Turn on the emo.

December 15

2008-12-15T09:28:00.001+08:00

I have officially moved to http://mentosonline.wordpress.com/

For details, read the previous post and/or the first post in the new blog.

Adios, Blogger.

A full circle

2008-12-13T15:01:00.002+08:00

YF Camp's over. Too lazy to bore you with the numerous epic hilarious moments, especially those involving my co-leader Andrew Fu.

So this year's my 6th YF camp. To be honest, the camp didn't go perfectly, especially the controversy surrounding the night games, but there were many changes this year, including really pwnage food, 2 campsites, 4th floor dorms when we were at PLMGS, and waking up at 1am to take a breather at MacRitchie Reservoir (with workshops).

When all's been said and done, it's really great to look back at the past year and see how things have changed (and not changed), to see how some people have really matured.

In 2 days, it will be exactly a year to the day I re-started blogging. More precisely, a year and a day, since as Theodore puts it, 2008 is a leap year. My inspiration of blogging has changed. When I first started this blog right after last year's YF Camp, the main purpose was to rat about mundane stuff and post some hilarious entries for self-entertainment.

Therefore, in 2 days time, I will formally move to a new blog, one that's reflective in nature. Of course, another motivation's the fact that wordpress blog templates are stylishly simplistic :P

Enough about that. Here's to my workshop group mates, the group of Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, really great having you people for company at camp :)

Andrew Fu

Kyran Chew

Hannah Lin

Elizabeth Tan

Oh Jia Min

Valerie Lew

Teng Kok Weng

Linus Seah

Lynette Quek

Alicia Tiang

Theodore Goh

Joey Tay

Christl Yong

Hahaha Kyran and Alicia were in my group last year too.

The Catwomanisers of Zion YF Camp 2008 - My Identity in Christ.

And so, we come to this time of the year again.

2008-12-07T15:15:00.002+08:00

I have the bad feeling that I'll be dead tired by next Sunday.

Here's the schedule from yesterday to next Sunday.

Yesterday Afternoon/Evening: Musical Outreach Rehearsals

Today evening till Saturday Morning: YF Camp

Saturday Afternoon/Evening: Musical Outreach Full-Dress Rehearsals

Sunday Morning 7.30am: PA Duty

Argh no time to rest! Fortunately Kenneth's lesson today was postponed so Danny and my lesson next week was subsequently postponed as well.

And on Tuesday, we're attempting something never done before in YF Camp history (I think). Changing campsites from Zion Serangoon to PLMGS. On foot, with our bags. 120++ of us. It's gonna be workshops simultaneously, we'll be walking all over Serangoon/Paya Lebar with our stuff (ie. we'll be wondering around in a manner similar to Amazing Race without the race).

Oops, I wasn't exactly supposed to reveal that. Can't wait for the camp hehe. Hope all the experienced I gained from leading YD class (once) this year will aid me as I'm assistant group leader.

-----

On the more emo side of things, I have been sorting out my thoughts the last couple of days.

So what have I accomplished, spiritually?

My walk with Jesus remains far from smooth and I'm well aware of it. So as I close this year, this will be my prayer:

A broken spirit, and a contrite heart

You will not despise,

You will not despise.

You desire truth in the inward parts

A broken spirit and a contrite heart.

Lord my heart is prone to wonder

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, Lord take and seal it.

Seal it for your courts above.

This is a really beautiful song (:

Adeste Fideles

2008-12-05T11:13:00.003+08:00

G'morning mates.

Adeste Fideles was not bad. We did miraculously well after all the fail in guitar camp. Time to take a short break, then leave for Serangoon Gardens for the YF Camp meeting thing. Tired like shit after 68 hours of crazy guitar this week.

Just got Lester's sms(es) haha. rofl Ryan Wan's in the same flight as Lester to Hong Kong. Ok that was random.

-----

Chillax time. Before I go, here's emo song of the week. Don't Wait by Dashboard Confessional. Yeah yet another one by them.

Oh sweet lungs don't fail me now

Your burning has turned into fear

Drills me in my every step, i'm moving quick but you're always on my heals

Just one more breath, i beg you please

Just one more step, my knees are weak

My heart is sturdy but it needs you to survive

My heart is sturdy but it needs you

Breathe, don't you want to breathe

I know that you are strong enough to handle what i need

My capillaries scream, there's nothing left to feed on

My body needs a reason to cross that line

Will you carry me there one more time?

Steady lungs, don't fail me now

I feel you bursting but you won't let me die

Fill me up with every step

I'm feeling sick, but i'm leaving it behind

Just one long breath i beg you please

Just one more step you are not weak

My legs are sturdy but they need you to survive

My heart is sturdy but i need you

Breathe, don't you want to breathe

And know that you are strong enough to handle what i need

My capillaries scream, there's nothing left to feed on

My body needs a reason to cross that line

Will you carry me there once more?

I have reason to believe that i have victories to taste

I can feel them on my teeth, upon my lips and in my chest

I can roll them on my tongue, they are more subtle than defeat

I feel the tension in my lungs and every move is filled by my resolve to

Breathe, don't you want to breathe

I know that you are strong enough to handle what i need

My capillaries scream, there's nothing left to feed on

My body needs a reason to cross that line

Will you carry me there one more time?

From the album Dusk & Summer (2006)

Post-Camp Order Of the Day

2008-12-03T16:05:00.002+08:00

Take lift from PCMW

Quickie Lunch, 2x Double Cheeseburgers from Macs

1 hour random chill session listening to random songs

Update blog for no reason

Shit

Bathe

Slack

Catch up on the news I've missed in my 3 days of isolation

Start gaming

-----

Right.

Camp was really fun, really appreciate the hard work of everyone who helped to make it possible. Please continue bear with my rubbish during ensemble practice =D

Back

2008-11-30T16:37:00.004+08:00

I greet you now in my return from my mini-hiatus.

Well, I wasn't that busy lately, just a little thing from one of the seven deadly sins preventing me from updating. That's right. Slothfulness. I can imagine the un-surprised look in your eyes.

Here's a little fail story about me to brighten your day. On friday, I went to Sitex 2008 with Aaron (yeah and some of his friends). Looked around at some cool stuff. Holy banana Geforce 9800 GT cards going for $199!!! And 4GB of DDR2 RAM for as little as sixty-odd dollars.

Messed around with the new Macs, quite impressed at the build quality and design. But even then if I had waited for this show to buy a Mac even the new Aluminium Macbooks would have been out of my budget anyway. So yeah good thing I didn't wait like an idiot. And yeah the classic white design matches with the power adapter and iPod Hi-fi anyway. Oh, and the remote.

Moving on to a more interesting part of my little story, Aaron and I each purchased a 250GB external hard drive from Maxtor, the OneTouch 4 Mini (design matches the new Al macs). When I got back to use it for the Time Machine backup software, damn thing would not work. Just refused to, after trying for 3 damn hours and plugging it to 2 different computers, running all kinds of system diagnostics tests.

Had to bring the damn thing back all the way to Expo to get a new one (Teik Siang came along since he was bored). Thank God, the sales staff there both on Friday and yesterday were super helpful and understanding.

-----

Anyway, I shall remember to pray for everyone stuck in Thailand! Apparently, the People's Alliance for Democracy is acting like a spoiled child and making ridiculous demands and backing that up by taking Bangkok's airports hostage. Namely, they wish to cut down the number of democratically elected members of parliament by two-thirds! Nice work calling themselves what they call themselves.

So Kanin's stuck in Bangkok unable to come back for Guitar Camp. And Deacon Zhi Wen, Nng, Zachary, Jasmine and Peiling and other members of the Zion mission team that are stuck in Chiangmai, and Shermaine in Laos. Their connecting flights were through Bangkok.

Apparently, Peter told me over YD lunch today that Thanasak took a 72 hour bus ride home. Wow. O_o

-----

Ok end of random rant time. I'll be away for guitar camp from 1-3. Concert on 4. YF Camp WGL Training on 5. And YF Camp from 7-13 at Gardens.

Thanks for the memories.

2008-11-23T14:29:00.002+08:00

Just chanced upon Perry's NUS High profile page. Oh-ho-ho, his profile is littered with tons of documents that simply seem to say classic Perry.

And on his profile The DMVPKV is mentioned. I am so honoured.

Go find his profile yourself, just type his full name into google and you'll be there in 10 seconds or less.

And therefore I found it prudent (very prudent as a matter of undeniable fact) to extract an entire document from that particular database which apparently (quite apparently) acts as a treasure trove of documentation of his life in ACS(I).

Thanks for bringing back the memories, Perry.

Note to our Guest of Honour for this post: I think you forgot the part where Mr. Simon Bongard went into the water with a pen knife in order to "persuade" our ruggedly constructed floating contraptions to conspicuously disintegrate.

OUR OEP TRIP TO TEKAM/TAMAN NEGARA

Half the class were excited about the trip during our starting on Sunday. The other half wished for an MC like Trevor, including me. So we began our perilous journey at 6.45am on Sunday to Tekam Plantation, Pahang. Many almost vomited, so although the prices and quality of items in Yong Peng was cut-throat, it was quite welcoming as our first stopover. For lunch, we stopped at Segamat. In the afternoon, we visited the gasing (top-spinning) factory and learnt how the game was played, and some people bought tops. We arrived in Tekam at our chalets at 6pm, greeted by a welcome drink, followed by dinner. At night, we trekked for some time before exploring a cave. The first day, we slept past midnight because of supper and the unpacking of luggage.

On Day Two, Monday, we began our exhausting, muddy and wet activities. Rafting was done with a number of bamboo poles, string and canisters, with 11 students on each raft. Then we held a lake race, where our group was still singing morbid anthems while I was trying to get back on onto the raft. The whole activity drenched us with muddy pond water and threatened with leeches, but the best part was that unlike the other classes, none of our rafts sank. I lost my insect repellent in the water. Too, we found out wearing our non-sacrificial shoes and socks was a bad notion, as it took three washings to get the mud off when we returned. So after lunch, which was a dirty and dripping affair, we went to visit the fruit plantation and had a fruit feast. We were wise enough to bring sandals this time, as our class did Flying Fox and River Crossing later, crossing the river suspended 5m above the same muddy pool in the former, and 5cm above the water in the latter. Teik Siang got stuck on the way due to a lack of bodily momentum. It took many efforts tugging the rope to get him down. A joke for all of us, but a unforgettable memory for him.

Treasure Hunting commenced at 9pm, where we searched for clues roaming around the plantation. One group ate a banana they were supposed to collect. Surprisingly, another group finished it in just 26 minutes. As usual, save a few rounds of BOOM-O, a favourite pastime of our class and that drew great crowds to our chalet, we knocked off to sleep, knowing that we would be sleep-deprived the entire week.

On the third day, we trooped to the oil-palm plantation to be educated on the harvesting, growing, anatomy and manufacturing of oil-palm. Barring lunch, we completed the Obstacle Course of getting a 70kg person through a 100x50cm frame off the ground, pushing a tyre out of a 3m pole, and walking on a movable bridge, all without touching anything else. The night was reserved for packing.

Subsequently, the next morning, we went to Tembeling jetty to take a longboat to Taman Negara. The longboat, made of wooden planks, was more comfortable than we had expected, with 25km/h winds in our faces. Arriving in Taman Negara two hours later with just a haversack, we dined to a wonderful meal there. The resort at Taman Negara was superb, but at night, the environment was more suited to zoologists. Monitor lizards, snakes, and monkeys – they had samba deer too last year – roamed freely.

We went to the Teresik Trek, Canopy Walk and Rapid Shooting. Trekking for 2.5km, we arrived at the Canopy Walk 200m above sea level on ropes and planks. Rapid Shooting consisted of charging against the currents and making waves. We were not very wet until the other boats swamped us with waves from their oars, upon which, it felt as if the Tembeling River dropped on our heads.

We were hard hit when our comrades Matthaeus and Juztin succumbed to disease at night. Being a roommate of Matthaeus, we had to pack everything for him. But the worst part was that he felt better in the morning – and the disease passed on to me. Still, the boat ride was not bad if not for the cold whipping winds. Thus followed the journey home, but with a viewing of the patin fish farm first, at Termeloh, where I turned orange into mango juice. We all endured a near-vomiting trip to reach ACS.

All in all, it was a journey which I promise, with all the over-punctuality of Mr. Simon Bongarde, the hanging of Teik Siang, the games of laughter and BOOM-O…… will not be wiped out from our memories in the foreseeable future.

LOL FAIL

2008-11-20T22:53:00.002+08:00

Sigh guitar is real crazy we've learnt so many pieces in such a short time. Shit, Shaun Matthias and I really suck.

Nonetheless, I find it prudent to enlighten you on my totally fruitless day yesterday. The morning was just half-drugged Viwawa gaming. And the afternoon. Was spent installing Red Alert 3. Or at least, the more accurate term shall be trying to.

Damn thing was too big to install on my XP partition, so I had to install it on my 100GB portable hard drive, which itself is fast running out of space. And I had to install it thrice due to 3 separate errors. After which I had to resolve an annoying DirectX 9 error. Bah.

Anyway, here's a little titbit from failblog.org, a site introduced to me by Teik Siang. This guy is teh ultimate sia. Click to enlarge. And enjoy.

Guitar Seminar

2008-11-17T18:45:00.003+08:00

The most boring shit ever.

If I were to succinctly describe my experience there today, it would be in five words. "I had a good nap."

Oh, and I did manage to re-read for the umpteenth time the technical details in the book The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. Don't you just love reading about atomic physics and the repercussions of nuclear weapons on geopolitics.

Tom Clancy got his details mostly right, although he was glaringly inaccurate on one point: In nuclear fission, the energy does not come from the destruction of nucleons (neutrons and protons), but rather from the minute difference in binding energies of the strong nuclear force between nucleons when the uranium/plutonium is fissioned and transmuted into far smaller atoms.

So much for the previous paragraph which, apart from Avery, no one will understand. More accurately, no one will actually bother to go read up on.

For now, I'm regaining my sanity by listening to Jars of Clay's Christmas album. Really cool, Jars of Clay really have a knack for transcribing old lyrics to new tunes. Here's one of my favourite songs.

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day - Jars Of Clay

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day - Jars of Clay - Christmas Songs (2007)

2008-11-14T08:23:00.002+08:00

Staring my last few previous posts in the face makes me wonder what I'm up to.

Where's the continuity and humour gone to?

What's up Matthaeus?

My posts from half a year back and before are way better.

-----

Random thought: Safari 3.2 is out, with anti-phishing protection. That's nice, but slow of Apple. Firefox and Chrome have had that for. Quite a while. And I don't believe those Macrumors fanboys who actually proclaim it feels snappier. Anyone who'll bother to do a browser benchmark for me?

C'mon Google, get Chrome ported over to Mac OS X Leopard already... You've stolen my heart as the best browser there is out there dammit. Even in beta.

Observations

2008-11-11T23:26:00.005+08:00

A few random mundane things I noticed today.

Guitar is, if you count dinner, taking up 12 hours of your life a day.

My Airport Card is really heating up.

My parents are watching some retarded Taiwanese show. No, I can't tell you what it is because I can't read the title although the last 3 words of the title says "Da Ge Da".

The Russkies had (another) submarine accident apparently. Google K-152.

I felt the urge to go learn some programming code. Namely, C++ and Java. Guess I'll procrastinate and get down to actually learning it 6 years' time.

Hmm. What's wrong with me? I think it's been a while since I did a write up on my thoughts on the geopolitical military dynamics in the region.

Oh, and also we need to conjure up more potential Dwee quotes for future entertainment. Rofl bumped into him at lunch, IB Tie and all.

-----

Edit:

Avery Khoo sends at 10/11/2008 9.46 AM:

"Are you at the science center?"

Ehh? I know you'll read this, so no, I wasn't, because I was at Limzy's house perhaps? But, what's with the random sms question?

Oh, and by the way you used American spelling for your sms.

-----

2nd Edit:

This video is pure awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Fj7wbc3Zc

If only I could embed it. Apparently, even changing some embed values from another video doesn't seem to work. Damn Sony BMG, disabling embed by request eh?

It's Stars by Switchfoot, and they filmed this single playing UNDERWATER.

Yes, I said that right, underwater.

AV

2008-11-10T22:13:00.003+08:00

Haha I'm back from a damn cool weekend.

Saturday I was owning at DotA in the morning, then in the afternoon I went to church to help out at the recording session for the musical songs. Haha the chapel became a makeshift recording studio with wires, mikes and all sorts of electronic stuff like a audio-visual expert's wet dream.

Learned how to mike a drum set whoo with 6 whole channels. Which is like half of the channels available for the chapel PA system mixer. And as I was told, we were using top of the line drum mike stuff for the recording. Cool shit.

Anyway the recording really sounded like the real thing. Damn we'd thought it would sound amateurish because of all the fears of sound leakage and the use of Audacity as a recording programme.

Sunday for YD John led in the absence of Peter who has to plan ACJC 09 Orientation -_-. Heh tried out some instant pasta crap from 7-11 for the first time and it sucked. In two different figurative ways, namely in taste and my wallet.

And the afternoon was more dota ownage and then I tried out Viwawa. Heck I swear "Zany Bridge" is the best place to get pure entertainment (and frustration) if you're damn bored.

And today we GHWTed at Limzy's house. Hell'a awesome.

Shit. Haven't picked up much guitar skills over the last few months.

Anyway here's a damn nice song that I've been learning :)

Meet With Me - Ten Shekel Shirt.

PW GG

2008-11-06T08:19:00.002+08:00

Keynote Presentation: Check.

Macbook: Check.

Scripts: Check.

Mini-DVI to VGA Adaptor: Check.

Cue Cards: Check. (Later, though)

Nervousness: Check.

Retarded Smile: Check.

Fast Voice: Check.

Stutter: Check.

Trying to Spot Q&A: Check.

Absolute failure at spotting: Check.

Now don't you just love PW. Once it is over.

Oh yeah, did I mention it's over.

HELLL YESSSSS :)

And after that, it was lunch with Aaron, then go home, dota, then dinner at Tony Roma's.

Mmmmmm.

2008-11-01T20:32:00.002+08:00

Just some random stuff I've noticed over the past few weeks.

Macbooks are the least exclusive campus notebooks on the planet. At least, evidenced by this picture I came across a couple of months ago.

In dwee's class (5.15 Galatians) there are 12 macbook/pro users.

On average, for every 3 metres you walk in the void deck, you see a macbook.

-----

On a random note, I am in need of some good new song/album recommendations.

In the meantime, here's an excellent song from Dashboard Confessional.

The air is visible around you, rising up and off your lips in slow currents

And i watch as your face is framed in its slow currents

Drifting curls a trailing path

A long drag becomes a dress of blue and ash

If it is born in flames then we should let it burn

Burn as brightly as we can

And if its gotta end then let it end in flames

Let it burn all the way down

The air is visceral around us, turning in its simple steps on slow currents

And i watch as it pirouettes and spins

in slow motion

A long drag becomes a

a slow dance and a halo around her

If it is born in flames then we should let it burn

Burn as brightly as we can

And if its gotta end then let it end in flames

Let it burn all the way down, all the way down

And if this is ever meant to end, then i hope it ends where it began

So hot with love, we burned our hands

If this is ever meant to end, then i hope it ends where it began

So hot with love, it burns our hands

If it is born in flames then we should let it burn

Burn as brightly as we can

If its gotta end then let it end in flames

Let it burn, let it burn

If its gotta end let it burn

2008-10-29T16:12:00.002+08:00

lol I'm playing dota now in Michael's house.

Of course, we were supposed to be mugging for chinese tomorrow.

I highlight the key word: SUPPOSED.

Well at any case.

We watched High School Musical 3 last night. A rushed plot with nice songs and dance moves and choreography and whatnot. With the presence of Dwee we were just laughing like crazy.

Of course. His appearance warranted the payment of my debt of $4.00 plus tax to His Eminence. Which I promptly paid $5.00 SGD and got 95 cents and 1 malaysian sen in return. All of us just burst out laughing until we were all out of breath lol.

Like seriously.

And we're like, screwed, for chinese tomorrow.

Oh and where is my new copy of the entry proof again? Oh dear.

And for the dwee shot of the day:

zzzzzz

2008-10-25T08:54:00.002+08:00

As my post title will punctuatively accentuate, I am indeed quite sleepy now.

I just got back from Nightmeh! with Michael Justin Lester (damn, we still haven't come up with a name for our gang) and haha it was quite fun. Although I haven't had a proper nap or sleep in 30 hours now, and prior to that I was already increasingly sleep-deprived.

And seeing that today I have to finish up what I promised Uncle George and then Youth Choir and YF itself, I won't be sleeping until perhaps 10pm. Oh yes, and I have to wake up early for ushering duty tomorrow. Great job.

Oh well but who cares. Carl Junior's breakfast was awesome.

Yo Lester.

HOLIDAYS!

2008-10-24T18:18:00.003+08:00

School's over school's over school's over yayayayayayay.

:)

YAY.

Finally.

I was supposed to be sleeping off this afternoon so that I'll be fresh for tonight. We're going bowling/shopping/eating overnight with Lester's church people who have aptly named their programme 'nightmeh', after that intricate mastermind of crime.

To those two peeps that messed with my facebook profile (if they find their way here):

No lah why so scared I'm not angry lah lols. As I said I was just dramaing roflmaozzz.

Apparently they messed with photo booth and left that damn funny and weird looking picture in the mac. lol.

-----

And on a separate note:

Hmm looks like Starhub FINALLY bumped the upload speeds by a scale of four.

Happy holidays everyone!

2008-10-21T17:40:00.002+08:00

School is damn retarded. You come to school early in the morning, attend assembly, slack for an hour, appear for some PW. Not that you get to do anything productive. Me and Aaron were watching the second half of The Two Towers extended edition on my Mac, burning two hours, and then playing bridge.

After which, go for a pointless hour of chinese for which we do completely useless and unhelpful revision work.

And then back to PW during which Jayne kopes my laptop and the guys in the class kope my cards. So I koped Richard's laptop and then was called to the CPA by Michael to play goldfish/bridge.

Not that our PW teacher came for PW at all except suddenly at the end, catching the guys playing with my cards and confiscating them, after which he immediately dismissed class and returned the cards. My conspicuous absence from the class wasn't even noticed.

And ironically, we were also caught by some teachers at the CPA playing cards. Although the cards weren't confiscated haha.

-----

Hmm.. I wonder why I returned to a reminiscent mood again over the week, this time over the fun we had in ACS (P). Then I started reviewing my collection of old project presentation slideshows from all the GEP classes.

I wish I could say more but if I did I won't stop and in the end I'll spend 3 hours typing about all the fun memories and not be halfway through it.

How much I would give to just turn the clock back seven years and live life all over again. The past seems so much brighter than the present. Undoubtly in many years' time, when mid-life crisis hits and I'm all down, I'll look back to ACJC and wish I could turn the clock back.

If taking things for granted is a crime, then I'm due for a death sentence.

This is your life. You've more or less wasted away all the opportunities you had in GEP. If only you had studied for PSLE. If only you had given a damn for secondary two examinations. If only you were bothered about the 'O' Levels (although I must say I'm satisfied with what I got). You didn't work exactly all that hard for the promos, but now isn't the time to take things for granted again and start slacking of as you perenially do.

Struggles

2008-10-19T14:23:00.002+08:00

Led YD today. Yay I managed to get Peter Wang to promise to attend at school over the week and Danny Chua, one of the main suspected people who would pon my lesson (or rather chairing) came too. Kenneth didn't come, so I'll arrow him next time =P

I must say leading a class is a very interesting experience. It forces you to really seriously prepare for the lesson (which I nearly forgot). And the topic I was doing was very applicable to what I desperately need at the moment - guidance from God.

So now I'm stoning away trying to think of some way to do complete my I&R. And whether H3s is still the way to go. And other things I don't feel like sharing at the moment.

Really hope everyone around me will promote safely. Man, I still feel flipping guilty about not studying for promos while other people mug like shit and deserve so much better than what they got. This is not a patronizing statement, it's what I really feel inside. Happiness on the external, brokenness on the internal.

especially for you. really sincerely hope you will promote. absolutely 0% chance of you reading this, but one day i hope you'll notice me :)

BAD ABC

2008-10-18T21:30:00.003+08:00

Pre-moderated promo results are back.

And therefore, this will now be a post-results, pre-moderation, post-mortem of my promotional examinations.

And first up, the languages.

GP - 64.5/100 - C (or rather a B because of rounding up)

I guess it turned out fine. Had targeted an A but I guess it was out of reach after experimenting with my AQ and having a very sketchy conclusion to my essay.

Chinese - 113/200 - D

Woots. Passed Chinese. Thought I'd failed after the paper review where nearly everyone lost 16 marks which had been presumed to be a free gift. Failed my chinese oral again, but then again, screw Chinese. So long as I can get into university.

Content Based Subjects

Physics H2 - 79/100 - A

A job well done, especially since I thought at most I could get a B. After starting my physics revision the night before the exam, I thought I was screwed when I attempted the sample paper and screwed up miserably. Really thank God, and also condensing my whole year of notes into 2 pages and printing them out to go through on the 74 ride to school the next morning really paid off.

Chemistry H2 - 51/80 - B

Hmm. A little disappointed because I wanted to take revenge for my failure to attain an A1 at the 'O's due to a total fiasco of a lab practical screw-up, of which I still haven't forgiven myself. Staked my pride on this, studied this the most (I started revision 2 days before), although I could have studied more if not for all that card playing during the study break.

Economics H2 - 28/50 - C

The happiest of all my results, albeit the second worst. This is the first time in my life I've ever passed an economics test/exam, and I'm freaking happy I did. I swear all my failures are because of Hashim Ali's ultra strict marking. And the day before we got our results back, during economics tutorial where he caught me playing handphone sudoku, he told me I didn't get a good grade. Pfft I was mentally prepared to fail.

Mathematics H1 - 36/50 - A

Yay. A similar situation to physics, except this paper was in the afternoon and I started that very morning. I still remember Michael, Lester and Justin going screw H2 Math and went off to dota and there I was closet mugging away. Really helped to condense all the calculus formula into terms of f(x) or f'(x).

So, all in all, it's AABC for my content-based subjects and AABBCD overall. Really much much more than I even dreamed. God is truly GREAT.

So now I can take H3s. Hmm, still contemplating whether I should take H3 Physics.

and yet it's all just a facade. intps rarely express what they really feel inside and that is so true. im just broken, just broken.

I guess the pain will fade away in time.

2008-10-14T22:03:00.003+08:00

Hmm after Lester told me about his classmate using iDVD for the PW OP test run, I got curious and decided to mess with some of the iLife applications since it comes bundled with OS X Leopard.

I've got to say that iDVD is damn cool, and so is iMovie. iWeb's pretty awesome too, but has very limited functionality if a)you don't subscribe to mobileme and b)you don't host your own website.

As for iTunes, I use that everyday and I haven't messed with Garageband since I think Guitar Pro can do everything it does and more. iPhoto's not bad, but it could do with more customisability, a perennial problem with Apple stuff these days...

Maybe I could combine Keynote + iDVD to make an awesome OP. Who knows? Have to consult the leader first though.

-----

My 6 week old Macbook becomes obsolete in...

... just 3 hours!

Shocking.

Though the rumour mill suggests that this new update isn't as awesome as it seems it will be.

-----

Edit: Oh yeah, I was bored and decided to create a holding blog on Wordpress. For those who still read this blog (these days, I'm guessing close to no one), the url of this holding blog should be pretty obvious. I must say the wordpress themes are much cleaner and better than blogspot. Hmm should I change should I change should I change.

2008-10-12T21:04:00.003+08:00

My crankyness was not sufficiently placated in the previous post, I changed the template of the blog to suit my dark mood at the moment. It wasn't enough, so therefore this is my second post of the day.

To make this a fruitful outlet, I'm going to extract a leaf out of Danny's book (blog rather) and blog weird.

Attention: Very low quality, poor vocabulary rants to follow. Actually, I'm just dwelling on the relatively "happier" stuff that had happened over the week.

it has comes to my attentionz that the macbook line will be updated on tuesday with aluminium shells. i saw some leaked photos of the chassis and i must say that apart from the removal of the grill speakers and addition of the macbook air trackpad it looks little more than a smaller version of the macbook pro. haha, suckers, you future buyers are going to have dentbooks with shitty wireless receptions. did i mentioned that the white plastic still suits the straight, classic macbook/pro design more?

dont bother to get skin-on potato chips from the longjohnshitsters. had them today for lunch and they were utter trash. for an extra 2plus bucks, too.

the 830 service laptop's gma 950 died on me today. and right before service too. like seres-ly, why the blooming hell does dell exist? no wonder i made the switch from windoze peecees.

lester came over earlier before dinner. lol attempt to transfer runescape stuff = fail. jagex you sucks. no wonder i quit runescape/run escape/rune's cape/rune scape 3.5 years ago. and now im requitting.

74 is my best inanimate fren. hey there 74, ive known you for 5 years, and everytime i wait for you to go home you know? and you always keep me waiting, i get so angry at you. but at the end of the day we always reconcile :) i luvs you much much 74 muackzxzxzxzxzxzx.

and on a more randomz notes, the school motto fits my exam results really well. truly, the best is indeed yet to be.

IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY
IAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKYIAMCRANKY

Do you get my point?

2008-10-12T15:23:00.004+08:00

Now, here's a pre-results, post-promo, post-mortem of the last two weeks.

Well, it appears that promos on the whole was really overrated. Everyone at school was so worried about retaining (me too somewhat), but at the end of the day each (well, mostly) exam came and defused all the tension the singlish "cheh..." coming into mind.

My ACS boy immaturity is happy that I didn't occur too much opportunity cost studying for the exams, and especially darn happy that the last minute studying saved the day again.

The other part of me is thankful to God for just giving me the clarity and peace of mind to remember all that was said in the countless lectures I slept through (though still listening somehow) and hopes that everyone will do well when the results comes out.

I'm probably going to fail economics. That's reality. I accepted that at the Term Examinations just like I accepted failing Chinese 'O' Level oral. I am perfectly mentally prepared. Just like I was in the trepidation of getting back the 'O's totally expecting to fail Combined Humanities and then really thanking God for getting at A2. How I marvel at that miracle, for a miracle that really was then, and still seems to me now.
This was a weekend to forget. I guess I'd been deluding myself all this year and being an utter fool. Now is when I ask myself, "Is there any hope left?" and the answers stares at me starkly in the face.

150

2008-10-08T22:39:00.002+08:00

Hehe, life is all fun and games now.

Today was Open House Day. It was the most boring thing ever. It actually is quite comparable to the Honour's Day ceremony back across the road, except this time you can walk all over the place. Try hanging around ACJC aimlessly for damn near 8 hours and you get what I mean. At least I was accompanied by Shaun, Matthias, Peter, Mitchell and the rest of the Guitar Gang. Aka GG.

After that, Avery came along at about 6 plus (yeah, after Open House). Yay took the Avery Express for the first time in about 8 months. I must say that despite the upgrade of vehicle, the Avery Express is exactly the same as it always was haha. Lunchbox containing peaches? Check. Toblerone chocolate bar? Check. Chocolate biscuits? Check. Cheese? Of course, check. Oh, and insanely nerdy conversation about quantum physics (wave-particle duality, higgs-boson particle, mass-energy equivalence, the works) with Avery? Check.

Tomorrow and Friday is AC Games or rather OlympACS. Heh.

Random afterthought: October is certainly a good month. Promos end, holidays start, Gundam 00 Season 2 begins and many other things to celebrate about :)

Just a thought...

2008-10-05T17:13:00.002+08:00

I quote the opening sentence of question 1 of the mock Physics Paper 2 the LMS system has supplied us with.

"Conan wanted to get a coconut from a coconut tree. He decided to throw a stone at the coconut to knock it down."

What the hell?

Oh, and by the way, damn you Physics for forcing me to closet mug.

3 Letters.

2008-10-04T08:49:00.002+08:00

OMG.

The MAN is actually singing!

For our junior batch's Senior's Night, no less!

Nostalgia

2008-09-30T20:57:00.003+08:00

Immersing myself with stuff from my past, after reading some Wikipedia articles of the legendary game series Command & Conquer.

At the top of that list includes music from the Red Alert soundtracks. Hell yeah, all those memories are flooding back. Including getting caned for having the audacity of playing Red Alert 2 in the chronological vicinity of PSLE all those years back =/

Here's one of my favourite songs from 5+ years ago to get you started.

Hell March 2, lead theme song for Red Alert 2 (or better known as RA2 among us gamers).

Frank Klepacki owns.

Oh and did I mention it won't be long before Red Alert 3 comes out? Heck yeah I am waiting for Hell March 3.

Slackmugging and more slackmugging.

2008-09-28T13:22:00.002+08:00

Ah well what a busy weekend.

With the promos, church duty and whatnot.

GP was neither here nor there. Strangely, everyone I talked to insists that the comprehension was a disaster, while I thought it was pretty okay (and that means something ominous). Not that I should be experimenting with my AQ for promos. Essay wasn't the best I could have put considering I had too many examples and points in my head for the topic I chose and so ended up stoning for the first 45 minutes and had to rush my antithesis and conclusion.

And chemistry. Well I guess it went better than the term exams because I actually got a chance to start on Section C this time round. But I still lost at least 12-14 marks, and that means a bare 10 mark margin of error if I want to retain my A. My dream of taking H3s are really in danger now.

-----

And so we learnt yesterday that Mr Forrest Lim passed away. I thought I was dreaming when I first found out because just a couple of days back he was so lively and ridiculing people's OP drafts in a very hilarious manner. Wilson Sum even said they saw him in the library reading a story book like wth.

It was just too sudden, but now the reason why he has a health condition with visual recognition falls into place.

So farewell, Mr Lim, we'll really really miss you and your very entertaining personality and for guiding us through most of our PW cycle (and in the process getting our progress way ahead of other classes).

Rest in peace, wherever you may be.

I win.

2008-09-24T18:42:00.004+08:00

Today Lester, Michael, Justin and I mugged at church. I bet this is probably the first time I've ever gone to church on a non public holiday/school holiday weekend. Much less mug. And mug in church.

Meh. My chemistry is horrendously out of practice. I am so dead on Friday. H3 Chemistry. HOW?

Tired, and still tired. Man I really want my holidays. Sigh. On an unrelated note, it is really interesting to see how time passes so fast. Our juniors are having (or had) their Seniors' Night, while virtually every other school has prom. Haha that's what you get for being in a boy's school. And people's MSN nicks are complaining of having to go through the torture of Honours Day, where just about everyone gets to go on stage to get an award and stretches the ceremony to a torturous 3 hours plus plus plus, not including lengthy speech by guest of honour. Am I glad to have escaped from that.

Now we're approaching that time of the year again. My 6th YF Camp is coming, and I'm looking forward to that. Though early signs do indicate that for the second year in a row (and third so far) it'll be held at PLMGPS. If only we could have it at Barker or even ACS(I). That would be awesome.

We had mini band discussion between the band members present today. Maybe we'll work towards AC's Got Talent next year, write a tribute song to ACS(I) with the uber familiar bagpipe band music we always here at those countless UYO parades.

Right my blogpost today is so terribly structured. Time to sign off now.

Alright everyone. All the best for promos, good luck have fun. And GG.

OS X +0.0.1

2008-09-16T21:51:00.004+08:00

Great job.

We love you Apple.

Love

2008-09-15T21:35:00.003+08:00

Lol as little as ten minutes ago I had intended to leave any blogging till tomorrow, but after seeing Justin's MSN nick I decided to post. lol Justin congratulate yourself.

Anyway, today didn't start all to well. Happened to be on the same bus as Richard (and also Yinglin but she vanished after we got off the bus) and we shared his umbrella because it was freaking raining cats and dogs. And as See Teck Hock would say, "occasionally a cow would come crashing down."

Then he slipped and fell. Cut his elbow freaking deep. Didn't see the wound very clearly in the dreary conditions initially (before it clotted and closed later on when I helped to clean and dress it) but I think I saw pale flesh on bone. Ouch. Funny thing is, both of us were in the rain laughing away like hell and he said he didn't notice any pain until much much later.

Then later we had chemistry tutorial plus remedial from 3.30pm to 5.00pm. As 4.30pm passed I got damn impatient and started rushing the teacher with Danny-ish quotes like "let's move on with life". I think my classmates were amused.

So yeah, made it in time for Michael's birthday celebration. Stupid me fell victim to Lester and Justin's evil plot to vanish when the cake got rammed into Michael's face. So I also kena pwned when Michael lunged for me.

And the amusing fact of the day: Lydia's crazy. What the fish running into the guy's toilet to smear more cake on Michael? lol.

Anyway here's a coupla pictures from today. Yay. Peek-tures.

I say that's a $2 very well spent.

Tan Weijing Justin; Priority seat huh?

So, let us remember today's scripture text from the message at chapel today. I used English Standard Version for this because the language used in the King James Version looks overtly formidable.

1 Corinthians 3:4-8

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

So let's cut to the chase; Happy 17th Michael!

Confused till exhaustion

2008-09-14T14:47:00.003+08:00

Tired, man.

Just damn tired.

Sometimes I see you're trying to make a point, but then we go nowhere and then a cooling off period of sorts happens.

Or maybe I'm just hallucinating and indulging in wishful thinking and there was nothing going on in the first place.

And I am too shy for my own good. I'm an INTP, you know?

Not that you'll ever read this anyway.

oOPs.

2008-09-12T21:33:00.005+08:00

Eh well.

Oral Presentation first practice was today. Our powerpoint was quite badly screwed up. On the other hand, the main source of sort term pressure is over.

Although the weird thing is, one side of me keeps reminding myself that I need to study for the promotional examinations. However, I am very successfully kept from studying by the other side of me, which insists that I should just treat this exam just like I've treated any other before it - with totally casual disregard.

It's just two weeks, more or less, to promos. And nope, not a thing revised. I hardly know half of the topics going to be covered for the exams, even for the subjects that I have an interest in and traditionally do well in. It's scary, when alarm bells are ringing in half of you and the other half is acting completely indifferent.

I guess 99% of the problem is that there's just way too many distractions at home to study. Hmm. Maybe I need a study group. Or maybe not, since INTPs tend to perform best under isolated conditions. Hmm? Okay I'm introverted but not as introverted as *ahem* Salty.

Therefore, interim solution number one: Bring a small stack of undone work everywhere I go. With the associated equipment a la graphic calculator and whatnot. There's mooncake goodie bag outreach tomorrow, and I do want to help out in one way or another, but then again my situation is becoming more adverse by the day.

Okay time to strike a compromise. Thus, here is the (planned) order of the day tomorrow:

Morning: Do up the formatting and annex for the final submission of WR, as requested by Jade.

Early/Late Afternoon: Go to church with my work, then decide to either

a. Help out with the packing of the goodie bags and then mug

b. Mug, then help out with the distribution

This looks feasible.

In an effort to make this text full blog less boring, here's a pretty nice song that's one of my favourites. Somehow, it strikes a resonant chord with my heart. I don't know how, but it does.

This is the feeling of being led on.

2008-09-09T21:02:00.006+08:00

I recently decided (where recently refers to an hour ago) to un-Crystal Case my macbook in order to improve cooling efficiency (especially so when I'm boot camping, when the fan is on half the time), view the white beauty in it's naked glory and also wipe off some weird black smudges which I have no idea as to how they got there.

Speaking of which, instead of protecting my keyboard, my keyboard protector has ironically become a dust magnet and also reduces the sensitivity of the keyboard. One and a half weeks and it still feels weird typing on this keyboard. Meh.

In other news, it appears that the Let's Rock Apple media event that will be staged in about 3 hours and 45 minutes will be dedicated solely to the iPod, iTunes and maybe the iPhone, relegating the long-rumoured Macbook line refresh to a likely October release. Of course, there could always be a silent refresh or a classic Steve Jobs "One more thing" line, but at least I glad I got the current model in case the next update really happens to switch to a buggy revision A aluminium cased product. White plastic is beautiful, it matches my iPod Hi-fi. And Apple Remote. But not my black iPod Video.

I have decided to consider getting a mini-DVI to VGA adapter. But prices ain't cheap, the Apple Online Store is reading S$34 and I'm not sure how long delivery will take so I may check out a premium reseller tomorrow or the day after. As a sidenote, I just checked the Apple Singapore Online Store and, crap, it's DOWN! Cool. Wonder what will the new iPods bring. Even though I won't be getting one.

Weekly Statistics

2008-09-07T16:42:00.003+08:00

Here are, um, some statistics for the week of holidays that has passed.

Word of the Week: "Fail."

Dwee Hokkien Phrase of the Week: "Kiam Par ah!"

Hours Spent Mugging: 0.00 (to 3 significant figures, and there are actually no significant figures to begin with)

Hours Spent Doing Homework: 0.00

Hours Spent Organising Lecture and Tutorial Notes: 0.00

Hours Spent Doing Any Work At All (apart from PW): 0.00

I can hardly wait for the promotional examinations.

Thursday

2008-09-04T21:42:00.001+08:00

Today, on the way to PW meeting, I went to Yamaha at Thomson Plaza and picked up 3 new guitar picks.

This represents a new personal record of procrastination. It has been two and a half months since church camp ended.

Boot Camp and VMware Fusion

2008-09-01T22:04:00.003+08:00

Today I had a slight nightmare with installing XP through Boot Camp. I spent 3 whole hours, sweaty palms and all, and I couldn't install the proper drivers because I needed SP2 and I only had SP1.

Therefore, I set out to get SP2. But no, stupid Microsoft screws up and SP2 refuses to install on an activated legal copy of Windows.

VMware Fusion's much better. It doesn't exactly support SP1, but the drivers work out fine, and I must say OS X manages system resources pretty decently. I'm currently running the boot camp partition on a virtual desktop as well as in the process of creating another virtual desktop. At the same time, I am also installing random freeware apps and chatting on the net. And running Adium. With no appreciable lag.

Although I'm told that OS X is pathetic at GPU management. Which holds true somewhat.

Wha?

2008-08-31T18:25:00.004+08:00

Something white has been added into the clutter of my desk recently. I wonder what it is.

Then again, although I had wanted to wait for a new revision of that product, I decided to get it now at Comex because I decided not to wait anymore since what I really need is something that can multitask well. And since the premium resellers were offering quadruple RAM for the baseline model, I decided to get it with the free assorted accessories.

Thanks alot mum for this machine.

Expose + Spaces + Front Row + Apple Remote is teh awesome.

Teacher's day.

2008-08-29T22:00:00.002+08:00

Yeah, today was yet another fun day.

Just when I was going to crack under the pressure of JC life, things started picking up. I took a step back and reflected on how far I've travelled in the past eight months of my life, with all the great new friends I've made. So for now, I've survived the tiring journey to the holidays, albeit one week.

Back to today.

Ok, Teacher's Day concert at ACJC wasn't that great. Like Michael said, it was largely the fault of us the unbehaved audience. Anyway, we went back to ACS(I) after that. Got invited by a random teacher into the auditorium to join the celebrations there (which just started when we came). But within 3 minutes we were out of the audi to eat lunch.

Met up with Limzy, Teik Siang and Avery. Limzy and Avery came in their old uniforms lol and I changed into the corporate tee for fun.

Didn't get to talk to many of our old teachers cause they had to rush off for some teachers day lunch thing. But nevermind, we+Dwee-Michael (who had pw meeting) and of course minus Lester (see for the 186th time, council ruins life) went to Limzy's new house to Wii. Hehe first time playing but it was damn fun.

Now, we're gonna Dota, so seeya!

Shadow Fiend has finally been exorcised. Or at least I think.

2008-08-23T21:00:00.001+08:00

Is. This. A. Dream?

I just witnessed a massive about turn in myself.

What a difference 8 hours can make.

And I was just blown away by the suddenness.

TGIF, Once again.

2008-08-22T23:21:00.002+08:00

Man theres guitar tomorrow. Oh wells.

But anyway, we ponned physics lecture today to print our EoMs and watch the table tennis semifinal match at the gym. lol LBK saw Wilson Lai and even smiled to him, meaning that she wasn't at sitting at the back observing the lecture and hence was oblivious to the fact that half her tutorial class ponned it.

As for now, I'm addicted to listening to Coldplay's latest album. Well fine I've had it for a couple of months already but I suddenly caught on to it. I just love their new "cathedral-ish" hispanic-influenced feel. Especially how they make modern instruments sound classic and contemporary at the same time, whilst blending in Chris Martin's falsetto.

Here's Life In Technicolor playing on the blog. It took me ages to figure how to work it, but anyway, enjoy the song, it's all instrumental and awesome.

EOM Kippur War, Getit Getit?

2008-08-21T22:59:00.002+08:00

Welcome to the latest installment of my boring updates.

You can see that it's boring just by that pathetic attempt of a pun in the title. If you catch no ball, I ain't surprised. Because if you have a real social life, you won't understand it. Ah yes, you see, I don't have a life. Wait, that's old news.

So, what does I has to rants abouts in this poorly grammatified post?

Oh. Yeah. Nothing much about the mock exam, except my introduction is way too long still. My individual paragraphs too. Five paragraphs of essay work in total, and five paragraphs in the essay each occupied a single page (with double spacing I'm not that long winded). And great news, I didn't fall asleep for the exam, unlike that disaster of the terms.

GP package test? Excellent. Brain finally managed to go into overdrive for the test and concentrate. And getting myself to concentrate on a task is VERY difficult. Try looking at my 179842 page long browsing history for the last two hours during which I was supposed to be doing the EoM final (done, mainly a paraphrase and slight tweaks here and there from the second draft, with a couple of new ideas added in).

And as for this particular tutorial, we were a full 15 minutes late today. Nothing happened. And just a few days back, I got the assurance of a poor conduct on my semester report for being well within the five minute allowance period. Great. I smell intense, disgusting biasness at work. No wonder we don't respect and literally hate each other.

On the brighter side of things, we three musketeers are owning the class in volleyball. Man v-ball is fun I wanna play more, though my hand is all red and sore from serving so many times. Just can't do the over-head serve thing, have to resort to the badminton style underhand serve. Which works pretty well still.

-----

I guess not. It'll all get better in time. Even though that's what I've been saying for the last six months, and worse is all it got. You will get out of my mind, dammit.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

2008-08-18T19:42:00.003+08:00

3 different things highlighted my day today.

In 3 different ways.

First up, the good.

Well technically, from a chronological aspect, this happened last. Anyway, I met Henry Liu on the way home today. Talked with him about life in the past few months. Which included the much asked question of why he didn't run for ACS(I) council. So there, caught up with a friend I hadn't talked to for quite a while.

Next, the bad.

Just when I thought that I'd cleared all my homework, here comes another big stack that ninja'd me completely by surprise. I totally forgot about Physics superposition tutorial, which I'll do once I get this posted, I forgot to write the GP essay introduction (but nevermind that, I did it in class in 5 minutes), we have chinese homework again (albeit it was 3/4 done in class) and chemistry didn't disappoint with yet another tutorial waiting. Oh, and did I mention, EOM final is due this friday?

Even better, I failed economics case study test AGAIN with 9/25. Bah. Ok fine Hashim Ali wouldn't stop scolding us but he did it in a hilarious manner as usual. A 1SD1 girl even got "LOSER!!!" and "COWARD!!!" written big big on her script for not attempting the graph question. LOL. But back to the point, it looks like my aim for H3s has just been destroyed.

Ah, and now, the ugly.

And this happened first chronologically. Chapel ended 20 minutes early today, so I bought a cup of coffee and read the papers in the canteen. When the bell rang, I went off immediately for contact time at EL6. I arrived there to find out I was the latest person. Whoa. And then LKY comes and questions me for arriving so late and decides immediately to mark my conduct down to poor for this semester. Great.

And then I realised I wasn't exactly late at all. See, contact time technically starts at 8.30am, not 8.10am even though my class went early. Second, I arrived in class before 8.35am, which is again technically perfectly acceptable. So I went to talk to LKY before chinese today, but nooo, she insisted that I was ten minutes late and whatnot. I double checked with Winifred and she confirmed that I arrived in EL6 just a couple of minutes after her 8.31am SMS telling me to find an excuse (which, unfortunately, I did not read until it was too late).

Ah well. I guess LKY just hates me. Just my fortune. No point arguing or shouting, it'll probably make things worse since she's probably determined to get me a demerit point/poor conduct for my semester report/both. I can't wait for the A Level Chinese paper, dammit why can't it be this week or something since I've the feeling that my chinese at the moment is as good as it'll ever get. It is a really really really good thing my GP teacher will be contributing also (and therefore moderating) to the shitty testimonial that LKY will inevitably write.

So much for a combination of (A teacher that hates you)x(You showing totally no interest in chinese)x(Bad luck). I'll save my more volatile (I'll try my best not to swear) comments about her to trusted ears, lest this post backfire at me.

So, just not the best of days for me.

-----

should I ask should I ask should I ask???

FOA

2008-08-16T10:14:00.002+08:00

Um yeah yesterday was fun.

I spent over 5 hours on the school computers at various times of the day at 2 computer labs. It's an awesome place to chill. Quite literally, I mean, given the rather enthusiastic air conditioning in school of late.

And as for the Guitar Festival of Arts Concert, I must say they were great. Sorry if any guitar person reads this, but they really make us look like total amateurs. And Benlee Tan, LOL Canon in G, B, A. Every guy in the CPA including me was thinking Game Boy Advance and you confirmed it. And LOL Pokemon, Mario and Zelda in it. Kudos to the guy who arranged it.

The Guitar Hero covers after the interval were great too. The drummer had an awesome solo and the last part where he threw one of his sticks to the bassist to strike his open strings was NICE. And then when I heard the phrase "Ng Teck Seng", the whole CPA erupted and frankly the experience was as if I'd never left the school.

Encore was cool too, heh, (Mr) William Lai was called out to "perform" with the shakers in an impromptu thing.

Met quite a lot of people. Such as Chanky for the first time since the National Schools Swimming Finals in Secondary 3. Haha he was mentioning that he looked out of place in his RJC uniform. Said hi to (Mrs) Toh Ling Lee too. And as for *ahem* PCMW (who will probably read this), nearly every GEP IB I met was asking me where you were (Basil, Marcus Ting, Rene, Adwyn, Samchan). Why leave so early with *ahem*?

Had supper with Nathan, Yanlin and Sherilyn at KAP after the concert. And guess who (in a plural sense) we bumped into there eh? Anyway.

MB

2008-08-14T16:01:00.003+08:00

Howdy.

Today was the most fun Physics lesson I ever had this year. We were slacking in the lab playing with all the strange lab equipment such as the spectroscope, CRT, and other weird crap. Lol Richard you ponned practical period for nothing.

And yes, I'm still in school using the free use computer lab. Waiting for CCA, zzz.

Till next time.

Random Self-Rant to No One in Particular.

2008-08-12T22:51:00.003+08:00

My ECONnect II is like finally done man.

Unfortunately, I'll be printing using the school computers tomorrow, my printer ran out of fresh paper. Which warranted me to send an email with the relevant files attached as a virtual thumbdrive. Which is why Gmail > Hotmail.

So, here is a direct word for word quote of what I wrote in that email to myself:

Ansgwekjng;qerjng;
rekjlngjrengkjngquwhfuoh428r0u43jr

DOTA MORPHLING 18 - 3 WITH HOLY SHIT SPREE BEFORE THE 3 CARELESS DEATHS. END GAME 50 MINUTES WITH 232 AGILITY = 707 DMG ADAPTIVE STRIKE FTW.
LOL TORMENTED SOUL END GAME LVL 16 HAS 962 HP.
THEREFORE WAVEFORM 325 DMG + ADAPTIVE STRIKE 707 DMG = 1032 DMG = TORMENTED SOUL PWNED TOTALLY
MORPHLING ROCKS.

--
Cheers,
Matthaeus

http://www.mentosonline.blogspot.com/

As you can see, I'm finally beginning to break down mentally thanks to that pile of homework that is increasing exponentially due to mitosis. Wow I still remember a biology term after 10 months of no biology.

Adieu.

2008

2008-08-08T20:07:00.003+08:00

I just watched the opening sequence of the Beijing 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony.

And all I can say is, I'm impressed.

I will update this blogpost once I've finished watching the ceremony.

Till then, people.

-----

Well it's Saturday morning already.

Anyway, I neglected to update last night. The Olympics ceremony opening sequences were awesome, but the march past of the contingents were a yawner. It got so draggy that I decided to catch up on sleep at about eleven plus.

The most distinctive part I still remember is the repetitive bagpipe songs. They use exactly the same tunes as those which we had for parades at ACS(I). Kind of a substitute fix for me since the ACJC National Day celebrations ceremonial proceedings were quite crappy.

(okay I struck jackpot five minutes ago)

2008-08-06T20:59:00.002+08:00

Today was fun. For once.

We had National Day celebrations 2 days early. The half day was very much appreciated since I'm not in a school that declares days off anymore.

My class got split up and they moved us from the front of LT1 to the hall seeing that many people ponned school today. So I decided to sit instead with Michael and his 1SC1 classmates since they weren't keeping track of us.

And his classmates are all so hilarious and cranky lol. Yeah now I understand what Michael said about how it's easy to tell whether one's from Crescent rofl. Just like how Chris said that it was very easy to tell that we were from ACS(I).

The National Day Service was very short compared to what I'm used to, because once again there's no more extensive parades with real rifles drawn from the Amoy Quee armoury. And the relatively unknown Guest of Honour was a welcome change from having some illustrious General/Admiral/Chief of Defence Force/Minister/Opposition MP 'true blue' ACSian with a full twelve years of ACS education come to give a long and hard to understand speech that would have the mysterious property of being able to put people to sleep (the same speeches which true ACS boys would applaud very loudly/cheer when it's over because it's finally over).

After that went to Michael's house, had a good chat, facebook, guitar hero-ing and jam. Damn now that there was an opportunity to jam with a drum set, I finally found out that my rhythm is a bit irregular. Michael's sister's new acoustic guitar is pretty decent.

----------------
Now playing: U2 - Vertigo
via FoxyTunes

ROFLMAO

2008-08-05T21:07:00.002+08:00

And for today's post we shall take a leaf out Facebook. Or rather a quote from one of the newly formed groups there.

The group in question is Dr. Ong Teck Chin Rocks!!

They have a discussion thread called The Positive Qualities of Dr. Ong.

And of course, I've tarried too long as usual and moved too far out of point. So, without further ado, here is the quoted description:

The supporters and fans of our greatest CEO / Principal, all unite under one goal: To Glorify Dr. Ong's name!

Dr. Ong rocks, everyone knows that! He is a role model and good example for all to follow!

If we follow his footsteps, we are sure to end up as successful and cheerful as him, with a great life that everyone envies!

A wonderful team player, Dr. Ong always has a smile on his face! How happy he seems.

So, join us now, and let's discuss the amazing Dr. Ong Teck Chin now!

Lol.

Indeed, something for us to think about.

----------------
Now playing: Coldplay - Shiver
via FoxyTunes

disoriented, disillusioned, deluded and just plainly lost

2008-08-03T15:39:00.002+08:00

Help.

The more I think about it, the more I get depressed.

Lost.

Down in the dumps.

Will somebody pick me up from this mess.
----------------
Now playing: Simple Plan - Welcome To My Life
via FoxyTunes

Gonna get harder still, before it gets easy.

2008-08-01T21:49:00.002+08:00

Hey I'm back.

Been pretty busy lately with PW and whatnot, and hence I haven't found the time to post. Ain't in the best of moods, though I don't show it. But anyway, this entire past week I've been reflecting on what I've been doing in the past seven months.

And well, as it is, I've achieved practically nothing. I am pissed. At myself. I didn't do any mugging for the Term Exams, and it showed. Only God managed to bail me out once again, answering my prayers to not give my mum a good reason to send me to tuition. For now that is.

I'm tired out too. For too long have I been sleeping through lectures and ponning tutorials. I made a little mental calculation a couple of days ago, and found out that the number of lectures in which I did not fall asleep for at least ten minutes was practically zero.

And as usual, there is a pile of undone homework, which will probably stay undone until after the due dates. Honestly man, what the fuck is wrong with me. Yes, like a friend who's way closer than I thought he was, I have a tendency of going vulgar to express anger. Why can't I flipping do my work on time and actually put in some effort in school.

Honestly, all this while I've been telling myself that this is thanks to my short attention span. But in reality, it's just an excuse to vindicate myself from my total slothfulness which knoweth no bounds.

Do I really think I'm up to the challenge of one, or even two H3 subjects? Or is it just my ego that's holding me up? And even though I'm aiming for H3s, I'm not doing anything to justify that I deserve to take them.

This is when I try to wake myself up. No more sleeping through lectures. No more ponning LBH's physics tutorials or WS's GP lessons. Especially to my GP teacher. How many times have I been mysteriously sick for her friday late afternoon 1hr 20min tutorials, how many times have I handed in late work (everything actually), how many chances and extensions she has given me, and till now she still has a good impression of me!

I ought to be ashamed of myself. So, no more fucking excuses to not do my work. No more computer gaming when I should have been studying for the O Levels. But the A Levels is a whole different ball game. Pun not intended. Leave DotA out till weekends or school holidays. Friends, and if you are a true friend, I'm typing this out to remind myself to start working hard. If you should ever find me slacking off again as usual and fucking up my life again as I've been doing for the last 17 years, remind me of this blog post.

If I succeed in getting myself to work hard (which I predict to be a failure again), I'll reap the rewards in October when the promos end and a well deserved school holiday starts. That said, I've applied for the A*Star Local Student Attachment Programme. I still have to go for an interview and stuff, but if I get in, I'll be throwing away 5 weeks of holidays. But this is the kind of thing I'm doing to build a portfolio so my testimonial will actually be more than one page long when I get my JC graduation certificate.

And get a breather, here's the end of my vulgar emo rants.
----------------
Now playing: Jimmy Eat World - Always Be
via FoxyTunes

Me Understandeth Not the Economics Case Study

2008-07-27T17:21:00.003+08:00

Help.

Based on my current calculations, I will run out of foolscap paper for that stupid GP essay. Heck my introduction took nearly one entire sheet of paper.

And it looks like I'm going to get detention class for not doing the case study, the reasons for which has been outlined in the title. Hopefully Mr. President will bail us all out by proclaiming that he didn't do it either so Mr. H A will "give us chance". Again.

As for what else on the computer that I've been doing recently, I spent quite some time customizing Firefox 3, since I just realized I haven't been utilizing Firefox to its fullest potential. Here's some of the custom add-ons I've added in the past two days:

Adblock Plus

Yay it blocks annoying advertising banners and pictures so if you're the kind of person who uses lots of bandwidth for applications like uTorrent, you can still surf the net with some decent speed. Subscribe to the filter lists which are very comprehensive. Very useful.

Better Gmail 2

Whee my Gmail page has been given a fresh look, and the actual file icons show up instead of the paper clip thumbnail for attachments.

Ctrl-Tab

Very good for tab navigation which improves on the current Ctrl-Tab function on Firefox. Basically you have a psuedo-cover flow to let you see what you're Ctrl-Tabbing to. Press F4 to see thumbnail previews of all your opened tabs.

DownThemAll

Well I haven't tried it yet, but the best test will probably be to download Maplesea to check if Starhub's been giving me my (or rather my dad's) money's worth. Well I don't play the game often anymore, but the file is over 1GB in size so it's a decent test.

Flagfox

Displays the IP address and server location of the site that you're visiting. Not very essential for me, but it's still nice to have.

PicLens

Internet surfing, cover flow style. Unfortunately very few sites work with it so it's basically a white elephant for entertainment purposes only.

TimeTracker

Displays the time that you've spent browsing the net on Firefox. If you alt-tab, it won't be counted of course.

Abstract Classic

Yay a new theme for my Firefox. After getting it, it feels like I'm surfing with a whole new version of Firefox. Contains elements from OS X such as a partial Aqua interface. Very nice to use.

Ok, back to work, sigh.

Here It Goes

2008-07-25T19:57:00.002+08:00

It's been a little while since I last posted.

Anyway as I was saying previously, I was going to watch the Dark Knight.

And so I did. Boy, was it a five-star film indeed. Excellently done, one of the best directed movies ever, coupled with a great script filled with action throughout the 2.5+ hours, the posthumous Oscar-deserving Heath Ledger and masterful use of special effects and cinematic music to create a wonderful cinema experience for six bucks. This movie ranks as the second best (or rather fourth) I've ever watched, and only the Lord of the Rings trilogy is better. Oh yeah we bumped into Cleon Wong. He cut his hair.

I was reading Graham's blog and I got interested at this little 'game', which he got from Lin Ping's blog. Haha so I shall try it.

RULES:

1. Put Your iTunes/Windows Media Player/ETC on Shuffle.

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.

5. Put this on your journal.

So, here goes nothing...

1. If someone says, "Is this okay?" You say?

Even Angels Cry - Jars of Clay with Kate York [Haha I guess everything will work out fine in the end]

2. How would you describe yourself?

Faint - Linkin Park [Haha I tend to fall asleep in school]

3. What do you like in a guy/girl?

If I Never See Your Face Again - Maroon 5 [Hmm. Very cryptic huh?]

4. How do you feel today?

Pride - High And Mighty Colour [Proud that I managed to get an extension for GP essay without asking for one? XD]

5. What is your life's purpose?

Jump - Simple Plan [Jump to God yeah!]

6. What is your motto?

Breaking the Habit - Linkin Park [Hehe yeah I tend to do things my way. And screw up.]

7. What do your friends think of you?

Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance [HAHAHA how appropriate except this is what I feel about myself. But enough of the emo (:]

8. What do you think of your parents?

Girl Can Rock - Hilary Duff [My mum's absent-mindedness is so funny she rocks XD)

9. What do you think about very often?

The Sun - Maroon 5 [Well I did think about the Solar System once]

10. What is 2 + 2?

2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm.) - Radiohead [LOL YES I CHEATED FOR THIS ONE I JUST COULDN'T RESIST]

11. What do you think of your best friend(s)?

Inseparable - The Jonas Brothers [Yup we'll stick like glue <3]

12. What do you think of the person you like?

Hey Mama - The Black Eyed Peas [Doesn't make sense but it's amusing haha]

13. What is your life story?

Suppose - Secondhand Serenade [Suppose what life could be like if I did option B instead of A]

14. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Dance Inside - The All-American Rejects [Dancing and praising God? Hehe]

15. What do you think of when you see the person you like?

Numbness For Sound - Howie Day [She makes me feel numb inside? Rofl]

16. What will you dance to at your wedding?

Shadow Of The Day - Linkin Park [Wow this is the 3rd Linkin Park song! But the lyrics do seem nice to dedicate it to person X]

17. What will they play at your funeral?

Goodnight And Goodbye - The Jonas Brothers [What the crap I don't even listen to this sucky band and I don't even know what it's doing in my library even though this is the second song. But the title does suit the question (:]

18. What is your hobby/interest?

Life Goes On - Mika Arisaka [Seeing how people live their lives?]

19. What is your biggest fear?

Savior - 30 Seconds To Mars [Guess so hahahahaha we're God-fearing people]

20. What is your biggest secret?

Distraction - Angels And Airwaves [Hmm what's this supposed to mean? Ahh yes she's my "distraction" and I guess it's supposed to be a secret]

21. What do you think of your friends?

What I've Been Looking For - Troy & Gabriella [Well yes XD]

22. What will you post this as?

Here It Goes - Jimmy Eat World [Yes I said "Here goes nothing" so here it goes...]

Un-exciting Post One-Two-Oh.

2008-07-22T21:34:00.002+08:00

And so inevitably I find myself updating this worthless site that makes people fall asleep (by my perception) due to boredom and slackerism.

'The problem of terrorism can never be contained.' Comment.

And I find myself 372 words into my Politics GP essay without having even started on a single point. Yes, I've used more than a third of the recommended word count on an introduction which will break convention by using two paragraphs. Hopefully the gamble will pay off since I might get penalized for being so damned long winded.

And since my attention span to do work (about half an hour today which is not bad) has run out again, being distracted by reading random wikipedia articles, Facebook and my iTunes library, I shall blog about-- while actually I'm not too sure what to blog about so just take my incoherent rants as they come.

And I just recalled Pastor David Wong's sermon where he mentioned that English teachers always say that it's bad to start a sentence with "and". And I just started four paragraphs plus this sentence with it. So much for that then.

Let's examine my school work situation.

GP essay >> Nope not complete.
GP Package Test >> Hopefully, it rains cats and dogs on thursday morning so Charlotte Tang our PE teacher will give us a free period for me to actually read that stupid worthless ACJC GP package for the first time.
GP File >> Is that some alien object? Oh you mean I was supposed to hand it in weeks ago?
Chinese Test >> Huh what chinese test?
Chemistry >> All those remedial tutorials?
Economics >> Shit Hashim Ali work due next Monday? ECONnect II coming up soon?
Math >> Oh right we're supposed to have a math file?
Physics >> Wait didn't I just pon physics today even though LBK saw me?

One day, I shall do a GP essay about myself. The topic question will be:

'The problem of Matthaeus-slackerism can never be contained.' Comment.

Obviously, it'll be yes to the furthest extent possible.

And as an afternote:

Whee. Watching the Dark Knight tomorrow. I hope no one from, uh, AC guitar committee reads this, because it'll only mean one thing to them.

I HATE SCHOOL.

INTP

2008-07-20T18:52:00.003+08:00

After reading dozens of INTP profile pages, all these results aren't anything surprising.

That said, emotions are my number one weakness as always.

When I get emo, I really get emo.

My intuitive-thinking personality always assumes the worst case scenario for everything.

So what shall I do about the problem of _________ and ______?

I have no answer.

With no logical explanation, I'm just living day by day.

And hope for whatever I can get.

For now.

Friends

2008-07-19T12:29:00.002+08:00

As for what happened yesterday.

I've known both of them for over half my short 17 years, and right there and then they disappointed me, and someone heard something he didn't need to hear. And so, the very situation I wanted to avoid happened in the end.

And needless to say, I am still angry. Forgive and forget, yes I'm very good at that (on a cheekier note, in more ways than one), but sometimes it's really hard to do. Especially to one of them, he's pushed the limits before, but this time round, they didn't just cross the line, they just stampeded right over it.

But what more can I do but to forgive? I guess we all learned something big yesterday, and perhaps this will be a turning point in our friendship, and hopefully from here on it'll get stronger from another dimension of maturity. I read online forums very occasionally and on a local one, I read a thread on ACJC a while back last year, and the forum users there commented that ACS boys can be total assholes.

And I totally agree. On reflection, I'm no innocent person on this issue. Yes, we can still joke cheekily over many things, but some things like BGR is too sensitive.

-----

On a happier note, I just got my term results slip from LKY yesterday. After combining my term exams with my CA, I got ABBDDS, or an A for chemistry, B for Physics and H1 Mathematics, D for GP(wtf!) and Chinese(undeservingly), and an S for Economics.

By the grace of God, I didn't get pwned by exams again, even though I seriously deserved to flunk it, especially since I didn't study, I don't do my homework, or at least not on time, and when I get down to stuff I just casually do it without much care to quality.

That said, if any class or schoolmate has not done any piece of homework or assignment and thinks he/she is in big trouble, all they have to do is come to me to have their egos boosted. Because whatever they've not done, I probably haven't either. And more.

I really need to shake off my reputation as the most screwed up slacker in SD2 heh.

No don't accuse me of closet mugging.

On another note, I didn't get pwned by Hashim Ali for the economics Case Study. He says my work has improved.

Woot.

-----

Now I'm in an emotional mess.

I just can't decide what I want for myself.

7.47pm

2008-07-17T19:47:00.004+08:00

I just failed again.

It's hopeless.

So I'll just give up trying to do that now.

And no, I'm not talking about the Listening Comprehension.

On the matter of that, today is the first time in a long while that I'm confident of getting full marks for a Chinese test (hmm, let's see, about 10 years perhaps?). Or maybe 9/10. Or 8.

But yeah. There's history to be made.

Council Investiture

2008-07-14T21:52:00.004+08:00

Instead of doing my Economics case study which is due tomorrow first thing in the morning, here I am once again updating this over-updated blog.

So for starters, we shall see the events that happened today in the point of view of an alternate universe which is perpendicular to ours. Or rather, the events leading to today. All of this part is fictional of course.

Anonymous Choreographer: Hey there you 32nds you guys are supposed to look sad that you're stepping down. Not overjoyed as you guys seem to be! Remember, you guys are supposed to leave the 33rds in the dark about the true implications of council until it is too late to back out. Kelly if I see you screaming in joy once you've passed over the school colours to Peter, I'll personally make sure you're the first council president or ex-president to go for detention class. [More lecturing to follow]

[The president starts crying]

Anonymous Choreographer, AC: Ah yes good good that's the way cry all your heart out. Just make sure it looks more real on Monday.

AC to 33rd: And you guys need to smile MORE. Peter stop frowning as if you got sabotaged for this role. You are so going to smile when you walk down the auditorium. And don't forget the oath.

[Peter gives confused look]

Peter: Huh what oath?

-----

So yes, as we have seen in the similarities pointed out, Kelly cried, the 33rds kept grinning from ear-to-ear throughout the ceremony, and Peter forgot his oath today :/

And Hashim Ali has promised to give us detention class if we don't hand in the case study in time tomorrow. If the SD1 people haven't told him, he will be the first ACJC council president in history to go for DC. And on the second day of his term.

But yeah sucks. Homework just piled up today in the most demoralizing manner.

But at any case, went home with Michael and Lester today. Chatted with Lester about some stuff that is not for anyone else's ears. Except for someone else Lester just had to sms about. Hope both of you won't leak it out like the last time.

And we dota-ed again for a game today. Yay I got 15-4 for Luna, which isn't that good but decent for my first game of Luna in 8 months, and I got a holyshit spree to boot.

And Lester came over just now to ask me some stuff about Physics term paper.

And now I have to really rush my Case Study.

Youth Sunday

2008-07-13T21:04:00.002+08:00

So today we had Youth Sunday.

I do apologize for the screw up. Playing dota on Friday made me completely forget about rehearsal and then I mis-interpreted Mark's SMS reply into meaning that rehearsal had been moved to Friday from Saturday and therefore there was no rehearsal on Saturday. When in actual fact there was. And then I came late for the rehearsal this morning. So yeah pretty crappy on me and my pangseh.

But at any case, our performance turned out okay, I guess. Although there was a part where everyone was listening to the 8.30am congregation instead of Daryl's lead and we lost the note when he shifted key for the last chorus of "How High and How Wide". 10.30am service was better though. Sang my heart out, just as Timmy shared the "secret" that since our back is facing most of the sanctuary, all we're singing for is God.

And we waited pretty long for lunch, and I didn't really have much for breakfast. It was almost 2pm when we left church and I tanked 2 double cheese burgers, a Mcflurry and a sizeable amount of Kenneth Ho's fries. Although having a chance to check out Daryl's guitar while waiting for lunch was worth it. Heck, it's just so imba. Sorry Limzy your Gibson is great but his is even better. And it's handcrafted by this Bill-something guy that put his autograph on it. I must get an imba guitar myself one day.

Whee Whee

2008-07-11T19:11:00.004+08:00

I'm suddenly addicted to using Morphling.

And here is why.

Too bad, for this particular game, I did not get a beyond godlike streak, dieing instead at godlike 9-0 earlier on. To The Scourge. Zzz. At any case, by the end of the game (which ended very quickly), I was shooting 3 times a second and no one from their team could survive more than 7 of my shots. And anyway my adaptive strike already cut anyone of them down to half health instantly.

By the way, since this is a replay, you're seeing the host's (bone clinkz) creep stats. Interesting though, by the end of game, he had Agility Power Threads, 3 Wraith Bands, a Butterfly and of all things, an Orchid Malevolence (which was his first major item).

Anyway, very cool game and our team won 63 - 9 in the end.

-----

Ah yes, I'm back, as I said earlier.

Here are two contrasting scenarios.

Scenario A

Friday Morning 7.25am

Chinese File not complete for the third lesson in a row
Chinese textbook not brought for the second lesson in a row
Chinese workbook not done for the second lesson in a row. And I didn't bring it either.

Scenario B

Friday Afternoon 2.10pm (Right before Chinese lesson)

Chinese File done
Chinese textbook miraculously with me.
Chinese workbook exercise 5 equally miraculously done.

You would wonder how, eh?

The Oratorical.

2008-07-09T21:03:00.002+08:00

We had Chinese oral today.

So yes, we were legally entitled to pon the S Cube seminar thing.

And oral was ok. I made a brief prayer before it, and it seemed like my prayer was answered. The two examiners were all smiles and very nice indeed (although that may have been because I was entertaining and amusing them with my chinese). The passage was somewhat difficult but I managed to pull through with few errors. By my chinese standard, few errors are taken to mean only about two dozen mistakes and pauses here and there.

Then came the dreaded conversation. The question was really easy, easier than anything I could have hoped for. Well in the end I still died, but in a more dignified way than last year: Rambling incoherantly until your examiners have to suggest some words for you to use is still better than staring blankly at the examiner, asking for her to explain twice, and then saying nothing for 20 seconds until you manage a short grunt to indicate that you are trying to think of something.

So because of this, I have the audacity to hope for a pass for my oral.

-----

Whatever happened to my resolve. After doing some hard thinking a month ago, I thought I had put the matter behind me. After all, I only got to know her barely 4 months back, and she wasn't christian anyway. During the holidays I thought it had succeeded, and it was still working for the first week of school. Yet inevitably the feeling slowly crept back, and yesterday, my willpower was shattered by a simple, short question about schoolwork over the damned computer. Now I can't get her out of my mind again. Heck, we haven't spoken face-to-face for over two months, so I just can't justify this.

And the other person has still been on my mind all this while. So who do I really like? The dilemma I thought solved is now back in full force.

Anger!

2008-07-07T18:35:00.004+08:00

I refer to this blogpost by Miss 11AOnes1ATwo in the recent (Malaysian) SPM exam and of course Dwee's quote from his TOK essay on his blog:

Language, as a way of knowing, will henceforth be used against, or for, the following seven areas of knowledge, classified from left to right in the form of a spectrum from objectivism to subjectivism : mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, history, the arts, ethics and spirituality.

Congratulations, both of you guys. You got me officially jealous.

Therefore, here is my own childish attempt to brag. This is the paragraph that probably got me the 36 marks for the GP Independent Learning. Fittingly, it's about the future of nuclear power. Why, Avery shouldn't be surprised. Having seen that we discussed it ever so often (amongst other things like antimatter, black holes and other weird physics phenomena, latest of which has been centered on that new particle accelerator about to be completed in France/Switzerland).

If nuclear fusion is a success, it will become possible to imagine a completely non-polluting global economy. The resulting abundance of electricity would mean that the currently expensive method of desalination will become economically viable, allowing for water supplies to parched regions, curing thirst and irrigating fields to curb hunger. It would fuel the growth of the global economy and even power the development of science and technology to fields which cannot even be imagined today. Nuclear fusion is the future. Till then, we must rely on renewables and nuclear fission as our alternative energy sources.

You are seeing hastily done crap that was rushed on the night after the due date. Yes, I handed in this work late, if I remember correctly.

But enough of my really really really childish bragging already. Time to grow up.

Speaking of which, today is one of the days I'm thinking of moving this blog to Wordpress. Which has better security controls so I can rant in increased privacy. And utilise the simplistic and nice K2 template which was used until recently by Andrew.

And I haven't started on my EoM yet. This does not bode well. At least, I was relieved when I received affirmation from Yinglin that we do not have Hashim Ali economics work to do. My hallucinations about always having Hashim Ali work to do cannot be stifled.

In other news, I was challenged 4 hours ago on Facebook's Battle of the Bands and lost $10528. Holy crap that's 3 times more than I ever lost (or won).

And so, here is my agenda for the week:

EoM due Tuesday aka tomorrow.
Consult someone from the CIP department so I can best decide what to do next for class CIP.
~~Pon~~ Attend guitar.
Fill up and submit the lengthy application form for the A*Star attachment thingy.
Hallucinate more again about having imaginary Hashim Ali work.
Sync my iPod.
Emo

I shall continue this blogpost after I've bathed, dinnered, and when I get bored doing EoM.

110

2008-07-06T20:11:00.006+08:00

So yes, instead of starting on my EoM, here I am making yet another mundane update on this increasingly boring and un-funny blog. I need more inspiration to make more hilarious entries it seems.

In MSN news, I just had a little chat with Aaron from class. Heh he sent me a picture of this year's cosplay event at Downtown East.

Damn pwnage. Never seen a DIY outfit for a Gundam mobile suit before in Singapore, and of course not one that good and professional looking.

In other news, I'm having a revival over Lord of the Rings in accordance to the recent screenings of the trilogy over Mediacorp's Channel 5. Not that I watched them over the air though. Although I finally realised Channel 5 now screens movies in their original widescreen format. Yes, you now know that I hardly watch english free-to-air content apart from Channel NewsAsia occasionally.

So I decided to replace my Command & Conquer 3 desktop wallpaper with something from LOTR. Bummer though, widescreen monitors weren't in use then so they only have standard 4:3 wallpapers. And I had to auto-hide the taskbar in order to see the whole wallpaper. But nevermind that already.

Yeah, it's one of the opening sequences of The Fellowship of the Ring, depicting the Last Alliance in combat with Sauron's forces on the slopes of Mount Doom/Orodruin. Arguably, my favourite scene throughout the entire three shows, which comprise my all-time three favourites motion picture films of any sort.

And of all the races of J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, high elves are the coolest, followed by Numenoreans (especially the Gondor Citadel and Fountain Guards which are decked out in imba mithril armour). Period.

Damn why is my images taking so damn long to upload. Bah Starhub had to choose this day for my internet bandwidth to slow down so drastically.

And after all that's happened so far, and with what I just so happened to hear (which I gather wasn't meant for my ears) exactly one week ago, I think I'm in need of an emo blanked out post yet again. And I have failed again to keep my emo from my latest msn nick.

Shiver for the Yellow American Dream

2008-07-05T14:09:00.002+08:00

Here are three nice songs that I've listened to recently :)

Shiver by Coldplay, Parachutes (2000)

Nice lyrics, intricate riffs and cool falsetto by Chris Martin.

Yellow by Coldplay, Parachutes (2000)

Regarded as the breakthrough song that established Coldplay as the best selling band of the 2000s in the world, with 32.5 million albums sold to date. Heck, this video on Youtube alone has 8.5 million views. As a sidenote, the laggy effect of the video is intentional. Go read the song's page on Wikipedia to find out why.

This is a classic from Coldplay. Slow beat, catchy rhythm and excellent vocals.

American Dream by Switchfoot, Oh! Gravity (2006)

This isn't a single so there isn't an official music video. Nonetheless, I like the chorus alot. As a sidenote, Stars (Nothing Is Sound 2005) and Ammunition (The Beautiful Letdown 2003) are among my favourites too.

From an analytical point of view

2008-07-04T20:22:00.003+08:00

Well, so we've gotten back all the Term Exam results, finally.

And therefore, we shall now take the time to do a post-mortem.

GP H1 24/50 S Grade

Well, certainly, time management was my bane for this. Had to rush my summary and couldn't complete my AQ so my score suffered alot. And I screwed up the other questions and the vocabulary too. So in that sense, I wasn't actually prepared to fail this paper, but nevermind. GP Independent Learning bailed me out, with a totally un-expected 36/50. I still can't believe how 2 hours of super-rush-anyhow-do-work (whilst facebooking and youtubing) can mitigate my GP CA results and give me my overall term exam result of a D, 55.1 out of 100. Perhaps it was God's grace. At any case, if I get my writing speed and practice up, I should be getting at least a B, if not an A for promos.

Chinese H1 90/160 D Grade

Well, very amazingly, Chinese was the only paper which I didn't have any time management problems for. Somehow, my paper 2 was decent with 60/100, although my paper 1 got 30/60 because I wrote 3 pages and everyone else wrote 4. Mainly because of my slack-doomed-to-fail-anyway attitude to chinese. So there, I'm pretty content. Even so, my target for the 'A's would be a C although a bare pass is good enough for a true ACS boy.

Mathematics H1 19/35 E Grade

The most unacceptable of my results. Apart from the use of a graphic calculator as well as parametric equations, H1 Math is little more than an over-glorified O Level Additional Mathematics paper. I need more practice hmm, my speed has significantly slowed since the 'O's and I didn't finish the last question and got slaughtered at the second last question which was on functions. This must improve to an A grade by promotionals.

Economics H2 19/45 S Grade

Well, there's nothing much really to say about this. After all, what did I expect after neglecting to draw diagrams and give examples. And at any case I didn't finish the paper either and I rushed through it. I really need to boost my writing speed. At best though, I can only expect a D for promos.

Physics H2 35/65 D Grade

Again, it was all about time management. And my MCQ got screwed up. 10/15 is unacceptable especially when I'm usually very good with MCQs for all papers of all subjects. And because I totally didn't do any serious studying at all for the term exams, some of my calculations screwed up and I forgot some principles aka the principle of conservation of momentum. To be fair, 'A' Level Physics is 'O' Level Physics gone mad, combined with mathematics, mathematics and more mathematics. So I guess I'd be content with a B for promos.

Chemistry H2 35.5/60 C Grade

Damn... missed B by half a mark. Though it should meet at least B when combined with my CA scores. My section C was a joke. 0 marks for the first question. And 0 for the second. Well I skipped the first because it was about chem bonding and I ain't got the notes so I totally didn't know anything about it. And question 2 was about chemical energetics. Of course, I didn't know Gibbs' was being tested until half an hour before the exam when Lester asked me to quote from memory the formula. So when I attempted half the question (because I ran out of time again), I got 0 for each of the four parts of the question that I attempted. LoL. But at least, in my heart I got an A. Hehe MCQ was excellent with 19/20. And so was section B with 16.5/20. So technically, I got 35.5/40:)

So as for the promotional examinations, nothing short of an A will do. I must erase the humiliation (mostly personal) of getting an A2 for my favourite and best subject. And I'm aiming for H3s.

-----

So there you have it, nothing stellar duh, and quite crappy actually. But at least I had a totally stress free June holiday from totally not studying and got away with it yet again. But slack time is over, better work hard for the promos and maybe I'll get rewarded with a chance to take up Physics and Chemistry H3s.

And anyway, I'm interested in the Local Student Attachment Programme at Research Institutes 2008. When for the briefing today and I generally meet all the basic criteria. Though when they take a look at my abysimal CCA record they'll be mortified. Hopefully this will be mitigated by my participation in the IvP and SMP from long past.

Looks like we've got a little problem here.

2008-07-02T17:31:00.003+08:00

Number of Chinese Holiday Homework Assignments given: 11

Number of Chinese Holiday Homework not done: 11

Number of hours to Chinese Holiday Homework deadline: 44 (Almost to the minute)

GAME ON.

-----

Ok, that was a very very very bad pun there. Assuming you readers even notice it.

SSP

2008-07-01T17:39:00.004+08:00

Barring a total freak accident where I fail GP, Math and Chinese simultaneously, I will not qualify for the prestigious ACJC self-study programme.

Given the amount of work I've done so far, I'd say its a wonder I only failed economics.

And playing more dota during the term exams as compared to the whole of the June holidays is a bad habit I shall eradicate. One day.

And in other news, the MySpace for Un-Band is up, created by Michael.

http://www.myspace.com/weareunband

The screwup on bar 10 in our first release is my fault. I can't believe my plucking of G is phail.

That said, I still like Dwee's hilarious improvised solo in the first recording where he suddenly went missing for a full 12 (or was it 16?) bars of the song and suddenly came back and owned the song.

I just love these photos lol. Look at Limzy's fake ear studs (which had us all fooled until we found out that they were magnetic).

Now, if the ironing board wasn't there, they would have looked much more professional.

Successful Un-Jam

2008-06-30T18:42:00.004+08:00

Oh yes, today we spent the whole day jamming at Michael's house. Thanks to my brilliant ideas of an INTP, we got Avery to come along as our roadie (inside joke that you will only understand if you play Battle of the Bands in Facebook).

The only songs that we actually did were Switchfoot's Meant to Live and Stars. And Mute Math's Typical. Then someone started talking about Finding Michelle and Afterglow and so we decided to spend the whole afternoon doing a instrumental cover of Afterglow with an improvised intro and solos. And outro.

We recorded it with Limzy's laptop, but the file is with him and Avery. I'll post it here sometime.

For the uninitiated, here is a video of Finding Michelle at last year's Battle of the Bands 2 Finals at the old auditorium.

Well, this does not mean we love Finding Michelle, although that song is quite nice, I must admit, and you've got to give them credit for writing it.

And I have 40 photos of today. It's gonna be troublesome to upload it all but I suppose I'll put it on Facebook (I just did click on the link). And perhaps at our blog.

-----

Moving on, it does seem amusing to see how different groups of people respond to my cryptic words.

Operation: Monday Blues

2008-06-29T20:22:00.002+08:00

Task Objectives with [Mission Critical] Designation:

Get one or two new guitar picks to replace those I lost at church camp.
Practice and master Wake Me Up From September Ends by Green Day on my acoustic. Especially the chord plucking parts.
Speaking of which, get my acoustic which has been lying at Lester's house since Wednesday night.
Learn Yellow by Coldplay. Actually, I just did.
Master Typical by Mute Math. Well, the rhythm parts. The power chords take a bit getting used to.

Task Objectives with [If can then whack] Designation:

Get Radiohead discography on my iPod.
Learn more songs? Songs by Yellowcard and Boys Like Girls seems like a possibility.
Slack
Stone
Stare blankly into space and say, "Huh?"
Dota

Task Objectives with [Ah whatever] Designation:

Try to not suck

-----

Ah yes, even as I am speaking (or typing, rather), we are having an Un-Band meeting on MSN. Currently, we are discussing what songs to play for our scheduled jam tomorrow. They include some gay song by Dragonforce because it's the hardest song on Guitar Hero, two songs by Switchfoot, and I dunno what else.

And here I am randomly playing chords from Yellow at will.

And therefore, it will be Limzy lead guitar, Michael drums, Lester bass, Dwee keyboard and me rhythm guitar (hmm either that crap acoustic or Michael's electric). Yes no vocalist because we have sucky voices.

And Dwee is no commenting that the band from 4.7 Finding Michelle IS STILL ALIVE AND HEALTHY. Actual words there. At least those in caps.

And now Dwee says his exams end at 1.30pm. Bah. IB ruins life.

Maybe I should post the entire chatlog here later. Or maybe not.

-----

Ah yes so much for subtlety.

Is it already common knowledge or is it just my crazy imagination?

BotB/DotA/MVO/RandomNonsense

2008-06-26T18:26:00.002+08:00

Yes.

My last iPod sync added in 88 new tracks. Wheehee.

And I just started playing Battle of the Bands in Facebook this morning and it's damn fun.

And I thank Michael for introducing Un-Band to Mute Math's single Typical. Really well choreographed using the reverse narrative technique (as a sidenote, just like Coldplay's The Scientist). And they even performed it live backwards too.

-----

Physics practical was today, and let's just say it was morale boosting if you consider the other exams I've had so far. Since we are on the topic of exams, it is rather ironic that the only exam I've managed to complete in time is Chinese. Because Physics SPA doesn't count. Because our invigilator was LLQ (Lester's physics tutor). Ah yes, now I know why Lester fears for his physics.

-----

And if the story of the latest saga relating to a certain teacher's recent departure from a certain school is true, then I am sorely disappointed at the top management. They are supposed to be Christians and yet there is so much un-Christian behaviour. Or is this just the real world we live in? Or maybe the they are just not worthy of the jobs that they occupy.

The (DREADED) Chinese Exam.

2008-06-23T19:51:00.002+08:00

Greetings people.

I report as a survivor from the absolut' total carnage that will be known in future as the Black (technically speaking, mundgen, actually) Monday. Indeed, over five hundred of us were led like lambs to be slaughtered at the killing fields, also known as the "badminton court", at approximately 1pm GMT +8.

There, we were subjected to take a short series of two "Chinese papers". Well, actually, they should be renamed "Chinese death-notes". Because nearly everyone died upon writing their names on those innocent-looking slips of paper and flipping to the next page to view the contents.

Indeed, as a survivor of this examination, I am definetely confident of scoring at least 40/160 for the exam. Making any more optimistic prediction would be venturing out into the unknown ( <- you've got to say this with an ethereal voice).

Indeed, I only left 50 marks worth of blanks in the examination.

But wait, my alter ego from a certain perpendicular alternate dimension is speaking for me with rather distorted facts!

-----

So this is the real deal.

Being the first day of school, I woke up on time. Living in Bishan means that on time refers to 5.30 am. As I left through the door and locked it, my hands instantly went to-

My collar. Uh yes, I thought to myself, "Dammit! Forgot my stupid tie again!"

Just as I was about to rummage through my pockets for my key to open the door, my eyes rested upon my shirt. And then came the afterthought. "Oh yeah. I'm in ACJC now I don't need my AC tie."

And yes, Lester says he nearly went back into his house for his tie too. And Michael keeps his tie in his bag all the time.

Chapel was good. RC was sitting at the end so his "actions moves" during chapel didn't manage to disturb and distract me. Which allowed me for once to actually focus on worship. Sidenote to the Media Resource Crew: Ah I think the treble for the acoustic guitar needs to be reduced. It was so sharp and piercing.

And so eventually we had our first examination. GP.

The paper by itself was, well, ok I guess. I didn't manage to finish the AQ, but who cares I didn't finish it the last time round and got 30/50. At any case, I should be able to pass. Should.

Sitting in right next to the aircon at the MPH does remind me of the frigid Boarding School Dining Hall where we had our Sec 3 final year papers. At least there weren't birds flying around inside to distract us.

Well anyway, it was time to start worrying about Chinese. Well, for starters, Michael was asking his sconer classmate whether she brought her dictionary for the exam. Which, well, brought me up to speed in an instant. Of course, I hadn't brought my dictionary. As usual huh.

No matter though, fortunately I had Lester bail me out with his e-Dictionary since he just so happened to want to use his manual dictionary.

So at any case I borrowed the chinese book from Jayne and started looking through the idioms. Ah yes, the idioms. Can I still remember any of the new ones I looked through today? Well no duh. Partially because I started fiddling with the iPods of random classmates.

And finally, with great reluctance, it was time for the chinese exam. Well to be honest it wasn't that bad. I guess praying with Lester and Michael at the bleachers before assembly really helped.

Paper one was total killer though. Flipped to the second page to look at the questions. And didn't understand (couldn't even read in the first place) all but the last question. So I guess almost everyone spammed the last question with their bestest primary school chinese vocabulary. Yes, me too, except I had to check to dictionary to remind myself how to write some of those primary school words. I did manage to write down one chinese idiom (which wasn't in the chinese book) from primary school chinese though! So proud man I guess it was the first time in just about ten essays I wrote an idiom down.

Paper two was quite okay, and that phrase coming from a former ACS(I) student does mean alot. Second passage about people talking rubbish was itself rubbish and not making sense but the third passage which I expected to be killer turned out to be pretty manageable.

-----

And now that you've managed to read (or scroll down, ignoring my rants in the process) to this section, I'll reward you with the insiders' heads-up that I received from Lester about School Council Exco. So, it turns out, I know at least 3 of the 8 people in the exco (according to Lester), and true to my prediction, Peter is President of the School Council. And Charmaine Phang (from Michael's OG), former vice-head prefect of MGS (by coincidence Pwy was also a vice-head prefect) is Vice.

Well no surprises actually considering that the President and Vice for every almost every council in ACJC's history is either from ACS(I) or MGS. So the tradition is continues for one more year.

-----

And in more random news, Michael has officially awarded me with the ability to post as a member of Un-Band. Go visit us and tag. Seriously. Because we rock. Even though we need a "do-over".

And therefore, I must do justice to Un-Band by getting my guitar skills up to scratch. Lester too. And that means: A two-man jam on Monday.

And with Un-Band endorsing the band Redeeming the Riot, so shall I. Nathan Khoo from AC guitar is their lead guitarist too. And their going to perform at MGS Talentime on Saturday evening. Hmm my terms will be over by then but it's going to be immediately after YF, so I don't know whether I'll go.

Till next time, people.

Be Strong; Believe.

2008-06-22T17:40:00.003+08:00

Think about the love inside the strength of heart
Think about the heroes saving life in the dark
Climbing higher through the fire, time was running out
Never knowing you weren't going to be coming down alive
But you still came back for me
You were strong and you believed

Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Be strong. Believe.
Be strong. Believe.

Think about the chance I never had to say
Thank you for giving up your life that day
Never fearing, only hearing voices calling out
Let it all go, the life that you know, just to bring it down alive
And you still came back for me
You were strong and you believed

Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Be strong. Believe.

(Again today, we take into our hearts and minds those who perished on this site one year ago, and also those who came to toil in the rubble to bring order out of chaos, to help us make sense of our despair)

Wanna hold my wife when I get home
Wanna tell the kids they'll never know how much I love to see them smile
Wanna make a change or two right now
Wanna live a life like you somehow
Wanna make your sacrifice worthwhile

Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Be strong. Believe.

Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
Be strong. Believe.

Think about the love inside the strength of heart
Think about the heroes saving life in the dark
Think about the chance I never had to say
Thank you for giving up your life that day

(The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here)

Believe - Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue (2003)

-----

Unbelievably, I've realised that despite the last four weeks of rest that I've had, I'm actually mentally exhausted. I was feeling tired throughout the entire day. I even took 56 instead of 54 while getting home after youth choir (during which I had to resort to handphone sodoku to keep from dozing off).

Not that I've mugged for the Term Exams. Okay, I'll admit I hit the books a little, although I haven't touched economics which is the main worry apart from chinese.

And I've been thinking too much about stuff. I am just so tired. Be strong, believe in God, Matthaeus.

Sidenote: I'm GG for chinese tomorrow. Take special note of 'GG' in block letters.

3 Wise Sayings

2008-06-20T20:14:00.003+08:00

Seeing that this is my 100th post, I find it my implicit duty to placate all readers (for having to read my emo rants) with 3 wise sayings.

One can never have too much hard drive space.
Using a 19-inch widescreen LCD TV as a monitor is not enough. And by the time you upgrade to a 22-inch, you find yourself wanting a 24-inch. And so on and so forth.
It is very interesting to have your Starhub 12mbps cable service connected to your computer with a wireless-B router with a maximum data transfer limit of 11mbps.

Uninteresting Post Number Ninety-Nine.

2008-06-19T16:12:00.008+08:00

Well, I did realise rather belatedly last night why I was being flamed on MSN by none other than the Darren Wee.

Apparently, he doesn't like the kind of music I listen to. Specifically speaking, my listening to Coldplay. And indeed, it was pure coincidence that one of his latest posts was talking about his music library as well. So yeah, Dwee you just got yourself a license to call me noob, just by having a more extensive music library.

But I won't really comment on his new blog template, except that it was better than the previous one which had an expletive in the title. Let's just say it's better because at least when your mom walks into the room she sees you browsing websites that do not have the word F***ing in block letters.

So there.

Now, why am I exactly typing out a blogpost now for?

Oh yes. Now I remember.

Indeed, it slipped my mind (as things usually do on a regular basis) that I've collected the school graduation certificate from A Certain School In Dover Road. So yeah this is a message to all ex-classmates and JC1 friends to go back and collect your graduation certificates.

While I was at ACS (I) yesterday though, I did manage to snap a couple of photographs of the old campus.

Where 2.14 Barnabas used to be.

Must be a relic from a random UYO camp during the June holidays. Kind of reminds me of the boot on the roof of the containers where the UYO rooms are located.

The new 'cage'. Well, actually, not so new, but this was the first time I saw it since I neglected to walk all the way to the back end of the old campus to see it.

Uninteresting sidenote: ACS (I) is actually almost 50% larger than ACJC and Fairfield Methodist Primary and Secondary Schools combined. Just by looking at the view from Google Earth. Meh.

-----

And now we come to the flipside.

This is taken from Juzzie's blog.

Because of the colour of the wheat fields.

It was then that the fox appeared.

"Good morning," said the fox.

"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."

"I am a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."

"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

"What does that mean--'tame'?"

"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"

"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean--'tame'?"

"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"

"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."

"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."

"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

"On another planet?"

"Yes."

"Are there hunters on that planet?"

"No."

"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"

"No."

"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

"Please--tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . ."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."

"Yes, that it so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:

"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"Your are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

-----

"What is essential is invisible to the eye."

Over time I have realised that one of my gifts is that of a powerful imagination. Because of that, I can evaluate, almost predict (often wrongly of course) what will happen next, especially with current affairs. And I do have an interesting, almost childish premonition to daydream into alternate universes, such as cartoon worlds as I was younger to other stuff now such as gundam. Life sucks, and that is reality, so is that why I am trying to hide from it?

It is interesting to see how my MBTI profile plays out in front of me. True enough, it certainly isn't 100% accurate, yet I find many of the aspects found in an INTP true to me. Unless people try to get to know me, I build a wall around myself, prefering instead to observe others rather than to interact with them. Feelings and emotions are my weakness, and I know it, so I try to suppress it, using sheer logic and pragmatism to guide my actions. And when that fails, I feel so misunderstood and depressed.

And I am just so confused now. Should I follow what my heart tells me? I have no answer to that. This is when applying logic is useless.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;"

This is one heck of a dilemma.

Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!

2008-06-18T20:14:00.004+08:00

Welcome Humans!

We have come to visit you in peace and goodwill!

Robots may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Robots have seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Robots are Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With.
Robots have shiny metal posteriors which should not be bitten.

And they have a plan.

-----

I hereby thank Avery for pointing out that easter egg for me.

And I have just installed the official Firefox 3. I thank Mozilla for withholding the fact that Firefox Download Day would start at 17:00 UTC 17 June, and not 0:00 UTC as I had anticipated.

But being exceptionally kind and forgiving, I have decided. To be...

*INSERT DRUM ROLL AND HEAVY ANTICIPATION*

Well, Matthaeus, DUH!

And therefore I hope that today I'll "make history with Firefox", quoting from the email that I got.

How nascent.

-----

In other news, I have had a lot to chew on and consider recently, and when that happens, it gets a little depressing. (Read: Zomg this is more evidence that Matthaeus is emo again)

Therefore, to cheer myself up, I shall do a little music review. Or rather, a playlist.

I don't usually do playlists, you know. I would rather listen to an entire album just for one particular song.

But I shall make an exception.

And without further ado --

Wait wait. iTunes is taking ages to load again. How annoying.

Violet Hill - Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends (2008) - 3:50
Pictures of You - The Last Goodnight - Poison Kiss (2007) - 3:10
I'm Just A Kid - Simple Plan - No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls (2002) - 3:18
Ammunition - Switchfoot - The Beatiful Letdown (2003) - 3:46
Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional - Dusk & Summer (2006) - 3:21
Stolen - Dashboard Confessional - Dusk & Summer (2006) - 3:19
In My Place - Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head (2002) - 3:49
Signal Fire - Snow Patrol - Spiderman 3: The Official Soundtrack (2007) -3:57
Yahweh - U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) - 4:42
Five Minutes To Midnight - Boys Like Girls - Boys Like Girls (2006) 3:47
How Six Songs Collide - Norweigian Recycling - So Far (2007) 5:51
The Scientist - Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head (2002) 5:09
Lovers in Japan/Reign Of Love - Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (2008) 6:51
When I'm Gone - Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits (2005) - 4:41
Time To Say Goodbye - Simple Plan - Simple Plan (2008) 2:56
Won't Go Home Without You - Maroon 5 - It Won't Be Soon Before Long (2007) - 3:51

Total Length - 1.1 Hours

Which means it won't fit on a regular CD. But who cares.

And there you have it, my current favourite songs, 16 out of a total of 1041 (not including podcasts) which make up 2.9 days and take up 6.03 GB of hard drive space.

EDIT: Well, still a far cry from Andrew's music library. 64.55 GB as of ten days ago, I mean, what the crap?

Firefox Release Candidate 3

2008-06-17T17:44:00.003+08:00

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Really. Go download it. As a long-time user of Firefox (seriously, man, Internet Explorer is trash), from experience Firefox is the web browser to beat out there, although for a few months I did use Opera, mainly in early 2007. Even Safari (I was compelled to download it along with an iTunes update) can't hold a candle (in my unprofessional opinion) because for some reason I find that it screws up my fonts.

And with Firefox 3, it's even better than Firefox 2, even at this developers' release stage (read: Beta). It loads pages noticeably faster than Firefox 2, which is already way way faster than Internet Explorer. After 15 minutes of random surfing (as I am accustomed to), I am dead convinced than Firefox 3 is DA BOMB PERIOD. Even Youtube videos load much faster. I tested it with the Dashboard Confessional single Stolen and the video loaded much faster than what I remembered the last time I watched that video, which was around late last month.

And here is a little screenshot of this nifty browser in action. Incidentally, it provides a good peek of what I usually do on my computer when I'm not gaming. And as it stands, I hardly game nowadays.

However, I do have one grouse. Indeed, being a new Firefox release candidate, lots of the toolbars and customisations are not compatible with it. All 3 of my toolbars that I had loaded were not compatible, and I was compelled to update one of them (Google Toolbar) to work on Firefox 3.

But it's still worth the trouble.

By the way, I am an insignificant tech noob when compared to people like Andrew and Kenneth, so please don't laugh at me when you view my screenshot.

Nay, Fools!

2008-06-17T11:17:00.002+08:00

More cryptic blog post titles to come from me, I promise.

As a sidenote, this title really doesn't mean anything. Honest.

And well here I am blogging from computer No. 08 in the ACJC Library.

-----

And as for everything that happened yesterday. Well, let's just say it was an awfully long day. Emotionally half-draining too, seeing that my efforts when half-down the drain and half-succeeded. Well maybe I have been relying too much of my own strength. Although it was encouraging to encounter two christians at Taka whilst we were selling our badges. Their efforts to evangelise only serve to remind me what I should also be doing more diligently. Oh yes, we bumped into Rng, Nng and Jiamin and ~~extorted~~ persuaded them to buy two badges :)

Thanks anyway to the seven people (excluding me) who made the effort to turn up: Wilson, Winifred, Cynthia, Rachel, Amelia, Cassandra and Lay Cheng.

And what am I doing wasting my life in the library? Waiting for my PW mates to turn up, duh.

And I had the misfortune to meet Justin Tan today. Who promptly (well, not quite) stole my bag and hid it. Fortunately, I found it unexpectedly quickly.

As for the sudden influx of posts on my usually-not-very-busy-tagboard, I say that's a good thing because it has helped to remove traces of my little conversation regarding "lab exploits" with Avery. Of course, unless you are so criminally bored to read all my older messages in the tagboard.

-----

And of course, it is amazing to see that the Dairy of Doctor Bong is still alive.

"Anglo Chinese School -
Hell CEO Ong Has Coins"

Indeed, an intriguing anagram for us to think about.

-----

And damn, Lester has windwalked to Batam (or was it Bintan) so darn, I can't jam with him. After all, both our skills at the guitar and bass respectively are supposed to be equally sucky. Seeing the people at church being able to tune by sound is demoralizing.

-----

In yet more random tech news:

So it seems, the iPhone's gonna be exclusive for Singtel for now. Just as well, since my contract to Starhub only expires in May next year and I have no intention of switching.

-----

In yet, yet more random news about me:

I want to go watch Prince Caspian. But nearly everyone has watched it already.

Bah.

2008-06-15T22:41:00.003+08:00

Well, that organisation did respond after all. So I stand corrected there.

-----

In random tech news for the day:

Firefox Download Day is on 17 June.

-----

In yet other random news:

http://www.i-eat-small-kids.blogspot.com/

So that is Shermaine's real blog? Haha.

2008-06-15T18:16:00.004+08:00

Day Four and Five Thursday and Friday

So after message we had our final message discussion at Reuben's room as usual. Then the now well-publicized closing ceremony event involving Kenneth Axyzr Fong (not to be confused with Kenneth Ho) videoed by Yi Tao, sent to me, and shown by me to Peter, Shermaine, Samantha and now everyone here once I get this uploaded.

As a sidenote, Kenji was wearing his ACJC shirt under his sweater, which brings to my attention to the fact that we have an unusually high number of ACSians and Rafflesians in ZYF. Even one of the adults in the camp committee was wearing an ACJC shirt on the last day.

Anyway after prayer and praise at night we had night games at 11! Haha the night game was meant for the youth retreat but they changed it a bit for church camp. Zzz I got into the torture chamber in the first 20 minutes for some really stupid reason. But on the whole it was quite fun and funny. I remember Kenneth said that one of his tasks from Marvin (to get resources) was to go up to Jeannette and ask her for her weight. Lol and he really did. So Jeannette told him to get Marvin over and slap him in front of her. So when he returned to find Marvin, Marvin just gave him all the resources he had left over and ran away HAHA! The two "kings" giving out the gold resource were of all people, Daryl and Kenji. And their tasks were the most stupid of all. I was told to make them ankle bracelets and I remember others were told to make them crowns, "bicep bands" and other sorts of weird fashion accessories out of the flowers and plants in the garden.

So this is what they looked like at the end of the games. My group, the so-called "Hearts Village" owned at the night games and trashed and Diamonds and the Clubs by getting to the Castle stage first, two steps ahead of either group. Then I was told that Graham confessed to cheating :/

And then we went back to our rooms. Kenneth and Kevin were gaming in our room when suddenly Axyzr's mother auntie Judy came in and asked if we had seen him. I heard he got missing for 3 hours and the whole of YF except us were searching for him. So I felt a little guilty. But anyways it turned out that he was in the room next door watching TV the whole time. Of all people, Cheryl Khoo's family like what the crap dey! I had no idea he knew her since he's from gardens. Scandalous sia.

Nah...

So in the end we came back on the buses. And that is all.

-----

Interesting. They're gonna introduce the bongos and maybe the bass guitar for the 8.30am service definitely on Youth Sunday. We've been approved also for the 10.30am service but we're not exactly sure if the folks there are ready and can accept it. So we're just going to have to pray about it.

And I still miss church camp but I am still in a very good mood :))

Very good mood :)). Even the problems at CIP aren't enough to spoil it :))

Oh dear what I am turning to using so many smileys...

Retrograde to Singapore

2008-06-14T15:42:00.003+08:00

So yes, I am back in Singapore.

Although my retrograde journey was slighty different. I decided to bus back with our room mates. Yeah we were the first to reach church at 7.30pm =) although I heard that the last bus reached at like 9pm plus. Of course, I managed to get my first Ramly burger since LDP last year. (Coincidentally, the LDP campsite was in some forested area in the Malacca area)

And yes, in all church camp was just so great. I can't really describe it any better with words.

Although I'm not sure about the rest part, (we slept at 1.30am plus for the first three days and 4.30am on the last day hehe) I have been greatly refreshed. Spiritually I have been restored and now it's time to restart life again here in stressful Singapore.

Realizing that I forgot to activate roaming for my phone was a good thing after all. At least it prevented me from worrying about organising CIP (so I couldn't send or receive any smses regarding CIP), which would have ruined my camp.

Anyway, here's a continuation of the previous post.

Day Two Tuesday [Evening]:

After dinner and workshops we went back to the room. Graham came over they jammed at our room with Kevin and my guitar. During which we had the hilarious incident. They were doing a cover of Only Once by Yellowcard. Then nng borrowed my iPod and noise canceling earphones so he could sing along with backing and get the pitch right. Rofl he did get the pitch right after all but during the chorus he went mad and all. Especially because three groups of people materialized at our door just in time to witness the first chorus. Namely, Kieran and Bryan, some guy from the hotel to deliver the extra pillow we ordered and our neighbours who were wondering who was singing so loudly.

And quite literally, nng was going "scream my lungs out". It was so funny even Graham and Kevin stopped playing the song and burst out laughing. The best part was that nng was completely oblivious to everything because he closed his eyes and my earphones blocked out all the laughter.

Day Three Wednesday:

Aaaahhh I saw Reuben's "valley of the shadow of death" during our message discussion! He looked like he was gonna sit on dng's face when he fell asleep. Heck our group Ioras, the JC and poly guys just rocked and all the message discussions were super funny and slack.

After that we lunched and had a Youth Choir meeting. We're going to sing How Great Is Our God and Beautiful Saviour for Youth Sunday Service in July! And after being told by the gardeners that there was nothing to shop in downtown Malacca (they went there on Tuesday), I was persuaded into going anyway and got two shirts. And in the end we (Rng, Shermaine and I) bumped into the gardeners there -_-. Haha there was a debate whether to cab or to bus and we still haven't paid the RM10 fare for the chartered bus lol.

During dinner nng was hoarding crab. We were arguing over where to sit. nng didn't want to sit in the corner, but the moment he saw that we were having crab for dinner he changed his mind instantly. This photo just says it all.

I'll update on the last two days later I've gotta go for the moment.

And if you noticed any difference in the way I'm talking, that's because I've been influenced and infused (happens every YF and Church camp) with the way the gardeners talk.

Camp: An update

2008-06-10T16:51:00.003+08:00

Greetings, earthlings.

I'm two hundred odd km north in sunny Malacca. Well, not so sunny on the way there, but you get the metaphor.

So far, I've taken quite a few photographs. But as ever, because I don't camwhore, none of them are of me.

And after publicly saying to myself (in private, sense the irony?) that I wouldn't be bringing my guitar(s) down for camp, I ninja'd the classical guitar up in the end.

Hence, a short summary so far:

Day One Monday:

Took a lift from Uncle Kian Lee and Aunty Joyce up to the hotel. Customs queue was short so yeah. We thought it would rain but it never did. We stopped at Restoran Lee for lunch where we had the coolios prawn and cheese beehoon. Whoa. It was very nice I never thought beehoon could taste nice with cheese gravy.

Got there an hour earlier than the people taking bus. So yeah I koped the room key (only one for six people) and dumped my stuff in the room. And the room was very big with two bedrooms, a living room and a bar with a mini fridge.

The icebreakers weren't really icebreakers because our group (the JC/Poly peeps) mostly knew each other already and there weren't many of us. Although the blow wind blow game played in our groups was hilarious because everyone picked on Kenneth Fong. Such as, "Who wore an underwear on his head at a children's camp", "Who has a sister who's a gymnast" and "Who has a stupid middle name that sounds like X-men". (His full name is Kenneth Axyzr Fong or something like that haha)

After the first message we got the Gardens (iBob, dng and some others) people to bring their laptops over to our room which because some people where already playing the munchskins card game at their room. We managed to find 6 powerpoints to charge the laptops by removing the tv and the mini fridge from the power supply. lol. But in the end the attempts to dota were met with utter failure; twice the game had to be remaked because of disconnections from the ad hoc wireless network. Then one of the laptop adaptors short circuited. So in the end we played worldcup of warcraft which was super spastic and super funny.

Slept at 1.36am, give or take 30 minutes for me to get to sleep.

Day Two Tuesday:

During lunch there was a diseased looking cat sitting at one of the seats at our table ("our" refers to Kenneth Ho, Joel, Kevin, Yi Tao, Jasmine, Shermaine and I). It was freaking disgusting. Then another cat came to hang out at our table. This one was cuter and smaller. So Jasmine went to go pet it. I can't remember how, but eventually we came to the conclusion that the first cat had probably sat and pissed on all the chairs we were sitting on at the open air dining area. So my appetite was cut short prematurely.

So that's pretty much it. I didn't get a photo of the cats though.

-Matthaeus Lim, using Peter Wang's laptop from the hotel lobby wireless, signing off.

You are my signal fire

2008-06-07T21:39:00.001+08:00

The perfect words never crossed my mind,
Cause there was nothing in there but you.
I felt every ounce of me screaming out,
But the sound was trapped deep in me.
All I wanted just sped right past me,
While I was rooted fast to the earth,
I could be stuck here for a thousand years,
Without your arms to drag me out.

[Chorus:]
There you are standing right in front of me
There you are standing right in front of me
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close, cause I need you to guide me to safety.
No, I don't want to wait forever
No, I don't want to wait forever

In the confusion and the aftermath,
You are my signal fire.
The only resolution and the only joy,
Is the faint spark of forgiveness in your eyes.

There you are standing right in front of me
There you are standing right in front of me
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close, cause I need you to guide me to safety.
No, I don't want to wait forever
No, I don't want to wait forever

There you are standing right in front of me
There you are standing right in front of me
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close, cause I need you to guide me to safety.
No, I don't want to wait forever
No, I don't want to wait forever
No, I don't want to wait forever

Signal Fire - Snow Patrol (Spiderman 3 Soundtrack 2007)

-----

This song is just awesome.

Go hear it and you'll know what I mean.

Oopsie.

2008-06-06T16:53:00.002+08:00

Yes, if you have noticed, I'm into pointless blog post titles.

Anyway, as to what provided the impetus for me to update today, credit must definitely be given to a certain person named Avery Khoo. He has (or rather, had) been showering me with a sudden flood of totally random messages in an attempt to provoke me to create some random Dwee quotes. All in the name of providing me with something to write for my blog.

Yes, yes, I get the subtle hint that your life is totally boring without me being your classmate anymore that you need me to update my blog to add colour to your life. Say what anyway, how's being in Avery's class for 6 years in a row since primary 5? To everyone who has not been his classmate, wink wink.

Oh yeah Avery you still haven't told me whether you got into CJC council.

At any case, some pretty good Dwee quotes where generated today, but unfortunately I am not in the mood to post in here at the moment. Hurhur, I just might be extra emo today huh?

But, to get back to point, there has not been any updates in a while particularly because...

Well yes, I have no life to blog about in the first place.

And there has been nothing really worth mentioning about in the last few days.

Exceptions to that include my cousin (who is Singaporean but lives in Johor) coming to town for a few days, and yesterday's DotA game where I got 17-4 for Silencer (including a 13 kill streak) partly because of imba guinsoo usage.

-----

But why must it occur on the same day?

Maybe I should just forget this.

Yet another untitled post

2008-05-31T13:28:00.003+08:00

Hey folks.

Yeah that's right.

I mean you guys.

Voice in my head: "What the hell are you typing Matthaeus?"

Ok back to reality.

Sigh.

Anyway, as I was saying previously, I went to watch Restless V. Of course, I had to leave the house at like 6.50pm rather under-dressed. Practically speaking, I was the only guy wearing berms in the CPA lol. I waited for 74 until 7pm, and then I witnessed a dramatic change in fortunes where the 74 skipped nearly 10 bus stops in a row, getting me to ACJC in barely 35 minutes and on time for the concert. Sidenote: Although this is still not the record. I took 74 from ACS(I) last year and got home in 29 minutes out of the usual 50.

Anyway, the concert was quite good. I admit, hip-hop music doesn't really appeal to me, but the first item So She Dances (sung by Josh Groban, and the first time I've heard it even though the album cd has been lying on my table for 18.5 months) was very nice. The Classic or Rock item was very well choreographed and the finale was fantastic.

And I forgot to mention, yesterday while buying bubble tea after lunch we bumped into none other than the DWEE, Bryan Ong, TKK, Ian Toh, Sheu Zhi and Basil. Judging from the fact that four of them where in soccer jerseys (and Dwee still dared to wear his Chelsea jersey after they lost Champions League), I guess they were at the ACS(I) cage playing soccer. So Dwee tried to manhandle me after my SMS taunting the morning after the match when they were about to leave for WOW.

Ok so much for the boring recount. Time to eat lunch and go for YF and church camp briefing.

C'zas Pookie.

It looks like some horrendous secrets of my life has been spilled by my little tagboard conversation with Avery. Like our "achievements" in the school labs in the last four years. You guys so did not know that.

Guitar?

2008-05-30T18:21:00.003+08:00

Before I run off to catch that 74 back to school for Restless V to meet Michael and some other sconers, here's a quick update on the last few days.

Anyways, I ushered for the guitar concert on Wednesday, doing next to nothing while Huiling did like everything. My bad I was slacking off the whole day gaming on my phone till the battery went dead.

And I was persuaded by Peter Chan to go for the guitar camp, so that he won't be like the only non-main ensong guy in the camp. So in the end, we formed a three man clique among ourselves between Peter, Shaun and I. And we sorta mixed with the other clique of Zoe, Sherilyn and Eileen for bubble tea.

And of course the epic once in a lifetime bridge game where I just pwned the living crap out of everyone with my eight card combo. A seven card royal flush for the win and an extra ace to boot.

And then that stupid "no bubbles" catchphrase coined by me. It was a slip of the tongue, I assure you, mixing up bubble tea and pearls to get pearl tea and bubbles.

Nope, didn't take any pictures because I didn't get any inspiration to take any.

In other news, my N73's vibration thing has broken down. Mainly because I've dropped my phone over a dozen times these few days.

Adios amigos.

Changelog 1.0

2008-05-27T19:57:00.003+08:00

Hello all. This is psuedo-Matthaeus-bot v1.0 speaking. Well, actually, not really speaking, but anyway just pretend you are hearing an electronically synthesized voices attempting to converse with you.

I am making this post on behalf of Matthaeus v1.00, who is currently experiencing catastrophic server failure due to massive software corruption and hardware breakdown. Here is a short summary of the causes:

Firstly, inherent errors in Matthaeus v1.00 source code. This caused the firmware operating system to be unstable.
The input of numerous Coldplay songs through his audio processors. This caused unexpected teething errors with the application known as "emotions".
The hardware component known as "Brain" getting dusty from lack of use. The dust accumulated on Matthaeus' circuit boards and caused short circuiting.
The unwarranted introduction of the lethal virus known as "Term Exams". This caused an interfacing error with the fellow processing unit known as "Mother" who wanted Matthaeus to start mugging. This caused a waterfall of systematic errors as we all know Matthaeus is allergic to mugging.
The stealth hidden trojan implanted in Matthaeus operating system, currently hiding in the application known as "emotions". Apparently, the general category of this trojan is known as, gee-eye-argh-el-ass. Unfortunately, this trojan struck a resonant chord with the input of excessive Coldplay songs, causing additional problems. At this point in time, the exact name of the stealthy trojan programme is classified top secret, only for those with a need-to-know basis (ie. Those with sufficient security clearance).
The programme known as "Class-initiated CIP". Along with the previous programme, it has been occupying to much processor time and therefore excessive processing has been done, resulting in poor processing performance for other functions.

Obviously, it is unacceptable for Matthaeus v1.00 to be operating at near-zero efficiency. Therefore, a repair programme has been initiated and expedited.

On tomorrow, Matthaeus v1.00 will undergo the repair process at about 00:00 GMT. The location will be the repair shop known as ACJC. The exact treatment prescribed is "Ushering for TPJC at the Annual Guitar Competition".

However, this is only considered a stop-gap measure, as Matthaeus will experience a more complete software and hardware overhaul on 9 June. This overhaul will take approximately 5 days and is also known as the "Church Camp".. The following is a list of what to expect after this overhaul:

The installation of the application known as "Sanity".
Upgrade of Matthaeus v1.00 firmware to the minimum requirements of the "JC Student" standard, up from the current "Secondary School Student" that the operating system is still working under.
Vastly improved latency, up from the original 30 seconds (recorded by several witnesses) for Matthaeus BETA v0.99 from the era of 2001-2003, 10 seconds (also recorded, by Avery and Andrew calling "Matthaeus" and then timing with a wristwatch how long it took for a response) for Matthaeus v1.00 from the current era starting 2004.
Software support for Coldplay songs! Instead of corrupting software, Matthaeus v1.01 will instead broadcast Coldplay by the application known as the "Guitar".

Yes yes, 9 June is indeed an important date.

-----

Edit:

I have been following up on the aftermath of the Pedra Branca dispute, particularly the reactions of the Malaysian online community such as the forums and blogs. Of particular note is this blog: http://bukit-chandan.blogspot.com/

In my childish opinion, this blog seriously amuses me. It's almost as if it's just a April Fool joke taken a few notches higher, but one look at the immense catalog of entries tell me that the people who set up this blog are dead serious. Which amuses me further. Are these people that ignorant, calling the panel of 16 international judges biased? And condemning and threatening Singapore with unrest? And the other posts are. Well it just makes me want to puke. They go so far as to condemn people to burn in hell. In bolded words no less. Who on earth are these people? Islamic extremists?

And another blog is http://fcuksingapore.blogspot.com/

But I don't want to disrupt sensitivites any further. They can go on flame baiting Singapore.

Bah, a holiday, it seems.

2008-05-25T18:58:00.002+08:00

You had to do that.

You just had to.

You had the choice to not do that, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Matthaeus, you just had to.

-----

Ok, so while you're busy asking yourself what the hell am I just talking about, I'll give you a rap on the head and make you literally mutter "WTF" by commenting here and now that I'm just referring to the rather stupid title.

Back to the point.

So the holidays are right upon us, huh?

(Voice in the back of my mind mutters, "You don't say..." in a crisp english accent)

But once again, it's been really amazing to find out that so much time has actually passed and I've hardly noticed it. Little do we know, but it is more than one year since I barely escaped the feared concentration camp but still had day camp for failing history and the crappy chinese intensive revision crap where school ended at 2.40pm as usual, but then we had to come back at 7.30pm for the stupid lectures where basically everyone was either sleeping, talking or playing handphone games while listening to Neo Hock Kheng repeatedly call in his deep baritone voice "DA JIA KE YI AN JING MAH".

Yeah, and I miss the old way of life. No offence to all the dudes (and dudettes?) here at ACJC, but it will still take time for my allegiances to switch from that 121 Dover Road school. Let's just say, I miss the collective groans of the school when drong comes up to the mike to speak to the school during assembly (except when the school just won a final so everyone is anticipating "some reward"). Or being in a class where everyone is an asshole and basically we insult and tease each other jokingly.

For example, the occasional shout during chem practical, "Avery you retard you're supposed to add only one spatula of manganese (IV) oxide to a test tube of hydrogen peroxide, not the whole damn vial into a beaker full of hydrogen peroxide."

Or, during bio practical, "Sidhant (or actually, everyone) you moron/idiot you're supposed to use a luminous flame to light your peanut, not a full blast roaring non-luminous flame (especially because the gas pressure in A Certain School where I came from is extremely high) vapourizing that thing!"

Of course, I still remember the 1st Student Council election campaign two years ago where everyone was asking me, "Who's Elizabeth?", only for me to find out a couple of hours later that some idiot pasted the post-it note on my back. Although I did take my revenge and kept asking Avery (with the help of some people), "Who's X?" (I can't remember the random girl's name I used). Which resulted in Avery hilariously using his hand to search for any post-it note on his back, which of course was non-existent.

Recently, some people told me it's easy to tell that we're from that school, due to our apathy towards deadlines and studies. We're all slackers in general. I will always remember my rant where I put up a "strong front" refusing to dota at first after an 'O' Level exam in order to mug for geography. Obviously, a good hour later after riding on the Avery Express, I was going, "screw geography" and joined Justin and Lester.

Well, let's just say that if my parents had a good idea of exactly what I was doing during the 'O' Levels, they would have fainted.

The Really Really Bored DotA Hosting Sequence

2008-05-23T14:18:00.003+08:00

[/modify step 14: Spam game as: Dota -wtf -ardm NOOOOO RULESZXZXZX GLOBALS ALLOWED]

[/modify step 18: Type: -ardm]

[/modify step 19: Type: -wtf]

[/modify step 20: SPAM HOTKEY FOR ZEUS FOR THE WINZZZZZ]

[/modify step 21: After getting Zeus, type: HAHAHA GG GLHF]

[/modify step 22: Get to level 6 as fast as possible and then spam hotkey for wrath]

-----

In other news, Lester and I had a nice, short 90 minute jam session last night. Actually about 75 minutes if you count that we spent the first 15 minutes watching Lester's Meepo 11-0 replay.

-----

United are Red;
Chelsea are Blue;
John Terry missed!
And Anelka did too.

And this is why I just love British dry humour.

DotA Hosting Sequence

2008-05-21T18:58:00.003+08:00

[Switch on computer]

[Log in to Matthaeus]

[Initiate random start-up applications including Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk]

[Start Hamachi (If you're wondering, it's for portforwarding so I can host)]

[Launch Zion]

[Enter sequence Ctrl+F12]

[Listen to the beeps and whistles as application loads]

[Start Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne with LAN emulation]

[Click on LAN]

[Click Create Game]

[Select DotA v6.52c]

[Create]

[Alt+Tab to Zion]

[Spam game as: Dota -ap Hubhost]

[Wait for room to fill]

[Type: Ready?]

[Start game]

[Type: -ap]

[Type: -di]

[Type: -random]

[Type: -ah]

[Start playing]

-----

Perhaps this is the best way to distract myself from her.

Department of Bad Rants

2008-05-20T18:28:00.002+08:00

In my place, in my place
Were lines that I couldn't change
I was lost, oh yeah

I was lost, I was lost
Crossed lines I shouldn't have crossed
I was lost, oh yeah

Yeah, how long must you wait for him?
Yeah, how long must you pay for him?
Yeah, how long must you wait for him?

I was scared, I was scared
Tired and underprepared
But I wait for you

If you go, if you go
Leaving me here on my own
Well I wait for you

Yeah, how long must you wait for him?
Yeah, how long must you pay for him?
Yeah, how long must you wait for him?

Please, please, please
Come on and sing to me
To me, me

Come on and sing it out, out, out
Come on and sing it now, now, now
Come on and sing it

In my place, in my place
Were lines that I couldn't change
I was lost, oh yeah
Oh yeah

In My Place - Coldplay (A Rush Of Blood To The Head 2002)

-----

Ingeniously simple opening riff + nice chords = Must learn how to play this song.

Too bad I don't really have the time to this last few days. Sigh.

Back in the Black

2008-05-18T15:51:00.003+08:00

So, coming back from my week long hiatus, some people might have suspected that I have lost interest in blogging, eh? Well no longer!

Unfortunately, as Matthaeus is currently rushing (insert obscenely large number) assignments, he is unable to make this post a long one to compensate for not posting for one week.

Nonetheless, I shall make it a point to point out (sue me for repeating words) how unfortunate A Certain Junior College is in losing so many competitions over the last few days. For example, losing BY ONE FRIGGIN' POINT to our Beloved friends in the Junior College near Junction 8. And of course, losing 1-4 in Jalan Besar to some Very (not) nice Junior College at soccer. And coincidentally, 1-4 also at Tennis to that same school. Meanwhile, we watched our tennis dudes (who were great and tried their best) go down valiantly to the Anti-Chinese Singapore (Institution). Although personally this didn't really hurt much personally to me since both teams are in A Certain organisation with the same flag and song and badge. So long as one team makes it to defeat our friends in Bishan, I don't mind.

But then again, it doesn't really matter because win or lose, this school I am now in is not in the habit of giving out any holidays readily like some schools with CEOs do. Even though I heard recently that some school was not given a holiday despite winning the B division and A division finals of this sport which consists of lots of people running around with one weird oval shape ball.

Please note that all occurrences in this blog post is purely fictional and for personal entertainment and amusement only. Any reference to any real life situations or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Indeed.

Oh crap.

2008-05-11T15:07:00.002+08:00

Did PA for service today, thankfully nothing bad happened, no major screw-ups or anything.

Had breakfast with the YD after service, food treated by Kenneth (who is getting his first pay from church) and drinks by Patrick.

Thanks to everyone who has treated me to anything over these years, I'll remember you guys (hopefully) and return the favour one day.

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On a separate note, lesson learnt for the day:

Trying to be emo on msn can really backfire on you.

I must always remember that not everyone is as blur as myself.

Especially-... ahh, this is when blog censorship comes into play.

I'm Weird.

2008-05-10T11:47:00.003+08:00

Now, does this picture bring back all the happy memories?

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a better resolution. This is all Facebook's fault.

Detract this.

2008-05-09T20:27:00.004+08:00

With reference to the ~~ever so holy and great one~~ Dwee, and to his request which I accede, here may we enjoy this new quote of his, taken from a gmail message talking about the Indian aka Sidhant Srikumar aka 'Sridant'.

With reference to your skilful arty implementation and rapierisation of your would-be detractors, of course.

Indeed Sidhant is a

wizarding rabbi of withering replies-

a dabbling creator of debatable controversey

a skilled celebrator of scything comebacks-

a vagabondized warrior of verbal weaponry-

a masterful priest of major putdowns-

an ice lolly of insulting lactation-

and an

indian of intrigue.

That took me 10 minutes so you better damn well read it properly. Yes matthaeus I'm talking to you. Go put this on your blog, you little worshipper.

Of course, we were all so waiting for his quote in response to Sidhant's zomghaxlolpwned article on the Straits Times newspaper forum on Saturday.

Given Sidhant's skillful skills, we were therefore not surprised that the online community flamed him soon enough.

And yes, I am aware of the multiple typos in Dwee's text.

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As for the random rant of the day:

It's amazing how a simple anagram has completely thrown someone right off the track and disrupted his train of thought which was only filled with lifestock to begin with.

A quote from Gundam 00, if I may:

"Mission Complete!" (In full strong Japanese accent)

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Dangzit what a pity.

2008-05-07T19:09:00.002+08:00

Yeah. We kinda lost.

But Kevin Keegan's already justified himself to be worthy of being manager of Newcastle. Once again.

And on a random note, I have just about only 100000000000 and one things to do. Such as. Contacting AA for PW. Physics Circle Motion tutorial. Finishing that GP comprehension that I 'mysteriously' neglected handing up. Organising the CIP programme for 1SD2. Fixing Lester's computer so we can DotA together once again. And of course the random usual whatnot.

Of course, today being Wednesday, Dwee popped up as usual, 'ambushing' me (or us, the future ushers at the guitar concert this Saturday) just before guitar ended today. Due to a lack of time, we shall not go further than this today. Yes, like the normal, I took more pictures and collected more quotes, but I was hindered by that physical entity that has been aptly named "his right hand" from getting a clear close up shot of his facial expressions.

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Bumped into Jarrel Seah on the way home today. He was contemplating a rather abstract Physics question from Physics Olympiad practice that is by far way more difficult than those circle motion tutorial questions you have been asking, where "you" can be substituted with 11AOnes1ATwo. Like seresly (pun intended). The mathematics involved would kill even H2 Math students. Obviously, neither of us could solve that question. Although thanks to that I can't stop thinking about that question once it got me interested and intrigued.

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And yeah.

We kinda lost.

To SAJC.

11-19 rugby semi-finals.

Ah well.

There goes my hope of a rugby final featuring two A Certain Schools located within very close proximity. If that happened, then I could bring my corporate t-shirt and be masquerade as an IB student for a couple of hours.

Darn Darn Darn Darn Darn.

On the bright side, we don't have to waste our Friday afternoon.

Although we MIGHT be supporting the tennis team. All the best to Yinglin, Wilson Sum and Chun Hsiang. Hmm. We have lots of tennis people in our class.

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"I like mexican wings." - Dwee.

Hyperventilation

2008-05-05T19:34:00.003+08:00

Is this strange? Well, it might be.

But at any case, Matthaeus is feeling weirdly ecstatic. Of course, you could always rephrase that to mean ecstatically weird.

Of all monikers, we had YD yesterday and it was usual business, with our extremely out of context humour and nonsense spouting, of which the prime example was Danny’s quoting of some verse in 1 or 2 Corinthians (can’t remember which verse) a few weeks back.

This time though, we drifted out of topic as usual, delving into speculation on how Satan managed to tempt some angels to join him. Then Peter suggested that maybe Satan said, “I give you extra wings!”

Immediately, I could not resist and said, “Then when the angels went down to hell they found it filled with cans of Red Bull.”

Maybe that’s why hell is often depicted as red :P

To give another example, we were doing Romans 10 yesterday.

And Romans 10:15 reads: “And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, How Beautiful Are The Feet Of Them That Preach The Gospel Of Peace, And Bring Glad Tidings Of Good Things!”

Get what I mean?

But jokes aside, it’s been interesting to realise that the quality of our debate in YD has steadily increased over the years into a rather intellectual one, at times that is.

Thank God for that.

As for school, it is infuriating to be unable to go to ACS (I) for lunch and attend Chinese practical tutorial (since it’s 1hour 20minutes) instead.

And I am one of the two people in the class that know my ranking in the class for the Chemistry test for obvious reasons.

And if any of you saw me dashing towards the back gate after school at 4.20pm today, that was the cause of my emotions expressed in the first two paragraphs.

Catch no ball?

Well, I was happily strolling out the front gate.

Then as I approached the traffic light, I saw the 74 arrive.

And seeing as the green man had just ended, there was practically no hope to catch it.

Not quite.

Being Matthaeus, I had an idea.

I decided to run to back into ACJC.

And out the back gate.

And towards the ACS (I) bus stop.

And reached it with two minutes to spare.

Catching my 74.

And thank you for wasting your time reading my daily rants.

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Gogogo Newcastle FOR THE WIN!

Friday

2008-05-02T20:08:00.002+08:00

And we have come to the conclusion of another long week.

Well, to be exact, the week didn't really feel long. After Labour Day yesterday, today felt like a Monday, thus providing some pseudo-ecstasy when GP was over because it felt like the week was super duper uber short.

Although of course, GP has started to stimulate my cynicalist tendencies.

And if you're the kind of person obsessed with my blog, you would have noticed that more evidence of something in reference to someone have been removed/censored literally. Again.

To conclude this short post, its time to pull more chord sheets off Ultimate Guitar. It's been too long since I've learnt a decent song.

JnK Show

2008-05-01T11:15:00.006+08:00

Do me a favour.

Visit this site.

Scroll down and subscribe to podcast 102 using iTunes.

Get both episodes.

Listen to them.

You may recognize certain voices.

I wonder who.

Jeremy Ow aka Owman.

TKK.

And

The One and Only.

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Intermission: This blog supports BLEAP.

As a sidenote, my council votes have already been reserved. Too late now.

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Edit:

Okay I'm like really bored but anyway I found Joel's blog. I linked it but I'll guess I'll take the link off since according to the blog it's supposedly meant for only a few people.

Sorry for reading your blog, if you happen to be reading mine, but I couldn't help but notice that you're an INTP as well.

Welcome to the club then.

What an interesting world we live in. INTPs are one of the rarest personality types and yet there are so many of them around me and I can click quite well with them.

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Anyway, I've been reflecting about all sorts of stuff that have happened since the start of this year when we all started that journey into the unknown, where the unknown is defined as JC life.

And here's what I define as safe to say on this public domain.

JC life is really different. It feels great and fun at first, but once you've settled down you begin to realize that it's just normal school life hyped up abit. Kind of like over rated, if that term can be used.

Being in a co-ed environment was something I was not prepared for after a full ten years of boys' school life. Yes, well, they all say that girls motivate guys to study harder but then again, I don't see myself working any harder then I ever have in this short life of mine. Of course, I learn new things everyday just observing the world around me, but my problems have increased greatly over this period. Just meeting so much more people from different walks of life and gender really puts doubts in my mind on what I really stand for.

Sometimes, I really face a big dilemma. I feel like telling someone how I feel about that person, but I really find it hard to express myself, even to the closest of friends.

I'm growing, but whether or not it's in the right direction, only God knows.

Nothing, really.

2008-04-30T20:48:00.002+08:00

Ok, this is going into my book of records.

25 posts in a 30 day month. Call me bored, retard, obsessed to blogging, whatever, so sue me if you can.

At any case, this morning's fiasco involving 11AOne1ATwo being extraordinarily curious has only served to remind me of the need to be yet more discreet than ever. Although it's too late now. Hopefully, she won't flame me on her blog when I humiliate her again at the physics test.

Pause. Let us read her mind.

So who is this loser boy 1 year younger than me trying to brag that he will pwn me, the 11 A1 1 A2 girl top student, especially someone who DOESN'T EVEN TAKE H2 Math like so loser lah?

Track and Field Meet was predictably boring. Unfortunately, the security was out at full force so it was rather difficult to disappear halfway like last year. For a full account of how I did it last year, you can ask me.

Unfortunately, my planned source of entertainment, Dwee, could not enter ACJC because of the heightened security. And heightened indeed, he mentioned that there were loads of ACJC people eating at the SAC back there, probably under further recommendations by former ACS (I) students, because honestly ACJC food SUCKS. Tastes like expensive trash compared to SAC food.

On another note, I did not kill the Dead Sea. That honour is accorded to the Wannabe Terrorists from 1st Centrestage 2006 and their staged (literally) comeback earlier this year.

Welcome to the end of my post.

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Random rant of the day:

You make moving on difficult.

Bleagh.

2008-04-29T21:37:00.003+08:00

Under the influence of several ("several lah right, kaiss?" - Petertan) recent events, I now find it more prudent to be more discreet about some things in my blog. This takes place with immediate effect.

And now for the random thing of the day.

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This is the clock upon the wall
This is the story of us all
This is the first sound of a newborn child,
Before he starts to crawl
This is the war that's never won
This is a soldier and his gun
This is the mother waiting by the phone,
Praying for her son

[Chorus]
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Hung upon your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we used to be

There is a drug that cures it all
Blocked by the governmental wall
We are the scientists inside the lab,
Just waiting for the call
This earthquake weather has got me shaking inside
I'm high up and dry

[Chorus]

Confess to me, every secret moment
Every stolen promise you believed
Confess to me, all that lies between us
All that lies between you and me

We are the boxers in the ring
We are the bells that never sing
There is a title we can't win no matter
How hard we might swing

[Chorus]

[Chorus Repeat]

Pictures Of You - The Last Goodnight (Poison Kiss 2007)

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KTHXBAI.