Sunday, December 13, 2009
The void caused by the lack of a post-As euphoria was made up by preparation for viva la glam 5 days later. In my desperate attempt not to look like a cheese cake once more, I scoured the streets and refused to settle on anything until the second last day when I finally decided I can't be bothered. But I'm very pleased with my whole get-up cos I saved a sum by borrowing my clutch, shoes and braclet! : D Getting our hair and make-up done at stage at ion made Yixin and I very self-conscious the moment we stepped out of the shop because dressing up in Singapore makes you stand out.Prom is very much a meaningless glitzy affair which has half the people walking around camwhoring and the other half sticking to their tables. It's a great chance for girls to pamper and capture themselves in their best looking moments and for friends to hang out for what may be the last time but it says nothing of school life. I think some 408s made that statement by camping at the couches near the girls' washroom. The whole atmosphere meant that I refused to use my lousy 5mp family camera so I'm left with a bunch of facebook photos as a reminder of my last official day as a rj kid. Urgh. And this may sound really weird but seeing all the food being scrapped and thrown away made me feel lousy. Think about how many malnourished they could have helped : (
Post-prom was supposed to be clubbing but my classmates took so long to decide, Yixin and I decided to go to her house for a sleepover. And there was lovely eelyn to join us as well : D Lying around and talking in dazed tones in the wee hours of the morning was fun and so was eating guoties made by Yixin's mom. So yummy! She prepared home-made soya bean milk and some shanghai sour-sweet fermented rice snack for us as well. : D After breakfast, I decided to be good and went home to pack for camp the next day while they watched you're beautiful.
If you are bored, do watch you're beautiful! It's a rehash of all the kdramas but I like the context : ) and there's a catchy soundtrack to boot.
I was just scanning through my archives when I saw this "So I think, after my A levels, I will read the whole series again (it shall become some sort of tradition) and then whisk myself off to Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando, Florida, USA between December 15, 2009 and June 30, 2010 because that's when the theme park will be completed! : D"
I was talking about Harry Potter. -.- Looks like I wouldn't be at sunny sandy Florida but I have already experienced some of the sun and the sea at Vivant and am expecting more of it at Pulau Ubin onboard the Cutter. : ) My choice to commit to Hi5 turned out to be a good one for a start. I found myself constantly trying to engage and be engaged as a facilitator and my campers are the awesome owning group when it comes to games. It helped that the batch this year is much more promising than mine and this year's activities were well-planned. I shall just spam the photos because I haven't finished packing for OBS and it's already 10:30pm. But I'm a pro packer after all the camps already so no worries. : D
11:09 PM
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
I think my previous post turned out being too emo for its own good though I was perfectly fine while writing it and not like seriously fuming or moping over the state of my life simultaneously. And seeing how I'm taking the loss of marks from the A-levels (in denominations of tens) with such panache, I think I've successfully learnt how to separate my well-being from scoring As. :D (this can only be truly validified in April 2010) Surprisingly (econs lecturer style with jabbing finger motion), it seems like many are concerned over the rise in the standard of my English instead. -.-Anyway two major annoyances for me arose during this period.
One - the bell curve. I do not like all that talk about not having to worry simply because in some other jc, the students will probably screw up more than us. It may be statistically true but why be happy over the fact that your A was obtained because it was juxtaposed against mediocrity and not excellence? Besides, I have always believed that the top kid in any other jc can easily beat the average kid here.
Two - when people can gripe about their loss of marks so furiously (often aggravated if it amounts to less than 10% of the paper) when they previously dismissed their peers' screw-ups with such nonchalance -.-
On the gayer side of life, many of us are left with a science mcq paper to go before we celebrate the end of our mugging (for the time being)! Unfortunately, I'm not in the mood for celebration because it marks the end of our life as a student and A-levels makes it such that your memory of jc fades away with it being the most prominent experience, unless you make a little more effort in sieving through your memory bank. Perhaps prom is going to make it better.
Speaking of which, I'm up at such an ungodly hour because I screwed up my constitution while shopping for prom today. After 2012, which turned out to be a pretty good movie to watch despite the apocalyptic message (halfway through, I started wondering whether this was why space exploration was necessary and if they will resort to a scene of us taking spaceships to the Moon. update on previous post: the scientists have now found LITRES of water - good for them), I went on this 5 hour long, excruciating and demoralising search for the dress from newton to orchard. 99% of the time, I looked so plain that I think someone may just walk right into me not knowing I existed. That is the epitome of a high school geek.
So I'm calling for any old prom dresses you wouldn't mind loaning to me if you think it suits me : ) If not, I'll have to relive my chang-er costume in Sec 4, which may be to the amusement of many.
3:52 AM
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
I think today was the best day of my life.I screwed my cambridge interview.
I realised how mediocre I am compared to deans' lists hoggers.
I found out what can arise from a depressing case of a friendship gone awfully wrong.
I got shortlisted for my top-choice internship (interview -.-)
I received an email trying to convince me of "my excellent academic records and accomplishments".
I'm not even attempting to make all this sound like a sarcastic jab at my life but at 10pm on a night less than two weeks away from the big As, still in my uniform and feeling this strong urge to escape to a place with no examinations or whatsoever, suddenly everything has never been clearer. The mad rush to get into the top universities following the rushed applications of personal statements and college essays, the pressure you get to make a decision about your career barely 18 years into your life for the next 48 years of life with the next inquiry of 'what are you going to be in future?', the guilt you experience when you realised that your past few hours of mugging have been marred by uncontrollable chatter with your friends or the insecurity you face as the day of our academic marathon draws nearer, and eventually, to a close.
I'm losing steam at this crucial point of time because this race has lost its meaning to me. I thought it was complacency but thought it impossible for someone with such a low self-esteem. People preach about how grades don't really matter and that 10 years down the road, the things you'll remember are the friends you made, the way you fought for your team's pride on the field or the insane hours you put into practising for that last performance. But I thought what bullshit, if that's true, why does 98% of the population make those precise statements to console their friends but still mug their ass off and fuss over how stupid they feel with each common test or finals.
"Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure. The first time I blew a test, I walked out of the room feeling like I no longer knew who I was. The second time, it was easier; I had started to learn that failure isn’t the end of the world."
The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. Schools pride themselves in producing leaders but not in empowering the common man. I'm not even calling for a overhaul of the education system because I think it is basically what drives our economy when we say the only resource we have is our man, one that is taught that it is alright to fail, but perhaps not for a second time.
The xth time I repeated how badly my interview went, I started to feel numb and I thought, does this really matter? It didn't and wouldn't and shouldn't. My classmate asked me just a day or two ago, "Manling, if I asked you to go out and makan yesterday night at 10pm, would you?"
I said I might if I were in the mood. So he pushed on, "Were you in the mood?"
I thought "No, I don't think I would go cos I might grow fat from eating so late in the night" (I really meant it) and I laughed it off.
And he said "Oh we thought wrong, we thought you might have been mugging".
It was almost like another of those jibes of me being a mugger and if I say I'm not one, I doubt many will believe me cos I don't whine about my results openly, but if it's disappointing to me, I think I show it in my resolute to get it right and I'd work on anything on a daily basis if I can push myself to. A mugger? So be it, but I'd rather not be the one who is panicking when an exam comes.
But then I thought about the conversation that transpassed and I felt disparaged that even though I'm far from being socially awkward, people may just see me as that mugger classmate of theirs many years later, simply because there was nothing else to remember me by. I realised I have built my self-worth based on my results, nowhere glorious but definitely nothing to be shameful of, essentially because I still haven't found any innate talent that I can hone. If it's not the sports, perhaps the arts? But what if both fields closed their gates to you? Or perhaps you haven't had enough time to explore truly everything and anything - but we live in such a system whereby if you haven't found something by say, when you're in your tweens, you are banished to the social ranks of being a nerd/geek/gamer.
I'd say this is unfair. Some people picked up a racquet and discovered that they could hit balls to the edges of the courts, some people picked up an instrument to realise that they have perfect pitch and an excellent sense of rhythm, some picked up the brush and realised they could produce an image of a scene just as it is presented before them. I picked up everything and realised I could not do any of them well enough to expect much potential for improvement in future. Or perhaps its a self-imposed thought simply because I looked to the right to see that the individual next to me could do better.
So I say, 2 weeks before the hell of the shit all junior college students think they are going through, maybe it's time to take a step back and decide what they should get out of this. For me, its going to be the tys and consultations as usual, but with a different take on it all, because I'm not doing this for what I'm going to be in future, but to find out what I may be if I get something right for once without caring about how I fare against others.
With that, today is the best day of my life.
11:07 PM
Friday, October 23, 2009
Omg omg omg.I hope I'll be able to walk out of the hall tomorrow.
12:27 PM
Monday, October 19, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BzvZ7sEm3Ehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh5knCxsMRo
SUPER FUNNY.
6:35 PM
Sunday, October 18, 2009
I just typed a whole bunch of stuff and deleted it because it was all too pitiful to read. This shouldn't be the case. Think positive. I'm days away to creating a miracle.
Damn it. What's stopping me.
8:05 PM
Saturday, September 26, 2009
There is something uncanny about how planetary scientists are getting excited over the few millimetres thick of hydroxyl layer on Moon. Proclaiming about the myriad of possibilities including the creation of a manned launch pad and what, growing vegetables? The superpowers in the world have their interests put in the wrong place I feel. We can't even use resources Earth has provided us wisely, we can't even decide how borders (that includes maritime) should be divided even after hundreds of years - and we are thinking of conquering outer space.So what is to come in future? Failed negotiations over space authority may stop at sanctions but may very well lead to war considering what history has told us about Man's conquest for land. And it doesn't help that this may be another channel through which rising economies like China and India are establishing their influence with the shift in the balance of powers away from the West.
The thought of technology which may one day provide us with the means to exploit the Moon at a decent cost sounds possible but may be deemed necessary due to overpopulation. Ehrlich's theory might have failed to account for countries' birth rates control policies nor the dynamic nature of technology that has allowed us to squeeze the most out of our resources, but I don't think overpopulation is impossible. Still, I'm skeptical of whatever we may reap from sending a few man up to space to man a launch pad with their visitors coming in at a rate of 1 out of 5 years and their only leisure being watching over their vegetable plot. If you don't die of loneliness, you die of boredom.
Yes, our desire to conquer space has led to creations like rainwater purification systems for developing economies and other medical advancements. Which is why I don't think going along this track will be harmful even with a misguided aim because such innovation that improves our quality of life is the sole justification to the huge expenses of economies on space exploration over all the other problems that are so much more pressing.
10:57 PM