The Congress forum is no longer anonymous.

Though I don't believe in boycotting the forum because that is precisely what the school wants, I do believe in saying something against the decision.


People (or at least, the people making up my rather pathetic readership), if you believe in the anonymity of the Congress forum, post to protect it. Don't let this be a battle fought by only a few, because then it can never be won.

Go forth, children, into the world, and do great things. (:

no silence is more palpable
than the one at our table -
strip away the honeyed pretense

adjust your lens
and take a picture;
artificial smiles frozen forever

meal finished. you pick up the tab
the atmosphere in here couldn't be any more fab
face it - the family you need

...it isn't real: can't you feel it?

please, see the shallowness of it all
for a careful pantomime can never
ever
be
a reunion dinner.

While bumming around just now, I felt a teeny sense of loss.

I was blogstalking my P2 best friend. She's evolved into a bit of a bimbo. And she put up loads of pictures of herself camwhoring with her friends at Kbox.

This is so unfair. I've never even seen the inside of Kbox before. And all my former best friends from my old primary schools (except Rosyth) trot there like practically every week to sing and have fun and whatnot.

AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE BEFORE.

Though truth be told, I don't like singing except when in the shower, going to Kbox seems like some must-have experience and I'm miffed because I've never gone there even once.

I am eternally grateful to Rach for dragging me to the arcade, or I wouldn't have bothered going in there either.

Sigh. Is it just me, or are we losing what it means to be a teenager in the pursuit of academic excellence?

My CNY celebrations so far have been...uneventful.

Saturday was a mad rush of chionging homework before the New Year (or Niu Year, as everyone likes to call it. Cue lame laughter) started.

Sunday was the 除夕and by rights we should have eaten reunion dinner with my dad's side of the family, but one uncle couldn't make it back to Singapore in time for the dinner so we pushed it back to the next Sunday. We'll be having a buffet dinner then, awesome :D

So we ended up going to my maternal grandma's place for reunion dinner with my uncle's family instead. My mum and I reached there early to help out with the cooking, so I put on a random ratty old shirt plus jeans (because there is no point wearing nice clothes if you're going to dirty them while cooking). But my aunt was there already, so I just slacked around watching TV with two of my cousins.

Dinner was good. My mum was the chef, haha. Unfortunately for her, my grandma had also cooked food the night before, and my grandma's cooking pwns my mum's thanks to her 20 more years of experience. Poor Mummy.

Yesterday was 初一, so we visited my paternal grandma's place. My cousins were out visiting too, so I didn't really talk to them. We chionged out after an hour to go for our second reunion dinner at my maternal grandma's place - we have two because there's an 'official' reunion dinner on 除夕but normally only my uncle can make it (because he's the only son and my mum and aunts have to eat at their in-laws' place), so we have another unofficial one on 初一 when all my aunts are free to have dinner.

Steamboat yay :D My cousins are amusing. We had fake rubbery vegetarian abalone on the table and New Moon genuine abalone next to it. My aunt mentioned that the can of New Moon abalone was left over from last year's reunion dinner, so my 4th cousin dubbed it "Old Moon". When asked by my uncle what the fake abalone would be called, he shrugged and said "Fake Moon lor!"

We called the abalone(s) Fake Moon and Old Moon from then on. My cousin remarked that Old Moon tasted better and everyone else rolled their eyes at him. -.-

My cousin from NY applied for CAP! And she's a scenario writer too :D Literary people FTW :D

My uncle (Naziuncle*, yeah) decided to give everyone a Physics lesson while we were eating steamboat. So now we all know that the metal lump in the middle of the steamboat pot actually has a use. Lolol.

Yunling (the NY cousin) realised in the middle of the meal that we were the only ones among the 1st shift of eaters to still be eating during the 2nd shift (the table wasn't big enough to contain the whole family, so we took it in shifts to eat).

Naziuncle: *pretends to look shocked* Pig!
Me: Did someone say something? Couldn't quite hear that.
Yunling: Yeah. We went deaf.
Naziuncle: *a bit louder* Peeeeeeeeg.
Me: Nope, still couldn't hear it.
Naziuncle: *slowly gets louder* Pig. Pig. Pig.
Yunling: *scoops seafood from the pot and starts eating*
Me: WE DEVELOPED TEMPORARY DEAFNESS WOOHOO.
Naziuncle: PIG PIG PIG PIG PIG PIGGGGGGGGGGGGGG ~~~

He eventually gave up lolol. And we ate right to the end of the meal.

(* For non-regular readers of my blog, I call my uncle Naziuncle because he's my tuition teacher and gives lots of homework. He doesn't actually support Hitler. I think.)

CNY celebrations today!

PE first thing in the morning was...sian. We ran 6 rounds (actually 5, because Shawna discounted 2 half-rounds from it) around the tiny Parade Square, barely breaking into a sweat at the end of it. Then we played Virus or something. Vic sneaked up on me in the end, sigh.

RALA next. It was awesomeeeee :D I think I'm going to love oddweek Friday RALA from now on because it's 1 1/2 hours long. We could always ask for RALA to extend till after recess, and I'd have an extra half hour of RALA in the cool Jblock classroom over the crowded, noisy canteen anytime.

Poor Dr Sakhar. I hope for his sake that he likes talking to us as much as we like listening to him.

WE MIGHT SET UP A CLASS LIBRARY, WOOHOO! With Dr Sakhar as the main contributor :D

And he said some stuff in class today that I think Xinyuan would have been really interested in, but too bad she left 20mins into class for CNY concert.

On the flip side, I didn't eat anything from 6am to 8.45pm today, just drank 1 cup of Milo, one bottle of water and a packet of lemon tea. I pwnzzzz.

Some of us needed to change since we rushed to RALA from PE, but other people'd left their blouses in class, so I attempted to sneak unnoticed out of the room to use the toilet downstairs to change by walking Pink Panther-style out of the classroom. The whole class was laughing at me by the time I reached the door, including Dr Sakhar. D: And when I came back to the classroom, they APPLAUDED! Sheesh.

Like Vic, I must improve on my stealth.

Assembly was coolios :D Crosstalk was supremely funny and the NCC people did a really good job with the lion dance (haha Huilian). For once, I dragged Vic down to the assembly to watch the show, but she apparently couldn't see very well and sulked throughout the thing. It was a blessing in disguise for me, though, because she was in front of me and while she slouched and sulked I had a clear view of the stage.

Ma Chang and Fengjing (and the rest of the PRC scholars) were really good! Ma Chang with her Beijing-opera husband (wahaha) and Fengjing with her piano. I'll probably never be able to play that well ): The scholars' parents came to visit them, and they were so cute! They kept saying their daughters said the Singaporean kids were nice people. I hope they weren't just being polite, because one of my highest points for OBS was when Ma Chang said HER highest point was when we taught the scholars the school song. I'm surprised she didn't get scared off by my superbly bad translation and even worse singing skills lolol.

Chinese was nonexistent. Mdm Loy (it feels weird to call her Lilaoshi, because she's already Mdm Loy forever in my mind) was at CNY concert.

Chem was fun whee :D We didn't have a proper lesson, so Mrs Lim just gave us this quiz (which I got like 9/15 instead of 10/15 for because I didn't write my 'O' in CaCo3 properly, sigh) and a powerpoint full of random non-Chemrelated riddles for us to solve.

After school ended I ponned RA talk (which according to Xinyuan was a load of crap, so no guilty feelings there) and met up with 6GEPRosyth06 instead.

Everyone else played Wii while I stared on, fascinated by modern gaming machines. Then they tried convincing Tessa, Azaac, Josie, BryanLee and me to go swimming but we didn't want to, so Eth Edward Kester Raveen JY jumped in and started splashing around. Azaac, Tessa and I tried to skip ice across the swimming pool water but I failed miserably. BryanLee and Josie looked disapproving of our activities lolol.

Then everyone else went for dinner while Tessa, Josie and I went home. D: Sad life we all have, isn't it.

--

These days, I keep telling people (esp yearmates) stuff and they go "Yeah I know. Don't say it again. I READ YOUR BLOG ALREADY."

So why don't people make their presence known? I mean, I've always thought nobody knew about my blog, and that even yearmates don't bother checking it frequently. But I can post something today and have people know about it, like, tomorrow.

I know I don't usually ask for tags, because I don't reply them and I don't tag frequently on other people's blogs so I can't expect people to do it for me. But just this once, can people who read my blog tag to let me get a general idea of how many people read my blog? It's going to affect the way I blog, so yeah.

Btw, HELLO MUNI :D I BLOGSTALK YOU.

RAWRRRR.

Why is NOBODY free to go out tomorrow?!

Vic has programming. She's like the only person I've asked so far, because nobody is willing to reply my email to the sixfourteen-fifteen yahoogroups on where to go for class outing tomorrow. All my exclassmates are busy?! I'm going to call Rachel later, but it's odds on she'll have something on with her Malay friends too. I was GOING to ask Xinyuan, but she called me first to ask me to help her do something because she has RMUN WTF.

Audrey chionging her paper. Possibly about half the year's doing so too, and the other half are like the RA yearmates/forever not free kind.

I am going to cry.

WHY AM I SO FREE?!

Today was, surprisingly, pretty fun.

Started with Philo, and I had fun asking Mr Funelas inane questions such as "But isn't there an unqualified generalisation in a hasty generalisation?" and having Yvonne rebut me. In the end Xinyuan clarified by saying that if the premise for the hasty generalisation is taken away, it becomes an unqualified generalisation.

Therefore:

"Sharks eat laksa with hum." --> Unqualified Generalisation
"I saw a shark eat laksa with hum the other day at the hawker centre. Therefore I can conclude that all sharks eat laksa with hum." --> Hasty Generalisation

Excellent. I am so glad I'm not in PEP. I can just imagine the look on Mr Funelas' face if I told him that.

Next was Bio. We had this experiment where we were supposed to test the effects of osmosis by putting shelless, previously-treated-with-vinegar eggs in either corn syrup or water. The eggs resembled tiny water balloons with yolks inside.

All the eggs looked alike, so to differentiate them while weighing, LeeVoon and I named our eggs. The egg which went into the water was called Brown-Dot, the corn syrup egg was nicknamed Long-Body and the control egg was named... Normal.

After the experiment (when it was duly proved, to nobody's surprise, that the corn syrup egg weighed less after the experiment and the water egg weighed more), Xinyuan had a flash of inspiration after seeing Yvonne accidentally burst her egg all over herself. She decided to squeeze an egg over the dustbin at my bench, and the egg duly exploded...

and the contents went onto my TOFU. (The soft cuddly type from Action City, not a real tofu.) Lolol.

Physics was mind-numbingly boring. I stoned through the whole thing. Yawnnnn.

I ate last night's leftovers for recess. :D MY DINNER LEFTOVERS STILL PWN SCHOOL FOOD HAH.

Math next! Very fun, only because my Denise, LeeVoon and I weren't even bothering to pay attention. Math quizzes 1 and 2 were okayish. Careless mistakes sheesh. I didn't get what the teacher was saying the whole lesson, but I've given up trying. Shall just ask my uncle during reunion dinner on Monday, since we're not having tuition on Sunday because I'm seeing him on Monday anyway.

RS block was spent slacking off in the control room. Xinyuan and I had a strength contest, followed by my valiant attempt to knock Xinyuan off her chair. (I couldn't. Fine. Whateverrr)

Erm.

Then I borrowed Order of the Phoenix from the library and went home. Yay.

My life is so interesting, isn't it?

I have a love-hate relationship with work and commitments.

No, I don't actually have a lot. I'm managing fine for now.

It's just that everyone else has SO MUCH MORE and I'm totally jealous and I don't know why the hell I should be jealous of people who have so little free time to themselves that they sleep about 5h a day.

Balance, Crystal, balance. It's completely childish but I'd like to think I'll live longer with less stress on me.

I WANT LSE VIETNAM LA SHEEEESH! Annoyingshitz, but I'm quite glad Xinyuan couldn't make it for the briefing today so I got to stand in for her and hear about it. And I STILL want to join. I think I shall find a way to wriggle my way in even though the deadline for submission of forms was...today. Anyway the teacher there said they'd try to sway me into joining since I was there to listen lolol.

Now I have to convince my mum. I can so imagine how the conversation will go**:

Me: *while washing dishes* "Mummy, can I apply for LSE Vietnam?"
Mum: "NOT AGAIN. Didn't I say no already? You won't be staying in a hotel there y'know."
Me: *launches into sales pitch* "I believe in freedom. I believe in truth. I believe in teaching annoying little kids how to change font size 12 in MS Word to font size 94. I believe in making up for my unwillingness to teach my friends in Perth how to swear in Chinese the last time, by teaching the kids how to swear in both English AND Chinese this time."
Mum: *stares horrifiedly at me, frozen on the spot*
Me: Okay, silence means consent. Sign on the form, I've already filled in your recommendation letter.
Mum: *dumbly signs form, wowed at my passion for teaching and community work*
Me: *does victory dance*





**(IMPORTANT NOTE: Just kidding. Duh.)

...but you get the idea. I really want to go. Sigh. Besides, Thanh (AV senior!) is one of the mentors, and she's awesomeeee. :D

I actually had something important to say, but I forgot. Heck la.

Post edited. My life doesn't suck that much. I shall start counting my blessings instead (the few I have, anyway. Haha no la just kidding.)

Blessings:
1. I'm not an ahlian! I figure ahlians must be quite happy, though. Having only makeup and guys in your head must be so restful. Like Tina Hakim Baba.

2. Academic stuffs. Contrary to what some of my relatives seem to think, I'm not on the verge of failing all my exams. Far from that, thankfully. :D Not stellar, but not too bad either.

3. RALA. It makes EL/Lit classes bearable. I love the subject, but I used to feel like sleeping during EL class in Sec1 and even (horrors! Dare I say it?) Sec2.

4. Yearmates! 'Nuff said. I'm just glad that no matter what happens in the year, we try to work it out and bring it into the open in the end, not like the backstabbing and incessant bitching that happens in other CCAs. Or so I've heard.

And as Audrey said, when everyone else turns your back on you, yearmates will always still be there for you (:

5. AV batchies! I feel really glad that we're in the same class this year. And 2/5 of us are classchairs hoho. And when there're tech problems in class it's so cute because all of us stand up at the same time to fix it.

6. My parents. My mum, for trusting me enough to sign the OBS consent form, and my dad for offering me his old stinky OBS singlet from his 9-day course a longlong time ago.

7. Lowyingxin, fellow PT I/C! She's a natural at voice projection. I'm nowhere near it.

8. Health. There's nothing more important, and I don't work out and eat pretty unhealthily so I'm happy I'm not gaining (too much) weight, unlike a rather shocking example I saw today. Vic would know. :O

9. My wardrobe! And my bimb mum lolol. She's adopted Bimbo as her personal adjective already, and makes it her life goal to make sure I look presentable, though she'd much rather I had fashion-model looks like her. Yeah right.

10. My computer and its imba 21-inch screen. Who else has such a ginormous screen, huh? I don't even need my specs to see the words on the screen.

11. Tenzing! For making our OBS wonderful (:

Okay I'm done counting my blessings. For every time I feel inadequate, I shall think of a blessing I have, and feel happy.

--

Unrelated, but:

CRYSTAL IS STARTING A SHOE-WASHING BUSINESS. BRING YOUR DIRTY SHOES TO HER AND SHE WILL WASH THEM FOR $4 - $5 DEPENDING ON THE CONDITION OF THE SHOE.

CRYSTAL IS NOT KIDDING. NEITHER IS SHE HARD UP. SHE JUST LIKES WASHING SHOES AND MAKING THEM SPARKLE.

CRYSTAL IS NOT CRAZY BY DOING THIS. AT LEAST, THAT'S WHAT CRYSTAL THINKS.

Despite being the most sunburnt person in Tenzing, my parents thought I'd come back with worse.

Camp 2's the camp my dad stayed in when HE was in OBS :/

MY TAN'S FADING NUUU~~~

Got to do a whole load of homework now, the teachers show no mercy for poor sandfly-bitten, sunburnt students.

Back from OBS (: Broken but undefeated, asleep or deaddddddddd!

There're so many things we did there, and so many memories I'll keep forever, but I'll try to list the ones I remember here.

Watch 27, Tenzing FTW <3 Ariel Shawna Mala Cheryl Hanqing MaChang Fengjing Kim Sarah Rachel Denise Xinyuan Yvonne Crystal LeeVoon Hannah!

--

Day 1 was pretty unremarkable; we reached school really early and listened to Mrs Wee talk for a long while, then tried to hide from Mr TJ Lee's camera as we waited for our bus to come.

We reached the Punggol reception area a few hours later and split into our watches. We met ZIPPY, our awesome instructor :D Lunch and icebreaking games, then we headed onto the ferry and set off for Camp 2.

(Camp 1 was the first stop on the ferry. It looks like a freaking chalet next to Camp 2.)

We got there, unpacked and repacked into the OBS backpack, dragged stuff out from the Tenzing store and pitched our tents before heading for the beach to cook dinner.

Dinner was interesting. Zippy taught us how to use the jackknife to open cans, but Denise with her incredible arm strength was the only one who successfully mastered the skill, and became the official watch can opener lolol.

Happy Moment Number One: Sitting under the stars at the beach eating slightly wet rice and leftover curry sauce from a shared mess tin while chatting to your classmates.

After dinner we talked a bit, then went back and slept. Sleeping in a tent with Yvonne, LeeVoon and Hannah was pretty peaceful since they all don't shift around in their sleep, but Hannah kept poking my stomach and complaining that it was growling so loudly it was making her unable to sleep. We couldn't really acclimatize, so the first night wasn't very restful.

*thinking it's 6am already* "What time is it now?"
"3.11 am."
"WHAAAAT?"

Halfway through the night I kept hearing faint strains of some sort of obiang music, and I thought it was due to a supernatural cause until we told Zippy the next morning and she started laughing and explained that it was the music from the crazy kelong people at JB who hold karaoke parties at 3am every night.

Day 2 was SeaEx(pedition) day. PT first thing in the morning was pretty easy, and we cheered random cheers to keep everyone's spirits up.

Next was lifevest testing and Jetty Jump. For all the hype about it, it was...nothing much. We made a commitment, jumped in and that was it. I forgot how to swim in my anxiousness at not being able to touch the ground with my feet and Xinyuan and Hannah had to push/drag me to the ladder, sheeet. So paiseh.

Kayaking lesson and subsequently kayaking and T-X rescue was fun. Hannah and I turned out to be perfect kayaking partners, since she's a really good navigator and I have, um, arm muscle. We cut through the water more easily than the rest, though when we did the actual SeaEx later we slowed down a lot because of fatigue.

SeaEx started out okay but it started storming, and we were getting super tired so we slowed down a fair bit. Switched partners halfway, Hannah kayaked with Rachel while I kayaked with Xinyuan. It turned out to be a really bad decision, since Xinyuan and I were obviously not the dream team Hannah and I were during T-X rescue - we couldn't navigate properly anymore and wasted a fair bit of time turning. Plus Xinyuan was grumpy and I was a little too hyper, so we couldn't coordinate our strokes either. I kept getting impatient and paddling faster than Xinyuan no matter how much I tried to synchro with her. (Oops my bad.) But we got to the shore in the end (:

Happy Moment Number Two: Racing across the water with Hannah and feeling my arm muscles work to paddle the kayak through the water (:

Next we trekked to Camp 1. It was one of the most awful experiences of my life, but the dinner waiting at the end of it - plus the chalet-like camp we got to stay in for the night - was enough to make up for it. I did get a bit pissed, though, when Audrey happily walked over and said her watch got to kayak to Camp 1. Sheesh. Dinner was the best we had in OBS; we got a proper meal at the cookhouse from a caterer.

The trouble started when we headed to our campsite to pitch tents for the night - my group realised we left our tentpoles and groundsheet back in Camp 2. Uh-oh. After guiltily telling Zippy about it, we squeezed into everyone else's tents. LeeVoon and I were taken in by Denise's tent, the nice people :D We slept quite well that night, except for one time when Xinyuan woke us all up by saying frantically that the tide was coming in and our tent was going to be floated away. (Our tent was the closest to the sea and the breakwater.) It didn't in the end, and the tide receded.

Day 3 was LandEx. It was probably the toughest day of OBS, but the most awesome, because after we trekked for around 4 hours straight, stopping by the shrine of a dead German girl popular with punters and singing to cheer ourselves up, we reached Kekek Quarry (: (Yes, the famous quarry from the Integrated Science module worksheet last year.) It doesn't look like the place where a brutal murder can take place, seriously. We had to build a raft out of barrels, ropes and pipes to paddle across the quarry, but after Zippy was done testing our raft's seaworthiness and finally let us float the raft, we realised that none of us except Shawna could get onto the raft because we built the platform too high. Yay. So we just splashed around in the wonderfully clear, sweet water and dunked/splashed Zippy. Having to change back into wet attire for the activity was really gross, though - our changing room was a clearing filled with spiderwebs and red ants.

After that, we continued trekking for a short while to our open campsite and cooked dinner. Maggi Mee, Sambal Ikan Bilis, Sardines and Luo Han Zhai yay (: Being Food I/Cs with Xinyuan meant we could choose what we wanted for dinner, but we mostly followed the menu. It was good anyway.

Happy Moment Number Two: Sitting around two fires with Denise's and my tent cooking Maggi Mee and warming canned food while laughing at inane jokes about entrenching tools* and Hannah dropping her mess tin while giggling madly at my constant "Oh, shit!"s whenever I made a mistake or dropped my mee. She ended up spilling the entire contents of her mess tin and Denise had to clear it up while Hannah went in search of the Entrenching Tool.

*Entrenching Tool = euphemism for shit shovel. The shovel you use to dig a hole to shit in when camping outdoors.

After we were done entrenching all our leftover food, we walked to the beach to meet Zippy, because she promised us she'd cook popcorn for us after dinner :D

Happy Moment Number Three: Sitting under the stars with Tenzing while listening to Yvonne lecture about the Belt of Orion, and Ariel squealing about how she found the Little Dipper in the sky - stars we'd never be able to see with Singapore's major light pollution. The skies at Ubin are so clear and pretty, I could cry just thinking about it.

The other group was having a kayaking briefing at the beach, so Zippy decided to move the group nearer to our tent in case we made noise and disturbed them. Her first (small) batch of popcorn was successful, but the second was not, so we sat around talking and eating about 3 kernels of popcorn per person.

Happy Moment Number Four: Listening to Zippy tell her life story to us (in response to Xinyuan's and my question about why she became an OBS instructor) and singing Superman with Tenzing with accompaniment from Zippy's iPod (attached to speaker). Laughing at the jokes we swapped around the circle. Wishing the moment would never end (:

Day 4 was basically just trekking back to Camp 2 (via a much shorter route) and repacking our stuff back into our personal backpacks, plus groundsheet and poncho washing and store arranging.

Celebration dinner was awesome. We took forever to cook the apple crumble and the group doing the Magic Fried Rice had to work with uncooked rice, but the fried rice turned out better than my mum's and the apple crumble finally worked with Voon's perseverance in singing this song to the filling:

"Why are you still not gooey
Can you please turn gooey
If you do not turn gooey
I will be the one to turn gooeyyyyyy"

While waiting for the filling to turn gooey, we taught the scholars to sing the school song. Lol.

The apple crumble turned out great in the end, but Zippy kept laughing when she took her first bite because we were staring at her anxiously to see her reaction.

Some instructor told us it was Zippy's birthday the next day (aka today), so our group, being the sweet people we are, decided to plan a birthday surprise for her. Denise's tent stayed up to draw a huge birthday card for Zippy using markers and mahjong paper, while my tent stayed up to finish the script for our finale performance.

This morning, we woke up at 5.30 am to unpitch, neaten the store and chionged everything to make it in time to wish Zippy a happy birthday at 6.30 am.

So we trooped up to the instructors' lodge, Rachel and Sarah holding a birthday card and one of Sarah's anti-mozzie candles, and shouted for Zippy. Then we proceeded to sing her the birthday song, but that's when Zippy said:

"I'm sorry to break your hearts, but it's not my birthday :/"

MAN DID WE FEEL LIKE STRANGLING THE INSTRUCTOR WHO PLAYED THE PRANK ON US. Sheesh!

After that was this long emoing/reflection session; Zippy got some modelling clay for us and told us to create our group's most memorable scene (we chose rafting and the Entrenching Party scene*). A fair number of people cried, sigh.

(*The Entrenching Party happened on Day 4. After returning to Camp 2, Sarah and Xinyuan realised they never had a chance to use the Entrenching Tool at all during the past 2 days, and decided it was an experience not to be missed. So they prepared for the Entrenching Party by eating lots of raisins and pitted prunes the whole day.

At night, they grabbed the shovel and a roll of toilet paper, and determinedly marched up to the Instructors' Lodge to ask Zippy where they could, um, entrench. They ended up choosing a place halfway up the stairs to Heaven. But Xinyuan ran down a while later, saying something like "COULDN'T ENTRENCH. NEED TOILET. NAO."

Sarah clarified the situation: "We tried digging for half an hour, but the ground was too hard and the hole was too small to shit in.") Then she ran into the toilet too, while everyone else nearly died laughing their asses off.

Anyway, after the whole emoing session, we went for the finale performance. Amundsen's was particularly memorable, thanks to their "husband and wife + lover" team. Tenzing was the first to go up, but we were too engrossed in singing to realise that nobody could understand what we were singing about. Whoops.

Then we said goodbye to Zippy and headed back to Punggol Jetty, sigh D: Bought OBS memorabilia: OBS shirt plus keychain.

I heart Tenzing, yay (: I'm so glad we'll be in the same class for two years, seriously. They're such fun people to be with.

"Zippy like to tell stories. You like to listen?" - Zippy
"Entrenching tool, entrenching tool, entrenching tooool~~~ (repeat 100x)" - Tenzing; the Entrenching Tool song

"I wish you enough." - OBS instructors

OBS: To serve, to strive and not to yield (:

Tenzing <3!







That's Royston Tan's 'Cut' for you. Apparently banned by Singapore's censors, but this is proof for our cause that the law's obsolete and should be updated (and the language sharpened and made fairer and less arbitrary.)

Blehhh today wasn't the best of days.

The morning started out splendidly, with Yoonjung informing us that Ms Lim said we might have gotten in for MPP 1st round (which we later confirmed with Mr TJ Lee during Assembly, yay).

Then everything went downhill; I got an awful stomachache during height and weight taking which persisted throughout PE and RALA, which was the class after PE. Obviously since I was feeling both sick and sleepy (not to mention still achy), I didn't much feel like talking, especially since I suspected I might have bad breath and Dr Sakhar was right in front of me.

Dr Sakhar's nice, really. He was talking about Dr Faustus, who famously sold his soul to the devil (derived from the original Faust) and then went "Not to Elizabeth Hurley! Though I wouldn't mind selling myself to Elizabeth Hurley... *grin*"

(Note: I just checked Wiki and it said Elizabeth Taylor was the one who acted in the Faust film, which means he must have said it wrongly, but if I were a guy I'd rather sell my soul to Liz Hurley because Elizabeth Taylor's an ahmah now. :D)

Everyone kept laughing at his jokes, which must have been at least moderately funny, but I was so sian and hungry and achy that I just couldn't laugh. Neither did Vic. Which resulted in Dr Sakhar asking us after class if we understood what was going on in class, because we were "pretty quiet". Grayte. Must save our reputation next lesson. :/

LA (can't call it Lit or English, we did both) extended till after recess because everyone wanted to keep listening to the wise words of Dr Sakhar, so we chionged back to class to change and then rushed to the hall control room for Assembly. Since it was not my duty week, I got kicked out of the control room by Cherylchan but it didn't really matter since for some reason everyone's so attracted to me that they all came out and joined me in the gallery outside the control room after a while. :D Vic and Denise were the first out. They're so nice. I don't deserve such nice batchies ):

HCL was unfortunately rather boring. Chem was tough, but interesting. Condescending as we might find the teacher, I have to admit she's good. Thanks to the lastminute revision I did last night, I kind of got most of what she was saying. Was still no match for the pro people in 311, though.

After school Charisse, Vic and I chionged out again to find the Ms Ongs, who were giving their CAP briefing. (Rather amusingly, they made the to-be CAPpers assemble at exactly the same spot in the Hall that they used for the CAP briefing last year.) I got Ms Ong SJ to do Xinyuan's and my recommendation while Charisse and Vic waited for Ms Sharon Ong to finish psychoing our batchmates to join LitRS. Then Ms Ong realised that Denise wasn't around and made one of us go find her. She was in the canteen eating noodles or something and nearly choked when she heard Ms Ong was looking for her :/ Can't imagine the fear she strikes in her students, she seems okayish to me. But then again, she's never been my teacher before. :D

Then I went off to hobo and eat lunch alone, but found Alicia waiting for her grandpa there, so I had someone to talk to, yay (: Mala appeared out of nowhere too, so I didn't actually get any hoboing done. Phototaking after that was okay, but Xinyuan (who had been absent the whole day) suddenly appeared out of nowhere and got her photo taken.

Xinyuan also showed me the solid fuel her dad got for OBS. She triumphantly held up a bagful of tealights that had "TEALIGHTS" written on it and went all "here it is!".

I almost fainted. I swear I did.

But then again, I guess it's not actually her dad's fault because I don't think he's done outdoor cooking before and so might have thought that "solid fuel" literally meant fuel in solid form, which candles/tealights are, and not a specific type of Solid Fuel, which is what we needed.

Still. IT HAD 'TEALIGHTS' WRITTEN ON IT!

...though I did find actual Solid Fuel after scouting around a bit just now. Didn't have enough money on me to buy it, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping the shop won't be out of stock when I go there tomorrow.

Sigh.

Actually, now I think of it, it's actually pretty hilarious, though just now I was too pissed to see the humour in it. LOLOL. Vic was laughing like crazy when we told her.

I'm starting to not want to go for OBS D:

I'm nursing a bad headache, left over from yesterday's chionging (but still not finishing) of Commonwealth Essay.

Not that it actually mattered, though. Dr Sakhar's MC was good for two days, so he's coming back tomorrow for our first-ever RALA lesson. (I hope.) We had a free block today, which we fruitfully spent reading Pathology Psychology (Xinyuan), some random book (Yvonne), Harry Potter (me) and coding (Vic).

Today's lessons were depressingly boring. I'm starting to wonder if I chose the right subjects - I've never been much of a Science person, and I've always loved the Humanities subjects. I just couldn't imagine myself suffering through another 2 years' worth of bad Geog/History essays and getting unstable marks.

Sigh there's PE tomorrow and I'm aching all over from yesterday, which just proves that I'm getting majorly unfit - running doesn't normally make me so lightheadedly happy and carefree, but I guess I've been depriving myself by leading a thoroughly sedentary lifestyle.

MPP interview was...okay, but I wouldn't bet on our chances of getting in. Sighhh.

Sigh I feel so maligned. I didn't. Seriously. Did not did not never even did anything okay that makes no sense.

--

Stupid Commonwealth Essay. All the plots I've thought of are lame stock storylines. The RALA teacher's going to keeeeeel me tomorrow.

Oh Mrs Sia's daughter's 311's relief teacher :D She went through 1 week's worth of lessons in 1 hour and introduced a weird sign to us. It looks like an E and is called Sigma, which actually sounds like a particularly horrible type of pus.

OH I JUST REMEMBERED WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. (Smegma. I think that's how it's spelled. One shouldn't read too much Xiaxue.)

I suddenly feel like not doing my homework and just packing for class and training and going straight off to bed.

So tempting.

"You're a part-time lover and a full-time friend; the monkey on your back is the latest trend
I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else but you..."

Moldy Peaches.

I know this post sounds incoherent as usual.

Grayte I deleted my entire Commonwealth Essay because I got grossed out by it.



Vic's latest blogpost is hilarious. NO-SMOKE-ANATOR!!!


Heh anyway timetables are out, and we have Lit twice a week, English twice a week and Chinese THRICE a week. What kind of world is this when Chinese classes are more often than English classes?!

Oh and I thought this would be interesting.

Behold, say, 315's beautifully organized timetable. They have every single lesson as a class.












Compare that with my class's timetable. As Mr Lee puts it, it's not a timetable but a freaking MATRIX (and, come to think of it, a rather magnificent work of art). The only lessons we have together are Social Studies, CLE, Philo and PE. Yay. My class is made up of TripScience AND TripHumans people.


E+Lit = Elite!

Sorry, random thought. Vic came up with it in the control room today.

Whoa Mr Thomas Jeremy Lee's 311's form teacher :O

So much for putting in an appeal to not teach us. Apparently it didn't work, because like Vic said, we (as in, the whole AV batch) started whooping and clapping as the class stood up to greet him. Everyone turned around and stared at us :/ Oops.

And he blogchecks his students too. At least, that's what he said. But who cares la, read then read lor. HI MR LEE :D

What's wrong with RGS, though? A teacher puts in a Special Request to not teach students from his CCA and promptly gets sent to be the FT of the class the entire CCA batch is in.

Haha. Not complaining though.

--

I just realised that I didn't listen to any of the talks today. I mean seriously, who cares? Alicia agreed (: (My downstairs neighbour, not yearmate.) Apparently they're still subjecting the poor Sec1s to the EXACT SAME talks that they forced us to go through 2 years ago. I wish I'd had the guts to fall asleep like Xinyuan did then. History of RGS and CCA Talk (Part 1). Alicia said there's still Part 2 on Monday. Good luck to her man.

Sigh stoned in the library for super long today (1.30 to 4pm! So proud of myself) because Alicia's grandma asked me to show her the route I take home. School admin stretched the programme from 3pm to 4pm, so I practically memorised the Sec1s' classlist while waiting and stood around trying to act like a Bored Parent, only that it didn't quite work because I was in school uniform.

I really do wish I'd studied harder for PSLE. I didn't know what to say today when asked about it. D: How depressing.

Oh, glorious Inspiration! How I love you.

fifteen. a chopstick (though not chopstick-thin). ex-coralite, ex-riverlite, ex-rosythian and now a rafflesian.
member of rgsrcy&aikirinashi; love always
and rgavpa - girls in black.

hobo. part-time PUSSian.