Curry session.

Last day of Year 5 lessons today. Whoa, that was amazingly fast. Soon we'll be facing our last day of school ever, too. I don't know if I'm looking forward to that anymore. 

The past week's basically been for clearing a crazy backlog of work (well not really backlog, it's just work and assessments teachers need to clear off before exams start). 

On Wednesday we went through some Chem hons stuff. Finally did well for a quiz, goodness. Needed some of that redemption. Then had Math, but we just did revision. I'm glad I still remember some chapter 1 stuff, which means I've still got hope. 

ACE was a briefing in the theatrette about post-exam activities. Not much, really. We've got an etiquette dinner on the 11th, boarding dinner on the 20th, EQ workshop and Year 6 farewell assembly on the 22nd, and script-checking sometime later, and then the rest of the time for ARP stuff. We may find it funny that we need an EQ workshop, but we asked Ms Dass today and she answered in such a way that made us all feel as uncivilised as cavemen. Sigh. I think I understand why the teachers think we're idiots sometimes, but I don't see how anyone can be taught EQ skills in four hours. Hmm. 

On Thursday we randomly did revision questions throughout Math again, then had Chem. Weren't really productive; we just talked about random things and Ms Wong gave us a few studying tips. I think the teachers didn't feel like teaching any more than we felt like actually learning things. 

Had our last Ecology prac yesterday too. Fighting fish and stimulus and stuff. I think I just sat there and drew fish while everyone else did things. Whoops. I like fish. Oh, and Ms Chan gave us After Eights (aka heaven in a box). Has anyone else noticed she looks strangely like an Asian Lea Michele? I swear she does. 

Then the Chem hons quiz. Oh no, Chem hons. Did okay, I hope. Hope. Fingers crossed. I really need to not fail this module. 

NS talk during PE, then went to resume our polymer practical. Interestingly enough, after Jia Hong and I screwed up terribly last week, our mould turned out quite okay. Poured resin and stuff into the mould. That was it. Nobody else likes the smell of polyester resin but me. I don't know why. 

Managed to survive today on two hours of sleep, because Deborah and Amelia and I spent a tonne of time just talking in the pantry about life and whatnot. Oh life. 

Went through our Math test (did okay), kind of slept through half of Physics (whoops), did our Physics quiz (ew) then had English. Ms Dass talked about our scores and we were disappointed (with the exception of Brendan and Galen) and then she brought us curry, because she promised to cook us some last week. 

Yeah. Basically survived the entire day on free food. Ms Dass' curry (which was really good), John Huang-supplied bread (his mum baked them; awesome stuff), Ms Wong-sponsored drinks, and then CCA farewell party pizza for dinner. I think as students shouldn't expect anything (gift-wise) from our teachers at all, and we have absolutely no right to ask for things from them. But when they totally insist on it, the least we could do is to appreciate. 

Also managed to draw interesting parallels between the 505 curry session and that story in the Bible where Jesus feeds over five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread (with twelve full baskets to spare) because we had five loaves (excluding three baguettes) and two chickens' worth of curry. 

Then had a massive headache trying to sort out CCA exco things and where we're headed next year and how to not let it collapse. 

Then came back and crashed and woke up three hours later and now I'm here trying to study. 

Night.

P.S. Oh, and we had our final fire drill of the year on Wednesday night. Did pretty well.

Singapore 2012

Is it weird that I've got 'Singapore 2012' as the title of this post? Not really. Race posts will be race posts. 

Race happened on Sunday, and more people than usual were hyped up about the race. It's strange how people suddenly become great fans of F1 and then never follow any other race. Like dude, just go all way man. F1 fan or nothing. 

Amid all the driver-team politics and contract-signing for next year and the terrible weather, the race went down really well. Best Singapore GP so far. Either that or I was just feeling glad I could watch a race on television after so long. Thank you Channel 5. 

Was in the new 7th floor TV room with Rania for the race itself (caught qualifying alone the night before, surprisingly with one of the Chinese scholars who I didn't think would be into cars going round and round a race track). Nice to have someone to talk to. Hopefully we'll be able to physically be at the race next year. Fingers crossed. 

So about the race, Alonso started 5th and Massa down in 13th. Red lights went off, and the first corner and second corners were a mess, and then Massa had a puncture and had to pit. He ended up last and we were sad, but he made an immense catching-up effort and finished 8th. Ferrari said today that they're signing him on for another year, for which I'm quite glad. I like him at Ferrari. Joshua Sia says the car's not fast enough for him (Alonso can make it because he's a crazy talented and dedicated driver) but I think it's good for him to stay in a team that he's comfortable with and that supports him all the way right when he needs their support. He's slowly coming back after that hell of an accident two years ago. 

Hamilton started on pole and led for a while, until his gearbox sort of blew up and he had to retire. Rania was practically dancing with joy. Too good to be true, really. I mean, I felt quite bad for the poor guy, but anything that helps Alonso with the Championship is good for me. Plenty of other retirements, too. Schumacher (after running into Vergne), Vergne, both HRTs, both Williams and Petrov. Button almost took out Vettel during the safety car restart (which would have been great for Alonso, but I feel mean saying that). 

Vettel ended up winning, and Button second. Di Resta ended up fourth, best result ever for him (and the team I think, not sure). Vettel is super cute. Finger waving and his LED-ed helmet. How can anybody hate him? 

Kimi was sixth, in front of Grosjean, because team orders are allowed now and they told Grosjean that Kimi was faster than him. Lotus has one of the better cars. 


So like, that's it. Singapore's signed another five-year contract so there will be a next year. 

Had a Chem quiz on Monday, and no Biochem. 

Math test today, and English. I don't like English. I like the lessons, hate the assessment. Why is it not good enough that I speak English and people understand me? 

Bunch of work to finish up before this week ends, because exams start next week. 

Oh God oh God oh God. 

So hard not to panic.

Selfless.

Oh God what has happened to Blogger? It's like it's been wrestled unkindly into something that resembles the lovechild of Google docs and the colour orange. I don't think I like it much. 

This is a video of a man doing good deeds on his birthday. That is so sweet. On a day where everything is supposed to be about you, he made it about everyone else instead. 

The weekend is here, but that means exams are closer and that's nothing to look forward too. 

Thursday was a long day, because we had Math, Chem, Eco, Chem, and then PE. Didn't do as well for the Chem test as I wanted, and totally messed up the Math GCT. Beautiful. 

PE teacher gave us Kit Kat after PE, which was surprising. She's not an incompetent teacher at all, really. It's just that we think she's crazy sometimes. But our ball-playing skills have probably improved under her. 

Friday wasn't very eventful either, really. We had a ridiculously long assembly programme where Ms Chua talked about this award thing the Ministry of Education is doing, where they give out cash to nice people. I don't think the vigorous process will help with the nominating, because we really hate filling in forms. But then again, it'll prove that we really think that person is worthy if we go to all that trouble. 

Had Math after that. Mr Lin just summarised chapters 4 and 5 and gave us some pointers for Tuesday's test (Oh God there's a test on Tuesday). 

Practical-ed for Physics, after our in-class assignment. Was surprisingly easy, considering how little I studied for it. I mean, it felt like I did nothing because there were no questions or examples to attempt, nothing. Just words and a few equations and five pages' worth of notes. The prac was fun, but then again I enjoy most Physics practicals. Paired up with Jia Hong, and was so perfectionist we were last to pack up. But I think we have awesome data so that's fine. Interestingly we were also asked to apply our newly-acquired Stats skills on our data. Just whoa. 

English was totally fun, because it amuses us to no end to try to annoy Ms Dass. She's great for dealing with us so well. Talked about gender equality and stuff. Women need to realise that if they still want to live in a world where chivalry exists, they really need to get rid of the whole feminism thing. They really can not go together. You cannot demand equality while at the same time asking to be treated better without doing the same. 

In the end we watched a speech by Michelle Obama. She is a great speaker, and I swear I was paying attention to what she was saying, but we really couldn't help but laugh at the little things that happened. Like the ridiculously large number of people crying, and the severe unglamness of many people caught on camera. 


Went for CCA, but the school was having some electrical problems and the Internet was down. No hostel LAN, no wi-fi, and that's why I slept early last night. 

Went out for dinner with Wee Thean, Kelvin and KT after CCA. Surprisingly there were seats at the Holland V. branch of 'Everything With Fries'. After being appetite-less from being sick and all, and being cooped up in school, I hadn't stuffed myself like that in ages. So full, but so satisfied. Mm. 


Had this Bruneian thing this morning, but that wasn't interesting. 

Then did my part of the Tioman report (ish, hopefully Galen isn't too pissed at me) and caught qualifying on television in the TV room. Hamilton on pole, followed by Maldonado and Vettel. Sigh. 

Will talk about the race tomorrow. 

Night.

Proceeding.

Hooray, it seems to me that my tagboard is slowly coming back to life. Nice.

Haven't posted for a week because I fell sick. Yeah, there's no elegant way to put this.

Had our Chem test on Thursday, so spent most of the day just studying and praying hard we wouldn't screw it up (Debb and I in particular, because we've been doing disappointingly bad in almost everything lately). Hopefully it'll turn out quite well. Throat was kind of scratchy so I slept early, then woke up the next day with my voice gone and a fever.

In the end I had to leave school because it got progressively worse (thanks Pin for talking to the lady at the general office for me, the lady who laughed when she found out I lost my voice), and slept all the way into the afternoon. Then I made Fatinn go to the clinic with me. Because one feels less miserable with company, and I needed someone to talk for me.

Anyway, my weekend was basically sleeping, feeling better, feeling guilty for not doing work, worrying, feeling terrible, sleeping, shivering, sweating, sleeping, staring blankly at things, etc. Fun. Thank God I have quite very much recovered now.

Punitha fell sick on Monday and Deborah's sick now, so something's definitely up. I blame the weather and the stress, really. Horribly humid and sticky and hot and unhappy and generally uncomfortable. Honestly. What is this. It's race weekend, too, and I don't know how the drivers and pit crew are going to like this kind of weather.

Been extremely busy, what with our Biochem presentation and lab report due on Monday (which we pulled off quite nicely with zero help from me whatsoever, being completely out of action for the weekend), last article review for English due on Tuesday and our Math GCT on Tuesday too. Then spent last night studying for today's Chem hons quiz (thankfully managed it quite well, so I'm hoping to end this failing streak).

PA system failed today, so we had to shuffle back to class to listen to someone recite the pledge over the PA system. Chem practical-ed, where Jia Hong and I promptly screwed up because we forgot the fixative spray. Then had Math, where Mr Lin finished off the last chapter of the module (yay).

Played pool, then went for council election voting. Will not say much because I didn't really-

ACE was nothing, and no other classes were doing that role play thing on integrity so Ms Dass just sat with us and drank her coffee while we talked. Yay class-mentor bonding.

Went out with the class (less than half the class, actually) for dinner after the Chem hons quiz. Ate at the hawker centre opposite WCP. Om nom. Beats hostel dinner any day, man.

Anyway, it's less than an hour till they reveal the new The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey trailer in lieu of Hobbit Day (Tolkien Week, which interestingly coincides with International Book Week. I shall look into this). Excited. I realise our job as fans is to wait patiently, only to embarrassingly lose our cool when things start to happen.

Shall go and shower and then come back, watch the trailer a hundred times, then study for tomorrow's Chem quiz.

Night.

Intellectually challenged.

Why do I have two seemingly identical versions of 'Sunshine of Your Love' by Cream? One's from my Complete Clapton album, and another's from Disraeli Gears. Hmm.

Anyway, I must've kept it for a reason.

Student Council Presidential elections have begun, for the 9th Council Exco. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. I mean, yeah it's great and all, and I support our Council and everything, but they have such a small impact in my life it really doesn't matter to me what they do, so when they ask us to vote for a president it's just going to boil down to who we think seems more charismatic on stage. I don't see why anyone would want to constantly complain about the council though; seems to me they're working hard enough.

Started the day with Chem Hons, brilliant stuff. Got our tests back, and did disappointingly terribly, and I just felt like I wanted to give up on life right then and there.

Then had Math, where we finished off Chapter 5 and then decided whether to take AP stats. I don't know. I signed up for it, but it's like five hours a week next sem, which means we'll have wasted a hundred hours of our lives on that module, not to mention the studying and the assignment-completing and the exam-taking. It's like I'm digging my own grave. But I'd like it on my CV.

Had lunch, and I realised how much I missed having lunch with our class. We're awesome.

ACE was fun, because we gave Ms Dass her 'Dass Mug', which is basically a colour-changing mug that has her face on it, along with the caption 'It's My Mug!'. Aren't we geniuses. I think she was quite flattered.

Then had to talk about academic integrity, which made absolutely no sense, because everyone sees everything differently.

All right, I'm going to have to go and study for tomorrow's Inorganic Chem test. Failing one Chem module doesn't mean I should fail the other one too.

Night.

Dozo.

Kate Middleton and her husband- I mean, Prince William and his wife are in Singapore right now. I wonder what they're here for.

Anyway, today's E-learning day, which meant it was multiple days at once. By right it's a Tuesday, but a timetable swap made it Thursday, and school scheduling made it E-learning day, but it totally felt like a Saturday, so everyone was a bit disoriented and confused (apart from the crazy productive people, who finish everything by morning while the rest of us slumber on peacefully).

Since we had to follow Thursday's timetable instead, my class is the only class that has to take this Ecology quiz online, which was a real breeze to do (because espace has several loopholes that make your life easy). The notes weren't even notes; they were links to videos that school Internet connection is too slow to load in time. And there was this Chem worksheet we had to do to, and thanks to Mrs Soong's uploaded lecture sound clip, it wasn't hard either.

Cluster outing to Dozo today, which is this interesting Japanese-style restaurant where they serve you high-class meals in a high-class setting (with pretty high costs too, mind you).

Food was incredibly excellent and was served with ridiculously nice cutlery (and an assortment of spoons and forks and knives which gave us a bit of trouble deciding which to use). Six-course meal (as I ordered) commenced as follows:

1. Mouth-washing sour plum cold drink thing.

2. Course 1: A platter of random stuff the chef decides would be nice to cook today. Consisted of scallop with sea salt and egg white bubbles, some mushroom thing with some bread thing, and (the best of the three) smoked salmon with spring onion. Oh so good, Jesus. By this time we were all starving after travelling and waiting for buses in the rain.

3. Course 2: Starter of tempura soft-shelled crab with mashed potato and random other fried things which we think are carrot, crab stick and apple.

4. Course 3: Mushroom soup with a teeny bit of truffle. I love hot creamy soup.

5. Course 4: Beef tenderloin on some leaf on some rock. Basically it resembled some high-class Pepper Lunch. Had to lay out the beef so it would cook evenly, and it was sizzling so well I think we had massive self-control to prevent ourselves from drooling openly.

6. Course 5: Dessert, mine of which consisted of green tea ice cream and two mochi things.

7. Course 6: Drinks (actually we had this tea thing throughout, but this was like the more expensive stuff we ordered). Many of us ordered this 'Mocktail of Love' thing, just because it sounded funky and we were all curious. Turns out it's this pinkish drink served in elongated test tubes (we swear that they're real laboratory equipment, and we've worked in enough labs to know this) that's slightly fruity and slightly minty and really cold because the two tubes come in this icy glass thing.

8. Some mouth-cleansing green minty thing nobody else liked except me, Deborah and Amelia, which we dubbed "Hulk Juice". Ended up mixing all the drinks together stupidly, and drinking from our Mocktail of Love test tubes, because it's always been a dream to drink out of test tubes. Mm yeahh.

Such good food, really. Like, sometimes you really have to pamper yourself with good stuff like that. Then you're like, oh yeah, life is great and fulfilling and my taste buds are happy and my digestive system is satisfied.

Best cluster outing food I've ever had? Best cluster outing food I've ever had. And all thanks to Ms Kong, too.

Om nom.

My turn.

Here, let me calm your mind with some delicious music. There, doesn't life feel so much better now?

I need to work on concentration and discipline, so from today onwards I shall divide my time nicely, and make sure I allocate myself time to post, and also time for reading and stuff.

Been extremely busy lately, but it's sad when days go by undocumented. However (sound like an English essay now), I've done some vlogging, so here is the first Tioman vlog. Please go and watch it, and like and subscribe and share with your friends, because it would mean a lot to me. Secretly, secretly, I really want to just earn money off YouTube. That would be great.

What's happened lately? Hell week after hell week has rolled by, with quizzes and assignments and project deadlines and presentations and tests and failing and passing and being grateful for passing and coordinating things and filming and creating incredibly awesome videos and Sports Day and Teacher's Day and Tioman and Brunei and work oh work.

My respect for teachers dipped slightly for a moment, then increased crazily right after that, because we made this video we can't really talk about and can't show any students. The bottom line is that teachers can act, and know how to have fun, and are generally more awesome and more human than we ever thought they were.

First day of last term of Year 5 today. Time doesn't just fly; it clubs you on the head, and then makes a quick getaway on an X-43A while you're dazed and recovering.

Rearranged our seating arrangement again, because it's the start of a new month and that's what we do when this happens. We're starting to have this sneaking suspicion that the random number generator in our GCs is hardly random, because we always end up sitting next to the same few people again and again. Strange.

Anyway, been progressively moving from the back to the front, so now I'm sitting right in the front row with Sree, Deborah and Pin within talking distance.

Had Chem first thing in the morning. Did transition metals and complex ion naming and stuff. Still much easier than organic Chem now. We were all strangely high, and were passing around sweets and things Muru and Aris got from Korea and Adrian from Taiwan (sadly they didn't manage to snag any girls, but oh well).

Had a Biochem prac after that. Totally forwent Prac 3 and jumped to Prac 4, because Prac 3 isn't graded. Simply blended spinach leaves with isolation medium, then spun twice, then split up pellet solution and placed tubes under light (and one tube in the dark). Yeah, photosynthesis.

Wasn't much work, so we spent most of the time just talking and waiting for things to blend and filter and spin and photosynthesise. Talked about Adrian and Aris' exchange experiences, and about how we were all missing Tioman terribly.

Then had a talk during the assembly slot (got to miss the house meeting) about Singapore's marine life by Ria Tan, who was quite awesome. Turns out Singapore's marine ecosystems, tiny as they are, actually do exist, and it really sucks that people are just mindlessly burying coral reefs and killing off precious individuals of precious species. It really is a waste to have such beautiful things destroyed. I mean, they made such a huge deal out of that ruined Jesus fresco, and hardly anybody cares about this. So sad.

Kay, E-learning tomorrow, so no school. Yay.

Night.