prelims tkae up 30% of the total score for Language Arts, so to put it all in two words: we're screwed. Of cos, i used milder euphemisms when Mr Quek later asked us how it went and didn't mention the portion about the judges' harping on the fact that we tried to cram too much into too little space. Oh, did i mention? Mr Quek's rationale for all that is: Slog hard for the prelims, and you can collapse for 3 entire days after that. And collapse i shall. At least tmr's Good Friday, so i expect myself to wake up at 2 pm or so. Gosh, im pretty surprised i survived the week, probably due to the fact that we had only 3 actual days of lessons. Although i think Jerrold fared worse than me - slumping motionless across the desk (me) looks more "presentable" than having your head tilted back over the chairs and snoring rather loudly (jerrold). And shaun actually went to take a full-length video of him dropping off to sleep. How stupid is that - though i'll be sadistic enough to post some pics up here if shaun actually sends them to me. D: |
'Twas teh winnar at 10:03 pm.
| Sunday, April 01, 2007 |
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Happy birthday Yi Yong! :3 Though it's already 2.45 am here (yes, i edited the post date) and it's technically 2.46 hours past the "Wish eeu happy bday worrx <3" period, but nvm, i made up for it by dropping him an offline message about 25 hours ago already. Hope he didn't burn his cheesecake with laser of over 9000 power though! D: That said and done, why the hell am i still online at this time?! (Im not here to dedicate my TLC, passionate congratulations and time to YYY, don't worry.) Well, the truth is that i just got out of an overnight sexual romp and im here to express my sexual desi- Wait, what am i saying? Gahh, that's probably the effect History essays and Lenin has on your brain. Not to mention panadol, too - since im down with a fever of 39 degrees atm. Looks like im gonna skip school tmr, another victim in the spate of outbreaks of flu recently. x.x But that leads to a paradox - why would i even bother doing my essays if i could pon school tmr? No, i am definitely not that mugger-ish - im a very last minute guy. Which leads us to the only possible solution: YOU JUST GOT FOOLED. No, i don't think you did, in any case. But if you were, then... NubNUBnUbNUBnub is you. Oh come on, did you actually think i would succumb to such immature, childish, brainless pranks of no real value? Hang on a sec, even Google does that too! So what am I doing here, being a screwed up bastard criticising others with no supporting views from historians nor objective facts and data? Damn, now i really prozac. Add some coke along with it. And so we're stupidly celebrating April's Fool 3 hours after it's over - wow. Nevertheless, in staying true to the spirit, everything in this post has been false - except for yi yong's birthday, heh. Now that's surpising. xD |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:45 am.
