jennifer's babble

Ad Infinitum!

2010-02-05T18:52:00.001-08:00

Orientation's over! And just when I thought it would never end :/ I was pretty sure I would hate it all because I just wanted to get started on lessons already. But Orientation was just crazy and waking up when it's all over is sort of like getting out of a dream. I was so hyped up about OGs and CTs and facs that I completely forgot about the stuff I'd been doing before Orientation. I woke up this morning and I was like, whoa, Sherlock Holmes! Whoa, legend! Whoa, computer! (Yeah, seriously.) I just about crashed out last night. In fact I'm still crashing out today. I'm running on energy I don't have, which explains the now-constant existence of Milo within arm's reach of me. But it was all worth it :D

OG19. It's amazing how you can get a bunch of unlikely heroes together and make them love each other intensely by the end of 4 days :/ First day doesn't do much, just involves simple icebreakers that make you remember only like 3 new names; second day is a little tougher, with games that either crack you up laughing or really just crack YOU up (seriously, they were a little dangerous sometimes. But they were fun because they were dangerous, so I'm not complaining), and you remember a few more names; by Monday you're like OGOGOGOGOGOG and that's all you can think about. You know everyone and you're all for winning every game you play. Wet games in particular break the ice 1. because there's WATER 2. because you seem to like everyone more when they're dripping wet and you're a little drier. :D And then you have your respective OG dinners where you have pizza and make people do 30 second dance solos and play very revealing I Never games. By Tuesday you're positive you will experience OG withdrawal syndrome, having spent so much effort bonding with people you're not going to be in the same CT with.

10A14. You have 7 guys and 19 girls, and already you know things are gonna get weird. Plus you've just left your OG and you're feeling bloody insecure. But that's okay, because what happens next--you're officially invested into the faculties and given a new group identity! So you get hyped up about winning again. By Thursday you love your seniors, who seem to have lost most of their sanity (but not any of their love and compassion) somewhere along their own JC1 journey, and also have a newfound sense of belonging to your faculty (which, by the way, frigging rocks). You play war games and realize that girls (yellow ones in particular) are particularly ferocious when they're pissed off and make a mental note never to get into a fight with one of those. You start to love the people in your class too, having spent 6 hours with them working on a skit without having dinner. Being in HP (and the successors of an impossible, groundbreaking legacy), you feel the heat to bring it on again this year. And so the entire class forgets about basic bodily needs and works through the afternoon and evening.

And it isn't over yet! Friday's the big day and you're all jittery about it. But the moment you straighten things out and perfect the details, you realize that it isn't that bad after all. In fact, by the time you step in for internal selections, both you and your seniors are positive you stand a pretty good chance. 3 hours later you're working again to represent your faculty to win Best Class Item, running on energy that is now negative, but still coherent because you want it so freaking badly. You've forgotten about lunch and dinner. There's a vague notion of McChicken burgers, but you're sure it isn't a good idea to eat now. Might get messy.

And THEN Campfire Night officially kicks off, and you're up. The entire faculty cheers for you all the while you walk up on stage and set out your props. For once you're not nervous about having so many expectations piled on you; you're hyped up by the fact that you're being trusted and supported on all sides, and that the faculty is behind you. For the first time you totally believe you can do it. And you do. Within 8 minutes it's over and you've done your thing.

The other faculties take the floor and soon the bonfire starts. You worry about the huge fire but it seems everything is under control, although the people who came up with the Kyoto Protocol might scream about the amount of black smoke it's sending up. But before that! Your faculty takes the Best Class Item and you're more relieved than happy. Now you can afford to give up and crash out. For the next hour or so you sing and run around, and then collapse as everyone else dances couple dances that are a little too long.

My only regrets:

1. I messed up a 6-7-8 during the dance. Rats.
2. I lost my orientation shirt. I WANT IT BACK D:
3. It might take 2 days of abstinence from physical activity to recuperate. You try dancing from morning till night without proper lunch or dinner. It was damn worth it, though.

So I fit into 3 new identities now: Apollo, OG19 and 10A14. In a matter of 1.5 weeks I have made about 30 new friends and found 3 new places in which I can belong. I wasn't looking forward to Orientation but I'm definitely looking backward now that it's over. It's time to settle down for real and hit the books (after how many frigging months?!), but for now I can't get it out of my head.

A-A-A14
AA, A14
A-A-A14
OH WE ARE HARDCORE

HWACHONG OOLALA :D

2010-01-05T03:12:00.000-08:00

School's started for everyone except the '93 babies. D: I feel sort of left behind. My sister's going to school, everyone's talking about homework and stuff, and I'm still struggling to figure out what I'm supposed to wear on the first day of school :/ I can't believe I'm out of it already. It's like, it only seems a few months ago that I was Sec 4 and on my first day of my senior year; figuring out where to sit, missing the first lessons of the year for Council duty, settling back into comfortable routines. I don't know how I feel about JC anymore. Dunno whether to laugh or cry :/

Okay, the JC part. I get this hunch I'm not gonna fit in. It was so hard for me to find my crowd in Nanyang, and now I have to start all over again. I don't think I do anything wrong; I try to be as discreet as possible nowadays because I generally can't stand people looking at me or talking about me. But you know that feeling when you don't like somebody but just can't put your finger on why? You just naturally get repelled. I think I'm a repellant of some sort. I don't DO anything. I just repel some people. Or maybe most people. I especially get the feeling I won't fit in during CCA--if I get into table tennis, that is (I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE SELECTIONS. WTH?! JENNIFER YOU #($&#&@^#*^&*@!!!). I just know that it's not my crowd. I had such a hard time in lower sec. And now I have to struggle through another 2 years D:

Actually that's all I can be bothered to say at the moment. :/ To those going to school (WITH ALL THOSE FRIENDS OF YOURS YOU CAN STICK TO--GAHH), have fun and work hard! To those moving on to JC, GOOD LUCK TO US ALL.

2009-12-23T03:01:00.000-08:00

I'm amazed at how my energy reserve is actually deeper than I thought.

I went to check out December Camp 2009 (Ground Zero; 起飞) yesterday. Initially I'd just intended to have a peek and find out how my juniors were doing, but then Dileen told me I could do sentry duty with her if I stayed overnight, and I figured staying up to watch the nighttime sky was well worth it (and also the fact that "sentry duty" sounds kinda cool), so I ended up bringing along a sleeping bag. We didn't do much in the afternoon (Dileen and the others conked out because they'd gone dragon-boating in the morning). We went out for dinner at Sixth Avenue around 6, and then went back for another nap. Then at 9 we all went to witness what we had all been waiting for: the infamous Heaven and Hell. Honestly, I've never done Heaven and Hell myself; Batch '09 did it during June Camp last year, but I'd gone home early so I didn't catch it (not sure whether I should be laughing or crying about it now). I'd actually looked forward to watching the activity (all of us were most interested in the physical stuff. Mental workouts are boring to watch), but the moment I stepped into "Heaven" I knew I wasn't gonna like it. It was the atmosphere--you know, the kind of feeling you get when you've been given a death sentence that you can't escape. That's how I spent the night--watching my juniors do PT for 2 and a half hours in complete darkness, with a bunch of seniors yelling at them left, right and centre. I didn't find it in myself to yell at them because they were really giving it their all (there are times when you just can't break the limits your body has set for you. Mind-over-matter doesn't always work the way you want it to.), so I went around encouraging people instead. :/ Not sure how much it helped, but I felt a bit better when most of the people I encouraged straightened themselves out a little bit. I really felt like getting down on all fours and doing the PT with them, partly because I generally can't stand watching people exert so much effort without doing the same myself, and also because I never really got the chance to push my limits and feel good about. Honestly speaking, I feel like all my Council camps were flops. I tried, definitely, but I suppose in retrospect I could have tried a little harder. I felt like doing everything with them but I was afraid it was inappropriate or something. Then this girl sprained her ankle and ended up doing twinkies for the rest of the night (at least the others got to do rotational PTs. This girl was stuck with twinkies for the rest of her time in Hell, and even though her legs were fine her arms must have been on fire after, oh gosh, 30 seconds). She had to sit on a chair away from the others so I think they pretty much forgot about her; there was no one to cheer her on and stuff, so I jumped in and started doing twinkies with her. We counted down 30 seconds again and again. When you're working for a short-term goal like 30 seconds (and not 3 freaking hours!) it hurts less. I'm proud of Batch' 10 and Batch' 11 because they did last night what I never got to do, or what I never allowed myself to do. They can say that they've survived Heaven and Hell in the best way possible. Nice going guys (:

Dileen and Yu Xuan slept through the whole thing, lol. So after that the 3 of us went for sentry duty, and we lay down in the Quadrangle and looked up at the stars. We chatted about a whole lot of things--primary school life, people we like, people we don't like, how we're gonna survive next year... I never realized we'd get so frank with each other. It felt good to get all those things out and have someone to listen to them. Thanks you two (: THEN at 3AM we went upstairs to get some sleep and Wenqi and the rest took over. I slept like a log until 640, and then it was time to get up again. Yu Xuan, Wenqi, Jen Yi and I ran with the juniors (they had a morning run), but it was hardly tiring (SHORTEST COUNCIL RUN I'VE EVER RUN). When we got back the seniors had already finished most of the balloon heart thing (about a hundred or so balloons, more, maybe, tied to a web of ropes that spanned the width of the Quadrangle), and after a few more balloons, seniors stationed on the fourth floor on each side of the Quadrangle hoisted it up into the air. It looked real good (: Then Yu Xuan left for a friendly match at HC, and I left to go home and get some rest before going for Maris trng.

I slept for about an hour at home, and then I had lunch, and then ran off to get to Maris. Smart move. By the time I got there everyone had gone off for lunch, and by the time they got back I would only have 2 hours to train (which, to me, wasn't trng at all). Along the way I met Edwin and his brother, who invited me to get lunch with them, so I followed them out. Kevin permanently put me off the idea of getting a driving license :/ We went back (late) for trng and Edwin and I paired up for doubles (I wonder why Chen likes this combination so much). I think I was (to put it gently) completely useless. He did most of the whacking. I tried to do some whacking but my accuracy rate was--well, I didn't have accuracy at all. I've concluded that it's not that I'm a bad player; it's just that he's too good for me and I can't catch up with the way he plays. But it's kind of fun (: (Sorry Edwin. I really am sort of useless.)

And THEN (yeah. the day isn't over yet) I felt bad about only training for 2-odd hours, so I called my sister and asked her if she wanted to play with me once I got back. She agreed, so I went home for another hour of trng with my sister. FOR SOME REASON I'M A LOT BETTER AT HOME THEN WHEN I'M AT MARIS. We had a lot of fun, but by the time I got back home I was quite sick of being hot and sweaty and everything. I'd spent pretty much more than a day like that. So I took a long long LONG shower and had dinner (french fries only. I didn't want the burger, lol). And now I'm here (: AND STILL GOING STRONG.

The fact that I haven't collapsed yet is amazing. I've never done the whole staying-up thing before. I'm so proud of myself :D Tomorrow I'm playing with Lynn (JUNIOR APPLE--AHAHAHA) so that'll be another workout. I wonder if I should run for real tomorrow. Combined with yesterday and today's activities it's sure to burn a whole truckload of calories.

Okay I got work to do. BYE! (Merry Christmas, everyone--whatever that means!)

2009-12-15T05:52:00.000-08:00

Too many things have happened these days, and I honestly can't be bothered to explain all of them. I'm just going to talk about the easier stuff. (:

5 things that happened/I've done this/last week:

1. X-6 debut. First night, we didn't manage to get into the hype of performing. Second day, we TOTALLY got into the mood. I think we really got the gist of it around the last two shows. I didn't realize that some of my X-6 friends' friends were MY friends too. MY JUNIORS HAVE SEEN ME DANCE NOW D: THERE GOES MY REPUTATION. My neighbor watched me too. Rats. But then when I think about it I don't really mind. I think the performances went okay. :D Those three days were exhausting but it was SO worth it. X-6, we beat the crap outta all the other X-s in the world! We're the MAFIA :D (Eh, Newbie was super short-lived. He left just a few hours after getting to know the boss and his seniors. LOL.)

2. Fairy Tail. It's probably the worst manga I've ever bothered to read. But seriously, after seeing new chapters pop up like EVERY WEEK on Onemanga you start to get curious. It's like reading the new, even-more-psycho version of Rave (it was aired some 5 years ago on AXN). It's quite nostalgic, actually. Natsu looks like Haru and Lucy looks like Elie, and Plue is just...Plue. And Gray looks like Musica, I suppose (no...Loki does. Forget it, they all look alike). Gerard (I can't take the guy seriously. What kind of name is that?! Sounds like a cat) looks like the guy who wanted to kill Elie because of Ethelion. Can't remember his name. It's brainless and it's completely empty. But it's the holidays. Might as well get as brainless as possible.

3. Jitterbugs. I've realized. Everybody's gotta understand how hard it is to dance D: I can keep up, but it's a total mental workout. Jitterbugs is on a whole new level. My previous class is peanuts compared to this. It's super fast and it's actually sort of advanced :/ For me, anyway. Dunno about the other people. They're from the advanced class so I suppose they'd find the drop-in class easy, although some of them are like me, just managing to catch up. The fact that I haven't completely embarrassed myself is nothing short of astounding (I'm so proud of myself...ahahaha). Just thinking about it makes me nervous :/

4. Legend. WAHLAO SO HARD TO WRITE NOW. D: I'M STUCK.

5. Brenda stayed over. We've drifted dreadfully apart these few years. We're really quite different. But after spending a good long time chatting to her (and staying up) I've realized that she's one of those people I can really talk to, without holding back. I suppose childhood friends are friends for life. I mean, okay, she likes Twilight and she spends a lot more time on dressing up than I do. But I like even stupider stuff and I couldn't dress up the way she does even if you gave me an entire year. So her staying over did us both a whole lot of good (:

I'm done! Going on a cruise on Friday. Not looking forward to being stuck on a ship with no solid ground beneath my feet. Rats. And if (and God forbid) we really do get attacked by pirates, I think I'd get so pissed off I'd throw something sharp (or big) at them and tell them to beat it. I don't have a good temper when I'm not on land.

PWAH!

2009-12-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write a proper post, but I think the songs do better.

I'm going home
Downhearted and hoping
I'm close
To some new beginning
I know
There's a reason for everything
That comes and goes

But so many people are looking to me
To be strong and to fight
But I'm just surviving
I may be weak but I'm never defeated
And I'll keep believing
In clouds with that sweet silver lining

Most days I try
My best to put on a brave face
But inside
My bones are cold and my heart breaks
But all the while
Something's keeping me safe
And alive

I won't give up like this
I will be given strength
And now that I've found it
Nothing can take that away
[Kate Voegele: Sweet Silver Lining]

Hey there, sad eyes
What's on your mind?
Don't look so down
Give it sometime
You don't have to be
So hard on yourself
I know the world can be a brutal place
Please don't let it steal your smile away

'Cause when the sky is darkest
You can see the stars
And when you fall the hardest
You find how strong you are
Close your eyes, rest awhile
It's been a long, long day
So come on, baby, baby
Have a little faith

Let those tears fall
You gave it your all
It's all you can do
I'll be here for you
And there goes your pride
Crushed on the ground
Sometimes it takes a wall to tumble down
For you to see who's gonna stick around

Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better (yeah)
And it takes so much to be brave
Sometimes you're afraid it'll hurt forever
But when all the lights begin to fade
[Jordin Sparks: Faith]

You fight to keep what you have, and your system overloads again.

2009-12-03T06:39:00.001-08:00

Sorry, this whole thing about talent needs to cleared up in my head. So here goes:

What is it that propels people to the top? Everyone knows what to say: hard work; if you've got it, talent; and chance. Let's see what Jennifer's got!

1. Hard work. I know this well enough. When I hit Sec 1 I realized what it meant to work my ass off. I was a DSA student and surrounded by people who'd kicked my butt in PSLE. I survived, but only by spending double the time and effort, especially on Math and Science (oh, glad it's over now. HAHA). Likewise, the moment I entered the sport I knew I had very little talent at it. I don't suck at it. I just don't have the extra edge. Everything I have now was drilled into me by going early for school training, taking weekends off to play with Lynn (AHAHA LYNN TAN WE NEEDA MAKE THAT A ROUTINE) and private training (a few years back). If I train 12 hours a week, I get on par with people who train 6 or 9 hours a week. If I study two months before a Physics test, I lose out by one mark to people who study the night before (Sec 2, Block Test 2). I've done the math. It's been that way for years and I've gotten very used to the idea that putting in extra time and effort is the only way to get through this sport. I will never go too far with it because there are too many people out there who work as hard as I do, but just have the extra bit of talent that pushes them over the top. It might not seem like I work very hard, but hard work is a behind-the-scenes kind of thing, isn't it? No one in my class is going to tell you I'm a slacker. I know what it means to work hard. But to be fair, I also know what it means to play hard. I know very well. (:

2. Talent. Okay don't know much of this one. Academics: some for the languages, maybe, but zero for math and science (I get through tests by memorizing every possible question in the book). Sports: NO WAY IN HELL. I got this far by training and doing PT every other morning. And I haven't gone very far yet! Dance: I can coordinate things okay, and I might have some spunk for it, but I can't really tell. You can't go anywhere if you don't have solid ground beneath you. I need foundations first. I'll get back to you about this. In other words, all the achievements in my life has been accumulated and hoarded through hard work. The only thing I might have some real talent for is speech-making. I can keep up in debates--just. And trying my hand at speech competitions was the best decision I made this year. Then again, ironically, I hate debating. Aw nuts.

3. Chance. You need to know what to do when an opportunity presents itself. YOU TAKE IT, DUH. Run a risk, take a chance. I'm not very good at this but I tried out Orator's Cup, right? (Good decision, that one. Totally crazy and completely suicidal, but it worked out. Miracles do happen.) But I'm getting less brave by the day, really. I think it'll take an entire week of JC life for me to get the gung-ho attitude back.

So you need a little of all 3 to get to the top. People like to say that hard work is all you need. Okay, so everyone works hard. But it doesn't mean everyone's gonna hit the mark. Who's gonna get it? The people who work hard and have a gift for what they do. But some of these people still won't make it. They're the ones who don't dare to take a chance and let themselves be known and spotted. Let's be realistic about it, shall we? You do need talent, and you do need chance and luck. Those are the things that will help you whack a homerun, long and far. Hard work is already a given in our society. It's a pre-requisite. It's understood.

So I'm gonna work hard and take the right chances for the things I'm not gifted at but for which I have a passion, and I'm gonna friggin' work my ass off and take friggin' big risks for everything else (to heck with the stuff I don't care about!). There are going to be people who will kick my butt. I'm quite familiar with the idea. But I might as well just keep dealing with it. I will always have a good moan and groan about how it's bloody unfair that some people don't even have to try to be good at stuff, but that's a routine moaning-and-groaning thing (so ignore it the next time it comes up). I won't always try to be as good as the people who are talented, but I will work as hard as they do, in my own way, behind the scenes. It's a good way to live life.

I like the things I do now. I really do. ISN'T THAT ALL THAT MATTERS! I'M YOUNG AND I'M HAPPY SO I SHOULD FLIPPIN' MAKE THE MOST OUT OF IT! THREE CHEERS FOR THE GOLDEN YEARS OF YOUTH! :D

2009-12-02T04:46:00.000-08:00

5 things I've realized today:

1. When you're having muscle aches that are so bad they could kill you, it's not a good idea to go for training. I said it wasn't a good idea. I didn't say it was the idea I took. I went for training anyway and fifteen minutes into the stupid thing--SNAP!--something went wackus in my leg. Another half hour and SNAP went the other leg. For the rest of training I was absolutely exhausted. And on fire all over.

2. Stand back and look at things carefully; analyse everything that goes. Then you'll see where you are. How far everyone has gone, and how far you've fallen behind. You used to be able to do all that. You used to put up a real good fight, or even if you didn't, you won anyway. But that's all so far back in the past that you begin to wonder whether you were really up there at all. You can't catch up, you can't face up to the people whom you know are beneath you (or used to be--nothing's definite anymore), and you can't do the simplest of things without screwing up. After all that's over you go home and wonder what the hell you're doing, loving something that you'll never be good at.

3. Precisely that--I spent half the day doing things I will never get good at. I love the things that I don't have a talent for. And--get this--I hate the things I'm possibly gifted at. I hate debating and I really don't like giving certain sorts of speeches. Wonderful way to live life. Do the things you suck at and don't do the things you could make money out of. I love it.

4. Some people are born with the talents you would die for and you could stab them for it. But after resisting the urge (and that's saying something), you begin to wonder if you do have the capacity. It's possible that you have the talent, but that you need to get down to it and find it. They always say you can't if you think you can't. So the best way to bullet-train my way through things is to keep thinking I can go higher. I've been thinking that for the past year and I'm still waiting for something to happen. But I can't if I think I can't, so I must think I can. And wait.

5. It gets tiring putting your all into doing something you're not quite born to do. It's not like I'm gonna stop what I like to do just because I'm not good at it--if that were the case I would have quit a long long time ago--but it strikes me that it really exhausts me to keep up a passion for things that get me pretty much nowhere (statistically. Let's leave out the personal growth parts). Of course it would exhaust me even if it did get me somewhere. But the point is, throwing in 100% input and getting only 20% output is a little daunting sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. And it can get me down. Kind of like how it's pissing me off now. But it always passes, it's okay.

And the conclusion:

I'm taking tomorrow off.

I'M BAAAACCKKKK!!

2009-11-27T01:26:00.000-08:00

Okay so I'm back from the UK, after a year of thinking it would never happen. I'm not gonna say too much about it--you can read all about it from other people's blogs--but I'm just gonna emphasise that it was the best school trip I could ask for (save for the hostels. Now those were a disappointment). I took more just souvenirs and photos away from it, which sadly is more than what I can say for my other school trips. It has reminded me that I have more than enough reason to continue my passion in literature, because there is so much to discover and so much to be excited about; it has rekindled my interest in words, which died off a little after my exams, considering the cramming I had to do for Macbeth (which totally killed literature for me for a while). I am now fully charged up to write again, and that's something because I wrote till 1 in the morning yesterday. I suppose I might do it again tonight. :D

So that's over, and now lemme tell you something about the holidays: THEY'RE A FREAKING WASTE OF TIME BUT I LOVE IT. :D The day passes by so fast because you have nothing to work for; there's no schedule, no timetable, which is GREAT because you live your life literally the way you feel like living it. There's nothing holding you back. You wake up when you wanna wake up, you eat when you wanna eat, and you do whatever you want. I have watched more than 100 SYTYCD videos in 2 days. (: I re-wrote another chapter (that's about 28 pages), too. I read up on all the manga I'd missed out on during my trip (I didn't miss much. Disappointing stuff came out this week) and I checked my mail and I replied the right people... In other words, I haven't done anything particularly constructive ever since coming back. In fact, I have been atrociously lazy. BUT I LIKE IT. And I intend to live my life out to the fullest (quite literally) during this holiday, because when school starts, life is going to get a lot messier. Actually, here are the things I need to do this holiday (but on which I haven't quite started):

1. Clean up my room. You won't believe the clutter.
2. Keep on dancing. This is a little complicated. I don't like dance lessons anymore, but it doesn't mean I wanna stop dancing. I would be very unhappy without dance lessons. I think I may switch studios after December's performance. There's nothing wrong with my current class, but I guess I need to find a place where I can lay down my foundations before going for proper routines. Popping and locking would be good--it's a specific genre, which narrows down the stuff I have to cram into my head; and it's very technical, which will help me get basic skills right. I really want that because I want to pursue dancing properly. It's confusing 'cause there's advanced stuff I can pull off (e.g. SYTYCD stuff), but basic stuff I can't do to save my life. (like a simple arm wave--STILL TRYING TO FIGURE THAT ONE OUT). I'll figure that out in December. If I find the time I shall do something crazy and completely out of my element, like tap and broadway or something. (: But getting hip-hop foundation down comes first.
3. Train. You won't believe how much I want to get back into competition mode. I miss those days. D: If I had it my way I would train EVERY DAY (except Sat, which is dance day, and which I can do nothing about).
4. Read the books I bought in UK. The stupid philo book, the Latin book, and Wuthering Heights. Good luck to us all.
5. Finish Legend. This is the one chance I have to finish it (after a freaking year!), because when school starts I won't have time to even touch it.
6. Read up on History because, on a crazy whim, I decided to put History down as a H2 subject next year. Really, I should just stick a knife into my gut and be done with it.
7. Go running. I haven't gotten round to this yet. I just can't bring myself to get up early :D
8. Write a bunch of poems and short stories that have been running around in my head but that I haven't penned down yet. Rats.

And on a different note, I have to add that the dancers on SYTYCD are freaks of human nature. Imagine the stress of having to throw out performance after performance, week after week, and each time it's a new genre that you probably haven't even heard of before (Russian folkdancing is a beautiful style, but NO ONE REALLY KNOWS ABOUT IT). Imagine a ballroom dancer having to get down and dirty with hip hop; a contemporary dancer having to shake it with salsa; a tap dancer having to turn up the heat with paso doble. Millions of people watching you, and the judges ready to pounce at any mistake you make; up against other dancers whose lives are dedicated to their profession, who live and breathe the art. You either make it or you don't. The competition was designed in a make-or-break fashion, which is good for the audience, bad for the dancers. Those who survive (or dare to audition, even) are the ones who know what they want and believe whole-heartedly in themselves. It's amazing how they keep it up, week after week, style after style. I will never dance like that (LOL) but it's nice to dream. (:

Okay now I shall get down to writing again. Sorry this blog has been dead for so long! (Some people lazy lah...ahaha)

PS. I haven't linked Linus yet, but if you can, check out his blog. Some people sure have hidden talents. http://please-don't-burp.blogspot.com or something. I'll make all the long-overdue links tomorrow. (:

2009-11-13T06:16:00.001-08:00

The only interesting thing that happened today was training, so here goes!

I woke up in the morning and found out that there was gonna be training in the afternoon. I was still half-asleep (but I could make sense of the SMS, tyvm) but I dragged myself out of bed to ask my mum if I could go. She'd said NO TRAINING ON FRIDAY BECAUSE YOU'RE JUST GONNA TIRE YOURSELF OUT AND THEN HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GO TO UK YOU TELL ME?! but I thought I'd risk it. (: And so when I asked her ever so tentatively ("Uh, Mummy--whom I LOVE..."), she said vaguely, "Go if you wanna go. But I ain't taking you there." Or words to that effect. So the risk was worth it. Totally unexpected beginning to the day! :D

And so I slacked off till about 12 (I tried to write stuff, but I only finished off like, two lines. I was watching too many dances lol), and then I had lunch with my mummy and then I made my way to Maris. I'm proud of myself--I managed to navigate my way to the school from the MRT. :D But I began to regret going when I realized I was the ONLY GIRL IN THE HALL and that everyone else was from China and therefore of a level of talent I will never understand. :/ It was okay after I was assigned to do some stuff, but I'm telling you, you walk in there and find out you're the only girl, you'll feel like running away pronto. The only reason why I didn't is because Chen'd already spotted me. :/

DO YOU KNOW SOMETHING. I actually managed to get some ball sense back today (: I started training with this little guy 小马 (yeah, like, literally) and at first I was a bit doubtful, because he's TINY and he wasn't that great the last time I'd seen him. But a few months can do miracles--HE'S CRAZY. He whacked the first ball I served and I was like, whoa. Okay granted he can't beat me :D But he's what, 8? And playing with him gets me worked up into demolition mode (I REALLY let it out that first hour) so that's good :D

Then we had to play matches against each other and that's where the only-girl thing freaked me out again--not to mention some old nemeses had popped out of the blue (not you, Edwin--you're not a nemesis!). I decided I'd just go in there and have fun--AND DO YOU KNOW, IT WAS AWESOME. It wasn't just fun; it was exhilarating. I was exhausted by the end of the first few matches and I'd started to get this blinding headache, but I didn't want to stop (even though I knew my mum would KILL me if she found out). I somehow found my way to the first table, got the crap beaten out of me by Seth (GAHH), but that was okay 'cause the previous few opponents hadn't really been much, so I hadn't gotten the feel of it yet--BUT AFTER THAT THE COMPETITION-MODE ME WAS BACK HAHA. Okay, it wasn't. But it was the closest thing I'd gotten to it in months. I mean, I didn't even think about what I was doing. The whole instinct-reflex-justwhackit thing was back. I got the whole blank-mode heck-care just-do-it thing back. I GOT A LOT OF STUFF BACK HAHAHA.

Yeah okay fine I was better in the REAL competition mode some six months ago. :/ But it felt so good. I made dumb mistakes and I really have lost some of the techniques (particularly the ones that go all science-y--the whole hit-it-when-it's-just-left-the-table-'cause-the-resultant-force-blah-blah kind), but I'll ignore those for the moment. (: What I mean is, I got the table-tennis feel back. Every time I whacked it, it felt right (OKAY NOT EVERY TIME BUT IT'S A MANNER OF SPEECH), and there was this solidarity upon impact. Sometimes it's all dull and hollow. (If this doesn't make sense, it's okay. It doesn't make sense to me either.)

After training Edwin and I went back to J8 together. I'm telling you, HE IS A CHILD OF NO MORE THAN FIVE YEARS OLD. He talks nonsense :/ But you should see him when he's in the okay-I-gotta-win-this mode. He's got this coolness to him when he gets serious, and then you feel like taking a step back and going "Whoa, take it easy". (Don't let this get to your head, Edwin! You're still a kid! :D)

All in all, uneventful, but totally worth remembering. When I get back from the UK, it's TRAINING ALL THE WAY. OKAY I'M GONNA GO SLEEP NOW I'M POOPED BYE!

JI INN MADDIE YOU ABANDONED ME D: I'll catch up with y'all at the Globe (:

WHO'S BACK? WHO'S BACK? (:

2009-11-12T06:13:00.000-08:00

HAHAHAHAHA I HAVE NOT POSTED FOR LONG ENOUGH SO NOW IT IS TIME TO BRING THIS STUPID BLOG BACK TO LIFE! (This is going to be very long. You might wanna fetch some popcorn and maybe a Coke.)

Okay, exams are over (like, over. Even Chinese O's--HAHA). So bad things all come to an end, even if it feels like they won't. (: I like to think that every time something bad happens and I gotta get through it. My results were actually better than I expected (I thought Chinese and IH were down the drain, but they were just tethering over the edge) and I'm just thoroughly relieved I made it to HC (this sounds stupid, but anything can happen, and I was pretty sure that anything would happen. It didn't, so yeah okay you win Stella!). HP is another thing, but there's nothing I can do about it now (signed up for it though) so I'll just see how it goes.

Went to Langkawi a few weeks ago and I'm telling you THAT WAS THE LIFE. (: The sea was crystal-clear and the sand was so fine it was like water anyway, and the people were awesome. It was the perfect reward for getting out of EOYs alive (although by the second day I was already worrying about my results). My sister and I shared a room and I think we bonded a lot (we watched lots of TV at night and we did a lot of dancing to weird songs--I think they were doing the Phineas and Ferb Top 10 Songs Countdown or something). So that was good (: And now that Chinese O's are over (HALLELUJAH!) I seriously have nothing on my agenda. I mostly spend my time sleeping, writing (I have made breakthroughs, tyvm!), worrying about UK (LET'S GO ALREADY), and going out with friends. I'm telling you, this is the life. I'm not used to having no work yet, but I could certainly get used to it. It's like the end of a road, and even though there's another long, tedious one ahead of you, there's a brief stretch of green grass in between. I'm gonna enjoy this stretch of grass. (: I totally deserve it--as does everyone else!

I've also be trying to train a little more these few days. I squeezed in 6 hours--last night I headed to Maris and today I went for school training. Maris training was painful. I mean, not really literally (well yes literally--I'm aching all over now. I've completely lost my physical fitness because I haven't trained properly for AGES). It was painful because it's disturbing how much I've deteriorated. I mean, okay, I did alright for someone who hasn't touched bat and ball in weeks, but thinking about all the things I used to be able to do is sort of...well, it's not very nice. :/ I used to put up a good fight for a lot of people, and NOW I AM A SITTING DUCK. I think most of you would know by now: I have no talent. I get by with hard work and by training twice as hard as anyone else (not like some people we all know...darn all you talented people.). Without the training, I'm screwed. So yesterday told me what I needed to know. Reflexes, ball sense, ZERO. We're back to square one.

Nanyang training was slightly better. I managed to get some good sense back--the instinct never leaves me, it just sleeps on me sometimes. It's like a hibernating animal now and I gotta wake it up. It's quite stubborn, but it's stirring. The bad news is that I won't be able to train in the UK so it doesn't really matter how good I am now. When I get back, though, it's training all the way. It's like major demolition mode. I kind of whack everything that goes. (:

I've been reminded how hard it is to fit in. Sometimes, it's not something you do or didn't do--it's just how people look at you. I'm not going to change myself (much) just to fit into the crowd, but I certainly won't let myself get too close, either. The people who know my name say I'm loud. The people who know me say I'm quiet. So now you know people are like onions. They've got layers.

There are many more things I want to say here, but I can't really remember what they are. I'll say it when I remember. I'm exhausted so I'm gonna go hit the sack now. (: I'll be back tomorrow and hopefully by then I will know what I want to say. I remember they're relatively important and actually quite emotional...but it's too late into the night for emotional ranting, so I'll spare you. In the meantime, here are some things I should probably tell a few people:

Stella: UK UK UK UK UK UK. You're rooming with me so good luck and God bless you. (: I will love you no matter where you go so your not being in HP won't matter to me (and I haven't made it there yet!). Do what you have to do for yourself :D And then, UK UK UK UK UK UK!
Edwin: Sorry I can't go for training these few weeks. I'll be back after 25th. (: When I get back please be merciful if I have to play with you. You would have trained for weeks already. I would be totally back to basics.
Yingjie: Happy belated birthday and good luck for your A levels! (:
Ji Inn, Maddie: HAVE A SAFE TRIP! (: We'll see you at the Globe!
Linus: Too bad I can't see you before I leave. D: I'll see you after I get back, then! Take care (:
Rosemary: Wallace videoed us D: CAN WE KILL HIM PLEASE. GAHH. It was great working with you (: I GIVE YOU HUG! HAHA.
Lynn: JUNIOR APPLE. I'll see you when I get back (: We'll marathon it--10 hours of training in one day. I'll bet you we can do it. Whether we survive after those 10 hours is another question. We'll see how it goes. :D

Okay I'm done. 'Night!

GAHH.

2009-10-09T03:48:00.001-07:00

GAHH is my new favourite word. It's very appropriate. "Chemistry--GAHH!" "Literature--GAHH!" "Dance performance--GAHH!" "Sister singing in the bathroom for the world to hear--GAHH!" VERY appropriate.

You should be able to guess by now that Chemistry and Literature didn't go too well. Very funny, Mr. Tan--YOU WERE TOTALLY HINTING, PLEASE. By the end of the lesson we'd taunted him so much saying he was giving us hints for the exam that he was practically stamping his foot and snapping, "I'm telling you, girls, it's not a hint! If you only study the things I told you about you will DIE!" And then we go for the exam and the next thing we know we're looking at the EXACT SAME PASSAGE he went through. GAHH. Nevertheless, it was SCREWED UP BEYOND ALL IMAGINATION. I ended up saying something about "tacit, unspoken love and concern" for the unseen prose, and halfway through I was wondering what kind of mushy crap I was wasting my time on (DH Lawrence has a problem. All his characters are very annoying. What kind of idiot uses a newspaper for a tablecloth?). And then the essay--nothing I studied came out. D: I was praying and praying the question would be along the lines of a. Macbeth b. Lady Macbeth c. supernaturalism d. "you don't have to do this question--the teachers can't be bothered to mark it". Lady Macbeth came out and I nearly shouted HALLELUJAH...until I realized I had NO IDEA what the question was talking about. They were totally cheating--they asked 3 questions, not 1! GAHH. I ended up writing a pathetic, disjointed essay that just screamed IDON'TKNOWWHATI'MTALKINGABOUT with every new line of rubbis.

Don't even ask about Chemistry.

Well, 5 subjects down, 3 to go: Japanese, Math and Physics. GAHH. Okay fine, this is a very important signpost (...?) in our struggle towards freedom and liberation. 5 subjects down! I consider that a large load lifted off our shoulders...YEAH, RIGHT.

I don't know if I can last that long. D: I'm so exhausted from the past few months of extreme book-marathoning. 2 weeks seems like forever now. I really don't think I can make it. And then, even if I do, there's the trauma of getting the papers back. Now THAT'S real trauma.

In the meantime! 5 things that cheer me up:

1. the awesome 7! :D our story is such rubbish HAHA but it's so fun to write :D anything that says a phoenix and a duck can be cousins MUST be good.

2. despite the fact that my world has practically grounded to a halt, other people's world's have not. every now and then i allow myself to go online and read some interesting mangas that make no sense but make you very happy (they make you feel smart). BUT sometimes the latest few chapters of a few less well-known mangas can only be found in japanese. kekkaishi is VERY long-winded and philosophical now because they're still tiding over the aftermath of the battle (so everyone's very depressed at the moment). imagine reading 18 pages of long, long paragraphs of complicated kanji you ain't never even seen before. GAHH.

3. the thought of all the idiotic things i want to do after EOYs--buy a frilly dress for my dog, visit clara's new puppy milo, dye my dog pink or something, go to east coast park with the other two musketeers and cycle our way through the day, go dancing in the rain with fei ya...

4. THE FACT THAT I HAVE A PET PHOENIX CALLED KAI AND A PET DUCK CALLED DUCKSIE AHAHAHAHAH.

5. ...okay i don't have a 5. GAHH.

My life is very miserable at the moment.

It's okay, I only have to fight on for two more weeks.

WHAT DO I MEAN "ONLY" GAHH I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE I NEED TO GO AND PUNCH MY PILLOW OR SOMETHING SOFT LIKE SOMEONE'S FACE OKAY THANKS BYE.

Adventure for 7!

2009-10-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

OKAY SO WE ALL GONNA GO ON AN ADVENTURE AHAHAHAHA. So here's what we came up with (and I think it has been scientifically proven by us 7 experimental subjects that IH does indeed stimulate the imagination...4 hours later).

Alias-es (just in case we die in the adventure, and do not want the bad luck to carry over to real life)

Stella likes the name Sharina (sounds like a warrior princess ahaha)
Sharon can't think of any name she fancies. Very well, we shall make one up for you...
Jennifer likes the name Ira, although she admits it is not a name.
Fei Ya likes the name Tarzan (you better be sure about that!)
Maddie likes the name Kayla (nice one!)
Ji Inn likes the name Rhea...until she found out it sounds like something else. :/
Jing Yi didn't say. Very well, we shall make something up for you too (I suggest you come to school on Monday mentally prepared).

Magic objects/pets (which should come in handy, considering that our adventures sound relatively dangerous)
Stella would like either a playful monkey (you have me already and you want another monkey?!) or a younger, magic version of Tuki (you'd also better train him to sink his teeth into evil people!)
Sharon wants a magic unicorn that can fly (unicorns fly lah!) and a bag full of "useful things and food". Ah, food, as always, Sharon.
Jennifer would like an embodiment of her soul (it might come out pretty ugly though...heh heh), preferably one that has a sense of humor and can guide her along the way.
Ji Inn wants a something that can shapeshift. Whoa, Ji Inn.
Maddie wants Mushu from Mulan. Are you sure? His ego may be a slight problem. Ah, well, your problem, not mine!
Jing Yi and Fei Ya did not comment. However, I believe Fei Ya intends to bring that 81kg-dog along. Mind you, YOU'RE feeding it.

Our positions on the field
It has been agreed (somewhat) that:
Stella is the medic.
Jing Yi is the strategist (she's a scholar. If anyone can do it, it's her. Also because no one else can...AHAHAHAHA).
Sharon is Jing Yi's bodyguard (considering that Jing Yi will be busy most of the time).
Fei Ya, Jennifer, Ji Inn and Maddie are positioned in the field. Fei Ya is the distraction, while Jennifer and Ji Inn fight it out while panicking and thinking, "OMG I'M GONNA DIE", and Maddie sneaks off to the toilet in an attempt to escape the violence...oh, I mean, to relieve herself.

What kind of adventure we should go on (oh, this part is funny)
1. Wizard of Oz Genre (i.e. kena tornado. Hello?! We're in Singapore!)
2. Finding a new world
3. A world that is gonna fall apart and which we need to save...but we won't, don't worry.
4. Fei Ya prefers to stay at home. I'm sure something awesome will happen at your house, though.
5. An adventure in a forest (without the insects and the scary creatures. Then it isn't an adventure anymore! We might as well camp out in your garden. D: )
6. An adventure in school at night. We might find a secret portal hidden somewhere in the LA Department! :D (As well as important information that may save our lives...exam scripts anyone?)

I'm sure our story will turn out great. I wonder if we'll get to kill people off :D

WE'RE ALL ALONE IN THIS WORLD GET USED TO IT.

2009-09-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

Gah okay I'm so emotional now. :/ I think it's because of EOYs lol. Not that I can help it! Even the smallest thing can piss me off and then I have to fight the irresistible urge to put my fist through something (normally, people's faces). I mean, come on, Jennifer, get over it. It's a small thing :/ But my temper is really, REALLY short now (okay, try non-existent. I just blow up.) and it only takes one mean word to set me off. And when I'm off, I'm really off. You don't want to be within a 5m radius of me when it happens. It's nuclear.

I feel myself drifting away. There's a barrier--the six of them, and then me. It seems okay on the surface, but when they ALL start getting on your back TOGETHER then you find yourself getting cornered. I thought I belonged there, and maybe I do. I fitted in so perfectly. But now, clearly, I don't. I'm the punching bag--literally, and you try getting hit some 12 times by someone who has like the sharpest knuckles in the world while the other 5 people stand there and laugh--and even though I try not to ask for it, it seems like no one needs an invitation anymore. One person starts, and even though I'm clearly losing the sense of fun and entertainment in the conversation, no one else picks up on it. I mean not everyone in the group picks on me, but no one defends me, either. It's quite tiring when no one ever agrees with you anymore, or disagrees just for the fun of it. It's for granted now--Jennifer isn't going to blow it, because she's always let us, and if she does, it doesn't matter, she'll get over it. She's in the habit of getting pissed off with small things, anyway.

But there's only so much I can take. And you wonder why I don't post on your blog.

And that's why we're mostly alone in our lives. You can have your friends, but even your closest companions can turn on you without even knowing it. The best of your best friends can drift away, either unintentionally or because they want to, and then you're left behind while they find their new bunch of friends. And yeah they have their freedom and all, but it's tiring that your friendship with someone can float one day and sink the next. There's probably no such thing as "best friends forever", then. All the best friends I've had have left me behind in one way or another. Those who remain may fall away in time to come. It's a fact of life. A sad one, but I've been rejected enough to accept it. I wonder if I've ever been the one to drift away first. I must be a real sucker, because I don't think so. Damn it, I want to do that to someone now. (Okay, I don't, but it would be so nice if I weren't the victim just this once!)

You're with them, but you're not. You can see it, the barrier, the divide. You have your own fights, and they can be on the sidelines--but even if they're cheering for you, which they're not, they can't help you win it. You have to fight on your own. At the end of the day, there's no one to fight the world for you except you.

Yeah okay EOYs REALLY getting to me. :/ I know I totally don't have time for this, and yeah I know I should totally be spending my time doing something much more constructive, but I just thought people should know. And, damn it, I want to be angry, but it isn't going to last forever. Because they're pretty much all I have--if I push them out of my life, what else I got? I need them and so it's only natural that I soften and give in, even though I remember it all. For the goodnessknowshowmany-ieth time in my life, I want to be as immature and childish as possible and STAY mad, until I get my way. Yes, I want that. Oh man, I so freaking want that. Because you people should SEE it.

Yeah, I'm whining. But get used to it. And fat lot you people care, anyhow. But anyway, yeah, whatever, I really don't have time for this, so after the song I'm gonna go and do things that really matter, like Chinese and what-the-hell, so okay thanks bye.

When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful
Every hour spent together lives within my heart...
So the years went by, I stayed the same
She began to drift away, I was left alone...
Lonely and forgotten, never thought she'd look my way
She smiled at me and held me, just like she used to do
When she loved me, when she loved me
When somebody loved, everything was beautiful
Every hour spent together lives within my heart
When she loved me

Sarah McLachlan

2009-09-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah okay I don't really know why I'm posting this when I should be STUDYING (JENNIFER YOU FREAKING PROCRASTINATOR) but I really have to let it out, so.

You ready?

I'M GONNA DIE SO BADLY OMG I WANNA BURY MYSELF SO DEEP IN THE GROUND THE HEAT FROM THE EARTH'S CORE SCORCHES MY ASS.

I've just realized the enormity and the importance of what I'm fighting for. I mean, well, it's not really THAT big a deal--just getting into a really good Junior College, and getting into an even more elite Humanities Program. But it's just that I want it so badly. To top it off, everyone knows I want it, everyone thinks I'm gonna make it. And I know I should live life for myself and not give a damn about what other people think, but the thing is, when you start living a high-profile life where most people in school know you and have expectations of you regardless of whether they like you or not, it gets to you. It doesn't inflate your head, certainly. It just puts pressure on you and reminds you that the world expects you to deliver, and God forbid, if you ever fail... I have a good chance, but things happen, you know? I'm up against serious competition, anyway.

So, yeah, working hard is taken care of. I can't say I'm not working hard, although sometimes I do have to slap myself a few times to stay awake--but I'm putting in effort and I'm getting things done. All that's left is those few hours that will determine pretty much everything for me right now. If I get it, and ohmygod I want it so much, then kudos to me :D If I don't, I suspect I'll get over it, but things will never be the same for me. I mean, well, yeah. I take that long to get over big stuff like this.

I'm really fighting for something for the first time in my life.

World Scholar's Cup was a fight. Table tennis is a fight. EOYs have always been a fight. This is different. It feels bigger.

On the other hand, I just went running and it felt SO GOOD OH MAN. And now I've just had my shower and I feel so refreshed and ready for anything (except perspiring again) and I'm going to have a nice, nutritious dinner. Ah, the small pleasures of life.

OKAY DINNER AND THEN HOMEWORK THANKS BYE BYE.

Suan-ing, PMs and NSW

2009-09-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

Yeah so I've decided I shouldn't really participate in daily conversations unless they contribute to my intellectual and/or academic progress, or unless they are totally harmless (e.g. talking about food, which can't really get you hurt unless you talk about how MUCH food someone eats). I mean, I think my suan-ing abilities really cannot make it :/ It's either that or the fact that I am always against 2 or 3 (or 6) people who all have the innate desire to gang up with each other once I open my mouth and suan one of them. Which, upon backfiring, ends up hurting me more than it hurts the other person. I mean, well yeah, I asked for it lol. 8D But not that way. It's (supposedly) harmless suan-ing until they decide that, since I'm the main object for entertainment and ridicule, they should suan me regardless of whether I'm saying anything to begin with. I mean it's all harmless fun--I hope--but after a while you just get quite tired. I'm exhausted, actually, so I think I shall put down my sword and shield (if I had one to begin with) and lie down and let other people fight it out. Yeah and not many people willingly become objects of entertainment (at their expense) and ridicule, especially when they're being outnumbered 6 to 1. After a while it gets overboard, you know? So, yeah, I should stop talking heh heh.

"Eva's powerful stomach growl", and "4-3 WTF", and "I'm on the verge of a myocardial infarction, about to spontaneously combust or die from excess waves of mugging". Wow. The people I have on MSN are REALLY good at coming up with PMs. (: I just need to log in and scan through my list of contacts and I always end up having a really good laugh. At the same people, too, normally. Some are actually quite meaningful (Don't tell us the sky's the limit when there're footprints on the moon, Meichun's). My PMs are mostly about bashing people up or dancing or wisecracks from stuff I watch (e.g. that 5 minute video about HALO that Linus made me watch--"Halos are 6 miles wide but conveniently do not show up on telescopes"). Alternatively, they are about alpacas, cherry blossoms or flightless birds. I think PMs are the only thing I really like about MSN with all my heart. 8D Gmail's PMs have insane word limits. :/ "Today is a f..." and then it gets cut off.

Yeah okay so Distinction for NSW. *Sigh* I like reading the passages, just not answering questions about them. I KNOW what they're talking about. I just don't know what the QUESTION is talking about. I remember wanting to tear the booklet apart during the test. Then, remembering that I would most likely have to pay a fine, I decided I'd tear some other piece of paper. I think I forgot, because all the scrap paper from my file IS STILL IN MY FILE AND SHOULD BE TORN AND THROWN AWAY IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE THEY'RE GETTING REALLY HEAVY. Okay, that's going on my to-do list. Remind me.

IN THE MEANTIME I SHOULD STUDY FOR EOYS I SHOULD BE DOING MATH NOW OKAY THANKS BYE.

The Lit-Game

2009-09-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

(Yeah okay Stella I'm a hypocrite!)

I never liked TS Eliot. Have you ever read the Cat thing? You could read it for hours on end and still be clueless about what he's talking about. Of course, you get the gist of it AFTER A WHILE...but if he has a point to make, why doesn't he just say so? :/

It's occured to me that literature is a man-made beauty. It's the art of expressing a thought in a very roundabout, beat-around-the-bush way. In other words, it's the art of fluff. Alexander Pope didn't like the frivolity of the society around him, so he wrote "The Rape of the Lock" to mock how people took trivial things a little too seriously and failed to treat the more important matters with the same vigilance. He couldn't just say, "Hey, guys, quit being so girlishly frivolous and focus on the right stuff" and publish that one line in the newspaper (or maybe they didn't have newspapers at the time. I'm too lazy to go check it up). George Orwell foresaw terrible social and psychological backlashes of totalitarianism, and wrote 1984 to issue a dire warning against such a society. He couldn't just say, "Totalitarianism sucks because (insert various reasons here), so don't be totalitarians, everybody" and publish it in the newspaper--and I know for a fact that by Orwell's time newspapers had already been invented. Both Pope and Orwell, amongst thousands of other famous writers, chose to express themselves in the most complicated way possible, and while their satirical attacks were blatantly salient, the attacks themselves were not quite as blatant as some people might have liked them to be (like me!). No, it takes things like Sparknotes and many months of close reading before you finally understand exactly what each author wants to say, and even then your intepretations of the stories are highly debatable.

I don't mind, certainly. Literature is a way of life. Some people see literature not only as a hobby, but as a civilized, cultured way of expressing oneself and communicating intangible thoughts in tangible words. Literature is a game. One person creates a piece of work, and the other players try to understand its meaning, reading the words that are said but not written. There aren't really any winners or losers, but it's an interesting game that few people can play well. At the end of the day, playing the lit-game means having to deal with complex thought processes that are intangible, invisible and often extremely personal; grasping them and accepting them doesn't always come easily. Literature may be the art of fluff, but it's a game of intellect and skill. You either play it well, or you don't.

But the whole thing has just gotten me thinking. If our ancient ancestors knew how to express themselves in clear, simple ways (e.g. "That's an awful hairdo" instead of "Your hair is like a nest, a web of tangled strands of brown and black"--that's probably something a poet would say), why did they choose to form the art of expressing themselves in not-so-clear, not-so-simple ways? Why come up with the art of literature when short, concise sentences would do? And, by extension, why come up with visual arts? If an artist wanted to portray world peace, for example, all he has to do is draw a. a dove b. a globe c. WORLD PEACE in block letters and be done with it. Artists nowadays go to great lengths to paint abstract shapes in the weirdest of colours, and then, after audiences put their head on one side and go, huh? they finally step up and say, "This piece of work portrays world peace". Why bother?

I really don't know. Logically, it makes no sense. People are just making things more complicated for themselves. Because literature is often ambiguous, the original meaning often gets confused with personal audience interpretations, and it may not be understood the way the author intended. On the other hand, though, maybe ancient people were just bored. Maybe they just wanted a more interesting way of dealing with the world, and with people around them.

No one will really truly understand the birth of this weird thing called "art" (or maybe you do--TELL ME!), but whatever the reason, I'm just glad literature came about. For one, I'm good at it, so that's my only saving grace--and for another, literature is powerful. A simple piece of work can change the way people think, can cause a turn in the tide. In this day and age, when political, economic and social environments are so deathly volatile, literature is an even more formidable weapon than before. The game isn't over yet; the war on words has only just begun.

Top 5 Things That Are Currently Happening

2009-09-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Things That Are Currently Happening

1. I'm losing my English edge ahhh D: All the typos and the grammatical errors. When I read books I keep having to re-read long sentences. I don't know who I should blame--the author for writing such long sentences that lose all sense halfway through (DUNE!), or myself. Not that I'm one to talk: sometimes during exams and I'm afraid the teacher won't get what I'm saying I tend to write like paragraphs and paragraphs about the same point and sentences that last like 5 lines and even I get confused by the end of the sentence but what the heck, you only ever have 1 hour and 45 mins for one unseen and two essays, so I never turn back to check my work, which explains the lousy marks. D:

2. I'm sleeping way too much. I sleep before assembly, in between classes (sometimes during classes...shhh) and after school. I still get work done but I just can't get through the evening and night without sleeping. It's the exam stress I tell you D: I slept at an obscenely early hour last night. I woke up this morning--just--and realized a little too late that sleeping too early all of a sudden makes it even harder to get your brain back into working mode. It wasn't until my class launched into a full-out basketball game that I snapped wide awake. If you're asleep in the middle of a 409 basketball game, good luck to you.

3. I have a temper that's like a bomb with a 1mm fuse D: Okay sorry that was a bad analogy, but you get the point. Any minute I feel like going BAM and strangling the most convenient person nearby (except Sharon. If I try to strangle her I'll end up getting strangled). If I don't get a Math question right (e.g. trigonometry--meaning ALL the questions in the booklet) I go AHHHH and I curse the person who came up with trigonometry. If I slip and fall on the stairs I go AHHHH and I curse the person who invented stairs. If I can't wake up on time from a nap I go AHHHH...and go back to sleep. (: If any of you are looking for a fight just come to me, piss me off and I'll give you a fight, you li'l buggers.

4. I'm reading a lot of rubbish. E.g. all the mangas that really make no sense, books from long ago that should be for 10 year old kids, Japanese labels on branded biscuits from my mum...Maybe it's because I subconsciously need to convince myself that I can still read long sentences. Not that mangas contain long sentences. At the most, they go AHH and CRAP and STAY AWAY FROM ME YOU (bleep bleep)-ers and then the sentence ends. And Japanese labels don't have to be long to confuse me. They just need to contain more than 3 Kanjis in one sentence and I drop the box.

5. I CAN'T CONCENTRATE ON STUDYING FOR EOYS OMG I'M GOING TO DIE. Actually I shouldn't be writing this post at all. Oops.

OKAY GONNA STUDY THANKS BYE.

Top 10 Things That Make Me Laugh Till I Cry

2009-09-16T04:22:00.001-07:00

I told you there'd be a second list (: (These are inside jokes, so only 409ers would get them...heh heh)

Top 10 Things That Make Me Laugh Till I Cry

1. (and currently the top-rated event) Regina's "Tell me more. Tell...me...more...BU YAO ZOU!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

2. Regina's SMS: "I'm comin' for you turkey!" I suppose it was because I'd SMS-ed her with "Where are you bao!" She likes to respond in kind...so don't hug her.

3. Fei Ya's "ACHOO ACHOO ACHOO...pwah." Oh, man, Fei Ya. You're hilarious. (And second to this is Pamela's sneeze: "meep!")

4. Stella's thing about hyperventilating in Thai Noodle House. I can't remember what it was about...but I know it was hilarious.

5. Zhenglaoshi's "wo hui ba ni sa diao ah!" We're all still here, so...

6. Katekyo Hitman Reborn. I tell you, it's hilarious. I love Yamamoto's "oh, it's a game. okay!" attitude. I also love Gokudera's undying determination to be the perfect right-hand man (OMG PLEASE THE DYNAMITES HAHAHAHAHA). It's a wonderful way to spend your holidays: afternoons filled with baseball bats, dynamites, yo-yos, dying-will bullets, sponge turtles (don't ask) and cooking that's so bad it'll kill you. No, really.

7. Ouran High. People grow mushrooms in the background (literally) whenever they fall into depression. Need I say more?

8. Pamela's hypothesis A: "Shakespeare was Buddhist?!"
Pamela's hypothesis B: "Malcolm is gay?!"

9. That episode in Fullmetal Panic, when Sousuke tried to do Japanese Literature and couldn't help but take everything literally (and militarily). "The frog jumped into the pond and made ripples in the water. So? Does it have anything to do with the mission?" And the conversation between him and Kaname that happened in probably about three seconds:
K: "You go look for him. NOW!'
S: "Roger!" (runs off to Staff Room)
S: (returns) "I went to look for him!"
K: "How was it?"
S: "He wasn't there!"
K: (WHACK)

Three seconds.

10. That moment in Midori Days, when the guy's best friend bounced up to him and yelled "MAN YOU'RE AWESOME WORD'S GOING ROUND THAT YOU SMASHED YOUR FIST INTO THAT GANGSTER'S CAR AND TOTALLY DESTROYED HIS CAR BONNET". Then the guy bolted to his feet and smashed his fist onto the desk and yelled back "DO YOU THINK I COULD DO THAT?!"

Being able to laugh is a blessing. SO LAUGH! :D

Top 10 Events that Jiggled My Heart

2009-09-16T03:28:00.000-07:00

I can never be a columnist. I'm never consistent with my posts (:

Maddie your stupid list is in my head now. I have to make one of my own or I'll go crazy. :D I said "jiggled my heart" instead of "touched" because most of the touching ones are sad and I'm sad enough as it is, thanks. "Jiggled" is on a smaller scale, so I hope this list is a little more light-hearted. Here goes!

Top 10 Events that Jiggled My Heart

1. From 2008, when a particular someone decided to confess me (completely by accident!). I think you should thank that friend of yours. (:

2. From a week ago, when a particular someone walked from Raffles Place to Boat Quay then to the Supreme Court then to Clarke Quay and THEN to the Esplanade under the afternoon sun with me after an awesome Subway lunch :D I liked it that we didn't even have to try to make conversation. We just did. I think you're the only guy I can talk to without getting in the least nervous. We should go on dates more often. Next stop, East Coast! :D

3. From Dune, when Gurney met Paul again after 3 years (and after assuming he was long dead). It was so relieving that they could finally fight alongside each other again, instead of unknowingly firing missiles at each other ("Oh, man. That was YOU?!").

4. From Kekkaishi, when Gen was introduced to and (somewhat) accepted by the Yagyou. Well, his life was screwed up over there anyway, but at least it was better than staying with that weirdo family of his :/ (If someone has a power that can't control and hurts people without it even though he doesn't mean to, IT'S NOT HIS FAULT, DAMMIT.) I was so happy for him, especially after he started going to school with Yoshi and sparking off a long series of pathetic arguments about coffee milk (and how to grow taller)...and then he decided to die. Ah, well.

5. From 2008, when Stella bought chawanmushi for me when I said I didn't have time for lunch. You taught me a whole new meaning to kindness (: I still remember it! And I don't think I've paid you back yet. YOU JUST WAIT. AHAHAHA

6. From some random Japanese movie in which this girl recorded a video for her boyfriend just before she died. She was talking about how she loved him and how she would have liked to carry on living so that they could spend more time together. I didn't even know what the story was about--just happened to flip to that channel--but I started crying, anyway. Dang I hate sad movies D:

7. From the Dark Elf Trilogies, when Bruenor pretended to be dead because he wanted to make Drizzt say he'd accompany him to Mithril Hall. I really thought he was going to die and I was so sad D: Then he suddenly sat up and said, "THERE, YOU SAID IT" and I dunno, half of me wanted to kill him and the other half of me was super relieved. (Note to readers: if any of you try to pull this kind of trick on me, I swear, I will bury you so deep in the ground the heat from the Earth's core will scorch your sorry ass, and then you really will be dead.)

8. From the Trilogies again, when Zak died. Okay I was actually sort of sad, but it was an honorable death (if you don't mind being killed by your wife and your daughters) and it was for the safety of his only son. It was so selfless on his part and I thought it was kind of ironic coming from a dark elf, but there you go. I was happy when Drizzt dropped the flash bomb on his mother and sisters, yelled, FAREWELL, LOSERS (well, no, he didn't, but it was words to that effect) and went off to live the life his father had always wanted but never dared to live. But I still want Zak back D:

9. From 2009 Feb/March, when a particular someone completely surprised me with his sensitivity and kindness (sorry Linus, I'm uh talking about someone else...but that's not to say that you're not sensitive and kind!). It was great having lunch with the two of you even though I didn't really know you (and please, I still owe you okay, not the other way round, so get over it!). They decided to go to a food place I was familiar with because I said I didn't know how to get back to school from the place they'd initially planned to go to. They changed course in, I dunno, two seconds? Thanks (:

10. When Pei Yu from KC burst into tears after someone swung her way too high on a swing. I would have preferred it if she hadn't cried at all--no one likes watching little kids cry, except maybe those crazy WWII Hitler people--but the way she clung on to me and refused to let go kind of jiggled my heart a little (heh...it sounds funny when you put it in a sentence. Wonder why it sounds okay when you put it in a title?).

So now you know what a loser I am--having a heart that get jiggled by stuff from books and shows and movies. But wait till you see the next list... (:

MOL Debates

2009-09-07T03:24:00.000-07:00

I'm SORRY this is SO SO SO LATE. My blog died, so I'm reviving it with my life-giving spirit. (:

Okay MOL debates just ended. NYGH2 got through to the finals! (: Nicolette and I didn't. It was mostly my fault, considering that I didn't really fulfill my role as the Closing Government. I was supposed to give an extension of the Opening Government's arguments, but my substantive was pretty much the same as the one they gave. I had 2 others, but I was more comfortable with the first because I'd written that speech. I should have taken the third substantive instead--it would have saved us. D: Nic gave a reply speech as the last CG speaker, when she was supposed to give a 3rd. But previously she'd been told to do just that, so it wasn't her fault that the content of her speech did not adhere to this format. Overall: right speakers, wrong format. But I screwed it up because I should have known better than to choose such a similar substantive. Or at the very least, I should have had the sense to signpost my substantive and show just why it was different from the Opening Government's.

The point, though, is that this is the one speech competition I've learnt a suprising amount from. Orators' Cup and NFL taught me some things; World Scholars' Cup taught me more things; and Ministry of Law Debates taught me the most. It's probably because this is my first pure-debate competition (therefore pitting me against official debaters--ACK) and I've had to really buck up my debating skills. It's also most likely because I trained long and hard with the debaters and with Yong Wei, and I learnt tons off them, people who debate throughout the year and have gotten used to it all. Ironically, the competition that I don't win ends up being the one in which I truly grow and develop (or at least, I think I have. Tell me I have!). I'm disappointed and a little pissed off with myself, but that's just how you're supposed to feel after a defeat. What brightens it up, though, is that the effort was worth what I learnt from the experience--and the friends I made in the process.

NYDC, thanks for all your support and for being such great people during training (: Training with you all was really fun. I have to admit that I dreaded it at first, but after a while I honestly began looking forward to them, and I'm going to miss them. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to fit in with you. Thanks for being so encouraging (: I learnt tons from all of you. Kick ass tomorrow (avenge us HAHA) :D

Batch 10, thanks for coming down today to support the teams! And the two people who sms-ed me afterward, thanks a bunch (: You all were really encouraging and seeing you all there made me go all gung-ho about the debate (even though that kick-ass attitude kind of dissipated once that guy POI-ed me...uhh). Thanks for being there! I love Batch 10 too :D You all will be awesome seniors for Batch 11!

It's settled, then--my last speech competition for the year. (THANK GOODNESS.) Now it's time to get my head set on EOYs (and NOT SCREW THEM UP LIKE THIS DEBATE) and study my ass off for them!

But first...watch finals tomorrow. :D

Update Upon Request (be honoured, Maddie!)

2009-08-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

Note that this blogpost, being the first in many weeks, is just another one of those Jenniferhadabadweek posts. Here goes:

I HAVEN'T DONE ANY PT FOR TWO WEEKS OMG I MUST BE SO PITIFULLY UNFIT NOW. AFTER THIS POST I SHALL GO DOWNSTAIRS AND JUMP ROPE HAHAHA OKAY.

Anyway! Block tests over. Then again, there is the trauma of getting the marks back. Fight's not even over yet D: The battle's just around the corner and I'm like, EEEOMGNOI'MGONNADIESOBADLY. (Sorry this post may have a lot of caps.) Sorry, I'm not the valorous or the great or even the moral or the wise. Guess the world will have to rest on some other pillar. (That came from Dune, so it's okay if it didn't make sense.) (:

So my life is now dominated by the Magnums sitting in the fridge just waiting to be eaten (oh, Magnum, Magnum...WHY YOU SO FAT OTHERWISE I EARLY EARLY EAT YOU ALREADY) and the Ministry of Law Debate Challenge. I took one look at the British Parliament format and I went ACK WHAT IS THIS. It looks awful D: Apparently my coach is my coach's coach, which makes him my grandmaster. I hope he doesn't bully me. I'm so easy to bully. (Maddie, this is NOT an opening for you to launch a verbal attack at me--or for that matter any kind of attack. So back off, li'l bugger! :D).

I'm reading Dune again to try and understand it better. A-Lit part of me taking over! (Mr. Tan should be so proud of me. HAHAHAHAHAHA.) I don't like Paul but I will admit that he is FREAKING COOL when he wants to be. I like Gurney and his songs. He actually reminds me of the Bao! Bursting out into the right song at the right time. (: In the meantime, I HAVE to find Catcher in the Ryes and read it properly. I love Holden. He sounds like the really pissed-off version of my blogposts. :D When I read his stuff I feel so innocent and so proper. Not that I'm not innocent and proper. 8D (You see Stella! The main difference between him and me is the SMILEY FACES. Look at all the smiley faces I have!)

I think for two totally different people to have a relationship, you have to be prepared for snarky people with snarky comments. Some will come from people you trust; the rest will come from people who really have too much time on their hands (in which case, GO FIND SOMETHING TO DO). I have my fair share of raised eyebrows and "uhh..." comments when I tell people about my relationship, and that's okay, because I don't care. They might know me well, but they don't know him at all, so who are they to judge? Likewise, if people know him well but don't know me well, where is the relevance in their comments, especially if they are annoyingly snarky? (I don't know if snarky is a word. It just sounds good. And it gets the point across 8D). Of course, peer pressure is a factor. Big one. And it's not easy to handle that. But if you believe in the relationship, if you're committed and you're sure of it, it shouldn't sway you. It doesn't sway me. If people are happy for me, then I throw my arm over their shoulder and we walk off friends. If they go, "I don't think he's right for you" when they have no idea who he is, I go, ah well, and I put my hands in my pockets and walk off alone. A relationship doesn't have to be accepted by everyone. Even if your closest friends aren't sure of the relationship, it doesn't matter as long as you are. So relax, okay? I know some of your friends' comments are grounded because we don't really see each other much, and I wish that could change (so keep wishing!), but for the rest of them who really just want to get to you, I feel sorry for them. If their idea of a relationship is so physical and so to-the-eye, they really need to think about what they want for themselves. I know what I want. You! (:

Yes okay I NEED TO GO AND JUMP ROPE NOW I FEEL SO UNFIT D: I've gotten skinnier over the past few months (HAHAHAA) but it doesn't matter unless I put on some MUSCLE. Sportspeople must have some sort of standard. I'm clearly nowhere near sportsperson standard, so I have to do something about that. 8D (JI INN LET'S GO RUNNING TOGETHER SOMETIME. I SAY MACRITCHIE.)

Take care y'all--and steel yourselves for the ensuing trauma! D: (I can just imagine. "I'm very disappointed in you girls. How could you say that the house is a metaphor of the man? It's so obvious that...(insert metaphor here)." [Upon which I will groan and say, IT'S A HOUSE.]

Life's but a walking shadow and all the rest of that crap

2009-07-14T05:36:00.000-07:00

Macbeth was right.

When you're happy, you think you know what life is: it's about enjoying every day as it goes by. But when you're hit left, right and centre with things you don't want to think about, you wonder. Life is but a series of actions and decisions made on one's part to reduce the amount of pain one feels to the minimum. Never mind whether it's physical pain or mental pain--life is just a continuous effort to get away from it. No one asks for pain. No one enjoys pain. You keep running away from it, keep wanting to escape from it. That's what it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...until one day you can't take it anymore and your heart goes PHUT and that's the end of it for you, ta-ta. And then, just as you are about to leave, you ask: why? What was all that for? If I die, what will be left of me?

What will be left except for a heart of darkness?

And I hate Joseph Conrad for putting the idea into my head. I hate him even more for the fact that it is true.

I lost my wallet today. And I'm not feeling sorry for myself; there is a difference between self-pity and anger. I'm angry because I shouldn't have lost it. Should have used a purse, something I can put into my pocket because you don't lose pockets (well, you do, but I assume one doesn't take off her skirt at random times of the day). I know where it is and I pray I'm right, but if I'm not, it's the end of it for me. It's the first gift he gave to me. I can't lose THAT.

And then if I really do lose it my father will get on my case. What pisses me off is how he can seem so ready to get angry at me when he isn't equally ready to get angry at my sister. I didn't lose a credit card or an EZ Link card or even anything remotely relevant to the basic needs of my life--I just lost money, that's all. I shouldn't have, but it's just money. My sister lost her PHONE. No one flipped. No one yelled. Just, "well, we'll have to look for it tomorrow. Hope we find it". And then, when she doesn't, no one flips. No one yells. She gets a decent phone almost exactly like the one she lost. She paid for some of it, but the point is that she got a decent phone. I was warned that if I lost MY phone I'd get one of those ancient ones with the antenna from 7-11 shops.

Remember the time you joked about how you would love her more if I didn't give you a kiss? And I muttured, you already do?

Well, stupid, obviously it's true.

Can you blame someone for getting hurt in a relationship? You ask your boyfriend if he wants to go out for lunch with you, because it's your anniversary, so to speak, and he's been getting on your case asking you out. And he replies, as if he thinks I'm mad, that he lives on the other side of Singapore and that it's just not worth it traveling back and forth for lunch. After thinking that you're making him happy, that you're doing this because he wants to see you and you him, he turns you down like that. A slap in the face. And don't tell me that doesn't hurt. So I say, alright, fine. I'm sorry I didn't consider the traveling time. I just thought you wanted to see me...so on and so forth.

And the matter goes on and on until eventually he apologizes (and note that I already apologized up there) and, as usual, I go, damn it, he makes it so hard for me to stay mad at him. Which is understandable, because I love him.

But someone else begins to doubt Jennifer because she blamed him for the argument. No, because she got HURT. I apologized for not taking into consideration the time needed for him to travel. But initially I'd said I couldn't make it, homework, dance, whatever...and I made time to have lunch with him. And just like that, with a tone that could freeze an oven, he goes, so you want me to travel all the way across Singapore just to have LUNCH. RIGHT.

If I can't blame him a little for being so cold, you can't be serious.

Life is unfair, so on and so forth. People are unfair.

But as much as I've already come to accept that fact (however grudgingly), it's exactly what makes me wonder. Macbeth was an idiot, but he knew what he was talking about. What's there to our lives except our desperate and notably futile attempt to get away from pain? What's left of us after we die but a vague, floating memory of hurt and ugliness that eventually fades away completely with time, the way a faint, lingering smell disappears on the wind?

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time...
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Cheers, Macbeth.

To Do or Not to Do

2009-07-13T02:17:00.001-07:00

We played a game today and it turned out to be pretty interesting. I might as well share the fun with everyone else. Read the questions below and think about what you would do--and sorry, no running away, and no "it depends on my outlook on life at the time". 8D (Sorry if these scenarios sound really extreme or dramatic. They're all the little stories I made up in my head over the years. Accept the non-logical parts and have fun with the quiz, okay!) (:

1. Suppose you're 10-year-old kid living a normal, rural life. You only have one friend and you spend every waking moment with her. Then, one day, your parents throw you out of bed and accuse you of a murder. You remember that, the night before, your friend asked to borrow a knife, saying that her mother needed it for the kitchen. But before you can say anything in your own defence, you are knocked out, and by the time you wake up, you are alone in a foreign, uninhabited forest. Your parents--and the entire community--have thrown you out. You live out life on your own. Seven years later, you are reunited with your mother. She is elated to see that you're still alive, and she says she is willing to forgive you. Do you forgive HER?

2. Same scenario, only that your friend isn't a cold, psychotic killer. In fact, she's so nice you're in love with her. The two of you promise each other that you will get married when you grow up, and that you will love each other forever. She gives you your first kiss. The next day, an accident separates the both of you, and you each think the other dead. Nine years later, you find out where she lives, and in all your elation you go to see her. She is equally overjoyed to see you, but upon being invited into her house, you realize, from the photographs on the mantelpiece, that she is engaged with someone else. And happy. Do you fight for her--or do you let her go?

3. (Sharon, you haven't answered this one properly. What do you mean, "according to the way a drama series would typically go..."!) Suppose you are a combat agent conditioned to suppress all emotions, and to use only logic and intelligence to carry out your missions. You are dispatched one day to act as a bodyguard for a girl, but (and this is where your rigorous brainwashing completely fails you) you fall in love with her. Upon realizing that you will kill upon orders without hesitation, your client makes a pact with you: if you are asked to kill, you must go to her and tell her about it. She will then do everything in her power to stop you, and you will go ahead with the assassination only if she fails. You receive an order to kill a target. Do you or do you not tell your client? (I got this idea from Dune. How come everyone is so fascinated with the idea of conditioning the human mind to suppress all emotion? It's so sick!)

4. Suppose you are an innocent man with a wife and two children. You make the wrong connections, and you find yourself caught up in a dreadful conspiracy (don't ask what it is. It's a random scenario). You are asked to kill a certain target. Or rather, you are blackmailed: kill the target, or watch your wife and children die in cold blood in their own home. You ask for details, and you find out that the target is your best friend. Who do you kill--your family, or your friend? (By the way, suicide is not an option. The person blackmailing you would kill your family anyway, to make the entire thing look neater. Too bad, Sharon.) (:

5. Suppose you are a young boy born into a royal family (choose a country that doesn't exist). You are, first off, deaf, and therefore imperfect; secondly, you are the second child, and by custom, only one child can live to ascend the throne. The royal advisors and your parents choose your older brother, rendering you redundant and useless. You spend a large part of your life in prison, kept a secret from the rest of the country (you are not killed because your parents cannot stand the thought of killing you in cold blood--upon which they decide to ruin your life instead. Silly people.). Chance, cunning and desperation somehow help you to escape. You live your life as a renegade, living freely on the outskirts of the country, until one day, you are found and taken back to the palace. Your parents and your brother are dead; the country needs a ruler, and by custom, only one born of royal blood can ascend the throne. Do you save your country by taking its reigns--or do you turn your back on it and walk away to continue living the free life you have settled into?

6. You are a happy child living in a proud, powerful House (that's the Western version of a clan. Can't they just call it a clan? I get confused and think, brick house? Wooden house? Oh, and choose another country that doesn't exist.) until you are wrongly accused of treason against your family. You are exiled without a fair trial. Five years later, you catch sight of the House's doctor (a.k.a your former best friend) on the other side of the street. Do you let him spot you--or do you run away?

7. Same scenario, but put yourself in the doctor's shoes. After talking to the child, you realize that he was never guilty of treason. The child has made friends with a lawyer, who, upon understanding the situation, suggests a trial to clear up the accusations made five years ago (you never had a real trial, so this is it--meaning that if you lose, you go to jail. Again.). Your House takes up this trial as the plaintiff and sets up the prosecution case. You, as one of the more influential figures of the House, are naturally expected to testify FOR the House, AGAINST the child. Do you testify against the child--or do you betray the house and advocate the child's innocence in court?

8. You are taken as a young child and used as a human experiment in a laboratory (sorry--this idea came shortly after we did bio-ethics in LA). After years of torment, you somehow escape, and are taken in by a young couple. Many years later, the laboratory that used you gets found out by the authorities and is publicly sued for crimes against humanity; the scientists in charge of human experiment projects face the gallows if successfully sued. You are asked to testify against the laboratory in court. You are all set to step onto the witness stand...until you realize that the man that took you in after your escape, the man you came to see as your father, was one of the scientists. He had been working on another project at the time, and since he never used you, he never knew about your existence until you escaped and ended up at his doorstep, which is why he took you in, seeing you as a mere street orphan. Do you testify against him?

That's all I can remember from all my years of daydreaming. Tag your answers on the tagboard--it'll be interesting to see how you guys will react to this kind of thing. (: Here are mine:

1. Yes 2. I'll let her go. Sniff. 3. I tell her, and then very gently knock her out and carry on with my mission. Work is important. 4. I haven't decided... 8D 5. Sigh; I'll do it. 6. I'll let him spot me, and then I'll give him a good whack on the head for not being there when I needed him the most. 7. Advocate his innocence, duh. And then, when I get kicked out of the House, I'll set up my own clinic, thanks. 8. I'd testify against the laboratory. But I'd tell the court that one guy took care of me, so could he just spend his life in jail, please?

Have fun! :D

11072009

2009-07-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

I.

It happened in the afternoon.
The July sun, the summer wind--
Excitement, even though I knew
You'd been waiting ever since
Sometime four years ago
Two children sat together in a room.
Time like a river steadily flowed
And then two children grew up; but you

Stood still in a moving crowd
Tried to speak up without making a sound
Wanted to reach out and take her hand
But with the crowd she was walking ahead

You whispered to her
But she never heard you
You wanted to hold her
But she never let you
And you wondered why you'd spent so long calling out
To a girl who would never turn around

But that July afternoon
It all happened
And the play of our lives
Unfolded

And now it's July again
A year ago, in July, we'd spent
Three hours in the noon wondering how far we'd go
Together, wondering how fast time would flow

A year ago, in July,
You were standing still in the crowd
Now I'm beside you
And we're moving on.

II.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players
A thousand plays unfold on this stage, but not all are thus remembered
The forgotten ones are of love and trust and betrayal and lust
But they are unknown to all of us because
No one watches the stories we tell
No one cares for our stories until
We find the one made to listen to us
To us, to us, and no one else
That's the one who will watch your play
Your life, the one who'll stand up and say
I love you and I know just what your act
Needs; we'll make your play a duet.

He will be your audience
Your only listener
He will be your partner
The only other actor
In your play, on the stage where all are but shadows.

III.

"The course of true love never did run true...
Or, if there was a sympathy in choice,
War, death, and sickness did lay siege to it
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream."

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste
And therefore it Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled."

in response to the twelfth minute

2009-07-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

You know how our eyes have a limited spectrum of vision?

We tend to look forward; forward and only forward. We look sideways every now and then, when we feel like we've lost something, and look around to see if we can find it. But we never really look sideways much. It's tiring and if you can see things well ahead of you, why look left and right?

It's only when you take the time to glance sideways that you understand.

What your heart has been searching for has always been by your side.

You've noticed them, somewhere in your peripheral vision. They've always been there, but have never been too important. Their images are blurred, little specks of black and white. Specks that don't matter much. After all, what are a few grey dots of dust on the whitewashed wall beside the loud, colourful, vibrant painting in front of you?

But then, somehow, you turn, and you see them: the people you've never really noticed, never really understood. Fomr some reason, you talk to them. It starts as a humble, shy question. A reply. You smile. They smile. You are heartened. So you make a bolder move. You start to chat. They listen. You start to giggle. And then you're engaged in a conversation full of jokes and teasing and bright, loud laughter. It's worked--Operation Start to Get to Know People You've Never Really Known Before has been a success.

And so the habit starts: you sit with them, chat with them, share your stories with them, and they do the same. You realize that you have a lot in common. Where you don't, you listen to what they have to say in curiosity, while they press to find out more about what you think. You laugh at the same jokes; sing the same songs; recite the same poems. Your conversations get brighter and brighter, noisier and noisier, livelier and livelier. They even start to turn into some sort of bilingual speech competition--it doesn't matter how you say it, they understand you. And soon it gets familiar. The ringing of laughter, the old in-jokes, the nicknames that only they can appreciate. The time you spend together becomes a part of your life. The better part.

That's when they are no longer insignificant specks of black and white. They are part of the painting--brilliant, vibrant splashes of red, of blue, of green, of purple, of orange, of yellow. They cannot be erased. They make the painting more beautiful than before.

My painting.

I have people with whom I belong. People who accept me the way I am, who understand me, who share my dreams and my pains and my fears. People whom I know will not leave me behind.

I thank the both of you.

what happened in math class today (please, don't tell)

2009-07-08T05:50:00.000-07:00

Alexander stood behind the cherry tree, watching Jamailah work in the garden. He leant against the tree trunk, his arms folded across his chest, where a familiar pain had started to grow. He had been here for almost an hour now, silent, unmoving, and she did not know it, but he smiled whenever she laughed at a passing butterfly, closed his eyes and listened whenever she started singing a new song. And all the while he looked at her, he fingered the new scar across his wrist, rubbed it gently against his other elbow. There was a tingling feeling behind that scar. He wasn't sure if it was entirely uncomfortable or not.

Demetrius had warned him against traveling to the village. He would attract unwanted attention with his foreign-looking attire (Alexander had stubbornly put off the idea of putting on a traditional tunic) and could possibly get caught up in a fight, considering what was happening in the empire. Secondly, the effects of the epic fight the week before had not worn off entirely. Despite all this, Alexander had decided to disobey Demetrius, just once. He had realized that seeing Jamailah was not a want, but a need. A way to heal the injuries inside, not out. And worth getting attacked by an entire village. Worth everything.

Alexander breathed in. The autumn air was crisp, fresh. And cold. Slipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he turned. Wondered, mid-turn, if he should look back.

He would never talk to her again; he would allow her to forget him, to move on, to find new love. That was the best solution he could think of. It hurt, certainly. But what mattered more was the fact that he would never forget her. He loved her, and it would have been nice if Jamailah could love him back, but maybe love wasn't meant to work out that way, not all the time. Love was probably about surrendering everything to a person without expecting anything in return--not even love itself. He didn't know how much of that was true. But the theory worked for him. It worked just fine.

Jamailah stopped short of a note of her song. Her smile faded. She couldn't act anymore. She straightened up to face the man standing behind the tree, watching her. Prepared to tell her childhood friend the thought that had been running through her confused mind since the day he had reappeared into her life.

She found herself staring at a lone cherry tree, its branches bare, its flowers gone, its fruits absent.

Alexander weaved his way slowly through the village, ignoring the stares and whispers around him. He didn't look up. Didn't have to. He knew the way--the way home.

Saturday

2009-07-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

I'm BAAAACKK! (Pwah!) Here's what happened on Saturday (sorry lah, must be teenage-girl sometimes lah huh. Bear with it!):

Kekkaishi 265 is out. It's late D: 266 is supposed to be here already! Ah, well. It'll come out sooner or later...I hope. Anyway, it's getting so twisted! Finally I understand what's happening (or at least, I think I know what's happening--I read it in Chinese, so...) and it's awful. D: I don't believe it--they screwed up big-time. As in, wemightaswellliedownanddiebecausewescrewedupsobadlywe'llneverwinthisstupidthing kind of screwed up. It's OVER D: Well, of course it isn't. Yoshimori will find a way with his weird musou thing. But that will only solve the fight. The battle will have to solved with brains...which is where Masamori is supposed to come in, but considering the way he's done things so far, he's maybe not the best candidate. Then again, no one else has as much political power, so he's the best they've got. :/ In the meantime, SOMEONE DO SOMETHING USEFUL.

Naruto and Bleach don't need to say lah huh. You go and read yourself. Naruto is okay--moving forward...but Bleach is, as usual, long-winded beyond all imagination. At least it's getting somewhere in the fight, though. Long time no see, weird people whose names have temporarily escaped me (:

Went for KC CIP this week. Completely outnumbered by kids (ahem, Maddie--FREELOADER!). Pei Yu was particularly loll-lish this week (loll-lish as in, she likes to loll around people. Not LOL). I went to fetch her in the mini-van and she put her arms around my neck and she hauled herself up and from that moment onwards she refused to let go of me. She wouldn't go into the room when we got there so I had to carry her in, and even then she insisted on sitting on my lap when I finally got my butt on a chair. She wandered off after a while (ah...the relief. She doesn't weigh much but I have very low tolerance for weight on my thighs. Try me. No, wait, don't.) but came back only to loll around some more. After tuition the kids ran out to the playground for some fun and I brought her out, too. She wanted to get on the swing so I put her in, and another older kid started pushing her. But he pushed too high. By the middle of the fourth swing Pei Yu began to cry. I made the kid stop and I carried her out of the swing and she hung on for dear life for the next half hour. She wouldn't even let go of my neck so I had awful muscle aches afterward. She was alright after some pacification from Linus and Mousey, but then this OTHER kid went BOO! in her face and she got scared again, so she had another cry. By this time I was ready to slap anyone who made her cry so that kid got lucky, 'cause he ran away before I could stand up and...

I'm telling this story not because I want to complain about how stiff I was after three hours of carrying a baby monkey around (well, I was, but that's not the point). I'm telling it because for some reason, it left a really large impact on me. I've never had such a small kid hang on to me before (Marcus is an exception. He hangs on for fun. Pei Yu hung on like her life depended on it). It felt somewhat pressurizing, knowing that a small, vulnerable child is in your care and that you are responsible for her safety. On the other hand, it makes you feel as though you're worth something, as though you want to protect her, as though someone trusts you enough to seek your protection. Pei Yu basically hangs on to anybody half a head taller than her, but yesterday she was particularly attached to me and Linus. KC again, two weeks later--I'm looking forward to seeing her again, and everyone else. (: Glad I didn't stop going to KC after NYAA.

Had lunch with Clara at J8--she'd decided to go for dance, after all. (: (Now all we need to do is drag Stella along...) Dance this week was really fun. I like the warm-up dance--I suppose it fits me better. Girlish hip-hop isn't really my thing. I like the angry, pissed-off, really let-go kind of hip-hop (hello? This is Jennifer we're talking about). The main dance is to Ice Box, by Omerion (or is it Omarion? I never found out). It's more of lyrical hip-hop, I suppose (so good timing, Clara!). I LOVE IT. I'm a weird person. I like old-school hip-hop, but I like the emotion that comes from lyrical hip-hop, too. Looking forward to learning the rest of the dance. (: Glad I made the decision to take Saturday afternoons off to relax a bit.

THEN I went for a xiangsheng performance at the Singapore Chinese Conference Something (enlighten me. What's it called again?). I've just realized that it takes a LOT of brains to come up with a xiangshen script. It's not like English stand-up comedy. You get a lot of profanities in those, and then you realize that it's partly because the comedian f---s so much that what he says is funny. Xiangsheng is...I don't know. It's more cultured, more civilized. No profanities allowed whatsoever. It's a lighthearted intepretation of the typical humdrum of everyday life, written from the perspective of an observant, introspective individual who opens his eyes a little wider, listens a little harder. It's hilarious, but when you think about it, there's so much truth to what you're laughing at. Glad I watched the performance--good way to spend the evening, laughing at jokes and feeling slightly relieved at the fact that you CAN follow the script...which is in Chinese.

In other words, I'm glad Saturday happened.

You don't get many days like that.

PWAH!

2009-06-20T02:41:00.000-07:00

I'm posting again! AHAHAHAHAA. Jennifer very free now (: (actually, she's not. she's got a ton of homework to do, but then again, she doesn't care at the moment. she will start caring when it's about two hours before the deadline.)

Kekkaishi 264 is out. Maybe my ranting did some good. It's made a move! :D FINALLY. After so much talking. Well, actually, they're still talking, but at least some good stuff is coming out. Masamori is AWESOME. He managed to talk to Okuni's ghost (at which point I squinted and said, uhh...) and found out from her that Yumeji has got an inferiority complex, which is ironic, considering what we know about Masamori...but never mind. He also managed to get attacked by No. 0 (then, technically, it isn't a number. Let's just call him Zero). If No.1 is powerful, and No.2 is insane, and No.3 doesn't have a brain of his own, what will Zero be like? :/ Another epic battle! (Masamori, don't you DARE screw this one up. You've done enough damage already.) In the meantime, No.3 vs. No.2 (oh, NO!) and No.1 vs. anyone-who-comes-near-him. Yoshimori and Sen are currently in the middle of an interesting conversation about he's-an-enemy-please-get-rid-of-him-already, and God forbid, this is going to spark off another one of Yoshimori's speeches about his unfailing faith in the people around him and how he believes that No.3 is a good person inside, etc, etc. Oh, for heavens' sake.

I also spent most of yesterday watching Last Exile. It's HILARIOUS :D Good story, although I don't really see the point in it yet, but it's getting along. I didn't manage to get past Episode 11, though, because no one uploaded it. :/ I am NOT watching the English-dubbed version. NEVER.

Can't do any homework (as is evident by the above!). I'm just not in the mood. Still holiday-ing! Speaking of which, I've finally started classes at Moving Arts Studio. :D I can't say I'm very good--try HOPELESS--but it's good fun. It's a good workout, too. We do a lot of stretching before the session and that feels AWESOME because I haven't stretched that far for AGES (which would explain my chronic injuries...ahem). I like the routines! You can do them again and again and never get tired of them. Only problem is, I can't keep up with the beat sometimes. It's REALLY fast. As in, OHMYGOSHWE'REONTHE NEXTMOVEALREADY?IHAVEN'TEVENFINISHEDTHISONEYET kind of fast. Still, it'll make me fitter :D

Legend is at a COMPLETE STANDSTILL. I'm moving into the final scenes already so naturally it'll take a freaking long time for me to get inspired. In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of editing. ACK. I hate writers' block.

Sorry. Holidays=ranting. 8D Bear with it! (Or better. Just don't visit my blog. AHAHAHA)

PWAH! :D

pwah!

2009-06-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

I should totally be arrested for being such a lazy blogger. (: Just so you know, this post is going to be a typical Jennifer-ranting session, so unless you are profoundly interesting in my life, you're wasting your time!

It's OVER! WSC is OVER! The bliss! The freedom! The...!

Oh, right. There's still homework. :/

Nevertheless, I am so glad it's over. It's been a really good experience (albeit exhausting!) and I've met a lot of people. I've managed to stretch my limits (I really never thought it would be possible to study two syllabuses at one go--the school curriculum, and the WSC textbooks) and I've learnt a lot of interesting things about the world around me. (I now know what Agenda 21 is, how economies work, and the capital of the Ottomon Empire. I should be given due credit for the remarkable improvement in general knowledge.) At the same time, I've gotten to know my friends better while making new ones. But while it's been a series of good memories, once is enough. WSC is enriching, but the time needed to memorize the entire curriculum (6 subjects...!) by heart is just not worth the time or effort. At the end of the day, school is more important, and I'd rather spend my extra time trying my hand at other things (e.g. dancing--WHEN AM I EVER GOING TO GET ROUND TO IT!). Besides, what I will learn from next year's curriculum can be learnt equally well on a leisurely trip to the library. Still, my fascination for alpacas will never fade. My favourite word now is PWAH. :D

Kekkaishi is getting a big slow--and that's already doing the series a huge favour. It's dragging. I'm so hurt. It's dragging! Its saving grace was its snappiness, it's okay-that's-done-let's-not-spend-too-much-time-crapping-on-about-it attitude--and it has to go and DRAG? Yeesh. Masamori, stop discussing with Yumeji whether or not you want power (because you do) and start doing something useful. Yoshimori, stop wasting time thinking about who's your enemy and who's not and get on with the fight (what happened to the musou thing!). Tokine, please help Yoshimori. Hiura, you don't have a brain, so just do what Yoshimori says. Sen, keep your nose out of this. Everyone else, break the spell (NOW!). No.1 and No.2, either put up a serious fight or get out (what is this morphing into a bird/weird monster nonsense!). People sitting on the giant wheel, either start spinning it and make things more interesting, or disappear. In other words, EVERYONE GET A MOVE ON!

Naruto is alright. I don't need to say anything about Bleach lah huh. STILL DRAGGING. I mean, how long has it been since Ichigo beat the guy-whose-name-is-so-long-I-can't-even-remember-the-first-syllable. :/

Yeah, this is how I spend my life now: reading mangas that last, like, forever. Oh, oh, I've been watching Natsume Yuujinchou, too. Now here's a good anime! (: I do like Natsume. He's so easy to bully. 8D

Of course, there's homework to deal with, but if I follow my schedule (ahahaha--I won't) I'll still have loads of time to slack off and enjoy whatever is left of my holidays. Frankly speaking, if it hadn't been for WSC, I would have had two entire weeks to do whatever I liked. But, never mind--it was worth it! Right now my duty is to finish my homework and do relevant studying while also enjoying the bits of my life that I should like to think matter more. 8D

Legend is getting on good. I'm FINALLY getting a move on things. I do not DRAG--I just take a long time to get inspired. I only write down the events I am truly impressed with myself for thinking up. I don't like wasting time on things that are uninspired and are thought up for the sake of being thought up. In other words, if I were a professional writer, my boss would murder me.

Sweet Sixteen on Sunday. This means two things: I'm 16, and I get to watch Appleseed (after 3 years...!). If any of you (still reading? AHAHAHAHA) have time off these two weeks, meet up with me for a date okay! :D I think I should take advantage of the time I have off to catch up with as many people as possible, and to spend time with the friends who make my life matter. Call me! 8D AHAHAHAHA.

I feel relieved. That's enough ranting for one day. My ranting has been considerably mild, actually. Normally, it includes a few profanities.

PWAH! :D

ALL HAIL THE HOLIDAYS!

2009-05-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

I am such a lazy blogger. I deserve to be fined for being such a lazy blogger. 8D OF COURSE I DON'T AHAHAHA. Hey Nurul and Matthew! :D

Sorry, I've been really, really busy these days. Everything was due in Week 9 and Week 10, so I had to rush everything out (including LA portfolio--which, by the way, is screwed beyond all imagination), and World Scholars' Cup took place last Saturday, meaning I had to study my butt off for it, too. To top it off, I decided to fall ill. Charming week.

Still, it's the holidays! :D Well, not much of it. These two weeks will be taken up by studying for Scholars' Cup (World Finals--eep). We have our work cut out. Still, it's going to be a lot better than before, because there's no school, so we have whole days to finish off whatever we haven't studied yet. I feel so motivated (primarily because I'm scared stiff, but you don't need to know that). We did pretty good at Singapore Finals, although it was pretty much a Raffles contingent sweep :/ They were really, really good. I will take into consideration the fact that they started studying eons before we did, and that they had 12 teams while we had 4, so I will not be daunted! NY-WSC FOR THE WIN! (help!)

In the meantime, I shall have to sort out my holiday homework (the school LIES, I tell you) and clean up my room, and at the same time focus on slacking off 8D I'm losing a lot of weight. I started out as 49kg in March; I'm 45 now. (Anyone out there want to lose some weight? Don't cut the carbs. Just cut the sleep.) I need to relax a bit and gain back a bit of my health. Ugh. My life will now be defined by things that don't exactly matter in my portfolio! 8) (Who am I kidding. 50% of my life will still be defined by the things that do matter. Ah, well. You win some, you lose some.)

It's my sweet sixteen month (: To all the 409 and 413 who come yesterday, thanks for the birthday song :D Thanks Ji Inn and Ye Qi for your presents, and thanks Stella for the awesome scrapbook! You really shouldn't have. As in, seriously, you shouldn't have. I feel so guilty now D: I will keep it forever and ever okay! I shall look at it whenever I'm sad (or whenever I'm happy--which pretty much means I will be looking at it every other half hour)! It makes my day 'cause everyone wrote really cute stuff, especially Fei Ya and the penguin 8D I will also add that Elisa has AWESOME pictures. Elisa, we need to talk. 8D WE NEED TO DE-CHARACTERIZE MORE PEOPLE!

Right! Linus, I am seeing you on Saturday 8) Can't wait to see you! Can't wait to see Nurul and Yuanli again too :D Everyone take care!

And now, breakfast.

2009-05-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all! (Yes, back to English. I don't think I can stand all that Chinese for much longer. I will get back to that.)

It's been a weird mixture of relaxation and pressure these few days. I've been studying my ass off for Math (I'm not kidding. If Jennifer sits at her desk and does math for four hours, that means something), but at the same time, I'm slacking off. This weekend has been rather laidback, actually. I spent a good deal of time writing (I'll get to that), and I watched 17 Again with my family. I'm not going to go all fangirl here, but I will admit that Zac Efron is a lot better than I thought. In HSM, he was alright. In Hairspray, he was good. In 17 Again, he was AWESOME. I didn't realize what a good actor he is until I watched this movie. He's really getting the hang of shaking off the Disney kid idol and turning into a professional actor (I'm not saying that Disney idols are not professional actors. They are, but you know what I mean, right?). Kudos to him (:

Legend is going good, I suppose. I finally figured out the chronology of the legend, although I have to say that studying Equinoxes and Solstices kind of pissed me off, especially after doing Math. In the end I gave up on the latitude and longitude thing and just paid attention to the longest day and longest night thing. That's a lot easier to remember. I'm actually quite proud of myself for finding out about the Solstices and the Equinoxes. I found out something else: the word "zenith" means the highest peak, or culmination, of something. Astronomically, it also means the point on the astronomic map right above your head. The words samt arras is Middle Ages English for "path above the head". All this cool vocabulary came in really handy. It sure beats the names I came up with. :/

But the problem with Legend now is that it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. I dedicated, what, four chapters to characterization? Sure, the story moved on in the process, and certain important events happened, but I just realized that all this has happened in four months...and I have another four months to go before I can finally write about the epic final battle, which will happen on the...never mind. (: But really, I think it's actually quite...empty. There's not much of a legend yet. It's mostly about the people. Going to have to work on that. Maybe I'll come up with some ancient grudge. Or something.

Oh, boy.

Good luck to me for Math and Physics. I'm screwed for Physics. Math is okay, considering all the work I've done, but everyone knows I blank out during exams. And for a subject like Math? Double blank-out.

Ah, well. Que sera sera.

Maybe I should put THAT in Legend.

2009-04-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

这几天，我会用华语写博客。我决定在平常生活中尽量用华语是提高话语水准的不二法门。（其实我这个早就知道了，只不过是我一直太懒惰罢了...）。比较喜欢用英语的人，忍耐一下吧。(:

生活是高潮和低潮的统一，而这几天绝对是低潮。我又不是发生了什么事，又不是特别多烦恼，我只不过是开心不了，无法找回以前那种积极的态度与精神。大概是因为各种比赛都结束了吧。现在没什么特别有趣的东西发生，因此我觉得每一天都很无聊，很闷，很长。对了，我总是觉得时间过的很慢。我一直等着夜晚的到来，夜晚代表一天结束了，我能休息了，不用再坚持下去了。

可是躺在床上时，我又发现，我想回去，再次度过刚过去的一天。时间的倒流是个无法调整的东西，时间一过去，永远就不会回来了。我们随时都可能被死神夺走。我们应该珍惜每一天，因为今天可能就是你生活的最后一天。没有好好珍惜刚过去的二十四个小时，感觉好像失去了，错过了些什么。

我对我的未来开始有疑虑。大家都以为我什么都很好，什么都做得了，也许他们没错。但是我这几天总是觉得，自己到底有没有那样地利害？成绩方面上，我有什么能炫耀的，有什么值得骄傲的？是的，我最近赢了两个非常盛大的讲座比赛，甚至有机会代表国家到美国去比赛，但是这些都是多余的。唯一最重要的，果然还是成绩。成绩搞得不好，也考不到哪里去。

我只好更努力，更用功。我发现，其实自己以前也蛮骄傲的，总是以为自己能行的，自己能帮自己，不需要别人的指导。现在我承认我错了。我愿意比以前努力两倍，三倍，四倍，因为我其实一早应该那样地努力了。

我觉得自己越来越自私，总是顾着成绩，没什么时间为别人着想了。但真正是朋友的，就会明白，我是学生，我有责任搞好学业，崭露头角，为自己创造美好的未来。如果连这个责任也负不起，我能算是个好孩子吗？我们始终还是要为自己着想一下，为自己的决定负责任。

今天就这样吧。明天再说。

Butterflies and Spiders' Webs

2009-04-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

Kieran lay on the mats, her blanket over her and her hands running themselves through her tousled hair. It was perhaps midnight, now; but for some reason she could not sleep. Tobias had spent most of the day avoiding her, and she was beginning to wonder if kissing him had been a dreadful mistake. But then, someone like Tobias did not seem capable of understanding the significance of the action. Kieran sighed. Being in love was difficult, and very tiring. Being in love with someone as silent and as clueless as Tobias was double the trouble.

But again, she smiled to herself, it was all worth it. Love was sort of like chasing a butterfly—it was almost always out of reach, always flitting tantalizingly close to her hands, but never quite close enough for her to catch in her cupped palms. It was beautiful as much as it was small and fragile. And yet, in spite of their fragility, butterflies were always around. She saw them everywhere, around the house, in the grassland, in the forest. It was as though the death of one butterfly was always compensated for by the birth of another, and so butterflies were forever in abundance, never absent. Beautiful butterflies, some the color of the sun, some the color of the ocean, and some the color of the night.

Kieran giggled when she thought of how Alexander would react to the metaphor. And then she wondered if Alexander had ever been in love before. Had any of them been in love before? What about Demetrius? Kieran fingered the end of her blanket. She knew Alexander’s story, but no one else’s. Had they had their families, then? Were they in touch? Most likely not, she presumed, but if they had the chance, would they return to the place from which they had come?

It occurred to her that one person can have many connections. He can love many people. There are many kinds of love, after all. That person would be the centre of it all, the centre of the delicate web of loved ones. If, say, he were to die, all the connections would be broken, just like how the silvery strands of silk break apart after the spider’s web has been disturbed.

It was as though she had been thrown headfirst into a tub of icy water. Kieran sat bolt upright.

It was so delicate! It was so easy, so simple to break! All it took was one moment of hesitation, one moment of mistaken judgment, and all the strings in the web, every last one of them, would be torn wide apart. If she died in her impending battle with O’Conner, the strings connected to her existence would fall away; following her death, the rest of the Breakers would die, and the strings connected to each of their existences would also be destroyed. The web that had taken so many years to build, so many times of hardship, so much trust, so much love, so much pain and joy, would cease to be a beautiful, intricate sculpture of a thousand silvery strands; it would become a loose, broken, tangled mass of dull strings that meant nothing, nothing at all. And all it took was one failure, one death! The fate of the web lay in her hands alone!

Kieran shuddered and then bent forward, hugging her knees to her chest. She was not fighting for five people, then. She was fighting for the tens, perhaps for the hundreds of people who knew them and loved them and would cry for them when they died, fighting to keep them from the pain of loss. So much depended on her.

She looked up helplessly, and then caught sight of an unfinished spider’s web constructed just near the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The spider hung from it, constructing the very last few strands that would make the web whole.

The wind blew—a strong, icy wind. In a single, hot, blinded moment, Kieran bolted to the window and slammed it shut.

But when she looked up again, the web had already been blown away. So had the spider.

2009-04-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

Well, this is what's happening in my life right now.

Competitions are over (although I have my individuals...but what are the odds?) so it's back to schoolwork and stuff like Scholar's Cup. I have tons to do so I'm having to stretch my limits here--having to do lots of things in very little time. I'm doing okay. I think it's under this sort of pressure that I understand just how focused I can be and how much I can cram into this tiny head of mine in a given period of time (which, by the way, is insanely short). Being busy means having less time to talk to friends and boyfriends (well, boyfriend), but it gives a grim sense of satisfaction at the end of the day, when you realize you've managed to somehow restrain yourself from chatting to a thousand and one people in one day and have instead managed to concentrate on homework. Life's good like this sometimes. Just not all the time.

Kekkaishi 255 isn't out yet. Hurry up, penguin! I want to know if Hiura really does attack Karasumori. He's not going to walk up to Yoshimori and say, "Hey, sorry about this, chap, but I gotta destroy your school 'cause I was ordered to"...is he? (Yoshimori, that was a really stupid promise you made with Hiura. I suggest you go to him and take it back right now.)

NFL went well. Surprisingly, amazingly well. Moving on to Alabama (if nothing preparation-wise goes wrong). Only some of the elation's gone already. Because I'd rather not go at all if it means losing a friendship with you. You're the older, wiser one, so you can probably read me like a book, and I'm the younger, dumber one, so obviously I can't do the same. I guess you know things in me that I'm completely unaware of, and evidently you don't like what you see or hear. I don't know what they are, so I can't apologize for them--that would be very heartless and unsincere--but I do wish you would tell me. To drop it and move on would be to try and forget things that will forever be in the back of my head. It seems like I keep doing or saying things to offend you nowadays--and this time I don't know what it is. If I knew, I could apologize for it. But I suppose there's nothing to do now but to move on.

My personal life is getting increasingly tiring nowadays. It's not anyone's fault; it's just that I'm still reeling from all the roller-coaster ups and downs that have happened recently. The breakups, the makeups, the anger, the guilt, the exhaustion. I never knew allowing myself to get close to other people--allowing myself to love--could be so tiring. It's like, I solve one relationship problem, and then another goes and throws itself on the rocks almost immediately. Can't there just be a time when everyone around me--everyone--is on good terms with me, isn't mad at me, doesn't hate me, and just keeps me safe? Can't everyone be a constant and not a variable?

Of course they can't.

So life goes on like this--on, off, up, down, and then you fall splat on the ground and you're so bloody tired you don't want to get up anymore.

At the worst of times, I just feel like I want to lock myself up in a room and break up ties with everybody. That would be a lot easier, wouldn't it--you don't get mad at yourself, and if you find a reason to, it's easy to make up. Allowing yourself to get close to someone, to trust someone, would be to make yourself susceptible to breakups, misunderstandings, more breakups, betrayals, more breakups...all of which are unfairly tiring and taxing. Because that's what relationships are, aren't they? The process of trusting, not trusting, and then trusting again. That's how you build a stronger relationship with someone: you have an argument, and endure it. No one is a real friend if he or she hasn't had an argument with you yet. That's a fact.

The worst part? No one ever says what they really think.

If they did, I wouldn't be emo-ing about this now.

There you go: today's slice of teenage drama. It's what I've found out from life as a near-sixteen-year-old. The good part? My portfolio's building up in all areas. The bad part? It seems my ability to get along with people--even though I LOOK fine on the surface--is getting drained away.

Why do I always end up pissing people off when I feel like I've done absolutely nothing wrong at all?

But that's just it, Jennifer. Maybe if you kept your mouth shut and didn't say anything at all, people wouldn't ever have a reason to be mad at you. Maybe that's the best safety net of all: to take away every possible reason.

Worth a shot.

2009-04-05T04:14:00.001-07:00

We've been in the same class for donkey's years, and yet it's only now that I really begin to understand who you are.

When we were 13 and 14, I never really knew you. You were just the kid sitting behind me, the one teachers always tirelessly chased for homework that never appeared on their desks (actually, they still do! AHAHA). The one who knew everything and could switch from English to Chinese like a radio switches from one channel to another. The one who had a wacky, off-tangent sense of humour (by the way, you STILL do. Only now, it's worse! :D).

When we moved on, though, I guess it was because we were one of the few people from 207 that ended up in 309 together. I began to get to know you a little better, and then eventually we became good friends. We spent a lot of time bickering about weirdo stuff (I don't know. You remind me. What useless conversations do we normally have? The Babaland thing?) and arguing about things that actually matter (e.g. homosexuality--but let's not go there). We also ended up doing more things together (e.g. like all those SIAs--Physics, LA, Chinese, uh...). We had our little, uh, clique--you, me, Stella, Jingyi. I don't know about you, but I started seeing the four of us as a block unit. I mean, Stella, Jingyi and I sit together and everything and you don't, but you're always in the vicinity (HAHA) and we still do a lot of stuff as a block unit (LIKE CHINESE SIA). And you always end up somewhere in our conversations, anyway. (:

I guess it's because I've recently been going through a lot, and I tend to rant about them. You should know I'm the sort of person who needs to let things out, so naturally I tell the people I trust about the bad stuff that happen to me. It seems that I'm doing a lot of taking and very little giving--I always tell you all the bad stuff in my life, and you always end up trying to make me feel better (like on Friday--thanks for that). You have this weird way of laughing everything off, which makes me feel better for a while. But you never tell me about your problems, or at least the bigger ones (or if you do, OMG I'M SORRY NEVER LISTEN PROPERLY!). But I don't think you do. It seems like I'm always relying on you and you're never relying on me--or anyone, for that matter.

When I was in 207 with you I thought you were the cold heartless kind. I'm serious--I thought you were very evil. :D Because you never seemed to emo or anything. But I've realized that you're very soft inside (SORRY--very "uhhh" way to put it, but I can't think of anything else!) and you care a lot for the people around you. On Friday, your trying to comfort me helped a lot. I never knew when I was in 207 that you were like that. I suppose you have to take the time to get to know people better before you understand their layers. People are like onions, remember. (:

I read your blog (honestly--you have the most random of thoughts!). I just realized that you probably have your ups and downs too. I never knew, because you never really showed it. Maybe they're not HALF as dramatic as mine (me drama queen) but they may be equally draining. I know you sleep at weird morning hours and wake up at ungodly moments. I don't know why, but you just do and sometimes you seem awfully exhausted in school. Dunno how you do it.

I think what I want to say is, I'm relying a lot on you now, so if you like, you can rely on me. I don't know if I'm the most reliable of people (or indeed the kindest), but I know I would want to help you if I could. If you need notes or help with homework (but you smart lah!) or my printer (never mind the number of pages, my printer damn pro one k), just ask. If you have any ups and downs in your life and you want to talk things out, I can listen (but I can't comfort people to save my life, so sorry ah). And thanks for everything--for being there and for being a great friend.

And in case you're wondering, Jennifer can be very mushy when she wants to be, you know. (:

Let Fly the Memories

2009-03-28T03:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the chance of a lifetime comes
And you reach out to take it
But before you know it, you're on the ground
And then you've just forsaken it

It was now or never, take it or leave it
And the chance just passed you by
But the worst part is that they saw it
And they don't care that you tried

What do you do when they are counting on you?
What do you do when they pray
That you stand up and fight and give hope anew
And end up saving the day?
What do you do when you slip and you fall
And miss that chance by an inch?
How do you stand up and face up to them
When they turn their backs and leave?

You could have done it; moment was there
But a voice in your head said otherwise
You tripped, you fell, you plummeted down
Taking with you all their pride

You were the key; but where was the lock?
Right ahead of you, but you missed;
Then they take you and crush you in pieces
Until you're just a broken promise

What do you do after they counted on you?
After their prayers went unheard
After you fought and tried and damned it all
And left their questions unanswered?
Will you forget? Will you start over again
Be strong and begin anew?
Or will you remember the day you fell apart
The day they turned on you?

They won't let you forget; they will never relent

They will make you remember, make you regret
It was you; not them; you started the end
And they throw out the memory again and again

I did everything I could have

It wasn't what I should have

But doesn't it matter that I tried?

That even though I lost the fight

For you, there will be time

I want to forget; not to remember
Leave me alone and
Let go

What do you do when they try to remind you?
Remind you of the day you fell
Do you fall to your knees and cry or get up again and try

To tell them that everyone has those days
Everyone has those times
Everyone makes their mistakes
You will have yours; this is mine

I will remember
So don't you ever
Tell me that I don't care enough;
I will remember
That you cared more
About the game than about the love.

You're not listening.

Legend 16

2009-03-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Demetrius sat on the porch, watching his three older apprentices play on the grassland. It had started out as a friendly game of Tag; but, as expected, Virgil had provoked Alexander, and the game had been elevated to a fight.

Tobias sat beside Demetrius, his hands in his lap. He had been here for three months already. He watched his seniors in silence, his blue-green eyes wide and attentive. He was small and his feet dangled a good meter off the ground. He never played with his seniors. It was not that he did not like them; he simply did not understand the concept of play. Over the past three months, he had been taught to fight to defend himself. He had not been taught to fight for fun (what was “fun”, anyway? No one had explained the idea to him yet). His seniors actually seemed to enjoy hitting each other.

He turned to Demetrius. The master was almost twice as tall as he was, and the strongest person he had ever seen—but he had come to realize that Demetrius never meant anyone any harm.

Upon sensing the small boy’s gaze, Demetrius turned to look at him. “Yes, Tobias?”

Tobias pointed at his seniors. Alexander had just given Virgil a good whack on the head.

“He’ll be fine,” Demetrius assured him. “They’re just playing.”

Tobias looked at him.

“Oh,” he said finally, understanding the question. “That’s their way of having fun, I suppose. They enjoy these little fights, but they never mean each other harm. They hit hard, of course,” he admitted, just as Virgil lashed out with a flying kick, “but they don’t do serious hurt to each other. They’re friends, after all.”

Tobias nodded, the new word echoing in his head.

“They’re your friends, too,” Demetrius said to him. “You can play with them any time you like.”

Tobias did not move from his place on the porch. Somehow, hitting his seniors to play didn’t seem quite right. He wasn’t sure what “friends” were just yet, but if his seniors were anything to go by, he knew he was not going to like the games they were familiar with.

Demetrius watched him, his grey eyes serious. He had come to realize that, despite where he had come from and how he had been treated, Tobias knew how to love, even if the boy himself was not conscious of it. He never hurt anyone, or for that matter, anything. He never killed ants or beetles or shot stones at birds, which was what a lot of boys liked to do. He was always willing to help around the house (the “motives” behind each one had to be explained to him—he had not understood the concept of washing dishes), and always listened to his seniors’ instructions. He he was a born fighter. But Demetrius was almost convinced that Tobias would never be a threat to anyone.

Then again, he thought wryly, Tobias would go through the test. Things would change for him.

Tobias was examining a ladybug that had found its way on the porch. As Demetrius watched, the ten-year-old boy stretched out a finger and let the ladybug climb onto it. Any other boy his age would have found interest in crushing the little insect.

Humans are created in funny ways. Demetrius looked at the talented young fighter and it occurred to him that Tobias’s head was made for battle—but that his heart was made for peace.

Legend 12

2009-03-17T03:59:00.000-07:00

To O’Conner, cats and dogs made no difference. They were both four-legged creatures with long curly things sticking out of their behinds, and they made sounds that were not understandable. He had noticed, however, that their styles of self-defence differed. Cats had sharp things sticking out of their front legs that could tear through skin and flesh; dogs sank their teeth into them. He had learnt this the hard way.

“Why did you kill it?” Leon sighed, bending down beside the body of the small cat that had left O’Conner with a long gash on his arm. “You couldn’t have just whacked it on the head and called that sufficient payback?”

“No,” O’Conner said, trying to shake blood off his arm.

“You killed the dog, too, a couple of weeks ago,” Leon said, lifting the cat up. “I’m going to bury this.”

O’Conner cast him a strange look, as if to ask why, but then he turned away and pulled his jacket on so that his sleeve could soak up the blood.

“Ed,” Leon called vaguely, looking around for a good burial spot.

Edward slipped off his perch on a rock and went to O’Conner. He took O’Conner’s arm and rolled his sleeve up to tend to the gash. The Setters had learnt that O’Conner seldom let anyone come near him unless his hand was hovering casually over the hilt of his sword—casually, but nevertheless readily. The only one who could go near him was Edward. When Edward was around him, O’Conner seemed to change—literally. Something that unnerved the Setters greatly, even the older ones like Leon and Niles, was that the color of O’Conner’s eyes did not remain constant. When he was around the Setters, or when he was fighting, his eyes would be a harsh, dark brown, the bright, feverish glint a sharp contrast to his irises. When he was with Edward, however, his eyes would change. They would turn, slowly and gradually, from brown to a light sort of baby blue. Even his stance would be different around Edward. Normally tense and alert, around Edward he would be calm, relaxed, wandering freely around and reaching out with his hands to touch and examine everything around him in a curious, almost childish manner. Once, they had even seen him do the “penguin thing”, as Arlen had called it: O’Conner had stood before a particularly tall tree, staring at it in awe, and while he was doing so, he had shifted from one foot to another, his hands playing with themselves behind his back. It was something they had only seen in children. O’Conner, ruthless and deadly as he was, could turn from a fighter to a child. It was almost as though O’Conner had different personalities; he switched characters according to the people around him. This did nothing for his reputation amongst the Setters. Most of them were now set on the idea that O’Conner was either strange beyond all imagination, or crazy.

Arlen, sitting on another rock and swinging his legs, watched with mild interest as Edward tended to O’Conner. “You nut, O’Conner,” he remarked. “You had to go and poke a stray cat. Didn’t you have something better to do?”

There was something else the Setters had learnt about O’Conner—that, when his eyes were brown, they always belonged to a hunter, not the seventeen-year-old boy he was supposed to be. O’Conner shot Arlen a dangerous glance.

“Well, sorry,” Arlen said, raising his hands in surrender when he realized that O’Conner’s eyes had remained a harsh, cold brown.

O’Conner turned away from him.

The Setters had known each other for a little more than two months now. Arlen and Raven had met first; later they’d met Leon by chance, and Leon had happened to know Niles. They had found O’Conner together. Edward had been the last to join the group. Niles was the oldest of the group, a man in his mid-twenties; Edward seemed to be the youngest. They roamed about freely, visiting villages as they passed, and when they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, they trained. The dynamics of the group had also surfaced. Arlen and Leon were a "package deal"; they went everywhere together and did everything together. Ironically, they spent every waking moment together arguing and bickering, and even though Leon always won in the end, Arlen never seemed to give up. They even argued during meals, which usually resulted in a serious fight involving cutlery. Raven always watched with interest, and when Arlen saw that he was losing hope, he would ask her for help; Edward would watch in silence and smile; Niles would watch mildly without comment. O’Conner did not seem particularly interested in their public speaking competitions, but he never told them to shut up.

The other Setters had come to treat O’Conner with respect as much as they did with fear. They did not doubt his ability; even before their attack on the Breakers, they had already seen enough to believe, without hesitation, that he was the ultimate Setter. It had taken them all, even Arlen, who normally made casual conversation with the most convenient person around, quite a while to converse with him without resting their hands on their own weapons (some of them still did). As time had passed, however, they had come to realize that O’Conner was often too busy being fascinated by the things around him to bother sticking a sword into one of his own acquaintances. It was as if he had never been outdoors, or to a village before. He never asked questions, always tried to figure things out alone. He never smiled—the only time they had seen him smile had been during the attack, and that hadn’t exactly counted as a smile—but his hands always roamed the objects of interest with a sort of quiet eagerness and his eyes would shift to that disarming baby blue.

He puzzled every one of the Setters, even Niles, who could normally read people like books. He had suggested the attack on the Breakers and had done the most damage, notably nonchalantly so, but any trace of cold sadism was countered by his childish fascination for the most trivial of things. True, he was violent, and destroyed everything that he deemed a threat to himself (including cats and dogs), but the wiser few of the Setters were beginning to wonder if it was because he was simply a killer, or because he was afraid of these things and did not know how else to deal with them. The split personality problem he seemed to have only made their doubts worse.

“Well, he’s buried,” Leon said finally, emerging from the bushes and dusting his hands off. “The next time you see a cat or a dog or any other animal, O’Conner, please don’t go near them, for both your safety and theirs.”

“That thing attacked me first,” O’Conner retorted. “I had a good reason to kill it.”

Leon sighed. “That’s the point. You don’t go around poking stray cats and dogs. You provoked him.”

“All I did was to touch it,” O’Conner snapped, his eyes, clearly brown, flashing, his hand suddenly hovering by the hilt of his sword. “What kind of imbecilic animal—”

“I’m hungry,” Arlen interrupted cheerfully, jumping off his rock. “Let’s get some lunch.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning, but Leon shot him a grateful look before turning away to fetch his knapsack. O’Conner’s hand left his hilt. He seemed to think for a long moment, and then slipped off his own rock, but his eyes were still dangerously sharp and bright. Edward gently touched his elbow. O’Conner’s fingers curled instinctively around an invisible hilt at the contact. Then Edward saw the transformation: O’Conner began to relax, and he began to move in a curiously dreamy sort of way, wandering around and gazing at everything and reaching out to everything with much interest. There it was: a deadly fighter morphing into a harmless child. Edward (only Edward) had gotten used to this and it no longer disturbed him. He smiled as he watched the ultimate Setter observe a tree. Soon, he knew, his eyes would change their color.

“There’s a village down there,” Arlen said ahead of Edward, as he jumped bouncily from one rock to another. “Wanna check it out?”

“We haven’t been to a village for ages,” Leon remarked. “I miss civilization.”

Niles looked at him, his clear eyes bright and penetrating. “I thought you hated company,” he said mildly.

“I do not,” Leon snapped. “Arlen is an exception.”

“Hey!”

“Watch where you’re going,” Raven said tonelessly, as Arlen slipped and fell off a rock with a yelp.

As Arlen and Leon began to bicker and Niles and Raven looked on, Edward paused to look for O’Conner, who had fallen behind. His eyes found the ultimate Setter and he motioned for him to catch up, but then he realized O’Conner was not looking at him, and he smiled.

O’Conner had found a butterfly.

2009-03-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

You know how it was a good week last week? You should always enjoy your good weeks. Because after that, everything gets (insert swear word here) up.

I spend two hours trying to get a good grip on a technique that's BOUND to come in handy for tomorrow's competition, and then we spar and then it all goes down the drain. Sure, it comes in handy SOMETIMES, but when your accuracy level is somewhere around 20% it doesn't really help that much. So, great. I'm screwed for tomorrow. And when I go down, I'm not the only one who goes down. I have to drag someone else down with me because I'm not good enough. What happened to the carefree days of singles when I could just screw up on my own?

I spend time and effort keeping the team together, and it's great. Yeah, we're NYTT now. We're all rah-rah. That's not just my effort, it's everyone else's, so wonderful job. Woo-hoo. But then all we need is a little bit more craziness and then I turn into a human punchbag that has KICK ME written on my forehead. I never said you couldn't joke around and have fun--who said Jennifer doesn't like having fun?--but there's a narrow line between joking and bullying. I'm standing there alone and the entire junior population flies at me. My height, my this, my that, everything. For one, I am a senior. Even though we never really bothered with the whole senior-junior thing, there is a bottom line. For another, I ASSUME I am some kind of friend. When you gang up against a friend and make fun of her nonstop, I suppose you feel good about it, until someone else does the same to you.

And then I'm the one yelling at people to pick the balls up because it's OUR room, not Jennifer's room. You want me to set an example? I freaking set an example. Who out there says Jennifer doesn't pick up balls? But if an example is set you're supposed to FOLLOW it, in case you don't know what an example means. You don't crowd around her and bully the living daylights out of her and pick up maybe about ten balls and then leave every other odd ball on the floor for her to pick up. You know she will. And she does. She could always leave it. Everyone's leaving and not caring, so why should she care? Because she is the captain--no, a member of the team who uses the room--and she KNOWS she should pick up the balls after training, even though no one else does. She could always dismiss it as a freaking waste of time, which is what everyone else thinks, but when everyone's gone and the lights are off she's still there, putting balls into the baskets and then packing up her own things alone, which are still strewn everywhere. And she's thinking, everyone's gone out the door, but what about me? Stuck here in a dark room with no one else waiting outside with the lights off and the aircons down because everyone's forgotten about me. Jennifer doesn't matter. She's an example. Because that's what you call her when everyone else is packing their stuff and watching her do the rest of the work, isn't it? "Jennifer's the captain. She should set an example." You can say that, but please, be truthful and add the climax. "That we don't follow."

I'm glad my captaincy ends when the Nationals are over. There are times when I feel proud of myself as a captain, and there are times when I sit down and wonder what the hell I've been doing. I don't ask for ultimate respect. Respect has to be gained. But I think I've done a considerable number of things to have a minimum level of respect. Even with a normal person, you respect her and you don't gang up against her to tell her how short she is in front of coaches and teachers and other juniors. I laugh and play around with you, but that's because people are watching. One day, when you push me far enough over the edge,

I will give you hell.

My sympathy goes out to all the other captains out there who don't have the guts or the heart to yell at their juniors because they're just having their fun, after all. To all the captains who don't have the heart to tell their juniors they're having fun at the expense of someone else. Or am I the only one who's that weak? Am I the only one who invites people to kick my ass?

"Hey Jennifer the awesome captain!"

If I were that awesome, none of the above would ever have happened.

2009-03-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

I am a lazy blogger. (:

I'm going to miss the past few days. It was great fun--running in the mornings with juniors, having breakfast, fooling around until we went over to the BS for training. It's a good feeling when everyone's either running or sitting around watching. You get really tired afterward and you're all hot and perspiring but that's the even better part of it: you get fit while having fun. (: I feel fit now! Although my past three lunches have been rather, uh, unhealthy, so I guess it balances out, so I haven't gotten any fitter after all. D: Yesterday Si Min and I caught sight of the juniors on the track on our way to the library. They were playing 老鹰捉小鸡 and (as usual) yelling and laughing at the top of their voices. It was then that it occurred to me how three days alone as a team (everyone else was at camp) can bring us a little closer, even if by only a little. Watching them play with each other--Secondary 1s and 2s alike--made me smile and think about how even teenagers can be kids sometimes.

Then again, while it can't be denied that NYTT has definitely gotten a little more bonded this year (alright, a LOT more bonded!), there are still cliques and groups. Si Min and I have each other, but it just occurred to me that if one of us isn't there, the other has nowhere to go. The Secondary 1s and 2s are one big happy family; Mingzhen and her gang are fine together; but the two of us are alone. It's not like we don't get along with anyone else--we're fine with the C Div and with the other Secondary 3s and 4s. But we can't consider ourselves part of the group. It's either because we're older or because we just don't spend enough time with them. If Si Min doesn't come for training one day, what will happen to me? When I go over to HC next year, what will happen to her?

I've been slacking off for the past few days. There isn't much homework (it's camp week!) to begin with. I've started on Legend again! (: After a block that lasted almost months, I'm getting, uh, inspired again. I hope it turns out okay. I still have no idea how to final fight is going to turn out. I'm the makeitupaswegoalong kind of person (at least, when I'm writing), so I'll think about that when I come to that. (: I'm SO HAPPY I've gotten past L13. I was stuck on that for ages. Glad it's over.

Kekkaishi 251 is out. I don't believe it! So hard to understand what's happening now ><>

I'm not going to talk about Graces. Everyone's talking about Graces. Why should my experience at Graces be any different? Everyone looked great (well, 99% of us looked great), we all had fun, that's all there is to it. Next topic!

Wow. My life is actually kind of boring.

Time to find stuff to do, I guess. Some Scholars' Cup reading, Macbeth, probably R and R (LA SIA is SCREWED)...

When you hit Secondary 4, you don't feel stressed out anymore. You're totally immune to it.

Cheers! :D

2009-02-28T15:29:00.001-08:00

When I smiled at you in the auditorium, I was probably thinking the same thing.

I can't say anything else. I mean, the fact that our argument rate has gone up by, like, what, 200%, has tested us again and again whether we were ever real friends in the first place, and if we were, how close we were. The past few years have been smooth and uneventful; it's only recently that we started going over the rocks (many, many, MANY rocks!). Sometimes we feel like we just want to cut the other person off completely, but then we remember that we do so many things together that we are literally inseparable. We have built so many connections in so many different aspects that if we were to break up, our lives would be extremely painful, because we would see each other EVERYWHERE. It's, like, an instinctive reaction to type your name into the recipient box every time I send an SMS. (: One of the first few websites I check every time I log on is your blog. It's even an instinctive reaction to peer into your class through the window and see if you're around! Even when we were in the auditorium, we kept looking at each other and then smiling. It's just instinct. I was the only one on stage you're close to and you were the only one offstage I'm close to (and could see!).

Let's not think too much about it. Let's just be friends for the sake of being friends. We can't separate ourselves from each other, after all; we've been through too much and we've done too much for that to be a possibility. So when I see you today, I'm just going to see you when I see you. When we play doubles, we'll just play doubles. And when we play singles, we'll just play singles.

It takes friends to share their thoughts, but it takes good friends to share their thoughts without saying anything.

So I guess we'll be talking a lot less now! :D

2009-02-24T05:27:00.000-08:00

Us with the Championship trophies and medals (:

NYTT for the win!

Bits and Pieces and Bad Moods

2009-02-24T02:52:00.001-08:00

I'm feeling extremely random today, so let's just talk about things that make Jennifer happy/sad/go "what...?"/fall asleep. Right!

I got a baby duck today (: The PRC juniors gave us seniors soft toys! Mine's a little yellow duck with a tuft of fluffy yellow hair sticking out the top of its head (honestly, do I remind you of ducks?) It got thrown around class and mauled here and there because everyone wanted to play with it D: I made up it climb up Stella's shoulder (and Stella's hair, as usual, flapped around everywhere and went into its eye in a most awkward angle), and then it flew over to Jeanette (yes, my duck can fly). They both of them looked so cute together--Jeanette, the baby penguin in her black jacket, and my duck, sitting on her lap for the world to see. So now the royal pet has a royal pet! That should keep her busy. (: Si Lei doesn't like ducks though, so she kept trying to whack my duck one. ANIMAL ABUSE!! Thanks PRC juniors! It really made my day :D

On the not-so-bright side, I had two quizzes: a nomenclature quiz during Chemistry, and a mock Chinese test paper. Well, it wasn't that bad; I just did them. The nomenclature quiz was actually quite easy (unless I made, like, a hundred and one careless mistakes, which is entirely possible), and the Chinese composition question seemed really hard at first, but then I got the hang of it. I actually think my written Chinese has improved lots since last year. I can convey messages in Chinese even though I think them up in English. It just comes now. I have to ask a couple of questions to make sure I'm grammatically correct (ahem) but even so, I'm better than before... Then again, I SUCKED last year, so compared to some other people, I'm still a hopeless case. (: Surds and Logarithms quiz tomorrow. These little things really spoil my day, but at least they didn't ALL happen today. Yes, we must learn to look on the bright side.

I'm waiting for Chapter 250 of Kekkaishi to come out (oh HAHA Elisa you're totally missing out!). My Chinese reading ability is still the pits, so I only understand about 70% of what's going on. (: Now there isn't much fighting (fighting is universal. You either whack or get whacked. You don't even need to read for that). They're just sitting around either a. training b. having very serious dramatic conversations (i.e. who they're going to kill next) c. planning some crazy attack--meaning there's a LOT to read. There are, like, three or four different parties now, all with different stands, so it's a little hard to keep track of who's good and who's not. The little boy behind the shinyuuchi destructions is so funny. He's this little kid who looks like he's barely ten, but then he's got this really evil look and an ego the size of a whale. I love him so. There's 水月 (sorry, I have no idea what their Japanese names are). She's REALLY pretty. She's got some connection to Hiura (so you can imagine all the complicated connections they have now!), who, by the way, is currently doing nothing except napping. I wish I could do that. OH, and 七郎 went to Karasumori to look for the Kekkaishis (good luck to them. They'll never beat him in a million years). I wonder why? I think he's cool, but I just wished he had more of a heart, like his brother (alright, his brother can be a jerk sometimes, but at least he had a heart! He would have had a happy life in the Yagyou. I wonder where he is now). It's time to see if Yoshimori's inspirationally unfailing faith in humanity can knock some sense into him. Oh, right. 七郎 is not human.

EVERYONE'S in a freaking bad mood today. Well, if you are, don't take it out on me, you know? If there's something you're not happy about, say so already. It's not like I did anything wrong but if you insist I did, spit it out. You had a bad day at school, you sucked at training, whatever. Don't take it out on ME. You're the one always calling us sisters and all the rest of that rubbish, but one little thing you're not happy about and BOOM, you decide to make me your punching bag. If you think I'm going to take this ___ from you again, you better think twice. Either that, or you freaking disappear.

That is all.

Hazing

2009-02-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

I just read a Chinese newspaper report about this new fad called "hazing" and honestly, I am enraged.

Basically, people throw a birthday party for someone else, and then, being natural party poopers, sabotage the birthday boy/girl by either a. dumping them into rubbish bins b. tying them up and then throwing stuff at them c. assault them (those are extreme cases). And that's not all. The whole process is videotaped for the world to see.

What a great way to turn sixteen!

Honestly. Is it cool to throw your best friend into the nearest rubbish bin? Is it fun to tie them up someplace and throw sandwiches at them? What the hell is this? Either kids nowadays are getting more and more repressed and want to vent their frustration out in this strange manner, or--and I like this one--our generation is just getting crazier.

It's bad enough that people do it. What's worse is that when the media got their hands on the news, some people hit out at those who slammed the fad, saying that it wasn't a big deal and that it was just a way to have fun. These people don't know what they're talking about, don't know what they're asking for. Go ahead and have fun, but not at someone else's expense. Hazing one of your friends on her birthday means you were never her friend at all. In fact, she should ditch you quick and never speak to you again, hopefully along with all your OTHER friends who may be lucky enough to see sense.

There was another earlier report in a paper that I read last year. A girl was hazed on her birthday and she was yelling at her friends to stop. A teacher walked past and asked the haze-rs what they were doing. They told him/her (can't remember) that they were just having fun and that they would clear up after the party was over (they'd tied the girl up and were throwing food at her). The teacher said, "Oh, that's alright, then. Just remember to clean up," and walked away.

What?

Hazing is not a fun way to celebrate someone's birthday. Hazing is just a sad, sorry excuse for sad, sorry people to bully others--those they call "friends". I personally think authorities should deal with haze-rs appropriately, giving out dire consequences and making them understand that hazing is plain wrong. There is no argument to that. There is no way someone would actually enjoy being hazed on his or her birthday; whoever gets hazed is a victim, never a willing participant.

Hazing is pathetic and I am truly disgusted by those who do it. Get a life! Here's what you do when you celebrate someone's birthday, you losers: go get a birthday cake and sing a song and be done with it. Cake and song--that's all you freakin' need!

2009-02-21T03:37:00.001-08:00

I am absolutely pooped--but I am very, very happy.

Yesterday we faced arch-rivals RV in the West Zone Table Tennis Zonals Finals. The C Division had an easier win at 3-1. You guys were great! (: I was honestly a little worried because Si Yi injured herself and had to pull out, but even without her you managed to clinch the title easily all the same. Three cheers for NYTT C Div! :D Thanks for cheering for us, too! Hope you all enjoyed the debut team dinner; we'll have another one after the Nationals to officially conclude this year's competition season! :D

The B Division had to fight much harder for the title. Si Min and I were placed as the second doubles (thank goodness--there had been possibilities of us each going up as singles players, which, in retrospect, would have been suicide). Althea won the first singles match easily enough; it was an auspicious start, I suppose. Lynn and Celestine went up for the first doubles match. They lost--the other side had decided to substitute one of their usual doubles players with a stronger singles one. It's alright, work hard and fight in the Nationals! (: Chen Qiong went up as the second singles, and that was when we began to break out into cold sweat. Her opponent just wouldn't give up. In the end, she lost 3-2--a shining beacon of hope for RV to break the NY record and finally clinch the Zonal Champion title. After 20 years! They were leading 2-1 now and if we lost either one of the remaining matches, that would be it for us.

When Si Min and I went up, I remember worrying. I wanted to win, I was driven, motivated, heated up. That's a good thing if you're in a fighting sport, like taekwando or judo, when all you have to do is hang on and keep getting back up on your feet. But for a more skill-driven sport like table tennis, you need a cool head. You might want to win very, very much, but the more heated up you get, the harder it is for you to be accurate. One misled WHACK and you lose a point. With so many people from RV watching (both boys and girls) and the rest of the teams who had already finished their games (altogether easily about 60 or more), I thought I might as well put my bat down and surrender. But I thought I'd give it a shot.

And so Si Min and I whacked our way through. I think, for a crucial match like this, we did great. Under that kind of pressure and in front of so many people, our performance could be considered surprisingly good (for someone like me, at least!). We won 3-0. Very honestly, I think we just picked it up and killed it. I think the fact that the whole team got up on their feet and lined the barriers around our court to cheer for us helped tons. It was so heartening to see everyone standing up and cheering us on, left, right and centre. Thanks everyone--it helped me a lot during my match (:

Hui Yi went up as the deciding singles player, and I have to say that under that kind of pressure, she was fabulous. WHACK WHACK WHACK with an accuracy of pretty much 100%. And then that was it. We'd clinched the title again. After the long, epic battle, we'd done it.

I was absolutely relieved.

At this point I must also add that RV played brilliantly. They had such admirable fighting spirit. Even if they lost in the end, they put up a great fight and gave us a little run for the title! Three cheers for RV!

It was a great feeling when we went out for our team dinner. It was our debut team dinner, and since we'd all fought long and hard (and well) for the medals we deserved, there was a sense of satisfaction in us. We went to Subway at JP and had a wonderful useless-conversation-packed dinner. Juniors and seniors mixed together and had their moments of craziness together. This is the first time I've seen NYTT so bonded. All the way for the Nationals everyone! (: If we could fight hard yesterday, we sure as hell can fight hard again! NYTT for the win!

After a night of rest, I faced another heart-pumping competition--ACJC's inaugural Orators' Cup. I didn't expect to win anything. I didn't even expect to get anywhere near the finals. But I had lots of fun speaking in front of sporting audiences and talking about Mango (she came up, like twice?) and just sharing a part of who I am. Most of my speeches were very personal and had my own opinion on things in them. It was thoroughly enjoyable (and I was also very relieved I didn't screw up). I got very, very nervous when I realized I was one of the finalists. The topic was considerably much harder than the previous ones; the Rise and Fall of Man. I chose to speak about the quote: "After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box." I talked about how death is the one truth that binds us all (I kept wishing death on people today! Sorry!) and how even the greatest of men couldn't escape death, and therefore why no one can act all high and mighty during their lifetimes, because we're all the same. I did a lot better than I thought I would, although I didn't entirely expect a prize. But I ended up second, much to my surprise... So that was a good way to end the day! :D

Now that two major (very worrying) competitions are over, I can have a good rest (I just had a two-hour nap) and then get back to homework.

No matter what you win, you can't get away from that.

Ah, well.

Today

2009-02-17T03:18:00.000-08:00

(Forgive me, but I'm just gonna do the typical what-happened-today thing.)

Today was, whoa.

First things first! Today we played in the Zonals semifinals. The C Div went with us because they had a match at the same time, too. Both coaches were there--the first time they've come together to coach us this year. It gave us a sense of security, I suppose, to know that we could fall back on them and rely on them if the matches got really pressurizing. The C Div had an easy game (YAY C DIV!) but we had a slightly tougher time. Althea, being the STTA player she is, breezed through her match, so that was a good start. Si Min and I went up next and at first it seemed like a pretty easy match. We won 11-2, 11-3 for the first two games. The third game was different. I think it was the 怪胶 the other team used--we're not too used to playing that, and they're meant to be confusing, anyway. We lost 12-10. Chen gave us some pretty good points and somehow I wasn't entirely daunted. I just knew we could do it. It was just that we'd lost our grip on a few strokes. We breezed through the last game and won 3-1. While it could have been better (everything goes that way!), I think we did good today. At least my whacking accuracy went up significantly (: In fact, I don't think I whacked anything out (I mean I lost points, but not through lousy attacks). Still, we have to work on playing the 怪胶, and focus more on stability and steadiness. Si Min, we can do it!

The second singles was the real heart-stopper. At first Chen Qiong made it look easy, even though we immediately understood that the opponent was a pretty good player herself (super-fast reflex!). We thought it was a definite win. And then we lost the third game and everyone was a little surprised--but never mind, these things happen all the time. And then she lost the fourth game too. Now that was worrying.

But the prominent thing in my mind about today is the fact that the whole C Div, who had more or less already trashed their opponents, came over to support Chen Qiong in her final game (whoa, that's dramatic--THE FINAL GAME). They came over voluntarily to cheer for their seniors, even though it wasn't their fight. I was so proud of them and so happy. I think Chen Qiong felt good that the whole of NYTT was behind her, too. At first, she fell behind in the final game, but caught up quickly and won the whole thing 14-12. I could have sworn my heart nearly stopped every time we won or lost. It was a real relief when she won. Chen Qiong, you're the best--all the way for the finals! (:

Ever since becoming Captain, I've been brimming with ideas to keep NYTT bonded and increase the sense of unity and belonging between the members. But that enthusiasm lasts only as long as it takes me to remember that I don't really need to do that much on my part. NYTT already has spirit and unity; it's just that, sometimes, they have an odd way of showing it. We don't seem as bonded as other CCAs, who have frequent team lunches; but I know for a fact that the spirit is there. We care for our CCA and we want the best for our team. Some people asked for a team dinner on Friday, regardless of whether we win or lose. That really made me happy (and that is a BRILLIANT idea--I think the C Div really know how to enjoy themselves!). Seeing and hearing all of us cheering together, and then cheering for our opponents at the end of the game, makes me feel as though we have finally gotten somewhere as a team. I can't even remember team spirit a couple of years ago. Now, though, I think we have it. NYTT, all the way!

After the match, my mother and I went to McDonalds' for some tea because we were both hungry. We sat there sharing fries and laughing--we laugh a lot when we chat. (: Then, seeing as we had time (previous appointment cancelled), we went to Thomson Plaza to check out a dress shop. My mum had spotted this amazing red dress in the morning. Alright--it's not AMAZING. It's a little red dress. But it looks good on me, and it's the type of dress I'd hoped for. I got what I wanted, so I'm really happy about it. (: I also got this tiny grey cardigan thing that would look great with my skirt and leggings. That was a bonus! And THEN we went to look for a shawl to go with the dress, but we ended up buying earrings instead, and a headband, which works wonders to keep my hair away from my face and from falling around my shoulders. I love it. Now I can let my hair down at home to ease that stupid balding spot (oops!) and at the same time NOT feel like I'm suffocating. I have really thick hair so when it covers my neck I swear I feel like I'm being smothered from behind.

This all seems very trivial: the typical teenager thing. But it was a good day today and a lot of things happened that made my life a lot more interesting. The things that worked my way remind me (but as if I need reminding right now) that I'm really, really lucky to live a life that makes me feel like it's worth living. They're small things and they can happen to anyone--I mean, they're earrings! It's a dress! Anyone can buy those off the shelf!--but they make me happy and I'll remember these good times. Just on the other side of the world, buying a pretty dress like the one I got ever so easily today is a luxury people hardly even dare to dream of. I have a typical teenager life and there's nothing particularly outstanding about it, but it's my life and I enjoy it and I'm grateful and happy for the things that happen (the good ones. When bad things happen I feel like putting a knife somewhere, but everyone is entitled to the right to feel that way sometimes. Just don't take it literally and get a knife).

Coincidentally, Si Min asked me today if I like my life the way it is now.

Need I answer?

NYSL Investiture 2009: Kaleidosc09e

2009-02-13T03:16:00.000-08:00

Let me be frank. I don't really like investitures. They make me nervous. I don't like it when I'm up on stage and I have to sit there for donkey's years. I don't like it when I have to wait anxiously backstage to do a dance I'm not even confident of. I don't like it when I think of all the teachers and seniors out there, with their expectations.

But on Thursday, I changed my mind.

On a very personal note, I enjoyed myself. Alright, sitting up really, really straight on a chair without moving at all for about an hour or so is back-breaking work, and immensely boring at times, but then again, it was all worth it. We looked GREAT and sitting there listening to speeches specially crafted for us made us feel proud to be up on stage, recognized for the fact that we deserve the responsibilities now officially entrusted to us. I have to say that the NYSL item at the end of the investiture was the most memorable part. Up there on stage, in front of the entire school, we danced all-out, vibrant and energetic, and very sporting. (: The mass dance--when everyone involved came onstage and danced together--gave me a sense of overwhelming pride and happiness. There we were, dancing to a happy song, totally enjoying ourselves. And the most important thing was that we were doing it together: one NYSL board, ready to take on the challenges of 2009. Compared to last year's investiture, which was a overly formal process that I didn't feel too much for, this year's investiture was a blast. Don't give me that look--you know we totally OWNED. (:

In retrospect, our investiture this year has marked a change in the course of Nanyang's student leadership history. Instead of a Council Investiture, which is exclusively for Councillors, the EXCO from the other Boards, like BOM, BEL and PSL are also formally invested, and are included in the planning process. The NYSL Investiture is a significant symbol of the direction we're heading for this year as student leaders. Just like how we work hard together for the investiture we now share, and just like how we are invested as one NYSL board, we will work together, not as Councillors, PSLs and so on, but as NYSLs. It's brilliant. What PSLs don't have, Council may have; what Council doesn't have, BEL may have, and so on and so forth. I think this year's investiture, as an NYSL investiture and not a Council one, held much more significance than its debut last year. This time, the fact that other leaders from non-Council leadership boards were officially invited to help out in the planning process, demonstrated a sincere, genuine want to put our differences aside and work together as NYSLs.

This investiture, to me, is also a symbol of change. I am proud of Batch '09 because we dare to break the mould, to step out of the boundaries of tradition. I am even prouder because we honestly, sincerely believe that what we are doing will be better for both us and the student body. We are not blindly following what was previously done; we are thinking, reflecting, doing things our way. For us, what we truly want this year is change, and the investiture reflects that. Kaleidosc09e: a different array of colors that forms beautiful patterns, none of which are ever quite the same. The investiture was different this year in that we melded formality and informality together. We were dignified and serious; but there was also some fun at the end, and some genuine attempt at enjoyment by both the performers and the audience. In fact, I think everyone will agree that the investiture was enjoyable. Previous investitures, in my opinion, were such strict, formal processes that it seemed almost mindless, more of a must-have traditional practice than an event to celebrate the pride we have in being Nanyang leaders. The fact that this year's investiture was a mix of dignity and elegance, and fun and enjoyment, and therefore a contrast to previous investitures, is a starting point for the entire NYSL board to bring about change for the better in the school.

Finally, the investiture has made me reflect on how Council in particular has changed. It reminded me of something: everything we did last year in Council was what Council had been doing year after year. The same things, all over again. Was there a rationale behind the repetition? Batch '09 spent a good deal of time thinking about each activity and each event that Council is supposed to have every year, and whether it was worth it to spend time and effort on such events. We brought about a huge change to the schedules for Council as a result of constant reflecting and sifting through post-mortems. We believe in what we do; we don't do things mindlessly, blindly, and just because we're supposed to. As leaders--as leaders who BELIEVE they deserve the role--the efforts we put into our work are genuine. What we will do in 2009, we will not do simply because we did it in 2008. We will do it because we believe it is for the collective good of the school, because we believe it is right.

Even as a senior, I think my term in office has only just begun. This is the year when my ability to think rationally and yet selflessly will be put to the test, when my reasoning skills and my ability to see and understand the problems in my school are stretched to the limits. Now, we can't hide behind tradition and culture anymore. We have pledged to make a difference, and to change things, we must be ready to step out and BE different from those before us.

Three cheers to NYSL'2009--the leaders who have pledged to, and will, make a change. We will leave our mark.

past and present; you

2009-02-10T04:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting much because our household net connection has been totally screwed recently, so I couldn't really stay online long enough to rant. Now, however, we have a new router. We salute the previous router for its faithful service and have given it an honourary position on the top of our bookshelf, where it will remain for a very long time to come.

PAST
You've realized that small things can make your day. They can be really small and insignificant, but they all add up. Last Sunday, your mum bought a couple of t-shirts and a to-die-for sweater for me. That doesn't seem like a lot, and you assume they didn't cost very much, but it's nice to come home and be greeted with a nice pink, tight-fitting surprise. On Monday, you had laksa for lunch. You haven't had that for lunch for donkey's years. When you got home from the competition (I'll get on about that later), we had curry for dinner--another favourite. All these little homemade (or home-bought) surprises can change your mood. When you think about them altogether, it makes you feel like you have a lot to live for. At least, for now. You're going to enjoy these little pleasantries while they last.

PRESENT
Friends can be a flower in your life, and they can also be a thorn. What happens when someone you thought you knew turns on you? It may not necessarily be betrayal, but nevertheless you feel like something on your part has been breached. When you think about it, your mind gets tangled up in itself and you don't know what is right and what is wrong. You have other friends to fall back on, but then you wonder if they will do the same to you, if they already are. If one person can do it, why not everyone else? Who can you trust? Who can you love? Some people remain constant in a stressful, ever-changing world; other people become the changes that define the darker side of your life. How do you forgive when you cannot forget? Have you ever been truly forgiven? The people who set you off the most are the ones who never tell you how they really feel. They beat around the bush and play a guessing game with you, which, inevitably, you will lose. They lie. And because of that, you wonder how you will be the same again.

It's so easy to destroy someone's image. All you have to do is ask; and then a whole stream of ugly things pours out. You may not believe them, but they will stick to the back of your mind and may even cloud your judgment about that person. You will try to be impartial, but those things you have heard about will remain in your head. You also wonder--if people can talk about him or her like this, what do they say about you behind your back? Again, you struggle to find someone you can trust.

At the end of the day, family is the one thing that stays the same. The people in whose veins run your own blood will never betray you; you know they won't. And you won't betray them. Even if there is a breach of trust, it can always be mended. Friends are different. You either accept them, or you don't. With family, you don't need that choice.

You've realized that ability and performance are two very different things. You may be a brilliant fighter; but your performance on the field may tell an entirely different story. What will it take to show ability in performance? It's probably impossible for someone like you. You try as hard as you can, and that's all that matters, but somehow, you just wish you could play on the court like you play on training grounds. That would be fabulous. You also wish you had someone to fight with. Someone who you can fall back on. Someone you know will never blame you for things you cannot control.

What you don't know won't hurt you until you come to know what you don't know.

You need time and a lot of brainpower to think everything through. You have your bouts of anger; and then they fade, leaving only tiredness and exhaustion.

You're living a typical human life.

2009-02-02T02:34:00.000-08:00

It's been two weeks since I last posted about my life (because the previous has nothing to do with how I live--I don't go around poking people with swords!), and a lot of things have happened. Most of these things are not-too-good. It's been an emotional roller-coaster ride for me.

Schoolwork-wise, I just don't feel the pressure. Nor do I feel the motivation. I'm sort of ahead in school in the sense that I've studied the topics we're studying now, so I know what's happening, but what strikes me is how fast other people learn, and how long it took ME to grasp the concepts alone. It took me 8 weeks to perfect indices, surds and logarithms; it took Stella and everyone else 2 weeks to do the sums just as quickly and as well as I do now. It took me a good many tries to understand Pressure, and even now I don't have as strong a grip on the concepts as the others do--and they don't have tuition. My grades (quizzes and worksheets) are alright, somewhat; but I just don't feel for them anymore. If I get a good grade, I'm fine; if I don't, I don't really seem to care too much, either. It's like I'm half-conscious and I'm sleepwalking my way through everything.

Schoolwork doesn't fire me up anymore.

The competition season is starting, but I don't feel the pressure, either. I train hard as usual, but last time I used to worry about training more to get more "ball sense". Now I just train as much as I normally do, don't really do much extra. Alright, a couple of extra trainings, but I don't seem to be stressed out about the competition just yet.

Is that good or bad?

My social life sucks at the moment. I mean, I laugh and joke and smile and chat--I can't keep quiet or keep a straight face for more than half an hour--but when the jokes are over I'm back to my own problems. In one and a half weeks, I've fallen out with three, maybe four individuals or groups of people, and all of them happen to come from my inner circle of relationships. Most of them have been resolved; some have not. And I have to say, I am tired. I have been apologizing and making up all over the place. Now, even if we're back to friends now, I worry. I worry about whether I'm pissing her off again, about whether we really are back to normal. Now that I know how much guilt hurts, I've become paranoid. I'm too afraid of letting it happen again. And now, with the possibility of another dispute and a possible break-up, even betrayal, I don't know what to do anymore. I am absolutely exhausted. I've had just about enough of apologies and heart-to-heart chats. I don't want this anymore.

But I'd rather be betrayed than betray.

It's funny how you seem to be best friends for so long--always talking about how close you are, how well you work together, how you share everything...and then it just falls apart in, like, a day. Maybe even a few hours. All it takes is one moment of doubt, a cold spell, another misunderstanding, and then we don't know who's right and who's wrong and we're back to square one. The worse thing is, it's a guessing game. I don't know what she's thinking, and sometimes I just feel too tired to make an effort to find out. I truly don't know if it's my fault or hers. Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe I just need to stay away from her for a while. I'll fight with her, but I don't think we can be the same anymore.

I may have hurt you, but I believe I've been badly hurt too.

I'm alright when you look at me. I laugh and I have my moments of high-ness. I smile and talk. I work. I eat. I fight.

But when it all dies down and when I drown inside my mind, it just doesn't seem the same. It's kind of like the end of the world as I know it. Everything's the same...but it's not. I'm half-conscious and I don't really know what I'm doing, what I'm thinking. I know but I don't. I keep wanting to sit down and have a good chat with a few trusted friends (the only constants in this variable-dominated time of the year), get it all off my chest, but somehow I don't get round to it. I feel like talking about it, but then I don't. The stories are all so long and complicated that I feel too tired to spit it all out again.

What's wrong?

Why doesn't Jennifer have the passion for things anymore?

Why does Jennifer keep conflicting with the people she loves the most?

Why?

Maybe this is just spell. Might go away soon.

But until then, who am I going to hang on to?

Legend 12

2009-01-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

To O’Conner, cats and dogs made no difference. They were both four-legged creatures with long curly things sticking out of their behinds, and they made sounds that were not understandable. He had noticed, however, that their styles of self-defence differed. Cats had sharp things sticking out of their front legs that could tear through skin and flesh; dogs sank their teeth into them. He had learnt this the hard way.

“Why did you kill it?” Leon sighed, bending down beside the body of the small cat that had left O’Conner with a long gash on his arm. “You couldn’t have just whacked it on the head and called that sufficient payback?”

“Well, no,” O’Conner said, trying to shake blood off his arm.

“You killed the dog, too, a couple of weeks ago,” Leon said, lifting the cat up. “I’m going to bury this.”

O’Conner cast him a strange look, as if to ask why, but then he turned away and pulled his jacket on so that his sleeve could soak up the blood.

“Ed,” Leon called vaguely, looking around for a good burial spot.

Edward slipped off his perch on a rock and went to O’Conner. He took O’Conner’s arm and rolled his sleeve up to tend to the gash. The Setters had learnt that O’Conner never let anyone come near him unless his hand was hovering casually over the hilt of his sword—casually, but nevertheless readily. The only one who could go near him was Edward. Edward never talked. Smiles came very easily to him compared to some of the rest, and he was very gentle, so gentle that even O’Conner had come to learn that he meant no harm. In fact, no one had seen him fight before. That night, when they had attacked the Breakers, Edward had refused to follow them. They were beginning to wonder if he could Set or fight at all.

Arlen, sitting on another rock and swinging his legs, watched with mild interest as Edward tended to O’Conner. “You nut, O’Conner,” he remarked. “You had to go and poke a stray cat. Didn’t you have something better to do?”

There was something else the Setters had learnt about O’Conner—that his eyes always belonged to a hunter, not the seventeen-year-old boy he was supposed to be. O’Conner shot Arlen a dangerous glance.

“Well, sorry,” Arlen said, raising his hands in surrender.

O’Conner turned away from him.

Arlen and Raven exchanged glances. Raven’s own eyes were very dark, even completely black, but occasionally there would be a spark in them. There was a spark now, and her eyes twinkled with amusement and mischief.

They had known each other for a little more than two months now. Arlen and Raven had met first; later they’d met Leon by chance, and Leon had happened to know Niles. They had found O’Conner together. Edward had been the last to join the group. Niles was the oldest of the group, a man in his mid-twenties; Edward seemed to be the youngest. They roamed about freely, visiting villages as they passed, and when they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, they trained. Arlen and Leon seemed to enjoy sparring with each other, and soon fighting wasn’t the only thing they did together. They spent every waking moment together arguing and bickering, and even though Leon always won in the end, Arlen never seemed to give up. They even argued during meals, which usually resulted in a serious fight involving cutlery. Raven always watched with interest, and when Arlen saw that he was losing hope, he would ask her for help; Edward would watch in silence and smile; Niles would watch mildly without comment. O’Conner did not seem particularly interested in their public speaking competitions, but he never told them to shut up.

The other Setters had come to treat O’Conner with respect as much as they did with fear. They did not doubt his ability; even before their attack on the Breakers, they had already seen enough to believe, without hesitation, that he was the ultimate Setter. O’Conner lived to fight. He was volatile, explosive, unpredictable. It had taken them all, even Arlen, quite a while to converse with him without resting their hands on their own weapons. As had time passed, however, they had come to realize that O’Conner was too busy being fascinated by the things around him to bother sticking a sword into one of his own acquaintances. It was as if he had never been outdoors, or to a village before. He never asked questions, always tried to figure things out alone. His eyes never changed, and he never smiled—the only time they had seen him smile had been during the attack, and that hadn’t exactly counted as a smile—but his hands roamed the objects of interest with a sort of quiet eagerness. In fact, if the long, curved sword at his waist and the dangerous glint in his eyes had been absent, they would have mistaken him for a child.

He puzzled every one of the Setters, even Niles, who could normally read people like books. He had suggested the attack on the Breakers and had done the most damage, notably nonchalantly so, but any trace of cold sadism was countered by his childish fascination for the most trivial of things. True, he was violent, and destroyed everything that he deemed a threat to himself (including cats and dogs), but the wiser few of the Setters were beginning to wonder if it was because he was simply a killer, or because he was afraid of these things and did not know how else to deal with them.

“Well, he’s buried,” Leon said, emerging from the bushes and dusting his hands off. “The next time you see a cat or a dog or any other animal, O’Conner, please don’t go near them, for both your safety and theirs.”

“That thing attacked me first,” O’Conner retorted. “I had a good reason to kill it.”

Leon sighed. “That’s the point. You don’t go around poking stray cats and dogs. You provoked him.”

“All I did was to touch it,” O’Conner snapped, his eyes flashing, his hand suddenly hovering by the hilt of his sword. “What kind of imbecilic animal—”

“I’m hungry,” Arlen interrupted cheerfully, jumping off his rock. “Let’s get some lunch.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning, but Leon shot him a grateful look before turning away to fetch his knapsack. O’Conner’s hand left his hilt. He seemed to think for a long moment, and then slipped off his own rock, but his eyes were still dangerously sharp and bright. Edward gently touched his elbow. O’Conner’s fingers curled instinctively around an invisible hilt at the contact, and then slowly, tentatively relaxed. He followed the rest of the Setters in silence.

“There’s a village down there,” Arlen said, as he jumped bouncily from one rock to another. “Wanna check it out?”

“We haven’t been to a village for ages,” Leon remarked. “I miss civilization.”

Niles looked at him, his clear eyes bright and penetrating. “I thought you hated company,” he said mildly.

“I do not,” Leon snapped. “Arlen is an exception.”

“Hey!”

“Watch where you’re going,” Raven said tonelessly, as Arlen slipped and fell off a rock with a yelp.

As Arlen and Leon began to bicker and Niles and Raven looked on, Edward paused to look for O’Conner, who had fallen behind. His eyes found the ultimate Setter and he motioned for him to catch up, but then he realized O’Conner was not looking at him, and he smiled.

O’Conner had found a butterfly.

2009-01-23T03:35:00.000-08:00

I'm tired.

The emotional roller-coasters, the confessions, the apologies, the make-ups. Tired of them all.

What do you want me to do?

What do you mean, you'll stand by my side even if you seem reluctant? What do you mean, you still believe in me? There was a time when you didn't?

How can I find success and happiness in the years ahead when my best friend doesn't make sense to me anymore?

Why do you think I complain? So that I can get it out of my system and gear up to face the problem. I don't complain and then leave it aside and forget to deal about it. Horrible things are happening around the world, but does my life have to stop altogether for them? Should I stop complaining because other people have worse things to complain about? If I complained, and then did my job right, and then moved on with my life and at the same time continued to stay aware of what's happening around the world, would that be wrong?

So someone who complains that she's stressed out, that she has too many disturbing things on her mind, shouldn't be allowed to participate in scholars' cup?

So the President of the United States isn’t allowed to complain about the stress in his life, because the things happening in Gaza make his life trivial?

Do you think I don't care about what's happening now? I care. I care a lot. But I have my own life to deal with too and my way of dealing with it is getting all the anger out of my system by grumbling about it, and then working hard to do better.

Getting into Scholars' Cup was a huge thing for me. Heaven knows what i would have done to vent my anger if I hadn't complained about it. I know my problems are trivial compared to the problems of the world, but it's my life, they’re not trivial to me, and I'm the one dealing with them.

If you don't think I deserve a place in Scholars' Cup because of that, then don't say you want to be in the team with me.

Speaking of complaining, I know I also have wrongs in this. I probably shouldn’t have drawn you in to listen to my complaints, especially when it ends up working out for me and you feel a bit cheated that you had to spend all that time listening to me for nothing. So I’m sorry for that, and I promise I’ll keep some of it in, although I will never stop complaining altogether, because that’s my way of dealing with things. If I have to, I won’t complain to you, if you don’t want to listen. You’re just the first person I complain to because you’re my best friend and I know you’ll listen—although maybe I expected too much.

I know I hurt people without knowing it, and I'm working on it. You know I am.

But I can't talk to you properly now.

I want to say thank you for being honest with me, for the note, and the email, and saying that you wanted to give me your support. Thank you for still being sweet and kind to me these days. I'm sorry for complaining about things you’d rather not listen to me complaining about, for making you think that there's a problem in our relationship now--or a problem in me. It must have been hard on you too, to have to say that you "still liked me as a person", although you must have been aching to be mad at me. I love you, because you've always been a great friend and you've always been there for me.

But this time round, I think I'm the one hurt.

the july sun

2009-01-21T03:38:00.000-08:00

last time I checked
we were us, not you and me
we were everything I lived for
until one July morning, I found I was free

i had nothing to my name back then
nowhere to go and no one to hide behind
but then the July sun shone down on me
and I remembered I am more than what meets the eye

what went wrong? were you wrong, was I right?
was it worth the final fight? did it come through
that everything I did, I did for you?
when you walked away, did you remember
all the times I stood up for you? did you ever
think of how I brought down the people who wanted you down
do you remember anything now?
i suppose it doesn’t matter to you
because it seems like I’m alone
but it’s okay; the July sun reminded me
i can always stick it out on my own

after you left
i stood there, my arms spread wide
there was the warmth and the light and the scent of summer
i knew I didn’t need anyone by my side
of course it hurt, just a little bit
to know that everything I’d lived for was gone
but the July sun shone down on me
and I decided I’d just have to move on

what went wrong? were you wrong, was I right?
was it worth the final fight? did it come through
that everything I did, I did for you?
when you walked away, did you think of
how I would live my life, who else I would love?
did you ever wonder how I’d make it through? all the how’s?
do you wonder about anything now?
i suppose it doesn’t matter to you
because it seems like I’m alone
but it’s okay; the July sun reminded me
i can always stick it out on my own

i was high in May, high in June
now I’m shot down in July
but there’s the July sun and the July breeze and the July reminder
that summer doesn’t exactly last forever

i’m in for tough days, tough seasons
i may lose my love, my reasons
but it’s alright; because after a while
it’ll be summer again and I’ll just smile
when I remember that one hot July day
the one I trusted just walked away
it hurt for a while, just a little bit
but the July sun got me over it

through August and September and every month of the year
the July sun will shine down on me
i’ll stick it out on my own and be free

will's speech to the general public

2009-01-20T03:44:00.000-08:00

dear one and all,

hello, my name is will. i spend a lot of time telling people that because i'm good at starting up conversations. i'm a very sociable person, you know? i can talk to anyone and make friends with anyone. i have great social skills.

but i've come to realize--the hard way--that somehow my communication skills aren't that great, after all. in fact, i fall just a little short of having a communication disorder. not many people are really going to believe me, but some people sitting here today will know all too well.

the first problem i have with communicating with other people is saying "thank you". everyone learns this phrase the moment they start to babble. it becomes a part of your vocabulary not too long after you understand the meaning of "mama" and "dadda". for me, "thank you" has been a part of my vocabulary for as long as i can remember. it's just that it's not part of my working vocabulary.

the people around me, for some reason, all seem to love me very much. they do great things for me, they go out of their way to help me, they do everything they can to make my life better. i know it. and all this goes by without a mention of appreciation. i know they love me; i know they will help me. a friend helps another friend: that's what friends are for. but friends are also there to appreciate what their friends do for them. a friend can help you and love you; a friend can also fall out with you and leave you. it's their choice, not yours. helping you is an obligation, not a duty. in a family, it is indeed duty to help a sister or a brother, but likewise, it is the recipient's duty to appreciate the help. the act of helping is sometimes a choice, an obligation; the act of appreciation is always a duty.

i have come to realize this only a little too late. it has taken many arguments, many fights, even a few fatal fall-outs, to wake me up. the people around me love me too much (i don't know why) and i take them entirely for granted. eventually, i don't even think about whether they will help anymore; their help is a guarantee, an absolute something that is always there. this has cost me, and even though i may be forgiven, the memory of going unappreicated will remain. the guilt of not appreciating what i should remains. i have a communication problem because it is so hard to say "thank you", and truly mean it. the "thanks, man" in everyday life doesn't count; i mean the heartfelt "thank you" that comes from the soul. how many people have i met and received help from, and have not said "thank you" to? it will take a few calculators to find the total sum.

my second communication problem is probably something we all have--it's just that mine is particularly serious. i have severe difficulties saying "sorry". it just doesn't come out of my mouth. i have intentions of saying sorry. i just never quite end up doing it, or if i do, not properly. why is it so hard to admit that i am wrong and that i am willing to change? why is it so hard for everyone?

i've done many bad things to many people who don't deserve to be treated that way. i have taken people for granted; i have used people; i have ill-treated people; i have betrayed people. i never really think about it until it is already done, until it is already too late. and then, i will think of apologizing, but, as always, it never comes out right. sometimes, i don't even want to apologize at all. i keep giving myself excuses, keep trying to tell myself that i am in the right, when clearly i know that i am just being weak and selfish. this happens almost on a daily basis. how many people have passed me by, deserved an apology, and moved on without getting one? more calculators, please.

those are the two biggest problems i seem to have. they're just two problems, not too uncommon, but they have cost me more than i believed they would and it has takcn that much to make me truly want to change, when i should have curbed the bad habits about ten years ago. they have corrupted my relationships with people and destroyed certain friendships, and even though most of the damage has been repaired (because all the people i know are very forgiving), the deed has already been done, and the scar will always remain. they have taken their toll on me emotionally and mentally, and damn right it should. the only comfort i have in this fact is that at the very least, i still have some resemblance of a conscience.

i'm going to end this speech by doing what i have always neglected to do. many of the people sitting here today are people i know, people i love. after everything i have done to them, they are still here, supporting me, listening to me. there are three things i want to say to them. firstly, i want to say "thank you". i want to thank them for everything they have ever done for me, whether it be a lifesaving matter or just a simple favour. i want to thank them for being there when they didn't need to be, for tolerating me and being patient with me. secondly, i want to say "i'm sorry". i'm sorry for all the things i should have done but never did; for all the things i did but shouldn't have. i'm sorry for only realizing my communication disorder now, when it would have made life so much happier if i had become aware of it earlier.

finally, i want to say this: i promise i will change. i have seen enough and reflected enough to know that i want to change. the road to change will be rocky and hard--bad habits aren't too easy to curb. throw in a tad of stubbornness and things get very difficult. i hope everyone--all of you--will help me through the transition, and help me remember the lessons i have learnt so slowly and painfully. i don't ask for anything more; i just want to know that you will continue to be there for me even in this stage of total confusion and change. it's perfectly alright if you don't want to be. i understand completely if you've had just about enough of me.

that's all the time i have today. this is the end of my speech. but it's not the end of my life just yet, and while i still have time, i want to try my hand at dealing with my communication disorder. i have one more favour to ask of all of you sitting here now: wish me the best of luck.

thank you.

abstract

2009-01-17T21:18:00.000-08:00

are you afraid of the thunder?
are you afraid of the rain?
are you afraid of life down under?
are you afraid of your name?

do you wanna be who you wanna be?
do you wanna stay who you are?
do you wanna live life the way it is?
do you wish upon a falling star?

we live, we die
we laugh, we cry
we fall, we fight
we fail, we try
we hate, we trust
what is love? what is lust?
we all want to know the answer to this:
why the hell does anyone exist?
we search and we ask everyone we know
but we don’t realize that the answer unfolds
only when it comes down to this
that’s just the way life always is

when a fight comes, do you fight?
when do you fall, when do you fly?
when you touch, what do you feel?
when you hurt, how do you heal?

what happens when you take a life?
what happens when you hit a child?
what happens when you spread your wings?
what happens to all the meaningless things?

we live, we die
we laugh, we cry
we fall, we fight
we fail, we try
we touch, we feel
we hurt, we heal
we all want to know the answer to this:
why the hell does anyone exist?
we search and we ask everyone we know
but we don’t realize that the answer unfolds
only when it comes down to this
that’s just the way life always is

you’ll never know why life turns out like this
you’ll never know who you’ll share it with
you’ll never know how the river bends
you’ll never know when your life will end
so come on, speak the words unspoken
never mind that your wings are broken
take the chance, take the risk
give that special boy a kiss
life doesn’t last forever
remember that it’s now or never
now or never

we live, we die
we laugh, we cry
we fall, we fight
we fail, we try
we touch, we feel
we hurt, we heal
we hate, we trust
we think that we must
that we must know the answer to this:
why the hell does anyone exist?
we search and we ask everyone we know
but we don’t realize that the answer unfolds
only when it comes down to this
that’s just the way life always is

that’s just the way life always is

wanna wanna weekend!

2009-01-15T04:44:00.000-08:00

no, i don't wanna weekend, considering the amazing list of things i have to do, but let's stay optimistic.

i'msostressedi'msostressedi'msostressed

well, no, i'm not. not yet. but wait till the zonals. and the nationals. and the SIAs and the projects and the tests and everything else you could possibly imagine, including a quiz that pops out of nowhere for a topic you've never even heard of before. that's why they call it a pop quiz.

anyway, the purpose of this blog is to tell the world what i'm going to do over the weekend. when you tell people what you plan to do, you have to finish them, or else they're going to KNOW that you're a slacker. i'm officially putting pressure on myself to finish everything on the list. LISTEN UP EVERYONE! ASK ME ON MONDAY WHETHER I FINISHED THE TASKS STATED BELOW SO I CAN TELL YOU YES :D

saturday
Kids' Club (CIP)
meet up with xinru

sunday
study surds, indices and logarithms
study remainder and factor theorem
physics assignment 13.1
redox worksheet 2
edit advanced literature term paper
IH articles (read through quotes, pick out trends)

0830-1000: IH articles
1000-1200: tuition (physics assignment 13.1, redox worksheet 2, static elecitricity)
1200-1300: lunch
1300-1500: study surds, indices and logarithms (practice surds and indices, practice log)
1500-1600: NAP!
1600-1800: edit advanced literature term paper
1800-1900: pack my bag for monday (sigh)
1900-1930: dinner
1930-: IH articles

that sounds feasible. somewhat.

SO DO WE WANNA WEEKEND!!

(no D:)

oh, well. there's no helping it. just gotta deal with things as they come...even if you end up banging your head against the wall.

THAT'S LIFE

wednesday oranges

2009-01-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

alright, so i've decided that wednesdays are orange. sue me.

today was relatively normal. i got my hair tied up in a bun. i tried it on sunday once and my dad said i looked like a nyonya (like i need that!), but he also said i looked pretty good in it, which, coming from my dad, is about the largest praise you can get. my mum spent a good deal of time laughing at me, and so did my sister, but i think i looked rather pretty, too. :D i decided to risk it and go to school like that today. there was a hullabaloo for about thirty seconds, and then everyone got used to it. brilliant--i think i shall tie my hair up like this more often. (:

for math, i didn't really pay 100% attention in class. i did the remainder and factor theorem questions, but i've already had a lot of practice on this topic, so i darted in between R and F theorem and surds, indices and logarithms. i've done that too, but it was last year and i've forgotten everything.

which reminds me: i am pretty determined to stay ahead of school for these subjects. i'm weaker in them and i think it would do me a lot of justice if i stayed ahead by a couple of topics. tuition helps a lot. so while everyone else continues with R and F, i'll be moving on to revise surds, indices and logarithms on my own. for physics, i've already done most of electricity, so i just need to revise the topics again. i'm way ahead by about half the year, so physics is alright. for chemistry, i'm ahead because i'm good at redox, but i haven't started on organic chemistry yet. better start this weekend! i think i should have done this a long time ago. it's so much easier when you already know what's going on and when lessons are just a revision for you.

during chinese we had to write our first composition of the year. did i mention how much i HATE chinese compos? it's necessary, but an absolute BORE and it affects my mood so. it was recess after that and jeanette had finished her compo already, so she asked me if i wanted anything from the canteen, because i wasn't done with mine yet. in the end she helped me collect my third language transport card from the general office for me too. it was SO SWEET of her. if not i would have gone hungry and without a transport card. thanks tons penguin! :D

during advanced lit i gave my term paper presentation, which, i suppose, went smoothly, but i just wished i didn't "read" off the paper like mr tan said i did. i've always been a good speaker (yes, i am going to say it!), but maybe to him it's not good enough. i knew standards would be raised when i found out he's going to be our teacher this year. it's a good thing, i suppose--getting out of my comfort zone and aiming to reach higher expectations. i think i had it easy last year. ADVANCED LITERATURE 408-409-413 ALL THE WAY!

nothing much happened in LA. assembly was boring as usual, although the panel discussion perked me up a bit. i can't wait for xinru to come over on saturday--i've missed her D: she's shown me her school and her home and her culture. my turn!

that's all for now. really, i need to post something more meaningful than just what-i-did-today recounts. i shall post an argumentative or a story soon...but in the meantime, redox study and surds, indices and logarithms! :D

shandong photos

2009-01-13T23:42:00.001-08:00

that's us on our beijing-shandong trip from 1st november to 14th november. this is beijing. from left to right: beverly, jody, me, and zhiyi. love you guys :D i love this picture!

us again, jody, beverly, zhiyi and me. this was our first day in beijing, i think.

class photo!

2009-01-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

that, everyone, is our class photo. LONG LIVE 409'2009! :D i love everyone in there!

the monday blues

2009-01-12T03:04:00.000-08:00

hey y'all.

it's the second monday of the year and already i feel like it should be the last. the hours pass by quickly; and yet the days crawl by. last year, it was different: the hours were slow, but the days flew past at such an alarming pace that i actually began to worry if my entire life was going to flash past just like that, too. i'm not saying i don't enjoy life now, but i wouldn't mind if it went just a TEENY bit faster. you get what i mean.

and now, it's time for me to do my typical everyday babble i.e. moaning and groaning about the things that make my life a little less convenient. complaining doesn't help, but it makes me feel better. i deal with the problems after complaining about them, anyway. there's nothing wrong with this!

well, today started off with my thermos (is it thermo or thermos?) leaking and soaking the bottom of my plastic bag, which had to be thrown away. still, when i went downstairs for the "urgent post-orientation meeting" that peishan and dileen had called for, it turned out not to be a serious post-mortem meeting, but a thank-you-for-helping-with-orientation-we're-so-thankful-that-we've-decided-to-give-y'all-mochi's sort of meeting. :D after a couple of mochi's i went back upstairs and had a good laugh with stella and elisa until school started.

LA lecture was a good start to the day--SRQ sounds like lots of fun, if you don't mind having a splitting headache afterward because of all the thinking. "it is justifiable to torture a terrorist to save innocent lives", "it makes perfect sense to save ten lives rather than to save one"... i had a lot of fun thinking about these things. i think i might just post an argumentative piece on them someday here, if i have enough brainpower to write a good one.

it was physics after that, which was alright, but not particularly interesting, either (not a science student). after that was lunch, i.e. scholars' cup auditions. seven auditioners (?), five places. the first debate went alright, but the second was the absolute PITS. i totally screwed up. i hope the NYDC team will take me back in for MPP, because i get the feeling i didn't quite make it into the scholars' cup team. D: so long, 2009 dream. i felt so depressed when the bell rang.

i remained depressed through chinese lesson, and the fact that i had not had anything to eat since 8 in the morning only made things worse. after chinese was math, and the prospect of having a probability quiz made me feel like putting my fist through something really hard and really solid. it was an easy quiz, though (too easy!), so that was alright. i simmered down a little and decided that i would pull through the rest of the day in a semiconscious mode. i was listening, but i wasn't really absorbing. i'm very good at pretending, though.

finally, it was time for japanese. 3 hours still doesn't seem like a feasible plan to me. a 15 minute break isn't going to give us enough energy for 3 hours! by the time it hit four, i felt like i'd been there for a day and a half. when the lesson was finally, finally over, i felt as though i'd spent about a week there. that's how bad it is. i don't know how i will cope when the real pressure of my later commitments sets in.

well, i went home (mum fetched me) and had a shower and talked to linus for a while. i felt a lot better after that, and diner was great. now, i'm posting this on my brilliant new blog (which i figured how to use last night--i am so proud of myself! thanks for helping out shelly!).

it's been a bittersweet day. i want to re-do the stupid audition, BUT i never want to talk about empires again. no empires. never.

later, i'm going to deal with geometric proofs (tuition homework. one good thing about math is that i'm way ahead of the syllabus...i think) and then i'm going to have a read through the quotes i compiled from all the IH articles yesterday. THEN i'll call it a day and get ready to face tuesday.

if mondays are blue, can i call tuesday green?

when tomorrow comes, i'll just have to deal with it, hour by freaking hour.