My life

ORD lor!

2007-11-10T20:36:00.000+08:00

It's a long time since I write in the blog. Army life have been very busy for me especially with the lack of manpower. We are super down in manpower lor, having around 5 men per section from initial of 10 men. More works had to be done.
Looking back, I rather enjoy my army life. Though it is tough, but I get to experience many things and learnt quite alot. I had excorted detainees to most of the places available, including court-martial, sub-court, hospitals and so on. I even get the chance to escort detainee to supreme court's court of appeal. It had been an eye-opening experience for me. Both sides, the prosecutor and the defending lawyer, argued very well and it was very interesting to watch. After watching so many court cases, I could even estimate the sentences to be passed quite accurately. Haha!
I also made a significant change to my camp. After editing the half-completed access document by my senior, I managed to replace the booking in/ booking out system from books to computerise. It started off with a WITS (work improvement teams) project proposal that I submitted to my sir when he asked me to think of one. I saw a computer left in the guardroom unused and gave the proposal to use it for book in/ book out purpose. I was then suddenly given the task of completing it. It was a very tough project as I knew nothing at all about creating a program. Though there is already a almost completed program written in access in the computer, it didn't help when I didn't use access before. Things became worse when I discovered that there is no one who knows how to use access in my platoon. I landed myself in deep shit. Having no choice, I read up about access and spent countless of hours trying to figure out how does access works. In the end, I managed to figure how access works but I knew very little about programming language which takes months to learn. By trying out many times, I manged to get the programme to work. I even added in the function of taking photos for identification purposes. Now, booking in or out only requires to key in NRIC no instead of writing in the book. It saves time and paper. I am glad that I managed to learn something and make a significant change to my camp unlike many who wasted their time in army.
1 of the things I missed most would be my dogs. After taking care of them for so many months, I had develop a feeling towards them. I especially missed playing with my favourite dog- Yellow, a rather hyperactive dog. Another thing I missed is the playing of table soccer. Every night, when we got nothing to do, we would play table soccer. I played defending most of the time and became well-known in my camp for solid defend. I became so good in it that I won most of my games. I also miss the games my camp-mates and I played like basketball, monopoly or watching movies together during our free time.
Time fly and I have now ORDed. I will miss both the good and bad times I had gone through with my camp mates. I wish them all the best and hope that they will endure through this difficult time of manpower shortage.

Dog Handling Course

2006-06-25T17:48:00.000+08:00

When I first sign up for the course, my initial thought is that this would be a slack course and it also excuses me from having to start my detention barrack's duty. But how wrong I am. Dog handling is not as easy as I had thought.
I was rather lucky to get the dog- Ranger from 2PDF (people defence force). He is a very old dog, almost 10 years old which is equal to human age almost 70. He is the 2nd oldest dog in the course and is enemy of the oldest dog in the course, Marco (11yrs old). Both Marco and Ranger are very well-known to be obedient, though Marco is slightly more obedient than Ranger. They can't stand each other. They would go crazy and starting barking at the sight of each other. Ranger has a good sense of smell and will go crazy at the scent of blood from any menstrating female dog, which happened during our course. He also has two wives and two children.
Our daily routine:
Everyday we got to fall in by 7.45am and get ready for temperature taking and to wash kennel. We would bring the dog to take temperature by poking a thermometer in its ass and later put the dog inside exercising ground while we wash the kennel. Shits and urine are common encounters when we wash the kennel. Luckily, Ranger is a dog with kennel pride and will not do its business inside the kennel.
After kennel washing, it's time for obedience drill. Firstly, we learnt about the basic commands like "sit", "down", "stay", "heel", "come" and also corrective command "leave" given when the dog made a mistake or not obeying instructions. After that, we went on to do drill. Yes, the same as the one in army- turn left, right, back and marching. It sounds a bit dumb but then SAF stresses a lot in drill in cultivating discipline. So too bad, the dog have to learn our drill too since it is employed in SAF. Haha... My obedience drill is rather good because Ranger even knows how to adjust himself when he is out of position, whereas for other dogs their owners have to push them into the correct position.
After lunch, we usually have lectures which allows us to know a lot about dogs, how to judge their behaviour, how to take care of dogs, how to do basic first aid for dogs and the different employment of dogs etc... These lectures I felt, though couldn't cover very in depth (because this is only a two weeks course) but is sufficient enough for us to know how to handle a dog well.
After lectures, we have baiting. "Dogs are a very dangerous weapon,"2WO Ravi said. I didn't fully understand his meaning until it comes to baiting. When a dog bites, it is not just one hole created. It would cause a few deep punctured wounds on both side of the flesh it bites. The photo of an example of the wounds caused was shown to us and it was very gruesome. We started to realise that handling a dog isn't as simple as thought and true enough injuries occured. For baiting, we have an intruder who would be wearing a baiting sleeve and a prowler doing prowling with a dog. When the prowler saw the intruder, he would call the dog to watch him and then shout for that person to stop. When that intruder refused to stop after three warnings, the dog would be release and he would run forward to bite the intruder. The one acting as an intruder therefore must be very careful and offer the baiting sleeve out for the dog to bite. The prowler would then call the dog back and then do a body search on him before calling for more help using a walkie talkie.
Things often don't go as well as the procedures as stated above. The dog sometimes would refuse to stop biting and come back. When that happens, I will have to choke the dog to make it release its bite. Once, the dog also accidentally bite my friend's left arm which doesn't have the baiting sleeve on. Luckily it is a shallow bite as it realise its mistake and release its bite quickly. I myself was also bitten before. Mine is because the dog bite onto a gap on the baiting sleeve, which actually is my own mistake for allowing it to do so, and created a small hole on my skin. It is very painful though and the pain lasted for three days.
After 2 long weeks, the course finally came to an end. It is not easy and I looked forward to taking care the dogs in the detention barrack. It will not be easy as the dogs there will be fiercer since their jobs is to guard the detainees. And of course, looking forward to the monthly off I will get as a dog handler... Haha

Updates

2006-06-04T16:32:00.000+08:00

The place that I was posted to wasn't as bad as I had intendly thought, though the facilities there are rather bad compared to the last two places that I have stayed in. The food is also somewhat different from what I used to eat. The food is cooked by JWs (Jehovah Witness) whose religion forbids them from serving NS and was sentenced to 3 years and 3 months by SAF. They have an secret recipes of cooking all kinds of meat (passed down for generations) which I think is able to match restaurants standard. Security in detention barrack is very high. It is surrounded by a few layers of fences with concertina wires on top of it. The route to cookhouse to have our meal also required us to pass through 4 gates. Therefore, I have a feeling of being locked up too when I first reached there.
MP in detention barrack also got quite a bit of power even though we have rather low rank. The detainees have to address us as sirs (uncommon because we only address officers as sirs in other parts of SAF) and have to greet us. There is also yellow lines in many parts of the cells and they have to ask us for permission before crossing. As MP, we can also give punishments like push-up, standing parade (standing at attention position for a long period of time). Especially those who just came in, they were tekan very severely to ensure that they comply to all our orders and also move fast.
As a person who is not fierce by nature, I choose to go to security side, dealing less with detainees. I will be in charge of CCTV, dogs, guard room and also escorting of detainees to courts or hospitals. Therefore, I will be going through the two weeks dog handling course starting from next week back in SAFPU again.
Next, birthday. This year, I didn't really celebrate much of birthday. I didn't even like looking forward to it. So what I did is just have the cake that my dad bought with the voucher redeemed from starhub points during my nights out and go back to camp.
Lastly, hamsters. My hamsters gave birth to the second batch of babies today. This time it gave birth to three babies. Photos can be found in my photo albums...

MP POP

2006-05-21T15:48:00.000+08:00

After 9 weeks of trainings in the school of provost, I have finally passed out. The ceremony was a simple one without military band playing. No parents were also invited. And the spectators are all our own people who have seen the parade every three months. Yet they said that this is a prestigious ceremony. I just can't help wondering to who is this parade made for...
Pardon me for my anger, but I have already lost hope in army. I was posted to detention barrack (army jail). They show us in Tekong that going to MP, we will get the chance to be posted to many interesting places, like into ZPC where we get to conduct raids in camp and capture people who break the military law, or SIB where we get to do investigation on the crimes committed or even the dog wing where we train dogs to become guard dogs or sniffle dogs. At the start of the course, they even tell us to work hard to get posted to the unit that we want. Then came the postings, out of 13 people in my section, 10 was posted to detention barrack and the rest to GSMB to do guard duty. Throughout the platoon, only 1 get into SIB and 1 get into dog wing. Even the company best trainee couldn't get into the choice that he wants which is ZPC and got into detention barrack. I felt cheated...
The duty in detention barrack is mount, dismount and standby. Which is on duty for 24 hours on one day, the next day we get to rest 24 hours at home while the third day doing other stuff like practising C&R and get ready to mount again the next day. There is no weekend for me and if I happen to mount on a holiday, I will still have to go to work. The reason is that the place need people to be on guard all the time. Hai, what is the use of getting off on weekday when my family are at work and my friends are all at the army?
I m quite disappointed with the life in the army. Now, I m looking forwards to my ORD date though there is still a year and a half away. Meanwhile, I will take up courses to fulfil my life. I have already register as a member at Bukit Batok Driving Centre. That should keep me busy for the next few months. After that, I will look for more courses to take...

More hamsters

2006-05-02T15:36:00.000+08:00

When the hamsters started to squeak more often and seemed to be closer than before, we started to suspect that the hamsters that we have gotten are of opposite sex. Soon after, the one that we suspected to be female started to become more aggressive towards the other one. It often chases the male hamster about the cage for no reason. Then came monday morning, my father woke up to find two red baby hamsters beside the female hamster. He quickly separated the male one away as he was worried that the female one might eat her babies when it felt threaten. The babies grew rather fast and by friday when I came home, they already have a thin coat of hair on their skins.
This is the 2nd time that my pets have given birth. The first time is when I have rabbits as pet. I remember that time is that we purposely went to find a male rabbit to mate with my rabbits, since both my rabbits are female. One of them were successful conceived and gave birth to six baby rabbits. Most of them were given away when they grew up...
The female hamster don't like people to watch her nowaday. She would carry her babies to a new place everytime we watched her and she felt threaten. Now, the baby hamsters, though still haven't open their eyes, have started exploring the surrounding areas. The mother obviously didn't like it as she often went to carry them back once she felt that the babies are too far away from their nest. My sister's friends have ordered the hamsters once they heard about the news. Hai, girls..... Don't worry, dwarf hamsters will mate very soon after their babies grew up and more hamsters will be expected this year....

The day when we have our live pistol firing

2006-04-29T16:18:00.000+08:00

I was actually looking forward to this day when we can fire pistol. Even the firing of GPMG (general purpose machine gun) wasn't as fun as not many people will get to learn pistol. I find it quite "cool" as I think about how the people use their pistol on TV and in movie. When I shoot in the IMT ( simulator), I got an average of nine out of ten for every position. So I was thinking, hmm, I got a little chance of getting something now- best shooter. Getting best in something got a plague and a day off, so I was looking forward to the live firing.
On the actual day, the first time I shoot, I got only one of ten. My whole practice was basically screwed up, getting 13 out of 40. However, I learnt the correct technique from Staff sergeant Mark and did much better in the test, scoring 44 out of 50. However, it is not good enough as the two best shooters scored 47 out of 50 and went for another round. Hai, never mind, hope I will get another chance to shoot if I can get into ZPC.
Something unpleasant happened in the live range too. Warning had been given to us again about the pistol being a more dangerous weapon than the rest. I had finally understand why. Pistol, being a short weapon, can being swing easily. So, if the firer talk to a person behind, the pistol will swing to the side too. What happen to my friend who sleeps beside me in my bunk is that he said that he squeeze the trigger and no more bullet came out. However, the sergeant behind him told him and there is still one more round left. Subconsciously, he squeeze the trigger again and a bullet went 45 degree to the side. He was scolded very badly for that and was banned from firing the actual test, which might cause him to be out of course. I think that this is a very important lesson for all of us. Often, we would do things subconsciously especially in the morning when we are tired. However, when it comes to very important or dangerous thing, no matter what, we must stay hundred percent ALERT. My friend would have killed somebody if the pistol swing more to the side. I hope that nothing much would happen to him. Guard duties is unavoidable but I hope that he would not be charged or placed out of course. May god bless him...

Life as an MP

2006-04-27T14:22:00.000+08:00

When I first discover that I wasn't posted to sispec (sergeant course), I was disappointed. It is even worse for me when I discover that most of my section mates made it to the sispec. I was posted to MP. Unlike others, I have already knew where I would go if I don't make it to sispec since I have already expressed that I was interested after selected for MP interview. One of my section mate who made it to sispec told me how he wished he was also posted to MP too. I was rather surprised until he explained to me that as a man I would not have as much responsibility as a commander. Furthermore life as an MP is considered to be one of the best vocation in SAF for NSF. I have to agree with that. What's more can I say when large amount of my time is spent in the lecture theatre where I can enjoyed the air-con (18 degree). We also got quite a lot of free time and I even used to watch the chinese series every night as I watched it everyday during my two weeks block leave and wanted to complete the whole serie. Nowaday, I spent most of my free time playing chess.
The good thing about MP is that you will get to learn about the military law (chapter 295). A lot of interesting stories are told by my sergeants and officers and it really opened up my mind about what the SAF is really like. Couldn't say much now since these are restricted information...
Even the field camp, which they described until like very siong ended up becoming the slackest outfield activity that I ever went. They talked about having to go without any sleep for two whole days and have to work continuously until all the three missions are accomplished. However, what happened was that most of the time we were slacking around while the spec 2 (future sergeants) soldiers went around to plan the missions which they took at least two hours. When it is time to carry out the missions, it rains. So we ended up sleeping in the five tonner (vehicle). So in the end, the field camp ended me don't really know what is the proper procedures for my wartime role. My friend told me that why do we really need to know about the wartime role? All we need to do is to take instructions from sergeants and just carry them out. I guess that is probably the life as a man in SAF. Just listen to all the instructions from commanders and carry them out. No need to think or worry too much.....

POP lor...

2006-03-07T17:17:00.000+08:00

After spending two months in the Basic Military Training Centre on Tekong, I finally passed out. No more a recruit anymore, but a private. Not much difference actually anyway, haha, but it marks the start of a nearly two weeks break.
BMT nowaday is not as siong as before. In fact there is a lot of welfare, provided you do not land in company like ninja which have a commando as their OC (officer commanding). I was lucky to be in Whiskey, the company known as welfare company. So do expect my OC to intervene if the tekan by the sergeant is too harsh. This is especially needed for our platoon, which is the toughest platoon to be in the company. On the day of enlistment, my platoon sergeant told us, "It is no easy to be in platoon 2." We do not know what he means until when the adjustment period is over.
Our platoon sergeant is one who is very strict about the standard of the platoon. He will catch a person for very minor mistake and give him very harsh punishment. Guard duties and confinements are oftenly given out for offences which seem very minor to us, like the mass tin (pot) not clean, or digging tool not clean after field camp. I have been very careful when he is around, but I still kena two five hundreds words essay for not having two water bottles filled to the brim before training and not "aiming" when triggering off my rifle after checking clear. The worst nightmare is the day after the OC night, after some guys from other platoon imitating him. He gave us a field bag inspection, everything out or everything in within one min plus. During inspection, any ziplock bag which is old or have a small old will be torn. A few confinements were also given out. After that, he didn't allow us to rest for the 16km road march unlike other platoon (note that we have a IPPT test in that morning). During the road march, we even have to high port our rifle which eventually became rifle over head. Luckily, our OC stepped in to stop all those tekan for the last 4km. My muscles became very tight and I was fully exhausted after that road march.
However, all these also have benefits. After all those tekans, I lost around 5kg to 62kg. My tummy is gone and my muscles became more developed. My no of pull-up also doubled from 5 to 10. His tekan, which he explained to us in the end, is to prepare us for the tough trainings in the command school next time.
O ya, I was also the toilet ic and have 10 men under me. Being ic isn't easy. I remembered once I got screamed by one of my sergeants because there is shit in the toilet bowl. And it is in the toilet bowl that is choked. That happens on the fifth week, and everyone in the platoon should already know that that particular toilet bowl should not be use. Until this day, I still wondered who is the blur king that did that. However overall, my toilet committee seldom get pumped by the sergeant, unlike those cleaning the bunks. So yup, I think it's a good job done. Haha!
I will always remember the good times I spent with my section, esp singing with jiewei (a person who loves singing and always singing at his top of his voice)...

A level results

2006-03-04T16:43:00.000+08:00

The feeling of getting A level results wasn't there. I was strangely not feeling nervous at all the day before the release of A level result. I could clearly remember the times when I was about to get my PSLE and O level result, I was very nervous and not eating well for at least three days before the release of result. This time I was perfectly normal. Prehaps, it is because I was too tired to even think about it with all the army trainings. On the day before the release date, we were allowed to book out. However, we have the Standard Obstacle Course test before that, which though I manage to pass it, is extremely exhausting. I went to sleep soon after having my dinner at home.
On the day itself, I was also not nervous at all. All I did is to do a prayer to god to hope that I would pass my GP (which I did badly). The release of result is rather fast other than the long speech by the principal, which includes telling us to join the alumni. My class even produced 2 students who got 7 distinctions. However, I did become a bit scared even she talked about, "Despite our repeated warning that GP is very important,..." I was 4th in the queue to get my result. All the people in front of me got straight A and I was getting pressurised. I just prayed very hard as I stepped forward. Mrs Lau and my civic tutor were there. My civic tutor searched for my result slip and then said to me, "Congratulations!" I was a bit stun when I released that I got 4 A too. I totally didn't expect my chem to get A after screwing up so badly for my food chem. I scraped through my GP with a C6 and got merits for both my S paper. I, of course, informed my parents immediately and they were extremely pleased with my result. My dad even talked about buying roast pig to thank the god next year.
I went out with my friends after that to have a short pool game as celebration before going home to get ready for booking in that night...

Hamsters

2006-02-01T21:06:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, we went to visit one of my grand-aunt. Before we went, I was thinking, "Sian, another boring trip." We only went to her house once every year, during the Chinese New Year period. Her house is just a normal HDB flat and I found the trip to her house boring cos there is no one near my age to talk to nor is there anything to play. The only purpose that I go to her house is to collect hongbao.
However, it is not the case this year. This year, her house contains 4 cages, with around 15 hamsters. They are rather small in size and is only around a quarter of the size of hamsters that I have kept as pet before. (Later I found out the reason why? Cos these hamsters are called dwarf hamsters which I discovered from the internet.) My grand-aunt told me that her friend gave her a few hamsters to keep as pet and they multiply rather quickly. She then opened up the cages for us to play with the hamsters. I then started playing with one baby one with very light-coloured hair. It is abit scare initially, staying still for some time. After that, it became rather active and kept running about my hands. My grand-aunt, after seeing us having fun playing with the hamsters, decided to give us a pair. She put them in a box, with some food and tissue inside, and reminded us to take good care of them.
The next day, we went to buy a cage for the hamsters. At the pet shop, I immediately saw the one that I like. It is a double storey one with everything that is required inside. It costs $35 but my mum managed to bargain until $30. We also bought the saw-dust and hamster food. The hamsters obviously like their new home. They can be seen running about the cage and running on the wheel moments after they were placed in. Dwarf hamsters, I discovered is quite an easy pet to keep. I just have to change the saw-dust, top up its food and water and bath them once a week. It can be easily done within ten minutes. The best part is that they do not smell at all. It is an ideal pet for a person who do not like to commit too much time on pets like me...
For pictures of my hamster, click here.

Last entry

2006-01-04T19:43:00.000+08:00

After this entry, I don't think I will be able to write blog again for the next 2 years. I will be entering army tomorrow. It is at Pulau Tekong camp 2 at 12.45pm. Caleb is just an hour plus earlier than me in the same camp. Hope we will meet in the camp.
During this holiday period, I have worked in hangten. My job is quite simple actually. I just have to fold clothes, provide service when people are buying shoes and also do cashiery. Overall, I enjoy my working at hangten enterprise. I have gained the trust of the in-charges at both Orchard Emerald and Northpoint atrium sales such that I was trusted to do cashiery at these 2 places. I also know the manager very well after working 1 whole day with him in setting up the Northpoint atrium store. Ha, the manager even called me up personally to request me to work on new year eve as they have shortage of people. Considering that I only work a total of 7 days, I feel that this is a very good experience for me. Besides earning a total income of $410, I have developed very strong leg muscles (having to stand around 13 hrs everyday) and also good communication skill. I also learnt some business skills after these chattings with the manager and in-charges. So I was actually quite sad to leave this job. When both the in-charges wish me well after my last day with them, I had to hold back my tears... I promise that I will remember them and visit them again next time. I have also made many friends during my work at hangten. I met Linna, who is also from NJC, though I didn't know her when I was in NJC. I also recommended Wangyi to my agent and he will start working tomorrow at Orchard Hangten. All the best to him...
Ok, have to stop now. Hope I will also do well in army too... Thank you everybody I know for making my life a fruitful one......

Class chalet

2005-12-01T16:38:00.000+08:00

The class chalet at downtown east was at least better than i have thought. Initial worries about not enough beds was easily solved as not many pple stayed overnight.
In the room, we played bridge, mahjong (card version), monopoly and chess. Ha, all the games were brought by me. I won the monopoly after bankrupting the rest of the players with hotels in the last 2 buildings. Haha, I traded the 1st building for the 2nd last building with the topping up of $6000 and it paid off. For chess, I let my opponents 1 car, 1 horse and 1 cannon. I lost all the 3 matches though for most of the matches I managed to earn back around 2 to 3 seeds. Hmm, I discovered that 3 seeds very difficult to kill opponents. And opponents will keep trying to trade pieces with you. Super disadvantage lor! Junjing picked up mahjong very fast. And as a beginner, he was super lucky and kept gaming. Haha beginneers normally aimed for small win and therefore they are able to win easily. The pro are quite ambitious and therefore difficult to game. 1 of the matches is quite funny la. Baifan and I are both waiting for the tile 9 bamboo and south wind in order to game. For those who don't understand, each picture only contains 4 cards and therefore it is impossible for us to game with each of us holding 2 each. Haha!
The bbq food is quite ok, though the beehoon was a bit plain. I particularly like the otar. There are some fish meat (white in colour) inside the otar. It is somewhat similar to the otar bought in Malaysia which my family likes to eat. We slept at 2am on the next morning.
On the 2nd day, we went to play X box. I lost all the 3 games to junjing in a basketball game. He picked up the game much faster than me and I was being thrashed like mad in the 1st 2 games score is like 20 to less than 10 that kind. At least for the 3rd game, I only lost by a narrow 4 pts after a fierce match with me leading in the game initially. We then went out to cycle. It must be a bad day for cycling with Charmaine falling and hurting her knee while Dongyu hurting his elbow and both knees. Dongyu made the mistake of accelerating during a turn. I reminded him that he had forgotten what he learnt in physics and FM about centripetal force being directly proportional to the square of his speed. Haha!
That afternoon, we went to the escape theme park. We got a total of 8 free tickets from the booking of the chalet. This is my first time entering that theme park. There are so many people that we have to queue for like more than half an hour for some of the popular rides. Go-kart was quite fun though I skidded twice and had got myself stuck. Ha, one of the skid is not entirely my fault as I made a sharp turn to avoid crashing into Charmaine when she crashed into the side border. Hmm, maybe I should have stepped on brakes instead. As for the Viking ride, Benghee and Mingxian were screaming on purpose. "How come nobody scream one? Like that not fun leh!"Mingxian commented. And then the next moment they started to have a screaming competition. Dongyu commented that Benghee's scream was much more terrifying than the ride itself. The alpha 8 ride was the best ride of all. It consisted of several fast U turns and at the last part, there is the final turn which immediately followed by a sharp dip. The dip came quite unexpectedly and it was quite exciting.
That night, everybody went home. Only Benghee and junjing wanted to stay overnight and in the end they decided to go as well. As the last few people to go off, I get to take quite a few uncooked leftover bbq items. Haha, my family will be having a bbq next week...

Finally A level has ended

2005-11-27T15:15:00.000+08:00

Finally A level has ended. The days before the A level was horrible. I was so stressed up that i lost my appetite. I only ate like only half the amount i eat normally. Overall, I felt that I did alright. English was bad, just hope that I did enough to pass. Physics and Chemistry was acceptable, except that I totally screwed up my food chem. It is so unfair. Why NJC didn't give us the chance to select what we want for that option topic? Biology students benefitted the most in this exam since they already know about those stuff. A waste of my time studying food chemistry lor. The 2 booklets are so thick that i have to spend 1 whole day to study them, and more frustratingly, doesn't help much in answering the questions. Did rather well in my all my 3 maths subjects. I was rather surprised that I could do almost all the FM qns and didn't leave too many blanks for Maths S paper. Before the exam I was only thinking of B for FM and merit for maths S. Now is A for FM and distinction for maths S (provided they do a little moderation, haha).
I celebrated my ending of A level by going to play lan with caleb, dongyu and junjing. This is my first attempt at playing dota and I must admit that I am bad at this game. I was dying more often than all other 5 players (some pple over there joined in our game) added up. I only get some hang of that game towards the end of the 2nd game. Haha, I have asked caleb to burn that game for me so that I can practise on my own. Spent the whole of the 2nd day painting my room. My room was initially white and now I painted it sky blue. This colour is quite bright but then blue is a calming colour. So now I feel a bit sleepy inside my room. Hmm, not a good place to study now but who cares. I will only be studying again a few years later from now. So I will just change the colour then...
Wonder how others are killing time after the A level? Esp girls since they still got a long time before entering university. I also got a long time since my enlistment date will be some time in April, since the January intake is full. I can't admit that I was extremely pissed off by CMPB for their efficiency. More than 2 months ago, I was demoted to pes D and went for the checkup while showed that I was alright. I was supposed to know my pes status 1 month later which has passed ages ago. What makes me more angry is that I called up the NS number and that person told me that she will defer me to the CMPB which will call me 5 days later. It's a week later before that call came and that person still couldn't explain why I didn't get my pes status and enlistment letter yet. Why bother to call me when you still can't explain what is going on? And that was more than 2 weeks ago. CMPB haven't contact me still then...
Have being looking for a job this 2 days. Haha, got to earn some money to buy a laptop and also to kill time. Days will be quite difficult to pass when almost all my friends entered by January, except Wangyi who will be in the same intake as me. Anybody got any recommendation for job? Ha, tmr will be my class chalet. It will last from Monday to Wednesday. And Thursday will be the graduation nite. So my activities is rather packed for the next week. Ok, got to stop now. Got to start packing for tmr chalet...

Wedding dinner & DSTA open house

2005-10-01T18:09:00.000+08:00

On friday night, I went to a wedding dinner with my dad. It's a long time since I attended one, since all most of my uncles are married and my third eldest cousin has a large age gap with second eldest cousin. The food there is rather good, with suckling pig, abalone, roast duck and it's my first time I eating shark fin soup with a lot of beansprouts inside. I also requested for another glass of stout beside the orange juice. Haha, 18 years old already, so must learn to drink alcoholic drink. I found out that stout is much bitter than the normal beer and I rather like that taste. To avoid being drunk, I drank it with the orange juice. Soft drink contains carbonxylic acid and it can react with the alcohol in stout to form ___. Ha, it can also produce sweet breath rite?
On saturday, I went to the DSTA open house together with junjing and dongyu. We were the first batch that arrived and the irritating cameraman kept taking photo of us as we entered the building and also when we moved around viewing the exhibitions. However, I learnt quite a lot of stuff that day especially during the afternoon focus group in DSO when I went for lessons on electrical and aeronautical engineering. I also found out that electrical engineering which I planned to study is the most useful engineering as it is needed in many areas. They also convince me to consider DSTA scholarship...

No problem

2005-09-29T18:31:00.000+08:00

Went for the 3D echocardiolography today. My appointment was at 9.45 but I reached there 2 hrs earlier as my dad drove me there 'cause I m not sure what bus to take (which I found out later that I can just take the same bus I take to school everyday). It is a lucky thing I did as I discovered that hospital actually don't look at appointment time but based on first come first serve. As a result I was the first one to be scanned. When I came out half an hour later, there are around 5 people waiting outside. So if I went there on time, I would have to spend a few hours there waiting. For the scanning, a doctor put a few suckers which I think is to measure heartbeat and move the scanner around my chest after applying gel on my chest. The doctor even dims the light as I lay down on a bed, how considerate!! It makes me sleepy and nearly fall asleep if not for the pains caused by the scanner being pressed so hard on my chest. After that, I had a consultation with another doctor. He then told me that I m normal. CMPB had initially suspected that I have an ENLARGED heart (?!) I was like thinking huh, even bigger heart also cannot? I thought it can pump blood faster...haha. Maybe I m generous, so they thought I have a big heart? It is good to know that I m normal. I was almost skipping on my way out of hospital...

End of prelim...

2005-09-26T18:30:00.000+08:00

Finally prelim for me is over... Which I did worse than last exam!!! The prelim exam is tough for some subjects like FM, math S and physics S. The physics S today is crazy one lor, set until so tough. Skipped so many questions that I still got a lot of time to look around while trying to redo the questions that I skipped. Hai... maybe I m not fit to do S paper. Don't have the talent of doing such questions. But who cares, I m only aiming for merit but won't be sad even if I didn't get them. Doing S paper for me is just to open up my mind and learn more things outside A level syllabus. The 4 main subjects are more important.
Didn't go out and celebrate with my friends after this prelim. There is nothing to celebrate when A level is just a few more weeks later. So I only went to west mall with Caleb and Junjing last friday to have lunch and then to the library where I borrowed 8 books in total (using my family member cards, haha). Also went for a swim that afternoon. The feeling of being in water again after a few weeks without exercise is good. I was humming the song "I feel good, da da ra rum..." while I swim 20 laps in water...

Prelim coming...

2005-09-10T18:53:00.000+08:00

Counting down... 37hrs more to prelim. Though I spent a lot of time mugging for the entire holiday, I m still not very confident. Somehow some of the thing I memorised seem to be leaking out and some of the concept still not able to apply very well...
Spent one hour plus clearing up my room today. Notes are laying all over my room (on the floor and tables) and it is getting harder to find the note I want. It's so frustrating that I have to spend five minutes to find the note I want each time and I decided that I should clear up everything. Now, my the notes are filed up and my table looks more empty. I also took the trouble to wipe the desk and all my files as there are alot of dust. Now, my room is sparkling clean and a pleasant place to study in. Hmm, maybe I should do cleaning up more often...
Will not be blogging for quite some time until the prelim is over. Hope that everything will go on well for my prelim. And to yuman, thanks and all the best to you too...

Medical Review

2005-09-07T18:59:00.000+08:00

When I receive that letter informing me that I have to go back to CMPB for medical review, I have a bad feeling about it. I started to ask around asking others whether they have also received a similar letter but none of them seems have it. For the past few weeks, I have been worrying and wondering what is wrong with me. I received the answer when I went down to CMPB today...
It lasted less than fifteen minutes, compared this to the few hrs when I went there for medical checkup. All I did was to sit there and wait while the clerk helped me book an appointment date and wrote a letter. What a stupid waste of time I must say! Why can't they just mail the darm letter to me? I was supposed to go down to Alexandra hospital three weeks later to have an echocardiolography. On a piece of the letter, it explain to me that they suspected something wrong with my heart. I was demoted to pes D (provisional grade) until three months later when the report come out. On the way home, I was wondering whether they have made a mistake? My family background only have cases of diabetes and high blood pressure. They must have surely made a mistake.
However, I was wrong. I discovered that my mum indeed has problem with her heart. It was only discovered last year when she went for medical checkup. I felt my heart sank. It is almost certain that there is some problem with my heart now. It is very depressing. Because if it is true, I will be definitely out of pes A and no chance of becoming officer in army. Since the army scholarship requires candidate to excel in officer cadet school, I will not even qualify at all. Army scholarship is the main reason why I took s papers and keeps me on going.
Hai, what to do? I can't blame my mum for that right? She also won't want such thing to happen. Now, I can only keep my fingers cross and pray hard...

Weekend family outing

2005-09-03T22:33:00.000+08:00

It's a long time since the entire family went out together. Most of the time is either me or my sis got something on or got a test next week that we haven't finish revising...
Today, we spent most of the time buying winter clothes for my sis. She is going to china for a six week exchange programme next month. This is her first school oversea trip and she would also be spending her birthday over there. I wonder whether she will miss home or not? (ha) Anyway, we went to Song and Song shops in both toa payoh and yishun. The winter clothes there are quite cheap, ranging from $5 to $10. The reason why they are so cheap is because they are mainly either rejected goods or clothes with gigantic size. I saw one of the shirt that is so big that two person can fit into it. I also found a casual T-shirt that I quite like which goes for only $5.
We have our dinner at the xing fu jiu lou, a restaurant that sells Hong Kong dian xing. The dian xing there is the most delicious one I ever eaten. And since we went in during the non-peak hour at 5.25pm, we are also given a 30 percent discount. We ordered quite a lot of food and I was very full when we went out of the restaurant as I was the one who cleared all the remaining food since I don't like food to be wasted. We then went to turf city to buy a luggage bag for my sis before heading home...

Passion Pursuit Day & Greenlink senior farewell

2005-09-02T18:07:00.000+08:00

Wow! It's a long time since I last blogged. It is mostly because I got nothing interesting to blog as life is quite boring recently having to spend a lot more time on mugging. Hai... did not do well for the GP paper. Believe many pple, like me, would want to curse the darm passages... (haha)
Today is passion pursuit day where it's a day with no lesson (yeh) and teachers sharing their interests with the students. As expected, many students esp J2 pon school but personally I find it to be an interesting day. I start off my day by going to the checkmate section to find my CCA teacher-in-charge. I learn some basic weiqi skill from him like the huo lu and the si lu. Haha, now I understand why I always lost when come to playing weiqi. I play 2 games of chinese chess with my junior, winning 1 losing 1. For the one I lost, I was actually in the advantage one, earning a seed. However having lost touch with the game since the june competition, i just couldn't perform any killer move and genna killed in the end. He was good though, quite solid in defencing, having to win a trophy in a recent individual competition. Well done DY! I spent the rest of the time visiting the classes over there like the word game, the gathering before going for the magic trick sharing session by Mr Goh. I would say that it's a very interesting lesson. I have learnt to do 2 card trick properly by the end of the lesson. As for the 2 coin tricks and the string trick, I guess a lot more practice is needed. Mr Goh also demonstrated a few more tricks which he refused to teach us. 1 of them is the one with 3 cups. Firstly, the ball seems to be able to fall through the cups and 2 bigger balls seems to be able to appear in the cups which they add up to even exceed the cup capacity. He also demonstrated 3 strings of all different length can become 3 of equal length and then back to 3 different length again. It's so cool and amazing...
Next is the greenlink senior exco farewell. 4 J1 and 6 of the J2 turned up. Peiling and Ken turned up in home clothes as they didn't go to school today (hai...). We went to pastamania in Junction 8. The juniors treat the seniors using the greenlink fund, so we no need to pay a single cent. (YeH!) All of us even get a gift each. I got a mug and Chengyang got a nice can which contains a seedling. It is supposed to grow into a plant which will be able to dance when music is played. (Cool!) I then demostrated the magic tricks that I just learnt to the J2 girls who went. You must see Huiling's expression when she turns all the 1st card on each of the 4 piles of card into A under my instruction. (Haha!) Magic trick rocks...

SAFOS tea session

2005-08-14T18:04:00.000+08:00

Today, I went for the SAFOS tea session in Raffles City ballroom with my dad. Well, I didn't really intend to apply for this scholarship, but just went there to experience the tea session (haha, never went to one before) and to find out more about SAF scholarship as I might consider applying other SAF scholarships...
I would say that there are a lot of people who turned up for this event, around a few hundreds (that's quite a lot considering only males taking up 4 A & 2 S will get the invitation card). The high turnout was unexpected for the organiser as they have to add a lot more chairs last min to accomodate all the pple. First, there is the defence secretary giving a speech, followed by a video screening about 3 SAFOS scholars' story. Next, there is a sharing session by another 3 SAFOS scholars which 1 of them is Lieutenant colonel now. They told us about their life, from the time they gotten the SAFOS to now. The LTC even showed us his family now. Wow, their live ahead is like well-planned for them already lor. The scholars will go to study in university in August in the first year of army. Financial all cared for, from tuition fee to computer and book allowance and even full salary during study. They get 2nd Lieutenant after completing the OCS, promoted to 1st lieutenant after 1 year of study and promoted to captain 1 year after completing their study. That's quite attractive...
Lastly, there is a Q&A session. 5 officers went onto the stage and 1 of them happened to got 3 stars on his shoulders (that's the highest post in S'pore army and there is only 1 in S'pore for ur information). From NJC, Alvin and Keith asked qns. After that, there is the tea reception. Wow, (maybe I am suaku or what) I found it to be very high class. There are a wide variety of food (ard 20 types) and they are very delicious. The tea or coffee can be obtained from a table (with a waiter pouring for you), the milk and sugar can be obtained from a few glass tables. There are also waiters carrying a tray to collect the plates and cups when you are finished. There are also a few ex-SAFOS scholars walking around and talking to pple. The atmosphere is very good and it is an eye-opener for me. I also get a lot of goodies walking around the exhibition. The (rich) Navy one especially, giving goodie bag consisting of a towel, notebook, pen, navy map and a badge. Suo Huo Bu Qian leh!

Community Service Day

2005-08-08T18:56:00.000+08:00

Today is Community Service Day. As a CIP rep, I was rather busy. Yesterday, I went to Causeway Point to shop for the gifts for the children. The CIP reps of the 4 classes discussed and decided that every class will buy gift for all the 30 children to ensure that every kids get the same quality of present. S08 prepared their gifts on Friday which is a goodie bag with notebook and a lot of goodies inside. Don't want to lose out to them and yet need to keep the cost low. Luckily I managed to find what I want in the Value Shop. The pencil cases is selling at 2 for $1.05. I bought pencils and eraser too, spending only $23 for 30 stationary sets, so average 67cents a set.
Anyway, today Mingxian and I went all the way down to Yishun Childcare together with Mr Whitby and another teacher to fetch the children. Our class Cip reps were selected to go down 'cause our class appear on the top of the list- 04SO2 * . The 4 of us took a cab there. The kids were quite young, 4 to 6. They loved singing and were singing while walking and on the bus. They sang QUITE loudly but can't really heard what they were singing. The activities for the children are quite boring I felt for the children. The 1st activity is drawing competition and 2nd activity is watching a show in LT 5. The ratio of students to children is far too large at 3:1. Esp at the drawing station where 4 kids shared 1 table. Imagine 12 students crowding around a table. Can't breath lor. The children also seemed very bored watching the show consisting of anklung and dances. Would children know to appreciate Arts? I felt that they should have students dressed in cartoon characters instead lor... The only reason why the children are happy is only because they have gotten so many presents that my civic tutor even has to find plastic bags for them to contain... NJC should seriously review this Community Service Day and a lot of improvement needs to be done if they want to continue this next year.

Senior Farewell

2005-08-01T19:00:00.000+08:00

On Saturday, Chess and Bridge Club celebrated the Chess and Bridge Day cum Senior Farewell with a BBQ party at West Coast Park. This is the first time this club organises a club outing. Though this outing is not well organised but it's a start to club bonding. For our batch, we concentrated a lot on training for competition. We did very well for competition but the club is not well bond. People from different sections don't really know one another, though I m an exception as I always go to other sections to play their game too during training. Just hope that they will not neglect training while having more bonding. The club booked pit number 15 in West Coast. If u go there for BBQ before, you will know that pit 15 is a very deserted area, around 600m away from the Macdonales and other game stations with lots of mosquitoes and ants. The food for BBQ is only hotdog, chicken wings, corn and sweet potato. Not enough for everyone too as each person can only get 2 hotdog and 2 chicken wings. There is no beehoon too. I have to go home to eat my dinner lor. As for the games, we played 15 mins of frisbee and rest of the time playing bridge (chess and BRIDGE club wat). Ong joined in too in playing floating bridge, telling us that he is not our teacher now outside school. There is also a prize presentation when the new presidents present to the seniors each a small gift. They purposely disturbed the old presidents a leaf with their names written on it and said that they originally want to prepare them a special gift but didn't as the fund run out. They then asked the old presidents to perform something and they chose "Twinkle twinkle little star". How boring! The new pres then present the actual gifts to them.
I m officially retire from Chess and Bridge Club already. Personally, I m glad that I join this CCA. In Secondary school, I join NCC and I felt that I achieved nothing in my 4 years there. I was a 1st sergeant but holds no post, the type that is redundant. Now, at least I got contribution in winning a silver and a gold for the school. Days without chess training is tough to get by as I used to look forward to these training sessions. Now, though I can stop attending all the trainings, my amount of free time didn't increase. In fact, it decreases. There are tonnes of homework to do daily. Couldn't afford to sleep at 10+ nowaday. I forced myself to sleep at midnight so that more homework can be done. Sigh! I guessed that's J2 life. Especially when prelim and A level is coming soon...

My Wednesday

2005-07-27T19:58:00.000+08:00

Today, we have basketball for our PE. Not bad for me. Though I didn't play basketball for quite a long time, my skill improves in term of passing and positioning. My accuracy is quite lousy though, I can like shot 3 times in a row and the ball just refuse to go in. Towards the end of the game, an unfortunate incident happens- Chengyang sprained his ankle. We helped him to a chair and elevated his leg. Yingqing returned with a pack of ice a while later and helped him to put ice on his angle. Mr Goh (Chemistry tutor) also taught us during his lesson on how to tackle sprain ankle on knowing about this. He taught us RICE (rest, ice, compress, elevate). Well, I learnt something today. =)
During Civic today, all the CIP reps and SPLs went to LT 3 to learn about the handling of wheelchair to prepare us for the Community Service Day. The speaker was from HWA (Handicapped Welfare Association) first introduced us to the different types of wheelchair and their functions. Then there is a demo on what we are supposed to do My friends Mingxian and Wangyi were called down to be demonstrators. The speaker told us that we should have some friendly talking with the elderly like "Ah pek, hou bo" (how are u) before asking him whether we can lift him to the wheelchair. He and Wangyi then demonstrate the correct way to lift an elderly (Mingxian) to the wheelchair. Mingxian felt uncomfortable sitting in a wheelchair that he stand up a short while after being placed in a wheelchair. The speaker then reminded him that he is the ah pek, who couldn't stand up on his own and told him to sit down. Haha! But he let Mingxian off soon and let Wangyi sit on the wheelchair so that he can demonstrate how to go up an obstacle like a step. Then, without warning, he tilted the wheelchair. Wangyi was obviously shocked when his legs went up and he quickly opened his arms to balance himself. His expression was so funny and the LT is laughing their head off.. The speaker then told us that we should inform the elderly before tilting the wheelchair. Wangyi and Mingxian receive a cute bear each for the demonstration. I personally felt that the speaker is a very good one who kept using humour to teach us what we should and should not do. When he taught us how to open up the wheelchair, he told us to be careful of our fingers or else we will join his society... It 's like these things can be remembered more clearly after the laughter. After his talk, I am confident of handling an elderly in wheelchair now...
Yesterday channel 8 also screened the finale of tiao zhan zhuang yan bang (scholar of scholars) with my uncle and dad in it. My dad was too defensive this time round and didn't manage to qualify for the 3rd round. But his overall performance was still commendable. Well done dad!

My weekend and Harry Potter

2005-07-17T19:07:00.000+08:00

After waiting for so long, Harry Potter 6 was finally released yesterday. I went to Pasir Ris for river-keeping and bought my book there at 8am. The entire White Sand shopping centre was opened so early just because of the popular bookshop. I reached there at 8am, 1hr after official release at 7.02am and was too late to get the bunger king's breakfast which was for 1st 50 customers per bookshop. But I was given a $12 voucher though. I spent the rest of the day from 3 to 8 after river-keeping to finish that book. Ha, I just can't put down that book after I started reading. I even finish my dinner in 10 mins so that I can go back to read that book. It is definitely better than book 5 but I don't like the ending when Dumbledore died. It let me feel worry for Harry and wonders how he can handle Voldemort alone in book 7...
Anyway, the river-keeping was not very good. Firstly, the turnout is bad. 4 J1 and 4 J2 in total. And the J2s are all pulled along by me with 2 non-greenlink members. Wonder how they can manage with 4 people if I don't go? Huimin was also another Harry Potter fan. She bought her book earlier than me and read on train while travelling here. The weather was very bad. It kept raining and at a point of time, we had to stop as the rain was too heavy. While waiting in a shelter, an ant colony dropped from a tree. We were quite excited and curious about it. I said that I have never seen a queen ant before and challenged the people there to go and break the colony. To our surprise, Chengyang accepted the challenge. He said that he was also curious to see the queen ant. He found a branch and used it to break the colony open. Hundreds of red ants rushed out. I thought I saw the queen ant when I saw an ant, 3 times the size of others and has wings. But others quickly pointed out that queen ant don't have wings and we spotted another 6 other same type of ant later. In the end, we still didn't get to see the queen ant. I wonder, what is the job of that type of ant in the colony??? We continued river-keeping when the rain is lighter. A park officer praised us that we are doing a good job when he passes and another curious group of people (which I supposed are foreign as they don't know what is CCA) asked about what we are doing and I spent some time explaining to them. They felt that what we are doing is meaningful after I explained to them. The J2s are far more efficient than the J1s as we picked 17 out of the 24 bags of litters...
Regarding the NKF incident, I felt sad that Durai and all the board members have resigned. It is a big loss to NKF I felt after what he have done for NKF. Personally, I felt that the straits time is rather biased in its report as there are no articles to show about how Durai built up NKF. Instead, it kept focusing on Durai's salary and the luxury items in NKF. Those people protesting about Durai's salary are people I felt totally don't know about the world outside, jing di zi wa (frog in a well), only know how to ren yun yu yun (follows what others are saying). Even SM's wife Mrs Goh also felt that the salary is acceptable. However, I also opposed the way Durai wasted money on luxury items and also not be transparent. "This court case was also the greatest joke of the year," Vincent told me and I agreed. He sued others, gained nothing but lost a lot of things instead...

Design a Maths Game Competition- PLATINUM

2005-07-12T18:44:00.000+08:00

Today during FM lecture, Ms Ng announced the result for the Design a Maths Game Competition. My team and the other team from my class were awarded platinum. There are a total of 2 platinum, 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze being awarded. The prize of platinum award is a $150 Borders Bookshop voucher that comes in form of a card with no expire date. We have the mini prize presentation in the LT since almost all the teams are from FM. Some people might said that the judging is biased since the organiser of the competition is my maths tutor, but I would say it's not. My team did not do things last minute and was always ahead all the other groups. Mr Neo, our mentor, informed us that other teams still haven't come up with their game when our group was already working on the game strategy. I would say Mr Neo is a good mentor. He is close to us as he was our math tutor last year and is rather good at game. He suggested to us to add wild cards to increase the wild element.
Our math game titled SUM21 is as followed:
There are 3 stalks of cards namely big, medium and small.
Big stalk consists of 7,7,8,8,9,9,10,10 and a X card. Medium consists of 4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7 and a X card. Small consists of 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4. So all together of 26 cards.
This is a vs game. Each player has 2 rows and each row consists of 4 max slots. After the player can draw from any stalk, then put it in either rows. The objective of this game is to form 21. When a row add up to 21, it is cleared, a new row is added and the player scores 1 point. A player wins 1)when opponent cannot put any more card (the card draw will cause the row to exceed or when that card has to be placed in the 4th slot and that row add up to less than 21) or 2)when all the cards are used up and he got more points than opponent. Both players drew when all the cards are used up and both players got same number of points. The X card allowed you to multiply any number to any card or placed in an empty row but the number to be multiplied by is to be specified.
This game requires the intense usage of probability to decide which stalk to draw the card from. There is also a few strategies to kill off the opponent...
It's good to win competition. It gives me more confident to take part in more competition in the future...

CT2 results

2005-07-11T18:20:00.000+08:00

Today, I claimed my last 2 subjects result (excluding GP though) and they cause my 4 subjects' grade to become ABCD (for maths, chem, phy, FM respectively). Err, the grades are easy to remember but I was not pleased at all. Analysing my mistakes for those papers, I realised that I am lacking behind in examination technique. A person can mug very hard but if he lacks examination technique, he will lose a lot of marks for bad presentation or lacking of some important points in his answer. I am not saying that I mug very hard but I lost a lot of marks in this area. This is quite worrying as content can be studied but the way of answering qns cannot be learnt in a short time. Err, maybe I should start studying answer key now and try to learn the correct way of answering qns before prelims. I also realised I m getting very careless. I threw away 3 marks for MC and 4 marks for FM just for wrong final answer due to keying in of calculator. This should not be happening at all. Dropping a grade just for mistake in keying calculator is totally unforgivable. Err, maybe I should key in double times before writing down the answer next time.
The Singapore Poly Chess competition has ended. We sent 2 teams consisting of all J1s. Team A won 4 out of 7 rounds. I didn't find out the result of team B but I know they lost all 3 rounds on 1st day. The team A even lost to secondary school Cheung Cheng on the 1st day. This is unforgivable. To get top 4, the team can't afford to draw with, not even to say, lose to a weaker team. This is quite worrying. Raffles Cup champion school losing to a secondary school which I don't think is even in the top few in secondary school category. Can't imagine how they will be able to defend the cup next year! Hope they will train alot harder from now on...

NS medical check-up

2005-07-08T19:10:00.000+08:00

Today is my NS medical check-up. There I met a few of my old secondary school friends. All of them are also in top JCs like VJC, TJC and RJC now. There are around hundreds of people when I arrived at 9 and I had to wait for quite a long time. The medical check-up isn't as bad as I had thought. For those who are interested, I was put under pest A. But the test after the medical check up is alot worse. It is like the psychometric test except this one is done on computer and they got more qns and more types of qns. Like the psychometric test, it was timed and we got like on average 20 s to do each qns. The types of qns tested includes shape IQ, Maths, shape orientation, response (pressing the no. 3 times as quick as possible when it flashed), instruction (eg find the smallest no, take the 3rd number from left, multiply by 2 and key in the answer), physics and also number sequence IQ. Didn't manage to complete all the qns but I felt that I did better this time as I got experience this time. I was also very tired after the test but then still need to do a survey with hundreds of qns inside. It was like 3 pm when I finished with everything and I was darn hungry by then. I am aiming for OCS so I hope I did good for the test...

Fire drill

2005-07-07T20:38:00.000+08:00

Today, the school had a fire drill. It was during Chemistry lecture when Mrs Cheng announced through the PA system that there is an emergency and that we are to proceed to the assembly area immediately. This is a very bad fire drill as we took a total of 15 mins to get there, even though the timing to meet is like-3 mins (quite impossible to meet la, NJC though not very big is not small either) Mrs Cheng promised us another fire drill in the near future. Ha, we did things that we shouldn't be doing, like bringing our bags along. But it will be convenient as we can move straight to our next venue. And I believe that most of the J2 will agree that in case of real fire, you wouldn't want to leave all the precious notes to burn in the fire right? Ha!
London had a series of terrorist attack yesterday, killing and injuring thousand. This attack seems to be a protest against the G-8 meeting. I was wondering if this attack came a day earlier, will London still stand the chance of winning the 2012 Olympic bid? The London team will be accused of not able to deal with terrorist attack and maybe Paris would have won...

My day

2005-07-06T20:27:00.000+08:00

This is my 1st week of lesson after holiday and things is not going very smooth for me. And I kept forgetting things. This week is so far bad for me, hopes it will turn better soon...
Firstly, I saw my FM result when Ms Ng was about to show the top scorers. I got 54, worse than my CT1. It is not really unexpected. I only spent 2 days studying FM and didn't have enough practice. Besides, there are some answer that I knew is off, but just can't figure out where I went wrong.
Secondly, I am not going for this weekend Singapore Poly Chess Competition. It is because our chess captain didn't want to fight for this competition, so the J1 excos decided to let J1 gains experience as well as try out the new J1 formation. Singapore Poly is more difficult with many additional poly teams around but we should still be able to get a 3rd if we really fight for it. But since the captain didn't want to play, they decided to put him in team A reserve and put me in team B reserve. But as reserve, I wouldn't get the chance to play so I am not going at all this weekend. Hai, thought we can still get 1 more trophy before we retire. So today will be unofficially my last training. Still got 1 more hand-over ceremony and then I will officially retire.
Just watched the IOC live from my room TV. London won by 54-50. Quite unexpected. I actually support Paris one. Hai, life is full of unexpectation. Underdogs will sometimes win. So the favourite must not be over-confident and the lousier teams shouldn't lose hope at all. It is a lesson I learnt from the Raffles Cup...

Weekend family outing

2005-07-03T19:42:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, my family went to the zheng ban qiao celebration at the marina south. There are a exhibition and a festive village. We didn't went into the exhibition because it was so expensive, 20 bucks per person. So we visited the festive village. The festive village contains many different houses by different people from different part of the world. There are pple from china, malaya, iran and africa. We also stayed to watch the festive show. It was quite an interesting performance, especially the performance brought up by the yun nan group. They performed playing of various instruments and dances. 1 of their man is able to play around ten kinds of their unique instruments. Coordinated with the dance, it has a good effect that capture the attention of all the audience there. They also performed 2 of their folk dances. During the watching of the show, we also have additional "air performance" from the National Day rehearsal. Beside the helicoptors carrying the flag, we also saw many other planes flying above our head. Hmm, not bad. Managed to see so many performance for free...
Today, we went to Guang Ming Shan temple. Today is 27 of the month in lunar calender. So the temple is providing free food and also have a flea market. My dad decided to bring the family there to experience the mood there as we didn't go there on 27 before. The temple was obviously different on that day from other day because once we reached there, we have difficulty even getting a parking slot compared to have many many empty slots when we went there on other days. The big canteen was also crowded. Just inside the canteen, there should be at least a thousand people. We waited for a while before getting a table. The food was very nice. There are noodles, curry veggies, spring rolls, soup... a total of 7 dishes for each table. Though it was vegetarian, it was the best vegetarian food I had ever eaten. After lunch, we went to the flea market there. I saw an Indian having Russian binoculars for sale on his booth. I asked him the price and he told me $18. BINGO! I had finally solved the problem of the birdwatching com not having any binoculars. Because a pair of good binoculars costs at least $100 but Russian binoculars are cheap as there are alot of them left behind after World War 2. I got his contact number and will be informing the teacher and the new birdwatching head about it...

Just completed all my common test 2 papers

2005-07-01T18:33:00.000+08:00

Phew! Finally all my papers have ended with Maths S paper as the last paper today. Overall, I felt that I have not done very well. 2 weeks of my holidays have been spent on chess competition and quite a lot of activities for me over the holiday. And I find that the content needs to be study this time is really quite a lot. 2 weeks are just enough to cover them but not enough time to do practise. My chemistry should be the subject that I improved the most this time since I can answer most of the qns. Subjects that I did not very well includes GP (have too many words that I don't know and can't explain them later), physics (way of thought wrong for some qns) and Maths S (mind not at the right freq). Hai! Anyway, it's over and no use crying over spilled milk. Have to work harder for the prelim. Now have to start doing all the tutorials that are going through next week. Seems to forget most of them since they are not tested for the exam. Have to restudy them all over again. Luckily there is a youth day next monday for me to do them. =)

Raffles cup photos

2005-06-30T19:30:00.000+08:00

Prize presentation by the RJC principal. The Raffles Cup is actually made of glass and is only put in the champion team school for 1 year. Ha, just stole it from AJC. Hope our juniors will be able to defend the cup next year!

NJC chinese chess team 2005. The trophies include (from left) girl individual trophy-8th, boy individual blitz (5min) trophy-1st and the rest are boy team champion trophies. What a good harvest! Cough! Cough! Hey, I can't breath!

Grandmaster playing with the champions (a total of 8 people) at the same time. I was sitting at the most right (argh, can't see my face clearly).

The radio 958 game

2005-06-24T19:07:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, my uncle (that one who also joined scholar of scholars game) successfully called in to play the radio 958 game. He and his opponent both had a score of 2 but he won due to his shorter timing. He also won the Genting resort voucher. So our family and his family will be going together.
Today, the DJ called my mum. Since she got the highest score with the shortest timing this week, she get to play again today. It's the same old format but this time there is no opponent and we have to get all the 5 qns correct to win this week grand prize of air ticket to HongKong. We got 3 qns correct in the 1st round (without the options). In the end, my mum's score is 4. We couldn't get the word riddle correct. Hai, a bit pity... Never mind, it's a good try anyway.

Joining radio 958 game

2005-06-21T21:30:00.000+08:00

This morning, my mum successfully called through the hotline to play the radio 958 challenge. For this game, there will be 2 challengers. There will be a set of 5 qns for each challenger. The DJ will ask all the qns without the options for 1 round and then the questions that were answered wrongly again but with 3 options to select from the 2nd round. If there is a draw, the timing will decide the winner, so the one that answered correctly the 1st round will supposely have a shorter timing. I quickly called my dad using my handphone. Ha, it's part of our strategy to have more people to help answer the qns.
The 1st person got 3 qns correct (which is quite good as the average score is 2). For my mum, I told her to skip all the qns the 1st round instead of attempting to answer them which is quite successful as it helps us to cut a lot of time as the 1st person wasted a lot of time attempting the qns the 1st round and got them all wrong. My mum got a score of 3 too but won due to shorter timing. If I am not wrong, she won Genting resort voucher. And if nobody won her record by thur, she will be called on friday. This time there will be again 5 qns and if she get all of them right, she will be air tickets to Hongkong. Ha, my family joined alot of this kind of games nowaday. I joked with my dad that maybe we can start considering joining these games as part time. Anyway, my dad's scholar of scholars game was screened just now. It was even more exciting as I have thought. Those who have watched would have agreed. O... the telephone started ringing already... it's from a neighbour at the other side of the block. Hai... more telephone calls will be coming soon...

The father's day game

2005-06-19T21:13:00.000+08:00

Today, my whole family together with my 2 aunts went to Lot 1 to support my dad for the 五项全能争爸赛. There were 5 categories and after each round, 2 dads will be eliminated. At first, they were separated into 2 grps and 1 dad will be eliminated from each group. The 1st round is Q&A round. There were 10 qns for them to raise their hand to ans and the person with the least score will be eliminated. My dad snatched 3 qns and got all of them correct. So he entered 2nd round quite easily.
Round 2 is limbo rock. My dad was bad at this game as his waist is not strong. Luckily for his group, there is an old man who lost quickly. So he went into round 3. In round 3, he was blindfoiled and I was supposed to use the mic and guide him to do various tasks. He was the 2nd person to play and he wasn't quite sure of what to do. It's a bit unfair. For the 3rd person, though her daughter didn't even say a word to control his movement, he already knew what to do and even saw where all the objects laid (the host forgot to rearrange the objects after he was blindfoiled). So he just went straight to complete all the tasks without his daughter's guidance. So in the end, the 1st person to do the task got the slowest timing and my dad got the 2nd slowest timing. So my dad was eliminated.
But even if he was not eliminated in this round, he will be eliminated in the next round as 2 of the dads singing in round 4 were darm solid. They got the stamina and their voices were loud and clear. They got into the last round which is to "test their oral". They were given 30 seconds to promote the Huiji products (sponser of the event) and the better one won Genting travel voucher, besides the Huiji products all the dads won. Ya, the consolation prize is 2 bottles of Huiji essence which is supposed to help the back (each worth around $40) and a towel. So this trip is not quite wasted...

Ci Ji

2005-06-17T21:49:00.000+08:00

Today, my dad took leave and brought me out. We first went to OCBC building to claim a $100 Robinson voucher won in a lucky draw. After that, we went to chinatown to pass time before driving to Nanyang to fetch my sis after her camp. While walking in chinatown, we saw through a door and inside looked quite well maintained and decorated. Curious, we went closer to take a look. A lady who was about to enter invited us in.
After entering, the lady told some other people inside that she invited us in and then took us to a table nearby. There, she told poured us a cup of tea and told us about this organisation. This organisation originated from taiwan. It was a buddhist organisation called Ci Ji (慈济) and its mission is to help all needy. What touched me most is that this organisation helped all people regardless of their religion. They did a lot of community work in many countries and well known for their help in the tsunami.
The lady told us that they respected the needy. When they decided to send an aid to help the tsunami victims, they even surveyed what kind of rice (from 5 types) they wanted before sending them. Unlike some organisations which just dumped their aid in the tsunami countries, they even went to distribute equally among each household and give me an impression that they were well-organisated. The photos in the gallery also showed them return greeting after the people thanked them for the aids. It really touched me. It was so different from the "look down on the victims" expression on American soldiers' faces when they went to aid others.
The lady then told us about their activities in Singapore. They had volunteers going to many different types of homes including elderly, mentality-challenged and other illness. Their jobs are mainly to make those people happy. The lady told us that her teacher taught her that doing good deeds cannot wait. She said that helping these people will let you saw how terrible others are so you will get satisfaction of your own life (after knowing how fortunate you are) and also get satisfaction from knowing that you helped someone's life become better. So you will be happy...
After listening to her talk, I felt that if I would to join a religious organisation next time, I would most likely choose Ci Ji. No offence to other religion but I felt that many other religious organisations concentrate too much on the life after death. I felt that living happy now is the more impt and I think that Ci Ji will be able to lead me to that happiness...

My dad

2005-06-14T22:03:00.000+08:00

Ha! My dad's tiao zhan zhuang yan bang (scholar of scholars) game will finally be screened next tuesday. Meanwhile, the preview advertisement got screened my dad. It will show him at the last part. This Saturday, my dad will also be participating in another game that is organised for Father's Day at Lot 1. He will be completing with 9 other fathers in 5 categories. Wish him all the best...
And ya, I received a book that looked exactly like a storybook with the title "Stealth Force". I was stunned to see my name as the author. Behind the book, it wrote LENG WEI BIN is a young Singaporean who embarked on an extraordinary life in 2005. Opening in the author's home at (my address) this book serves as an autobiography of the writer's experiences as a Naval Officer. Managing, motivating and leading men and women onboard state-of-the-art warships.... Opening, it was blank and in the first page, it wrote that this book is for my own story if I join the navy. What the? I was thinking, wa the navy is so rich? They can afford to make notebooks especially made for everybody. Anyway, I will prefer to go for the land army. So their effort is wasted on me. Ha!

We won the RAFFLES CUP!!!

2005-06-10T21:13:00.000+08:00

After 5 days of intense competition, we accomplished the task that seemed impossible from the start by winning the Raffles Cup (the most prestigious tournament for our level). AJC team A not only have all the members that helped them won the champion last year, but also have additional strong members. Almost all their 6 members were in the top 10 in a recent individual competition, with 3 of them getting 2nd, 3rd and 4th. For our team, we have Pengfei (captain) who won 1st for all chess competition recently but the rest of us are not good. Only Kah Seng was in chess club when he was in Chinese high, but the rest of us only joined chess club in J1. Furthermore, only the captain and I are J2, the 3 others are J1. Most other teams have all J2 in team A as J2 have more experience. We also didn't have any coach (as our club don't have the money) unlike most other schools. We were coached by our own captain. So we don't even have much confident to be in the top 3 before the competition.
It was a tough fight for this cup. But with some help from the god of luck and teamwork, we did it! I was playing the 1st board. So my opponents were mostly rather good one. In this tournament, they will try to arrange the teams of equal no. of wins to meet after every round. So our opponents will supposely get stronger after each round.
Our 1st game is vs SRJC team A. Don't look down on SRJC lor! They won 4th position. Pengfei and Kah seng won their opponents but Dianyang lost. I was the only player left and I was pressurised. I have to at least draw to get this overall win. I requested draw to my opponent after a while and he accepted. I earned a piece, have more soldiers and more time left. But the game is in very critical situation. I might just lost if I moved 1 step wrongly. He was also not confident of killing me so we drew and get this win of 5-3.
Our 2nd game is vs RJC team B. It was an easy win. We thrashed opponent 8-0. My opponent moved a wrong move at the 8th move and allow me to break his defense. My cannon and car went all the way down his territory and killed a shi. He made another fatal mistake later. I smiled to him before moving my piece and said,"Check! Earn car." He was thrashed and don't have the chance to strike back.
Our 3rd game is vs AJC team B. We defeated them 7-1. I earned a piece after a long fight and then my opponent was demoralised. He resigned a while later when he got no more attacking pieces while I still got 3 soldiers and 1 cannon.
Our 4th game is vs MJC. MJC also won their 3 opponents and even thrashed VJC 7-1. We had a tough fight with them. I rested for this round and let liang yuan played. He drew and our captain won. But our remaining 2 boards looked weak. Dianyang won after a tough fight. Luck was shining on Kah Seng as he by luck killed his opponent though he was almost losing.
Our 5th game is finally vs AJC team A. We have to fight them as we r the only 2 teams left with all wins so far. Kah Seng stunted everyone in the tables by defeating Yicheng with only about 30 mins in the game (btw, each player were given 1 hr thinking time). Dianyang lost, followed by me later when I was defeated by my ex-classmate, Joseph Chua. Our captain then fought hard to win Jack Moy resulting in overall 4-4 draw.
Our 6th game was vs TPJC team A. We were stunned while Kah Seng who was winning all his games so far lost very early. I looked around and saw that Dianyang was in the disadvantage. I was in even deeper shit then. My opponent had 2 cannons and a car right at my base and I could only defend. Our captain then won and Dianyang drew. The pressure is now on me as the score now is 3-3. So I can only afford to win so as to get the overall win. All my team mates crowded around me and I felt a lot of pressure. I set up a trap and to my delight, my opponent fell into it, letting me earn a horse. The table then turned. My extra horse then helped me to get this crutial win to get 5-3 overall win. All my team mates were overjoyed and congrated me when I stood up.
Our last game is vs VJC team B. I had an easy game, earning pieces right from the start. When my opponent resigned, he had no more attacking pieces and I had 1 cannon, 2 horses and 3 soldiers left. We won them 7-1.
Our game pts is then on par with AJC team A. However, since the opponents we met got higher score in the end, we were crowned champion (a bit unfair actually I felt). This is the 1st time in NJC history that we won 1st. Our captain also won individual lightning chess champion too. After prize presentation, 4 of us together with sec school team champion and girl individual champion fought with a grand master who played against all the 8 boards at a time. The 4 of us resigned after an hour plus when we were slightly disadvantage so that we can get to eat our lunch. Mind u, it was 4pm that time and we haven't taken our lunch. All of us went to Long John Silver to celebrate the win...
This win taught me an impt lesson. Nothing is impossible if u got the mentality to win. A few times I felt like giving up when I had a hard game but the captain encouraged me and told me not to die. It is his encouragement that gave me the strength to fight back. I would like to thank everyone in the team for their fighting spirit esp the captain. This win will remain in my memory for the rest of my life...

A day before my competition

2005-06-05T20:10:00.000+08:00

Today is the day before my competition. I am rather nervous. Didn't have the appetitite to eat or do other things. I wondered, this is the 4th competition I had but why am I so nervous than previously. I thought about it and concluded that previously I don't have the mindset to win. I was in the 2nd team for last year competition, followed by a competition that is so intensive with all the poly teams participating too. We won 2nd in lightning chess this year. Now we were the favourite to get top 3. Hope everything will come out right the next week...
Good luck to both teams!

Making dumplings

2005-06-04T19:41:00.000+08:00

To celebrate the duan wu jie that is coming next week, my family make dumplings today. For me, I like to eat dumplings. This might be because I was bornt a day before duan wu jie. =) So my mum said that I was borned to eat dumplings. Ha. I was good at eating dumplings. I will eat straight from the banana leaf instead of putting it on a plate first. (I found that dumpling tastes better when eat in this way) And I can eat 3 at a time, which I did for my lunch today.
Making dumplings isn't as easy as many have thought. Yesterday, my mum and I were busy preparing the fillings and other materials for making the dumplings. We have to wash the leaf, stir fry each ingredient separately and stir the rice together with red bean (ya, forget to tell u all that her dumpling got red beans one. Her unique way of making dumplings) This morning, we made a total of 130 dumplings of which only 5 of them are made by me. I woke up late and by the time I started helping my dad and mum, there wasn't much ingredients left. However, my skill of wrapping dumplings improved. They were in the right shape and looked as good as theirs after I tied them. Last year, either my dumplings were not triangle in shape or they were not tied correctly and dropped off a while after I tied them. This year is the 3th year we were making dumplings after my mum stop making them when I was very young. So it is my 3rd time making dumplings. Although we only made it for the 3rd year, there were a lot of orders from relatives and friends. We have to give to at least 12 families and each family 6 - 8. So though we made 130, we were only around 30 in the end. Ha, my mum's dumplings were delicious, probably the best in the world. =) So, my relatives would prefer to get my mum's dumplings though some other relatives made dumplings too. The number of orders increase every year. So we would probably have to prepare making more next year...

Enrichment

2005-06-02T20:46:00.000+08:00

Today, Greenlink had a combined enrichment together with the DV club and lion dance troop. This is for us to get enrichment pt which is part of the CCA pts. Due to chess training, I missed the lion dance part but I had indeed learnt something from the DV club.
From the DV club, I learnt about how to position the camera and the meaning behind. Like when we shoot a person from bottom, it will show that the person is of a high authority. When we shoot a person from the top, it will show that the person is timid. I also learnt abt the focus pts... But as for the editting of video, I already learnt it in Cat high. So it is just a recall...
When I went to the garden, I was shocked to find it in such a bad state. My chilli plants r half dead and weeds r growing until as high as the plant. It's really sad. It shows that the duty rooster isn't working at all. Last year I was helping Chengyang and even though I was only on wed duty, I watered the plants at least 3 times a week, each time around 4 big pails of water. This year, I was in-charge of bird-watching com so I didn't have the time to help out in gardening. Now the garden is in a mess. What I worry more is that the J1 who is taking over are not even confident to do as good as Chengyang. The elects running for gardening head can't even name 5 plants in the garden when I can easily name at least 8. And Mrs Cheng is going to give us another plot for garden. Felt a bit worry that the new exco won't be able to cope.
Anyway, back to the enrichment, Mingjun did an intro about the soil. It was my first time hearing about this and I learnt something new today from greenlink. =) But overall, the lesson only lasts for around 15 mins. We didn't plan much and all of them was planned last min. We could have introduced more about each plants in the garden. Should be able to do so after memorising them for the nature trail. But overall I felt that this enrichment was quite a success. We learnt things from one another while earning CCA point at the same time. It's killing two birds in one stone. Ha!

Psychometric test

2005-05-31T22:27:00.000+08:00

Today I went to school to take the psychometric test.
I guessed I did badly 'cause I didn't have time to finish. I totally screwed up my section 1 'cause I didn't even touched on the whole section of E, which means 12 out of 60 marks gone. I miscalculated the time and even thought that I got 5 more mins before I heard the examiner said time up. Hai... I didn't do as well for the maths section too. Spent too much time figuring what each qns asked and left last 6 qns blank after I spent 3mins trying to figure out how the 2 tables work for 2nd last set of qns. I was so desperate for the section 3 that I gave myself a time limit. When I passed that limit, I just guessed and then moved on to the next passage. So I managed to complete section3 but with a lot of errors I felt.
Hai...so I guessed I just take this as an experience. What my final result turns out to be, it doesn't really matters to me anymore. Beside PSC scholarships, there are still other scholarship right? So I must work even harder now and hope to impress other organisation with good A level result...

Birthday

2005-05-30T23:01:00.000+08:00

Today is my birthday. Didn't really celebrate very much 'cause I have celebrated once with the class and another time with my relatives already. So all I did was to cut the cake that my dad made for me. This is his uncountable times that he attempted to bake a cake and luckily this time he succeed. Ha, this is his 2nd time he succeed. Most of the time, his cake just refused to expand and remained flat after taking out of oven...
Being 18 years old is a sign that I am officially an adult now. So I have to pay adult fare now (sigh, can't pay the children fare anymore the next time I go swimming). But it also means that I can now enter casinos, help my dad buy 4D, watch M18... I can also officially drink alcoholic drinks. My dad even poured me a glass of red wine today to celebrate. Ha, it's not that I didn't drink alcoholic drink before this but now I can guang ming zheng da drink it now. Cheers!!!

Butterfly

2005-05-28T23:46:00.000+08:00

I noticed that recently there are a lot of moths around Singapore. I saw them in school and in my flat everyday. Is it their session now?
Ha, yesterday night I truly understand a fact that butterfly are straight minded and only fly towards light. This butterfly flew into my room yesterday while I was reading a storybook. It flew around my light. I tried to chase it out but somehow it seems to like my light so much that it wouldn't be chased out. I then remembered reading an article before that butterfly if placed in an empty transparent bottle will fly around in that bottle until it died of exhaustion since it saw light around the bottle. Since I was going to sleep, I wanted it out of my room as I was afraid that it might come to disturb me when I was sleeping if it didn't see any light and couldn't fly out of my room. I went to switch on my sis's room (which was empty since she was sleeping with my parent) light and switch off my room light. The butterfly then flew to my sis's room and I then switched off my light and went to sleep.
My mother told me this morning that the butterfly was still in my sis's room this morning as my sis's room windows were not open. Ops, didn't realise it the night before. It had saw some light through the window and was trying it best to get out of the room. It was very tired when my mum saw it and she immediately opened the window to let it out...

Greenlink election

2005-05-26T23:12:00.000+08:00

Today, I went down to GVN to get CIP booklets signed. Peiling didn't wait for me yesterday. Since I got Raun and Joyce's CIP booklets with me, I felt that I have the responsibility to get them signed. But I found myself going to GVN with 8 booklets (she didn't collect all the booklets the day before) and even more annoyed that Peiling's one was inside one of them (because she missed out 2 of her CIP activities). I have forgotten how to get there (as I only went there once before) so I get her to draw a map (which was rather badly drawn) and I set off. Once I reached the MRT station, I discovered that it wasn't as easy as I have thought. The station got many exits and going to GVN also required a few turns. GVN was in 52A and initially I found 52 and 54 but there is no 52A there. I looked at the road sign and frustrated to see crap road (actually craig road) when I was supposed to get to Duxton road. I walked up and down that road but couldn't find any road called duxton road there. Finally I decided to walk all the way back and start again. I then found it. It was not as far from the shops as Peiling has drawn. I met Grant and then got all the booklets signed. Grant was grumbling as usual. He told me that 1 more time we clean the beach instead of the river he would not sign for us. He said that he don't want to hear any crap about dirty, citing the fact that he brought primary school kids to clean the river before...
Next, the election today. I was the timekeeper, supposed to ensure that the elects kept to their 3 min time limit. But then, the Q&A stretched to around 10 mins for the 1st 2 candidates and I have to time the Q&A too. The points they brought up was about the same as the interview. Kevin was low confident again today though we told him yesterday to be more confident for the speech. He showed that he cannot handle the job of expanding the spice garden and presenting proposal to Mrs Cheng. In the end, yunjie and qianxin didn't get elected as expected. But surprisingly, Junying got only 20 votes which was the lowest among the 8 elected. Huimin topped with 31 votes. I got a shock as from yesterday's interview, many people supported him but they backstabbed him???

Chess election & GL Interview

2005-05-25T22:50:00.000+08:00

Today, we have our chess club election. For those running for president, vice president and secretary, we have 5 candidates of which 2 from my chinese chess section, 2 from i chess section (but from cat high). And each of us have 3 votes so means that I can't support all of them. So I listened to their speech and select 3 of them. Dianyang from my section got elected. I felt that he did rather well for his speech with some of the present president's attitude too. Liangyuan did not do as well since he did not answer a few qns that the audience posted. But he got elected later for section leader though he got lesser J1 votes because he got all the 3 J2 votes (as he was better-bonded with us since we went through a competition before).
As for the greenlink interview, we have a good chat with the J1 elects. It was rather fun especially we asked all of them a qns that if a water snail and a frog fall into a poison water, which one will u save first? It was just to test their reaction and most of them really got stunned. But we noticed that most of them chose to save the snail as it seemed weaker in the 2. When we asked them who do they think is the best president and they all chose junying. It's like junying already brainwashed them. Kevin was the most funny one. He was a very shy person and normally wouldn't speak up one. He was super low-confident. When answering qns, he was shy and always covering his face. It was really comical. As for junying, he was too ambitious. He said that he will do ...... but we find a few of them really very hard to implement. He also admit that he was bad-tempered. The teacher in the end decided that he can't be the president anymore. The interview ended around 9pm, which was the latest time I leave school this year so far...

Chalet

2005-05-22T22:08:00.000+08:00

My uncle booked a chalet this holiday. We were actually looking forward to it but a serie of screw-up makes the chalet less enjoyable this time.
The chalet was booked by his friend's friend. There was a lot of miscommunication. Firstly, the chalet was supposed to be book from Saturday to Monday but we found out that it was booked from Friday to Sunday on Friday itself. It screwed up our plan esp mine since I organised a farm-visiting trip on Saturday. Next, the chalet was supposed to be Costa Sand (pasir ris) but it became Costa Sand (downtown east). It got a lot of different as pasir ris one is 2 storey semi-detached house but downtown east one is just 1 room. It screwed up our plan again as a lot of thing cannot be brought there since it was too small. To make thing worse, we discovered that only 1 chalet was booked when it was supposed to be 2 after we reached there on Friday night. So imagine 5 families squeezing into 1 tiny room. In the end, only 1 family stayed overnight while the rest of us returned home.
We went there again on Saturday afternoon. Basically, we got nothing much to play. We initially planned to play mahjong but we were afraid that it would disturb other people next room. It was so boring. To make thing worse, the rain started at 3 and didn't end until around 7. So we wasted our time in the room playing cards. The room contained around 15 people and it was a bad experience.
However overall, I learnt something from this. As an organisier, he shouldn't too believe in others. He should constantly check and ensure that everything is ok. Once the organiser screw-up, he will cause a lot of troubles for others. So if I am to organise something in the future, I will take this as my qian che zhi jian...

Farms-visiting trip

2005-05-22T21:01:00.000+08:00

The trip to the farms is generally quite a successful one. This is my first time organising a trip all by my own and I have indeed learnt a lot.
We boarded the bus at Kranji MRT station at 9. The bus driver didn't know the direct way to the farms. He drove us up expressway to Chua Chu Kang, passed the cemetery before reaching that area. Then, he don't know how to get to the cow farm. But luckily, I got print a map and directed him there.
At the cow farm, everyone was quite lost and I had to lead the way. I took them to the cow shed. We get to see cattle sucking milk from bottles held by workers there. They are quite cute. Huiling couldn't stand the smell in the shed. She hold her nose and eventually decided to wait for us outside the cow shed. She later told me that there are rats. Ha, this must be her first time coming to places like this. 3 of us bought milk and then we set off to the goat farm.
On the way, we saw snake on a tree. Jun Ying was the 1st one to spot it and everyone quickly gathered below that tree. It was out of sight when we reached that tree and it came out again very soon. It is green in colour. And it's poisonous (which I found out later from my dad).
At the goat farm, we saw the milking of the goats. Ah, we came just at the right time. The goats were gathered at the area with their head locked at a bar. Next, the workers wiped the goat nipples. A man then tested whether they have milk before using the machine to milk them. They even ensured that every drop of their milk was milked by inserting the tube deeper into their nipples. The goats obviously didn't like it and kept raising their foot to kick the workers' hands away. We went to see the goats at the bay after that. They were so cute and we have fun feeding and patting them. The smell wasn't as bad as the cow farm and Huiling even feed the goat this time.
We then set off to the frog farm. It was a long distance and the members were very tired after the long walk. There was nothing much to see in the frog farm. But I get to have a conversation with the worker there. I learnt that the frogs there were fed with dried food. (I initially wondered if there were really so many inserts there since there were hundred of them in a small area and they looked rather fat). Chengyang even handled one of the frog. The frog was a rather fat one. It obviously don't like being handled and was croaking and struggling to get out of Chengyang's hand.
On the way back, I directed the bus driver with the help of Chengyang's street directory. So the return journey took only ten minutes compared to nearly half an hour to get there...

My Sunday

2005-05-15T23:02:00.000+08:00

Today, I settled everything for the farm visit next saturday. Phew... Gives me quite alot of problems. First Peiling insists on Lim Chu Kang's farms as they were more interesting. But the problem is that they were far apart and the teacher said that the bus cannot wait for us while we were there or it will be very expensive. After doing a lot of research, I decided on the Lim Chu Kang farms in an area. So we will trek from one farm to another. When I contacted the farms again, I was shocked that the goat farm want to charge us $3 per head entrance fee. Chengyang contacted the farm one month ago and they didn't ask for any money. The man on the phone line explained that those coming in groups will be charged even if they don't want guided tour and we can choose to deduct from our edusave account. What crap!! I used an angry tone to inform him about chengyang's calling the farm and told him not to cheat our money. He must have got frightened as his stand changed and said that we can go in but there will not be guided tour. Last month when I contacted the cow farm, the same thing occurs. The manager said about $3 per head entrance fee that will go to the "cow fund". Also another piece of crap. I scolded the manager. He then said ok, we can enter for free but need to buy at least $5 of milk product. Those 2 farms are obviously trying to cheat students' money as my family had visited those 2 farms quite a few times for free...
Just finished the report for the CIP incident. So next week, we (CT, CT reps, CIP reps and Mingxian's dad) will sit down and debate who is at the fault. So far, his dad has protected Mingxian by saying there is a miscommunication and we will be showing him that the problem don't lay in us but is all because of Mingxian's irresponsibility...
I ran 6km today. I weight 68kg before the run and 67kg after the run. Ha, this has being happening for a few weeks already. During the weekdays, I will eat alot and gain 1kg. Then on weekend I will run long distance to use up that 1kg of fat. But personally, I find it quite strange that I can lose weight so fast. It's like I can lose 1kg just within 40 mins.

GL exco outing and college day

2005-05-14T23:40:00.000+08:00

Today, Peiling organised a greenlink exco outing in West Mall. This is supposed to be our last J2 exco outing though we still have one more together with J1 exco and senior exco in the holiday. All the excos turned up except Joyces and Sabrina. So there are 2 girls-Peiling and Huiling and 5 boys altogether. For me, I found girls' behaviour quite hard to understand (hmm, maybe it's because i came from a all boy sec sch). For example, when deciding where and what to eat, Peiling said,"Anything." But then, she thought for a while and said,"But don't want McDonale, Burger King." We saw KFC nearby and Junjie said,"Then KFC la!" She then said,"No KFC." So we started walking around level by level until we reached the foodcourt. When we boys felt that foodcourt might be a better choice, she got the "don't really want" sort of expression. So we asked her again where she wanted to eat, she said anything and told Junjie to choose. When Junjie decided on foodcourt, she said,"Huh, really?" But we ate in the foodcourt in the end. Hmm, girl's "anything" got quite a lot of restriction actually. =)
In the food court, we found a 8 seat table and we boys went to buy our food first. When I returned, I saw peiling and huiling kept changing seats??? They placed my bag on the table (which I originally placed on the table) and huiling took my seat. Then, peiling wanted me to sit in one seat and huiling wanted me to sit in another. After I sat down, they changed seats again. When all the boys were back, the girls went to buy their food. Throughout the meal, the boys were mostly talking to ourselves and the girls were talking to themselves. After the meal, Huiling then suggested going to Swensen. The boys protested, feeling that it is expensive. She then asked are we sure we want to end our lasting outing in a foodcourt? Qingxiang then suggested Coffeebean as he "thought" that it was less expensive. The girls agreed and we went there.
In the coffeebean, the boys sat down (at a loss of what to buy after seeing the prices) while the girls went to buy their drinks (notice it is the other way round compared to the situation in the foodcourt). When they returned, Chengyang asked how much is their drinks. One of them costs $4+ while the other costs $6+. You can see the boys' faces turn colour on finding out the prices. Sometimes I wondered, how come girls seem to be richer than the boys? =) The girls then wanted to treat us, but we rejected. (Paiseh leh for girls treat boys.) So Junjie and Qingxiang decided to buy something as the situation is becoming very awkward with 5 boys looking at 2 girls having their drinks. Qingxiang asked Junjie to help him buy Espresso small (hope I spell the name correctly). Junjie later returned with a tray with a Cuppocinno and a small mug of around 5cm tall and 2.5cm radius half-filled with brown colour liquid. While we were wondering what the small little cup actually contained, Qingxiang asked,"That can't be mine right?" When Junjie replied,"That's yours!", Qingxiang then was stunned for a while and then carried on talking about being cheated. That tiny cup of coffee costed $3.20. Qingxiang then went to add milk until the brim, drink a little and filled it to the brim again a few times. He said that this is to ensure that the coffee can last longer. It was very comical and we couldn't stop laughing for a few minutes. When he finally finished that coffee, he said that Nescafe 3in1 coffee was better la and that he won't buy Espresso again. He must be very xin tong for buying that coffee.
After that, Huiling, Qingxiang and Junjie left for College Day preparation while the rest of us walked around the mall before spending the rest of the time until 4.30 in library before we left for College Day.
Personally, I felt that the College Day was rather ok, though I find speaker clapping during speech very strange. At least I get to get most of the performing art groups which is my first time seeing quite a few of them perform. The foodfair also quite ok except all the drinks finished very early so I couldn't buy any after my food and was rather thristy. It ended at 9+pm with a performance by the band, which gave the best performance of the night I personally think. It's no wonder they got the gold with honour...

Friday 13

2005-05-13T22:18:00.000+08:00

Today is Friday 13, considered to be an unlucky day but for me nothing unlucky happened for me.
I got 21/25 for a FM test. And out of these, 2 marks is because I didn't see a part and 1 more is because of a wrong equality sign in 1 of my working though I put the correct one in final answer. But it is the highest score for a test I got so far. Normally for test I would just go for a pass. Didn't really study very hard for this one. So I guess I am just lucky to use the correct test for qns 1 and my mind happened to be in the right freq when doing the test...
Extra training for chess today since we had missed a lot of monday trainings. The president forced us to forget all our opening and use another opening. I am not used to this one and was defeated by the section leader for my first game. He said that this opening will have a more or less fixed way of playing later in the game and will more likely to gurantee at least a draw. So I think his strategy to win AJC (defending champion which got a few top players) is that the 3 of us get a draw each and he will win his match to get a 5-3 win.
For my dad and uncle in the scholar of scholars grand finale game, they targeted by the host throughout the game. My dad is called leng tian poh and my uncle is leng tian ann. So it is quite obvious that they are siblings. They were arranged to stand side by side each other and the host kept focusing on them like guessing which is the elder brother and when he got it wrong, my uncle said,"wrong answer, deduct 200 points." =) They both got into round 2 but didn't get into round 3 because the competitors were all very smart and quick. However, my uncle answered correctly the bonus qns that the zhuang yan answered wrongly and won $300.
My dad went to TCS again today to film the Renault advertisement that will be shown in the end of the game. He said that the light was very very bright and warm. And there was a lot of NG. Hmm, now we know that filming just a short advertisement is not easy. The advertisement will last barely a few seconds but they took hours to film. This advertisement is for Renault since they sponsored the money for the game, so my dad will not be paid for that.
Ah, just heard that my uncle's game will be shown this coming tuesday at 8pm. And in his game, the zhuang yan got the $10000 for answering all the 3 bonus qns correctly. So TCS decided to show it earlier to boast the rating...

Yeh, I enter team A

2005-05-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

The selection for Raffles Cup chinese chess team A ended today. For my 1st 3 games held last week, I did badly. Only manage to obtain 1 win, 1 draw and 1 lose after playing 3 matches. I was quite disappointed with my performance and started mugging the chess manual. Today, I have 3 straight victories and got into team A. The section leader of chinese chess was kicked into team B. I was back to my top form during my 2nd match, performing a perfect combo kill (means got so many killing angles that the opponent can't block) within 25 steps. The form carried on to the 3rd round which I gained 2 pieces within 20 steps and then another unblockable finish within 25 steps. With 4.5 points after 6 games, I entered team A with 2nd highest score. This implies that my 2nd medal will be coming soon after the competition held in the 2nd week of holiday. Hope to get 1st this time.
The president was very serious today. Halfway through the selection, he told us to go to the classroom next door together with Mr Ong. There were a lot of scoldings. He said that we didn't play our games seriously during the trainings. Too many free seeds were given away. He also said that our schools including VJC and HCJC were training very hard now. And they even have the advantage of a coach. So if we thought that we could easily get at least a silver again in Raffles Cup, stop dreaming. Our school also didn't get us a coach because the principal don't care whether we win chess competition. She only interested in sports like canoeing...(a few more). But winning chess competition is better because we use our brain to win and not by physical. He then said that he would increase our amount of training and whoever not interested can walk out of the room now (which none of us did of course). He also wanted us to do additional stuff like doing warm-up and cool-down from that training on, which we discovered that it was just staring at a chess board with all the pieces at starting position for 5 mins. He said that this is to train our concentration so that we will not give free pieces again. Feel a bit like idiot when we actually did that.
Tomorrow, my dad will be going for the grand finale for scholars of scholars and my team will be having the design a game competition oral presentation. Hopefully, I will be able to post more good news tmr.

My dad got zhuang yan (1st)

2005-05-10T21:13:00.000+08:00

Today my dad went for the tiao zhan zhuang yan bang (scholar of scholars) recording. He was very excited and kept calling home to inform us about the result.
For those who didn't watch the show, the format is like that:
Round 1: From 18 contestants, 9 will enter round 2. The host will ask qns and the 1st to press the buzzer will get to answer. If correct, he will enter round 2. If wrong, he will be out of game. Game continues until the 9 are selected.
Round 2: Likewise in Round 2, the 3 fastest players to obtain 300 points would emerge and move on to the round 3. Each qns is 100 points and player can choose to answer even after hitting 300 points to double the score to 600. The max is 1200.
Round 3: Contestants got 80s to answer qns, each correct ans is 200 points while each wrong ans deducts 100 points. The player with highest score for round 2 and 3 added up is the winner.
The winner will get into a bonus stage with 3 super difficult qns. If they are answered correctly, $10000 will fall from a box above.
For the rehearsal, my dad scored a record of 3100 points after 3 rounds. Ha, this is because the qns are the same as the online version game ones. He entered the bonus stage but can't even answer the first qns.
For the actual game, he is the 7th to enter round 2. He pressed the buzzer but couldn't manage to snatch it. 2 people answered wrongly and got out of game. For round 2, it is even more exciting. At one time, 7 people got 200 points. And then 4 peoples who got 200 points answered wrongly and was out. Leaving with only 4 people left. My dad got 300 points and then he pressed the buzzer again. The host asked him confirm or not. Because if he got it wrong, even contestants with 200 points will enter round 3. He and another woman answer 4 qns correctly and scored 600 points in the end for round 3. For round 3, he scored 1400 points and was crowned the zhuang yan of that game.
He entered the bonus stage. Then he was supposed to twist his fingers and said gao zong three times (for getting pass 3 rounds). He didn't do properly and got NG. The cameraman said that he should do it loudly and cheerfully since he was the zhuang yan of the game. There are quite a few NG scene throughout the recording like when the contestants didn't clap loud enough and didn't cheer loud enough. My dad answered the 1st qns correctly but answer the 2nd qns wrongly. So he won himself $1400 for getting 1400 points. And qualify for the grand final game (which all the winner and runner-up will turn up) this thur. So he and my uncle will be contesting this thur one. Good Luck to both of them.

Summing up this week

2005-05-07T22:41:00.000+08:00

Don't really have the time to blog this week, so just doing a summary now.
The major event that happened is the passing away of spore 4th president Wee Kim Wee on mon 2/5. So paiseh. I actually didn't know anything him before his passing away on mon. He was the president when I was just a small kid. From what i remember, the first president I start to know is president Ong. There were many stories about him this week and many of them were very touching. He is a people's president. Though he was a president, he once said something along the lines of... if you remove the word 'President', I am just Wee Kim Wee, just like any other taxi driver or cleaner or whoever. He invited many common pple to his house for parties and really cared for his people by visiting them when they are sick and more... These articles made me wonder how he managed to fnd time for all that???
Today, my dad drove me to the farms around Kranji. Didn't know that there are so many farms there. We usually went to these in Lim Chu Kang. The farms there are not so good as the lim chu kang ones but are good enough. In case u are wondering, ya I am in charge of a farm visit trip organise by greenlink. The teacher said that we cannot rent a bus and wants the driver to wait for us there on the spot. He will charge very high for that. And the lim chu kang farms are very very far apart. For the Kranji ones, they are walking distance away and we just have to take bus 925 from woodlands, marsiling or kranji mrt station to sungei buloh nature park and then we can walk from there. Ha, I will try to make the place to meet at marsiling mrt station if possible. Why? 'cause I live there. Must abuse my authority for once... =)
Today at night, my family and san bo and si bo (uncles) families went to Sembawang Park to have a meal to celebrate mother's day. The meal is nice but rather expensive. It costs $400+. I believe it's because of mother's day so they must make use of this opportunity to earn more money. The serving of food is quite fast at first because we are the first few to arrive(at 6.30pm). But for the last 2 dishes, they took 30mins each to arrive. I think it's because all the tables in the restaurants were occupied by 7.30 pm and the chiefs in the kitchen were unable to cope. We finally finished all our food at around 8.50pm. My tang jie (cousin) then gave a self-made flower with a rocher in the centre to all the 3 mothers that went. I was caught unprepared as I didn't made anything for my mother, not to say all the mothers that went. And I was the eldest in my family. We didn't really celebrate mother's day the years before this and this time is because my uncle invited us along one. Hai... so paiseh for not showing my graditude to my mum these years. Maybe I should help my mother with housework tmr...

Good news

2005-05-05T20:25:00.000+08:00

A good week so far...
1) My dad finally received the call from tcs to go for the tiao zhan zhuang yan bang (scholar of scholars). He has been mugging alot now and challenging himself in the online version. The webpage is at http://event.mediacorptv.com/scholar/online_login.php
Click on the scoreboard and don't be surprised to find my name there. He has been using my username to play.
2) The band has gotten the gold with honour. They have been practising very hard and they did it. Well done. I wouldn't be surprise that there will be a half-day next week. Rest is exactly what I need now. Has been stressed up by the amt of work this week from the academically, cca and class position. The CIP incident has finally been settled.

Opening ceremony of my cousin's shop

2005-05-01T20:04:00.000+08:00

Today is the opening ceremony of my Yisheng tang ge (cousin)'s shop. He opened the shop together with one of his friend after working with my biao ge (cousin)'s shop for a few years. His partner is once a member of a lion dance troop and today they came down to cai qing for free. A total of 5 lions came down today. This is my first time seeing a shop's cai qing live instead of from tv drama. I would say it's a total different experience from watching it from tv drama. The ceremony tales place over 40 mins and my ears were almost deaf from the loud noise of drum and cymbals. There is quite a big crowd gathered when the ceremony started.
Firstly, the 5 lions went into the shop and went around it. I notice that they moved backward when stepping out of the shop later but don't know the reason (anyone can enlighten me?). At this point, the name of the shop is still covered. After that, 1 lion jumped up and bit a lettuce hanging just in front of the shop name. It then uncovers the cloth covering the shop name.
Next, the lion started "eating" the oranges on the floor and arranged a word everytime it "eats" a pair. The words formed is sheng yi xing rong (may your business blooms). The final tray consists of pineapple, lettuce, a dozen oranges and sweets. The people under the lion skin must be shocked to find so much things on the tray that the back guy signals to a person standing nearby and he activated a second lion to help. The 2 lions sat side by side. It takes them 6 mins to finish that tray and the lions "spit" orange skins, lettuces and sweets during this period.
After the ceremony, we had a buffet. And gosh, there is a wide variety of food. My plate is filled entirely with food even though I only took one of each type.
I have uploaded the photos at:
http://community.webshots.com/album/335266412VxscDD?89

boring sat

2005-04-30T19:43:00.000+08:00

Today is sat, but there is no activities by the school or family. So I spent the whole day at home doing homework. Mr Gerard Yee has given us a compre to do. Sian! He always gave us a lot of homework to do. We don't get to do compre or compo in class one. He would just give us on fri and tells us to do over the weekend. Last few weeks we even have GP PBL to do over the weekend. Yes. We got PBL for GP. And the FILA table again. But personally, I find that I have learnt rather a lot in his lesson. He is a very well-read person. Besides newspaper, he likes to read economists. He will then discuss with us the current affair during his lesson. One example is the budget 2005. He explain to us why the gov gives so much money to defence and education and very little amt for social issues like aiding the poors. Pple might ask,"What does it got to do with GP?" But it shows the s'pore gov way of thinking and for the first time, it interests me and get me to read the newspaper's report abt the budget which i always skip for past years.
Mr yee also gets us to read abt human rights articles and also book com lab for 2 lessons for us to research abt all the human right organisations and how they operate. A few of them encourage pple to write to the country's gov and provide the format of the letter and the gov's email, fax and mailing address. Quite scary. Imagine the president open his mailbox the next day to find it bombarded with those letters... Now, i understand abt these issues and starts to like reading newsweeks which i attempt to read last year but couldn't understand and gave up. I actually wonder if his method of teaching will really help students in GP exam at the end of the year. But life is not abt exams right? At least i am more knowlegeable and more able to analyse things now which i think is more beneficial to me for the rest of my life.
Talking abt knowlegeable, my uncle had entered the "tiao zhan zhuang yan bang"(a tv show that start screening next week) and got bang yan (2nd). He won himself $900. My dad also went for the selection but so far no reply yet. Still got chance though as his selection was later than my uncle and there is another round in may. Hope he gets in...
Today i went for swimming again. Actually i want to swim yesterday one but the weather don't permit. Today i swam 50 laps with 10 of them rather fast speed and only a break in the 20th lap. Rather enjoy the swim except it is filled with many pple again. Can't help as it is saturday. Made my mind now to swim every weekend from now on...

Well done for the golds!

2005-04-29T22:25:00.000+08:00

A series of good new continue to come with the angklung and the guitar groups getting gold for SYF. I have quite a few classmates in these cca and I am quite happy for them. Talking abt the angklung, I hear them playing just a few classrooms away from my chess training classroom. I heard them playing repeatedly again and again that i can even hum some of their tune now. They really put in a lot effort and i am quite happy for them.
Now for the guitar. They were practising in class almost everyday when i am doing tutorials. They also put in a lot of time and effort in practising. Joseph even sacrifices his track trainings for guitar though he likes running very much. So, it's nice to know that their efforts have paid well.
All the best to choir and band next week!

Earthweek

2005-04-29T21:10:00.000+08:00

This week is earth week. On mon, we gathered in the oasis very early in the morning. We then went to atrium to set up an exhibition.
During the assembly, we had an opening ceremony. The first thing is a pub stunt. At e beginning, we had a flower man. The story is very simple abt the flower dying and then an investigater goes to investigate the flower. However, the flower man is really very funny. The entire school was laughing at him but he didn't seem to mind and even waved to the school. This pub stunt is so far the best one by greenlink. A successful pub stunt is one that is able to attract the attention of the crowd and this one indeed did. The principal then threw the different colour balloons to the crowd in which the crowd is supposed to support for us by hitting the balloons to the back. But the wind is so strong that all the balloons were blown towards the left. People at the back also don't want the playing of balloons to end by hitting them back to the front. It's only until the command for school song was given before we stopped.
After that, we went to witness the planting of a small tree by Mrs Cheng at the science block. The plant is provided by our ex-ex-senior. They made it as if it's a big event and have a few photographers taking photos of the event. Students having practicals in the first period were all witnessing the event too from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th storey of the science block. The tree was not looking good after it was planted. And when I went to look at it on wed, it looked as if it was dying. Hmm, maybe the plant is not adapting well to the new environment. That's what happen to my chilli plants at first. After a chilli was used for cooking, my mum threw the seeds into a flower pot. And all of them survived. Imagine 24 seedlings in a flower pot of radius 8 cm. It's super overcrowding and we decided to transplant them in the spice garden. All of them looked like they were dying after a week. However, they survived after a month and now they were bearing flowers, so we can expect chilli fruits soon. Let's hope that the tree will survive too...
Other activities include second-hand book sale and the fashion parade. Ha, for the fashion parade, thomas got sabo by me. There is no one to wear the design done by our group during the greenlink camp's fashion parade. And then, zhi xiu wanted me to wear. When i came up with a few excuses (that even i found them not valid), thomas was forced to wear. Then, I helped to dress him up (ha, i am so bad). He had to wear a skirt made from magazines and a crown made from wire and flowers. He told me that he regretted wearing it after zhi xiu and i finished dressing him (he did not know how the design looked like beforehand). Peiling shifted the venue to the canteen and all the students in the canteen saw the parade. It's even more pai seh for thomas when his friends noticed him and came forward to talk to him. A round of applause for thomas for his sacrifice for greenlink.
The earthweek finally came to an end today with all the giving out of prizes.

Run

2005-04-24T19:21:00.000+08:00

Just have a 8.5km run continuously today in the woodlands town garden besides my house. For the first 2km, my timing is around 8mins, second and third 2 km timing 10 mins and last 2.5 km timing 14 min. It's my longest distance run so far and I felt that my stamina has improved by quite a large amount. Should be able to get B comfortably for 2.4 now. Hope to be able to run as fast as joseph soon...

Swim

2005-04-23T19:23:00.000+08:00

Just have a swim today. Swim a total of 40 laps with last 26 laps continuous. Weekend swimming is really very bad experience. There are just so many pple in the pool that I can't really sprint. Have to swim in a zip-zap pattern and it's really irritating. Nevertheless, I still have fun chasing and overtaking the pple in front. The best one is when I am start swimming my 32th lap, I saw this man swimming freestyle at quite a fast speed a quarter lap in front of me. I decided to overtake him using breaststroke and I did it with just 2 metre before reaching the wall on the opp end. Feeling quite refreshed now after the swim...

Praying mantis

2005-04-22T20:46:00.000+08:00

A big praying mantis get into my room last night. And mind u, I live on 9th storey. Give me a fright when I saw it on the window, besides where i m sitting. Dad tried to use bare hand to catch it. Didn't expected the praying mantis's pinchers can be extended to its back and gave my dad a HARD pinch. In the end he used a plastic bag to catch it and put it on the plant outside. It disappeared the next day...

green ambassador

2005-04-20T21:39:00.000+08:00

Congrat to our beloved greenlink president Peiling for being selected to be 1 of the 5 green ambassador. She is so shy that she didn't went up during assembly when she is supposed to. "Pang sair" Ms Koh alone to present the green lotus award to the school. She is in the lian he zao bao today. With the award, she will be going to India to study their environmental activities...

Council Election

2005-04-20T20:56:00.000+08:00

The council election this year is so boring. We have many elects having around the same way of speech and it became a torture towards the end of the speech. The few types are as following, 1)say how they will be the bridge between the students and admin, 2) say how it's boring to sit there all day and promised to keep their speech short, 3) the singing or rap type. The only interesting part is hou fei shotting qns during Q n A. He attacked type 1 by saying that many elects wanting to be in the feedback unit but how abt other units. He also attacked type 3 by saying that they are very talented but how we do we know whether they have the leadership quality to be a councillor. His first few qns are very good and the entire LT is expecting him to ask qns during every QnA. When he did, the entire LT clapped for him. But he went a little overfire later by directing qns at the J2 councillors asking whether do they find the election effective. But I think that he got a point there. This year's election even included a group performance for them to perform eg skit, song which i find it very stupid. But so what if they have the talent in it. They should join the talentine instead. What I think will be useful is that these elects be given a few opportunity to organise activities and from these, we pple will be more able to judge these elects' abilities. Letting these elects organise the orientation camp is a good start but more such opportunities should be given so that the J2 can also observe their abilities too...

Kenny bday

2005-04-19T22:36:00.000+08:00

Poor Kenny! I saw how the councillors treat their president on his birthday. He was smashed with cream on his face a few times. And 1 of the culprits was YUMAN. Ai yo! Don't know she is so wicked one! Cream was all over his face and shirt lor. And he was smashed again after he washed them off. What I admired abt him is that he is not angry at all and even thanked the councillors for all their efforts. He is a person who got da liang. Hmm, maybe that's why he is able to become president of the councillors...

Casino!

2005-04-19T22:10:00.000+08:00

The government finally announced the result of the casino issue. What surprised us is that they approved 2 casino proposals! It's like many pple are already not happy with the gov for favouring the building of casino right at the start and yet the gov approved not 1 but 2 casino proposals. While I am not exactly approved of the setting up of casino, I felt that it's a reality that we must face. Look at Sentosa. I believe that most people will agree with me that it's not successful. But look at Genting Highland. When I went there last dec, the outdoor theme park is badly maintained but yet why so many tourists went there? It's mainly because of the casinos. I know there is at least 1 in each hotel there. For such integrated resort, it is able to attract alot of pple b'cause adults can gamble at the casinos while teenagers, children can have fun at the theme park (which what my family did at genting). Besides, the earning from casinos is rather high so it is able to cover up for other attractions that are not earning money. Looking at Sentosa, how many tourists are actually attracted by the so called "attractions" like wondergolf, fort siloso... So I think that with the integrated resorts built maybe we can attract more tourists esp Chinese gamblers(which fill the genting casinos, opps).
These are some of my views and thoughts while I read the newspaper today. Feel free to comment.

NAFRA test

2005-04-19T21:53:00.000+08:00

The NAFRA test is not very well done. I got 2A, 1B, 2C and 1E?!? The E is from the standing broad jump. Stupid la! Drag me down from gold to bronze. However, I am not feeling sad though I got to go for PE "remedial". It's actually considered an improvement from last year's 2A, 1B, 1D and 2E. This shows that my own training for arm strength and stamina is going well, at least I can do 6 pull-up compared to 2 (very unstandard one) last year and timing for 2.4 also improved slightly. Hope to get C for standing broad jump and gold for NAFRA after the remedial...

Blog Reconstruction Done

2005-04-18T21:43:00.000+08:00

Ah... Finally, my blog has been reconstructed. Quite satisfied with the new blog outlook. Not bad! I learnt quite a lot. I learnt how to change skin, add tagboard and music. Actually I learnt from other pple's blog. Just see what they have, then select view source and then copy. Ha, now I can let others know my blog address already... :)

The week

2005-04-15T21:58:00.000+08:00

Things that happens this week:
1) Our group has almost completed the design a game project, leaving only the oral presentation. Great! We r quite fast compared to other group.
2) Principal leadership talk. The 4 steps of the FISH philosophy: 1) Play 2) Make Their Day 3)Be Present 4) Choose Your Attitude.
3) Grade 2 for PW. The releasing of PW result was quite a shock. The school suddenly announce at 11+am through the PA system for all J2 to go to the hall at 1.20pm to get the PW grade. It's like no mental preparation before that. The result is expected as my group is not outstanding and I did not perform well in OP QnA. All my group members got grade 2. Only Charmaine, Caleb, Dax and Bai Fan from the class got grade 1. Junjing's group(slackest group) saw 4 out of 5 of the members getting grade 3.
4) This week also saw Ms Vignesh been very harsh to the class, when the VP presented a list of latecomers of the class to her and 5 of the classmates been "excorted" to the assembly area by Mr Gelbert Lee for staying in the classroom during morning assembly. Now she wants attendance marked at 7.40 sharp every morning in the assembly area. Students with pub stunts or other reasons must inform Charmaine or Mark beforehand. Hai...actually doesn't affect me much since I reach school at 6.50 every morning and always the 1st few to get into the row. But it is sad that such policy has to be implemented which shows that Ms Vignesh had totally lost trust in us...
5) The dance groups have been doing very well with the Indian, Malay, Chinese dance all getting gold with honour. And the best part is that our dances didn't get gold with honour before and suddenly we got 3. Now the pressure is on the western dance group. Hope they get it too...

Greenlink Camp

2005-04-10T19:23:00.000+08:00

The greenlink camp was quite a good one. HA! Maybe I am biased as I was 1 of the organiser. I was mainly in charge of the treasure hunt which is the highlight for the 1st day. Things r not going well in the beginning as ji wei had gone home to eat dinner and only back in school at 5.50 and chengyang got maths trail. So there is no one to help me do the preparation works at first. It's not even done when all others arrived. I only got a little time to eat my dinner (nasi briyani delivered by my dad together with my bag) at 7pm. Then we went around pasting the clues. Then Ms Koh was late and we only get the classroom keys at 8.35 instead of 8. Jiwei, chengyang and I have to rush to do the haunted houses. Though having to rush, the haunted houses were rather good, all going well according my initial plans of the 2 houses. The treasure hunt eventually start at 9.40 instead of 9 as planned.
In TA21, when people pulled open the door, they will hear chairs dragging inside. When they entered, they will see 2 candles and walking closer, a green figure was hanging there looking like praying was taking place. "Tan Xiang" was lighted to give the joss stick smell. A man with green face(chengyang) then came in from the window.
In TB33, when people opened the door, they will see blood, finger and a cockroach "eating" the finger. When they stepped in, something will pat their shoulder and when they turned they will see a green face man with pointed nose(jiwei) holding a "bloody hand". The room is in a mess and another blood with a nose can be found on the other table.
For me, I went to all 24 stations to ensure that all the clues and stickers are still there. On the way, I gave hints to every groups. Peiling also called me for help when a group couldn't solve "way in KL" which is an easy clue. While patrolling, I also heard a lot of screaming from the classrooms. HA! Qing Xiang also screamed in TB33. He is quite comical. He knew someone is hiding inside. He went up there together with 2 people. He then bang the window and so on to try to scare the J1. The J1 switched on the light and did not notice Jiwei. QX thought that the pple hiding inside went to toilet and stepped in too. Only shock to find a hand touching him. Haha! Serve him rite...
The treasure hunt took up lots of my time. I have to think of the clues, where to hide them, type them out and plan what clues to link to in each station. I also had to plan the haunted houses. Took me a long time too to find a shop selling horror stuffs. I discussed the treasure hunt with the participants and they gave me an expression of "Oooo" and "like that also can" when I reveal the answer or where the clues is hidden. But from their expression I can see that they have quite alot of fun. Fenella even sms me praising me for the treasure hunt. Things like these made me feel that all my efforts are not wasted.
For the 2nd day, we went to botanical garden to do the fashion parade thing. Our group used aluminium foils, magazines, leaf and flowers to design a J1 into "king of nature" After that, they have to parade, do a catwalk and a commentary abt the design. The botanical garden is crowded with people on Saturday and I really commented that J1, joyce and sabrina for having the courage to parade with so many pple watching. Joyce and sabrina even did dare to do sexy poses. Sabrina's group win in the end for using the most number of recycled material after all the groups draw.
The bbq food was rather nice. I set up one of the pit and only manage to bbq for 10 mins. Then I got no more space to bbq again when I came back after eating beehoon and pineapple rice. So I end up doing the job of poking the sticks into the hotdog, chicken wings,... to prepare them for bbq. And I had to leave earlier to prepare for the candle game.
The candle game is one having to burn all the ropes to go in to "rescue" the prisoner by burning the last rope which a waterbag will fall on the prisoner. Overall, it's not very successful as the game barely last 5 mins due to insufficient rope to do a complex maze. Ken was a bit disappointed as he is the one who planned this game. It's like after having to spend so much time planning and yet it's not very successful. It's understandable and I felt a bit sad too... I will be feeling very disappointed too if my treasure hunt did not work out well.
I left at 10.30 when my dad drove here to fetch me home...

Free Drinks?

2005-04-06T19:09:00.000+08:00

After PE today, I went to the vending machine to buy a drink as usual. As all my coins are used up, I borrow 40 cents from junjing. After inserting the coins, the light did not light up as usual. I hit the button for winter melon drink but nothing drop out. So I turn the coin returning lever and to my SURPRISE 80 cents drop out?!! So I insert 40 cents again and pressed winter melon again. Again to my SURPRISE, not only winter melon drop out, but also wheat grass?!! So end up me returning the money to junjing and also treat him to a wheat grass drink....

Interesting things that happens today

2005-03-31T21:17:00.000+08:00

Today, Ms Ng used tablets (something that looks like a giant PDA) today for FM lesson. She said she liked to use new technology, but she don't really know how to use it. Mark had to help her again and again to solve problems like image being inverted, the program cannot be open. When the program is finally started, she accidently pressed the power button and u can see the program telling her to save and when she click cancel, then appear "window is shutting down". The whole LT was clapping. She then have to restart again. The window came back again she carried on to type her username- s7102... and then the entire LT goes "oh..." Someone asked "ms ng u are 34 hah!" She only smiled and said nothing.
Poor Benghee, he fractured his arm and his entire left arm was bandaged. In the canteen, he bought chicken rice and on reaching the table we were all at, someone reminded him, "Eh, how are u going to use the fork?" He then paused for a while and went "O ya...!" The fork was left unused. Hmm, cannot blame him la. Sometimes we are so used in doing certain things that we will automatically do them without thinking.

Official ending of common test + exercise

2005-03-28T19:02:00.000+08:00

Ah! The tests are finally ended with the Physics S paper as last paper. And the best part is that the paper is not as difficult as I have thought. Now I can enjoy myself without any worry of exam. Just did a serie of 75+40 situps, 70+70 dumbell, 6.5 km run. This is the 2nd day of training with 70 situps and 4.8km run yesterday. Yeah! Just cut 1 kg. Hope to get at least a silver in the nafra test. The ending of tests also marked the starting of lessons again. Hai... Got tons of uncompleted tutorials...

Slow

2005-03-26T20:51:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I really felt like an idiot. I didn't realise that xinling who is in my com was peiling's younger sister for 3 months. Then I called xinling's handphone to ask whether she is going out for the club outing. As usual, she asked me whether is it about the club outing before I even tell her (a thing that I always found strange but didn't ask). After consolidating, I called peiling's home number to inform her about the number of people going. The phone conversation goes like this:
"Hello, may I speak to Peiling please?"
"Hello, (laughing) weibin har? U just called me a while ago."
"Huh???"
It's xinling who answered the phone. I then looked at the contact list carefully. Xinling's sirname is choo and she has the same home phone number as peiling. Should have realised it long ago. She always know the news before me and she came together with peiling for the birdwatching trip once. But she looks totally different from peiling, got tian di zi bie. No one will know she is peiling's sis unless someone tells that person. Haha, can't stop laughing at my slowness.

Club outing

2005-03-26T20:06:00.000+08:00

Today I went out for greenlink outing. So pathetic, only 2 J1 attended. It is also not well planned, lots of time wasted on deciding where to go and what to do next. Then the usual truth and dare game. As usual I gena again. Twice today. Peiling is the best lor, gena at the first number. And the punishment is to shout I love greenlink and to eat bread. Stupid la, make me unable to eat my dinner. Chengyang have to spell zhi xiu with his butt and zhi xiu sang a japanese song. And her sound is not bad, able to sing rather high pitch. The outing ended with the rain coming and they went to watch the movie. Have to go to shao mu..

Qing Ming Jie

2005-03-25T21:22:00.000+08:00

Today is qing ming jie again. My family and I went to vsit my grandfather and grandmother at the temple to make offering. This time is the first time I saw my gu zhang's ash pot (just pass away last year). Today is also the first time I visit my tai wai gong and tai wai ma (great grandfather and grandmother) tomb. This is what is really called shao mu, man. We have to clear the path to go to even get to the tomb lor. The tomb is also not easily seen, covered with grasses. So we really have to chu chao. The tomb will have to be dug up soon, so I am glad that I have the opportunity to see their tomb before they are gone.