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I don't know if it's the fact that we always lose in some way, but everytime I go home from a house event of any sort I always feel deeply disappointed. I've never been able to nail it down. My participation in House sporting events is as follows: (to the best of my memory)
Sec 1 Track&Field - Triple Jump heats Sec 2 Track&Field - 100m heats House Carnival - Table Tennis Sec 3 Track&Field - 100m heats House Carnival - Rugby Sec 4 (none due to collarbone fracture) J1 Waterpolo IHC Shooting IHC
Interestingly it's not about the results. I felt the same way yesterday as I did when we walked off the field as champions of Rugby HouseCarn. (They later told us we got 2nd but that's not the point) No matter how succesful the game turns out to be, it seems like there'll always be an unsatisfying end waiting for me around the corner.
It's not some twist of fate like what happened today. It's not unfortunate circumstance, it's not bad luck. It's just unsatisfying, playing for the house. I wouldn't say I don't have pride in my house, and do want to participate in house events, it's just that I never feel anything particularly satisfying, even if we get 2nd like we did today at shooting, or if we won like we (sort of) did Rugby house carn, or even if we get smashed down to 5th like we did yesterday, I just go home with this mucky feeling.
Maybe this is why I never went for HouseD.
On a sidenote the HH House D (or at least what I've seen of them) is absolutely fantabulous.
There's the house captain Uncle Sixuan who seems to never ever run out of energy, and is always the only or last one left screaming "GO HH" or something like that.
There's Chanel, who smses encouraging stuff with a conspicuous number of ex!clai!!!ma!!!tion!!!! m!!ark!!s!!!!!!!! :)
There's Matthew, who is jumping up and down, and if you'd seen him at any house event in Sec1 Sec2 you wouldn't know it was the same Matthew Chan.
Haven't seen much of Jaryl in action, or any of the other house D people. Come to think of it I don't even know who's in my HouseD other than that 4 and Patrick Cho, which either means that they are slackers or that I haven't been to enough House events.
Ok whatever it is I don't think I'll ever be able to adequately express what I feel about my house. Only thing is, after Shooting today, in what was probably my last ever sporting effort for (Hadley) Hullett House, I don't think I have to.
One thing's for sure, I want in on dramafest next year. Cast or crew or ticketing manager, I don't care, I would even be a tree (again). Dramafest is satisfying. It's the feeling of togetherness I just can't get from any other experience than drama.
Soo basically, my blog died for a week because I don't really care about it enough to take/make time to post anything.
Well, following up on the previous post, Archery training's been going pretty well, I would say. We've been having lots of fun, playing frisbee and Scramble, singing The Wheels on the Bus, sharing fruit juice, running on Meyappa Chettiar Road (which is actually not so fun), playing with the flamethrower, 4646, searching the field for lost arrows, doing bowtraining, struggling through PT we handled easily before the pre-promos blockout period.
I got approval from Ken to start using my Klicker (actually it's clicker but in German, clicker is spelt Klicker. Just kidding.) and that's kind of been going well. The Klicker is this little piece of metal that does wonders for your shooting because it goes KLICK everytime you reach full draw. Which, as you can guess, is the optimal time to release your arrow.
I'm improving, I guess, but not quite at the rate I would like to. Oh well.
I realise I go Oh Well a lot. Not in real life though.
So anyhow.
Since the last post, I haven't been really really busy at all, just really really unmotivated.
There's been no lack of things for me to do.
I've been reading, but not the Lit Books. Which is fine, cause I got time. ("I got time" is one of the biggest lies I tell myself but I believe it every single time.)
O'team prep is going to heat up soon, or not. If I messed up lit as badly as I thought I did, I'm no longer going to be the IC of O'team Decor Subcomm Banner Subsubcomm. Anyhow, I kind of spent the last 2 weeks fretting about Banner, and then I finally got down to organizing a meeting, which went pretty well.
I've been going around telling everyone how I have to work with "scary girls" but then now I kind of realise that my fears were totally unfounded. Let's see. In no particular order, here is Banner subsubcomm, Decor subcomm, O'team 2010.
Celine whose face I can remember Stella who looks like Matthew Mengxia who is like Shiyin Shona who is a dancer Becky who is Becky Xian Ning who can draw Pauline who can't stop smiling Vanessa who is in Council Andrea who is Andrea Marc who is actually a boy JeffWang who bought me chocolate and apple tea
Ah yes. My default gauge of whether or not the work experience is going to be nice and smooth is whether or not I can remember everyone's names. And I can! So, yeah, the girls aren't scary after all.
And then there's PWOP to deal with, and Chinese coming up soon, but I don't think I'll be doing much other than fretting about it.
Speaking of fretting, Monday is RESULTS DAY (quake, quake), which can have 3 possible outcomes for me. (In order of increasing desirability)
I get kicked out of O'team
I meet the OGL 2nd cut minimum grade and I get to be an OGL, but I can't take H3
I surprise myself and do so incredibly well that I qualify for H3 something. Probably Bio.
Now as you can probably see, there's a kind of freaking huge-ish gap between 2 and 3. I somehow do not see a H3 in my future.
In addition to all of this stuff that I have to do, my PSP got found. I expect this to be a great source of inspiration distraction OH HEY LOOK I UNLOCKED CAPTAIN AMERICA
Have you ever been faced with a situation so seemingly impossible that, thinking about it, you just can't bring yourself do anything but sit there and wait for it to hit you?
It's like sitting on the beach watching the tide come in, it's lapping at your toes, your feet, your shins, your knees, your thighs, your waist, and then it hits.
We're on the verge of finishing up our final report, and it's like playing Vasebreaker on Plants vs Zombies. To the uninitiated, Vasebreaker works like this. There are a number of vases on your lawn. They contain either plants or zombies, and you have to smash them open one by one.
The zombies you find can range from the basic zombies who can be easily killed with basic peashooters, to the gigantic Gargantuars who smash your plants and tank damage like, well, like tanks.
The plants you find range from the superefficient Squashes, who kill all zombies up till bucketheads, to the peashooters, who really can't do much. The important thing about plants is the positioning, because your lawn has 5 lanes and you don't want too many plants on one lane and too few on the others.
So that's just about how it is with PW.
We've got most of our vases all broken open, and most of the zombies are dead. There are one or two bucketheads futilely biting down on a walnut, but there's a repeater on its lane and so it's going to die.
The thing is, even if there are only a couple of vases left, one of them may be a Gargantuar. Now, the thing about Gargantuars is that, when they're almost dead, they take the imp zombies off their backs and fling them 5 spaces forward toward your house.
So yeah. We're breaking open the last couple of vases and we're doing it really really carefully. Just hope no more Gargantuars are going to appear. With my current stockpile of suns, I can't afford many more cherry bombs.
9 days left, and only now it hits me.
I hate to think of it this way, but my performance in CTs could honestly have been a fluke.
A for GP, but I can't seem to produce quality essays like I thought I could. Recent essay practices have shown up tragically lacklustre results of 27 and 30, and the thing is, I was actually honestly working hard for those.
B for History, but my Term essays turn up with 13 and 14.5 marks for SEA and INT history respectively. I realise that I don't really know how to approach a history question, and that my substantiation and content knowledge is weak. But then again, CT performance could have been because, in 45 minutes, you aren't expected to have that much of the hard facts, but more on point development.
Econs seems to be the only thing that's going well.
AND YET.
I was doing really well for Econs before CTs, but CTs went really awfully. I'm doing pretty well now before Promos, do I see an emerging pattern? I sure hope not.
The past couple of days (these 2 weeks or so) have been spent mostly in school. Some days we are at the Raja Block till late. It offers almost constant wind, (more so than Windy Benches) power source for laptops, (if required) basic infrastructure, (reliable electric lighting, tables and chairs) and motivation in the form of the RJ students and boarders who mug here till late.
I wonder what it would feel like to one day be the last person to leave the Raja block.
Other days we classroom hop around, we are nomadic muggers. Mostly, these are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mostly it's math mugging, mostly fulfilling, but tiring, and draining, and sometimes it gets frustrating.
All of this has an adverse affect on my temperament and behaviour and tolerance and patience and overall mood and though my brief emo flashes never last more than 5 minutes, they're happening witn increasingly alarming regularity. I ran around the entire RI compound (approx 3km) this morning and came into Econs lecture feeling considerably more relaxed.
I want to stay overnight in Lakeview one of these days. Just for the pure joy of being able to wake up at 7 and take a 10 minute walk to school.
Wrapping up now. The word doc needs to be converted to pdf to preserve the formatting. We need to print 2 copies and bind them. We need a blank page on the front of one of them, in front of the cover page, for the official PW coverpage on which we will sign, put down a wordcount, and seal our PW fates.
Thinking about it, it's just 40% of the overall grade.
If you can do a good job of the Oral Presentation, let's say you do a really really good job. 32/40.
And let's say you do a really good job of your personal portfolio. 18/20.
Now with your 50 marks nicely secured, all you need for that 70% overall and your A for PW is a pass for WR.
And with all the time you've saved on doing your report, you can study for promos and take H3s and have fun while mugging and be relaxed and have a proper study plan and actually cover all your syllabus.
Dreams.
But then again you can't do well for OP without doing well for WR, and there's the thing about the bell curve and how you have to be superomega awesomer than everybody else to get A after moderation.
And yet 90% of students get A. How does that work?
I guess everyone puts in maximum effort. Or at least, most people. Individual decisions rarely affect the majority sentiment, we learnt that in Econs. Everyone wants to do well, that's the underlying assumption.
I think the best PW group is one in which members are motivated not just by their own desire to do well, but also their fellow group members' similar desire. It's when you see someone putting in their best and you can't not put in your best too.
Is RJ248 such a group?
I sit here with Hoang at table #7. Ryan's probably long gone. I'm hoping Stephanie gets to bed early because she was up till 6 on Monday night and up till 4 last night.
I've spent too much time on this posting already, but it felt so nice to get it all out. Also, Becky walked by and saw me typing, so I know for sure that I'll have at least one reader.
I guess, after all of this, after 4 years of blogging, all I want is to be heard.
I spent the afternoon doing math and catching up (you can guess the proportions) at JustAcia with jonlim.
I didn't notice it, but jon caught a fleeting smile creep onto my face as we watched a small group of Filipinos spring a birthday surprise on a friend.
"They're so happy!" "Oh. You're smiling because they are happy?" "... Huh? Oh. Oh. Yeah I guess so."
So anyway.
The day was productive, but not very satisfying. I spent 2 hours travelling to and from Dhoby, and with that kind of fixed costs, it makes sense to increase output to get closer to the Minimum Efficient Scale. Mom intervened with a quota that forced me home for dinner at 6:30.
I still got work done, but I like doing things all the way. That is to say, if I'm out studying, it'd be nice to study till the point of no more studying. Same way as when I go down to the range, I shoot till I cannot shoot anymore, and then I shoot a little more, and that's when I get stronger.
Speaking of shooting, I called PPCC on Saturday to make sure the range was open, and they told me it was, but when I got there it had been hijacked by renegades from SMU. Yeah, SMU, the local U in the middle of the CBD. Golden Stabilizers on GMXes, and those bighuge bowstands, V-bars, X-10s, pure Archery Opulence. And they were shooting on the 10m line.
Pardon me while my brain explodes in fury.
(fizzle)
I ended up at the taohuay shop, which wasn't that bad after all, because taohuay and croissants go really well together, and they smell really good too. I finished all my hypotesting revision questions, too.
I'm home now, after a pretty good Italian-Mexican-American fusion dinner, (fusion cuisine is quite the norm in my house, given that my mom's 50% malay, more or less grew up in a hawker centre, and spent 3 years in England.) and it's time for the final lap of Written Report.
"If I can feel this happy now I know I can carry this happy in everything I do." -Mar 31, 2009, from a 25 year old in Brooklyn, New York, when it was sunny.
Do you know a place that we can go to? A place where no one knows you They won't know who we are Do you know a place that we can run to And do those things we want to They won't know who we are
When I am tired, my eyelids feel heavy. When I am tired, my body temperature is higher than usual. When I am tired, I am irritable. Not much, but more than usual. When I am tired, I get distracted much easier.
Funny how I only started picking up on these little signs this year. Probably because last year I was just tired all the time. Then during holidays I slept a whole lot, and now school starts at 7:40, it's just 20 minutes but it makes such a great difference.
I'm in some seedy lanshop now, in half U. Yeah they let you in in half u. the class is playing Douda and my brain feels hurt. Like, in pain. Seriously in pain. Physical pain. It's like my head is inside a giant, uh, stapler. Here it comes now. .. .. ..
After Netgroup on Friday night, after having hot tea with the boys and seeing them off home and washing up the cups, I sat down to polish up the proposal for Orientation 2009, Deco subcomm, banner subsubcomm. Funny, but the moment I sat down the stuff on the screen started swimming around hazily. In my subconscious mind I was able to attribute it to Extreme Fatigue, and I had no idea why. I somehow managed to snap myself out of my stupor and wrap up the loose ends. Many thanks to STELLA (formerly from Zhonghua Secondary), who scanned in my doodlings.
SIDENOTE I don't think I put in my best effort for the Banner Proposal, and I didn't make a lot of meaningful input in the 2-hour meeting, either. Okay, I got there early, I was prepared, I downloaded the relevant materials, I coordinated (somewhat), but I somehow can only remember making a couple of wisecracks. Note to self: if you don't have anything useful to contribute, shutyourface.
I lay in bed after emailing the banner proposal out and thought back on the week and I suddenly realised how little sleep I'd actually had.
Monday night was spent not sleeping at class stayover at Dillon's house. I did sleep between 5 and 7 am, though, so that counts as 2 hours. When I got home at 2, sitting on the floor unpacking, I slumped over and died till 5. 3 hours. Tuesday night was spent doing PW (WR) in preparation for Wednesday which was actually Monday. I slept at 5, woke up at 6. 1 hour. Wednesday night was spent polishing up EoM in preparation for final submission on Friday. Slept at 2 and somehow managed to wake up at 4 to continue. 2 hours. Thursday night was spent on PW, again, because we were dead-set on submitting Draft 2 by Friday afternoon to ensure that Ms Wong has enough time to look at it before we consult on Tuesday. Slept after 4, almost dead. 1.5 hours.
And with all that in mind it started to make sense as to why I was so dead by Friday night.
Ok to be fair it wasn't just 9.5 hours of sleep I had, because there was a very restful doublechinese period on Wednesday which was actually Monday.
Wellllllll.
History tomorrow.
I'm intending to go for a run with Dillon in the morning. Take a look at my 2.4 timing and how much it has deproved.
It's not a "what-am-I-doing-here" kind of lost, you know, because I know what I'm doing here. And I know where I'm going. And I kind of know how to get there. I think.
But I still feel lost.
Well at least I don't feel lost and alone.
On a lighter note, tomorrow's HARDCORE 10A01E CLASS OUTING involving East Coast Park and stayover at Dillon's house.
Dillon: "We relax and make love tomorrow."
Final recharge before hardcore promo-mugging, I guess.
When I got off the train at woodlands I felt absolutely dead and flat and just, well, shitty. So instead of walking home in that state I stopped at Burger King and had a cup of hot tea. I am inclined to say that it has magical properties, which it does.
I feel alive now.
I feel my heart beating.
I feel the blood coursing through my veins.
I feel a spark run through my body.
I feel alive.
I feel warmth.
I feel warmth.
Ok maybe what I'm feeling is Burger King aircon shutting down as it gets closer to closing time. 11pm. Time to pack up and go home, for more hot tea. And Strawberry-flavored jelly.
So I was googling drAHMA after receiving Jon Lian's email about us being in the news and all that.
Turns out there's not much blogbuzz about drAHMA. There's only 3 blogs that even make a reference to it, with one of the 3 being mine, and the other 2 being byap's and Nora's.
I'm tempted to do a full recount of the entire proceedings but to distill it down to pure pure essence, here it is in a couple paragraphs.
Jon Lian calls me up and because it's Jon Lian I agree. I ask a lot of questions before saying yes but I know I've already said yes because it's Jon Lian, you see.
It wasn't the appeal of the CIP hours, for sure. I mean definitely at the back of my mind for the first couple of weeks I'd been imagining the wonderful boost it would be to the paltry 40+ hours of CIP that I'd done in my entire life. But the promise of CIP hours never really got anybody going, did it.
I don't know if you can ever do theatre for yourself, because it's the interactions that matter. It's the people that matter. It's when you see dedication in others and you need to mirror it. That's what happened with Dramafeste, and that's what happened here.
The massive massive cast made for a lot of crazy rehearsals that were frustratingly unproductive. We never really managed to get over it, I think. This persisted all the way till our final rehearsal last Thursday, actually.
What really astounded me was that we did everything with no adults. I mean, an entire theatre production with no guidance. There was jonlian pointing us in the right direction but with all due respect to his directorial capabilities, with a cast of about 30 he never did have much hold on the reins. It was more like hey guys look there let's go there and everyone's like OHYEAH and everyone's running there and all he had to do was give little nudges along the way.
I'm going to miss everyone. As in, I would be lying to say that I've forged lasting emotional bonds with the whole cast, but I'm going to miss the feeling of togetherness, of oneness of purpose that I don't feel very often. I mean the Archers are united and everything but in the end everyone wants to be good on their own, and then not everyone's completely enthu about training.
I love the feeling of being together. Perhaps that's why I always sing the National Anthem loudly, but nobody else sings so it doesn't work.
The awful sad thing about drAHMA ending is that Togetherness suddenly being pulled away. We're all on our own now, I guess, back to our separate lives. I have a couple more friends, and some not so close friends got, uhm, consolidated, I guess.
I will miss everyone, and I probably won't see them very much anymore. Oh well.
I don't know how to end this because even after spending 3 hours that should have been spent on lit I still cant' convey what I want to convey oh well whatever back to lit.
