Shaw Leong

The Designed Human

2012-02-08T22:22:00.003+08:00

I'm going to blog about designer babies today. Random, i know. I'm doing this because i wanted to do research on this topic for one of my CA, but it wasn't really suitable, and it kind of interested me, so i'm just going to talk about it. But of course the main reason is the lack of content in my blog.

There's this kind of technology where people can actually pick out "perfect" and selected genes and put them together in some embryo or whatever thing to create a baby with some selected traits that they want. So people can give their babies blue eyes or whatever they want. This is a genetically-engineered baby (media calls it designer babies).

And then some people went to purposely give the babies a disability just so he/she can fit into the culture. Like there's this culture that gave the babies deafness through this genetic-engineering thing.

And then there were others who do the opposite; they make sure that their babies are healthy and free from disabilities. In some cases, parents created designer babies to save another child. These babies are created with certain body parts that can be donated to save another child's lives.

But, is it really okay to let your parents modify your genes and stuff? Isn't it weird and unnatural? And what's with purposely giving people disabilities just so you can fit into the culture? I don't really have much rights to criticise this "system" because i don't know much about it, but i find it interesting.

In some ways, isn't this what some people willingly do anyway?

Like, plastic surgery and stuff. I heard that there was this woman who injected cooking oil into her face because she tried to perform plastic surgery on herself :/

I guess the best is still positive thinking and self-satisfaction.

The Days Go By

2012-02-02T19:04:00.004+08:00

Recently I haven't been blogging, and my blog is approaching its death soon, so I've decided to resurrect it. I'll blog about 3 random things: Chinese New Year, school, and a game I've been playing.

Chinese New Year
It was fine. To be honest, it was actually the most boring chinese new year because my cousins have all grown up and became mature. I talked to my siblings and cousins less because we kind of distanced over time and stuff, or at least that's what I feel. Though we did play cards and drank a little. Really little.

The CNY experience was fine, actually, but I cannot stand how disgustingly dirty my ahma's house is. It's as if they have never cleaned it even once ever. As for the other new year stuff, like the reunion dinner, tidbits, red packets, they were all fine.

So I have one word to summarise my whole CNY: Fine.

School
A lot of CAs actually. Since the term break ended, it had been CA2s after CA2s, and before the CA2s even ended, CA10s had came our way. And then there are GenEd submissions. But actually it's manageable. I just hope I don't have to sacrifice resting time and all, especially since I fell sick since 2 days ago.

Final Fantasy XIII
Slow, i know. I'm still playing FFXIII now. But anyway, it's a fun game with nice soundtrack and a fine storyline. Maybe I shall write an unprofessional review on it soon. After all the CAs, that is.

Actually, I feel like writing a review for One Piece as well, but bleh.

Lazy to blog

2012-01-29T17:03:00.001+08:00

Lazy to blog

We Shapes

2012-01-16T23:53:00.002+08:00

We are often more multi-dimensional than what is on the surface. We have more substance than what is on the surface. We are 3D shapes; we have many sides, many edges, and we have a volume, not just a surface area. We are deeper than what we show. It's easy to say "You don't understand me", but what about the moment when you felt that it was the other way around? Sometimes, you understand someone less than you think you do.

Sometimes, we look at what is shown on the outside. We see the images other people try to portray. We see different sides to them. Sometimes, even worse, we only see one side of them. We make judgements, and then we feel intimidated and we avoid these people. But it's unfair. We haven't even got to know one another.

There's this person I had always judged. I used to see a few sides to him/her. One day, I gave in to my insecurity, and I felt that I could not open up to this person because of a few actions that he/she had done. I avoided him/her and gradually my view of him/her became shallow. From then on, that person was flat to me. There was only one thing I know when I see him/her: He/she is a hypocrite. But there was more. Everyone has a story in them, they have depth, deep thoughts, feelings, soul, and all those stuff, and judging from the outside is just wrong.

And then I opened my eyes and saw more to this person. I had always felt that this person was unemotional, one-sided, superficial. And then I saw another side, and yet another side, and the emotions start coming. I feel guilty for what I've felt.

We are all 3D shapes. Even in creative writing lectures, we learn that characters are multi-dimensional. There is always more to a person, that's why people are so intriguing. There is always more to a person, that's why we never fully understand one another.

On The Outside

2012-01-13T14:50:00.003+08:00

Recently i've got nothing to blog about. Maybe i'm becoming less open and starting to shift away from sharing my thoughts in my blog. Sometimes i feel that my blog is getting too superficial. You get to know nothing much about me from my blog, except for things that i do and wear around my sleeves. It's just a surface to show what i want to show - nothing.

The reason, i think, honestly, is because i'm afraid. I no longer dare to voice out and get my true soul heard. All i dare to do is to put on a front to show people what i want them to see. I'm not being completely genuine, because i fear judgement, even though there's nothing to fear.

So, perhaps i should start finding things that i'm more interested in to blog about. For now, i shall just do an update on my daily life on the surface.

----------

I've updated up till last friday. Last friday was supposingly the last day of my open house duty. Went to school earlier to do consultation with sweelin for EP ca2. Went to fc2 to look for yakun but couldn't find it, so went back to fc4 to have our lunch. My sick was at its climax around this day, so i was feeling tired and uncomfortable in my stomach.

Went to do bus duty anyway. Did one round of tour. Felt very nervous and the people were laughing at me -.- But after that, the lecturer got me out of bus duty to do spcc side door duty due to a lack of people there, fortunately. So, i did and stood there for like 3 hours giving people stickers o.o

This week had been a lot of CAs. I need days without CAs T_T Rushed EP and finished it today. Feeling quite confident about it. Aiming for an 'A' isn't too much, is it? So this week, we're done with WMM (World Issues and Media Maker) and EP (Entertainment Programmes) ca2s. It's just left with VPPP (Video Production), CS (Conceptualisation and Structure), and CMM (Communication for Media Makers).

WMM was fine. The thing that's scariest about this module is the judgement and criticisms that come with it, not the CAs themselves. The CA2 was a really easy test which i got a B for (we went through the test right after doing it). Got back WMM ca1 too, got 81, to my relief.

Got back CS and CMM ca1s too. Got 'B' for both of them even though i worked the hardest for these modules. As for VPPP, i already got a 'C' for ca1, hope to buck up in my ca2 and ca10.

I sound like a no-life loser o.o

School Reopened

2012-01-05T18:40:00.002+08:00

The holidays are over, it's a new year and year 1 sem 2 continues for us. I fell sick on the first day of school, but i went to school anyway. Stella's lesson on writing a research paper, and some recap to what we had learnt before the holiday. It was over quite fast, got back our cmm ca1, i got an average B.

Had a break, and then did CS consultation and brainstorming in the writer's room :D Worked on comedy-fying zhaoyi's group's 'Brighter Sides'. Comedies are difficult :/ More or less done with the groupwork part, just a little more to do. These CA2s are so worrying! So much at once :(

The second day after school reopen is open house day 1, which is yesterday. I was doing CASS tour duty, but there was hardly anyone because it was just the secondary school people. Didn't get to do anything for the whole 3 hours.

Today is the open house day 2. Unlike yesterday, today there was lots of people. I was doing CASS tour again, managed to do 4 tours. Quite fun. Some people appeared more interested than others and stuff.

Tomorrow is my last day, going to do bus tour, don't think there's anyone I know doing the same shift :/ I'll see how it goes, hopefully i can make some friends.

December 2011

2012-01-01T22:05:00.002+08:00

The first week of December in 2011 was the last week of school. It was rather slack, but i forgot the details.

The second week was the start of SP people's holidays. Spent the first week doing lots of preparation for christmas. Shopped for a gift to exchange (which ended up being my possession because there was no longer one) and did cards with Jt. On the third week of december, i started doing CAs and watching/rewatching some stuff. Restarted layout making, and then there was christmas. The last week was quite monotonous. Stayed at home for most of the days and played ps3. Went out on friday for some chinese new year clothes shopping. My sister returned from china yesterday, the last day of 2011, and then after bringing her home, i headed to celebrate the new year with some of the mehmehs @toa payoh's rooftop garden. Got high and stuff. And then we did prank calls and spent our time doing random things till around 2.30am. Walked to braddel, then trained home to bishan.

For this new year, i had added one more resolution, so to sum it up i have two very general resolutions: Find peace within myself and try new things.

Don't know why, but i'm really looking forward to the days to come even though there's nothing to anticipate :D

Ramblings

2011-12-27T12:57:00.003+08:00

Christmas
This year's Christmas was not so much of a celebration for me (actually, last year was the only year when my family celebrated Christmas). But there were some sort of celebration, in terms of eating. This year, didn't get gift for anyone because i did not save up enough on time, and towards the end of the year i need to use my money to buy some other stuff. Instead, this year, i made christmas cards for most people around me. In total, i think i made 22 cards o_o Just counted.

I got some very interesting things as christmas gift despite not buying for anyone. Next year i'm going to repay :D Got a ps3 from parents (not sure whether it's for christmas or not, but it'll be nice to treat it as so), got a roller blade, earpiece, a pen set, and a card. Haven't got to meet up with the mehmehs yet, and haven't got to do gift exchange yet, i wonder if it's still on? :/

Didn't go out much last week, so managed to save enough money to buy a game, i guess. Right now there's ps3 but there are hardly games. My brother bought one game (Fear 2), my parents bought for us another (Final Fantasy XIII), and the shop gave a free one (Fracture). Most of them are not my type, except maybe FF XIII, but it's quite boring so far :/

Anyway, to celebrate Christmas (sort of), my family went to eat at Crystal Jade Kitchen. Food there not bad. Had a very filling but expensive meal. It's a once in a while thing. Yesterday, went to have a buffet with some of my classmates (MJ, stefanie, hazel, joey, and pascal). Also met up with matin, ziwei, and avelin to hang out, but ended up going nowhere, except that some of them went to town, i think.

New Year
During christmas, i've set my new year resolutions for next year. Just set out my mind to do 2 things, hope it's achievable: Gain inner peace and become more outgoing. Broke them down into smaller pieces so that i knew what to do to achieve them. 2011 is ending in just a few days, my sister is coming back to singapore on December 31. I wonder how next year is going to be like, hope the world won't end :o

This holiday
This holiday had been a range of small things and a few "bigger" things.

Spent most of the first week with jt plus preparing gifts and cards for people. The second week had been nothing much but project and random slacking-arounds. Now it's the third week, i wonder how it's going to be like.

25/12/2011

2011-12-25T00:00:00.003+08:00

A Room Online

2011-12-19T15:05:00.002+08:00

It's been so long since i've seriously worked on layout-design and stuff. I had even stopped visiting graphic sites (most of my favourites are dead already), but this holiday i suddenly feel like improving my ability to design stuff for a layout. So i've spent a lot of time coding, experimenting, and doing stuff on photoshop these 2 days and sort of "renovated" my blog layout into this :D

For me, it's one of the best thing i've done for these design kind of thing because it's personal and fresh for me, as in i've never done header images like this.

Recently, i've started visiting these anime graphic design websites again and i'm getting inspired again. I feel like creating a website, but i know i'll need to spend a lot of effort to produce content and manage it. In the first place, i don't even know what kind of content i can put inside. For now, i guess i'll just practise on layout-designing then maybe if i'm still interested in this whole website thing next time, i can get myself a domain or something.

It's something random, but i feel like a page on the web is like an online room, thus the title of this post :)

Balance

2011-12-18T12:15:00.002+08:00

Okay, a random post coming that i forced out of my mind, since i have nothing to blog about and it's been a week since i blogged.

Let's talk about balance.

When i was very much younger (forgot how old i was), i used to buy bubbletea from time to time (i still do now). Then i would grip the bubbletea cup really tightly and it would break and all the liquid would spill out. There was another time when i shook the tea without holding it tightly enough, so it dropped onto the floor and broke. From there, i had learnt that there must always be a balance: Hold not too tightly, but not too lightly.

Then recently there's another lesson about balance that life gave me. I was doing some painting (painting is so fun, i haven't done it for soooo long) and i needed to delicately control the brush. If i spent too little effort, the brush would not touch the paper, but if i spent too much effort, it would "overpaint" certain parts, such as those really small portions that i wanted to colour. It's kind of a balance thing as well, so i had to balance.

Balancing is not always that easy at first, but it becomes natural when i got used to it.

And this can apply in life as well. There must always be a gauge and some experience in order to balance things out. Once we get experience, we can then balance things out.

Views From Everywhere

2011-12-09T18:30:00.003+08:00

This semester, especially the last few weeks, i realised that my perspective of things had been rather narrow. There were so many points to view a situation, a thing, and a person from.

The Judgement
I did mention before that i didn't like it when people judge, but i myself judge people. I judge not only myself, but also some people around me. I actually said things like "i don't like that person" when i didn't understand him/her that well yet. Something that someone told me kind of struck me: "But you hardly talk to one another!"

All along, i had thought i knew about those people i dislike and why i dislike them. But actually, people are far more complex than what they show to those they're not close to. They're, in fact, more complex than how best friends view them. Saying things like "don't like that person" when i didn't try to understand him/her better was really judgemental. I should look at things in a closer "distance" and from other perspectives.

The Big Picture
Recently my class did a debate. I was rather impressed by certain viewpoints the smarter classmates had. Things they said were very well-considered and weighed. They didn't look at things from just one point, they went and look at many many different things that are related. I, on the other hand, was too focused on one particular aspect of an issue. The big picture is always better. This probably applied in life, friendship, and other stuff as well.

The Realistic Side
I had always been worried and at times anxious about small things. But acceptance really make a big difference. One of my friend said that everyone is different; some can be more unreasonable or prefer different things. In the end, we just have to accept one another and accept that we may not like certain aspects of one another. This way of viewing things is realistic, and important for me as well.

The Positive Side
Still, to me, the most important is positive thinking.

Many Years Later

2011-12-08T21:00:00.002+08:00

I'm kind of a greedy person. When i grow up, i want to work as a writer, then work as a teacher. I have to find a way around this. I'm really clear what kind of writer i want to be and why. As for why i want to be a teacher, honestly, i don't know. I just enjoy visualising myself to be one. I like to tell people stuff and be involved with this whole 'education' thing.

For the writer part, i want to write drama because it gives me so much room to create and dream. In a drama, people can use special powers (i am into these special powers thigns, that's why i'm really hooked to heroes now), non-existent places and phenomenons can exist as long as i create an explanation from it. I can write about anything i want, and if it's good enough it can be turned into reality on screen. Also, drama is a lot about people and their struggles and changes. I like people and i like to see "things" happen to them and how they overcome it. In the process, some bonuses can be the emotions they feel. I want my audiences to feel what i want them to feel in the future.

Another possible thing i may want to write for is game shows. I like setting rules and giving instructions (that's one reason why i want to be a teacher). Occasionally, i enjoy making things a little more difficult and see people struggle, but at the same time have a constructive experience that help them to grow and face "character development". My reason is kind of the same as writing for drama. I like to see "things" happen to people and their development and stuff, and game shows allow that.

If possible, i would like to try both, and then proceed to teaching. I want to teach things that are related to people, once again; things like psychology, geography, or something like that. I wonder if this teaching part of my ambition is possible. My only hope is to become a great writer so that i can lecture people on writing. Maybe this can be a motivation for me to constantly try to improve on my writing.

November 2011

2011-11-30T19:21:00.003+08:00

Woots, this year is coming to an end in just a month's time! This month had been tiring. Lots of projects and some stay-back-till-nights. But i think i didn't go for any BP mentoring session. Skipped 2 times, and then the other two times don't have sessions. Don't have much to summarise; it's all school school school, and some personal stuff of no interest to anyone else but me.

I'm going to blog about it nonetheless. Despite these projects, i've managed to be disciplined enough to keep to my weekly to-dos! I guess it's because this time i made my goals bite-sized. (speaking of goals, i suddenly remember about gened PLJ) And some tuesdays, i met jt for swimming/project. Some thursdays, met guangyi to chat (unfortunately many thursdays i'm in bad moods). Then on saturdays we go to the gym. Kind of a routine. Happy that we can find time for one another despite schools and projects. Oh, and occasionally guangyi, ruwen, and i meet up for dinner and stuff on thursdays.

Besides this weekly to-do thing, another personal thing is the kind of annoying thoughts going on in my head. Must be optimistic!

Then there was 11/11/11, 11:11. There were two of them. On the afternoon one, my EP tutorial group actually held hands and started wishing. And on the night one, i didn't wish because i was busy helping my sister take photos of some figurines she asked me to buy. Speaking of which, my sister's one piece new world figurines set is almost complete.

There was the Anime Fest Asia, but i didn't go.

Went for run for hope with guangyi, weijian, and melvin.

Today
Had lunch with classmates and then went to watch puss in boots today, with stefanie, avelin, hazel, and cong xu. Very long never watch movie already. I want to watch Snow White and the Huntsman when it comes out! :D

Oh, and i started re-reading yankee-kun to megane-chan because i forgot 90% of it. Funny like mad.

I guess that's all for the month. Unproductive but fine.

People I Miss

2011-11-28T21:59:00.002+08:00

One
I don't know if it makes me a hypocrite if i say this, but i'm saying it anyway, because it comes from my heart, though it defies logic. Despite what we did to one another, despite having felt so much hate towards you, you're still so important to me. Am i driven by circumstances? Am i learning to appreciate? Or am i actually subconsciously using you? I really don't want it to be the last reason, because it'll just end up making things ugly. I kind of miss you, because i really enjoyed the time we spent together, even though it was just a little while.

Two
You were my nightmare, but you were my greatest hero as a child. We were so close. This was all so painful, yet so fun and unforgettable. You were my best friend, and my only friend. But did this all mean nothing to you? I really don't know, but we never see each other anymore. The one who made such a big impact of my life. I had been jealous.

Three
We used to be more than this. Now, we don't talk anymore. All i can feel from you is hatred. Can we be like last time, and be natural to one another again? Can we talk again?

Apparently some people hate sentimental guys. Some people have rules for how others should be, but i don't want these rules to restrict me. I am already like this, there are people who appreciate me. Maybe i'm really weird, but i can find my place. You don't know me, and i'll never let someone like you understand me.

The Push

2011-11-25T18:32:00.003+08:00

Went for Run For Hope last sunday. Because of that, woke up at around 5am, then cabbed to east coast park for the run. Quite exciting because this was my first time running a marathon kind of thing, not sure if it's considered one, but still. Anyway, 10km. I told myself not to stop jogging but i stopped at 7.5km. Not bad already, at least i managed to do 7.5km non-stop! Actually felt quite proud of myself and my commitment to not stop running. I had wanted to, but forced myself. Anyway, the remaining 2.5km had been jog-walk-jog-walk-jog. And there was the great sense of satisfaction at the finishing line! :D

And then the week after that run (this week) had been super hectic. Monday with 7 hours of VPPP was actually quite interesting. Got to film and edit a commercial thing. As usual, monday was tiring. Tuesday, met at around 9.30am (actually supposed to be 8am, but i didn't realise we had to meet) for WMM project. Then stayed back till 8pm to "finish" WMM. Forgot to set alarm and woke up late for class on wednesday, so roy let us do out presentation next week instead, since there are two weeks. Wednesday was the worst. Stayed back till around 9.30pm to do CS project. After we reached home, continued doing CS online till 3am. On Thursday, went to school at 8am for even more CS. Scary :/ But managed to finish. Better give us good grades!

Then everything else this week was fine, i guess.

Facing The Mirror

2011-11-13T21:55:00.002+08:00

Take a good look at who is in the mirror. It's you. This person in the mirror is you, and you'll never be able to escape from this person. He is your role model, he is your first lover, he is your listener.

Treat the one inside the mirror with respect, believe in him, smile at him every morning, and, most importantly, be proud of him.

Be proud of yourself.

You don't have to lie to people because you're afraid they'll judge you. You don't have to reproach and blame yourself over everything that happen. You don't have to feel lousy about yourself. Perhaps you're a little crazy, you're weird, you're one of the least well-informed person, you feel you're stupid and have achieved nothing, but you must never lose faith in yourself. You live for yourself, this is your life. It is important. To some people, it may not be, but it is your everything.

And accept that people may not like you. But you are just a part of their lives, except for your family, best friends, and partner, if you have one. And your pets and mentees and students and whoever. But to others, you are just there because you are there. This doesn't make you invaluable. Know this and dismiss the need to impress. Instead, be yourself and make mistakes. Let people judge. Let people hate.

In the end, being strong is key. Being happy is key.

Being yourself is key.

11 11 11 11 11

2011-11-11T14:47:00.001+08:00

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A Halloween Article

2011-11-04T22:29:00.002+08:00

Some of my friends and I went for the event 'Escape to Helloween' at escape about a week ago to have some fun as guests. Now I'm having the urge to do an article thing for my experience there.

Halloween dressers were parading around in Escape during the night hours while we, the customers, were queuing up for the different things: Entrance to the theme park, entrance to the maze, etc. Even as people requested to take photos, the dressers never showed a sign of being human (except for one who actually talked).

While queuing for the 'Maze of Horror', we were very impressed by the dressers, but disappointed at the maze itself. There were no scarers, so it was all about finding our ways out.

There were other attractions such as the fortune telling and halloween make-up stands, but to us, the most fun was from the good-o-viking ship.

October 2011

2011-11-01T18:44:00.002+08:00

This month had been long. Spent the second last week of the holiday in a leadership camp and learnt about leadership stuff. This camp rose my personal awareness higher and made me feel like i need to change and stuff. From then on, i got overly-conscious of my quiet habits and found it very difficult to relax. But at the same time, it had lots of positive stuff, like leadership opportunity, new friends, and positive awareness.

Then there was school reopening. At first, everything felt so fresh and different, but soon everything became normal. New modules and some new lecturers. Moving on to more serious stuff, i guess. GenEd is becoming more interesting. The CA1s coming seem to be less interesting though :/

Somehow i gained more insight to myself (it's difficult to not worry D:). As a result, becoming more assertive, hopefully, but feeling less confident and patient.

Some other stuff that happened: Longshorts meetup, Escape to 'Hell'oween, and Writers Festivel: Creativity vs Bottomline talk. There were fun, a new friend, and learning, i guess.

Yup, so that's all for october.

Fight It Away

2011-10-29T00:10:00.004+08:00

It's definitely alright to be sad, but if you hurt others just because you yourself are sad, it's not alright.
It's alright to self-pity, but if you compare to others and say that they're so much luckier than you even though you don't know a thing about others, it's not alright.
It's alright to whine, to cry, to emo, but it's not alright to let your sadness kill you.

Sadness can be controlled. The first step is to commit.

Actions be Independent

2011-10-27T21:38:00.003+08:00

I feel that being objective (seeing actions as separated from person) is really important. For example, instead of thinking in terms of WHO made us angry, we should think of WHAT HE/SHE DID which made us angry.

Being objective = not judging. Judging is never fair; A person's qualities cannot be decided just by a single decision he/she made or an action he/she took. A human's life is too long to determine his/her value through short amount of time. We dislike being judged, so why do we judge others?

Judging takes away our ability to value people and be grateful for what they have done. By judging, we tend to capture more negative sides of people. Besides, it is a tiring thing to do. Plus, judging makes us overly conscious of our own actions, which may lead to anxiety.

As practicing objectiveness makes us separate our actions from our self, it allows us to forgive ourselves for our mistakes. At the same time, it lets us put down our egos and make our lives easier.

Let our actions be independent, not part of our worth.

When the world darkens

2011-10-25T21:50:00.002+08:00

When you're sad,
The sun starts to disappear
The sky starts to lose its light
You feel horrible
Like it's always raining
You feel depressed
Grey is the strongest colour
You need someone to tell you
"You're strong. You can."
But no one does that

But before you know it you'll see light again
It doesn't come from the sky;
It comes from your heart.

Back to School

2011-10-21T13:58:00.002+08:00

School reopened this week. Had new modules and some new lecturers. Everything just feel so fresh and different :)

Monday - GenEd and VPPP
Monday is the worst day of the week. Starts with General Education (under ms sinyee), which i don't mind. Trying to get to know the whole class at least by their names. Now learning critical persuasion and stuff like that. Did some bonding game and then tried to pitch a product. I went to check what we'll be learning for the rest of the GenEd module. Not too excited, but don't mind.

What continued was one hour of break, and then a seven-hours module called Video Production Principles and Practices. By right supposed to be taught by this lecturer called chee ting or something, but he would only be coming two weeks later so mr esman and ms gamar took over in the meantime. Very technical. Learned how to handle a professional video camera, work around its functions and brightness and stuff. Learned about camera tricks after that. That was a really really tiring and dry practical. Monday blues is going up to a higher level.

Met up with the mehmehs plus jiaxin and younice for dinner, then walked around in daiso before heading home.

Tuesday - CMM
Tuesday was Communication skills for Media Maker under ms stella. Didn't do much. Played a communication game and got introduced to the module and stuff.

Wednesday - WMM
A new module and a new lecturer. World issues and Media Maker under Roy Sourav. His teaching style seemed quite flexible, but i guess the content just doesn't interest me. He had an interesting activity though. Some pretend to be journalist kind of role-playing.

After that, went to eat and went bowling with my classmates. It was fun :)

Rushed to dover station to meet yangyin to go to BP mentoring together. Tried opening up more this time and i'll say i'm very successful compared to the previous times! :D Had a lot of fun this session with both the mentors and the mentees. I was doing the games (BP mentoring is made up of 2 parts: studying and games) for the whole day. Played H20, Blow Wind Blow, Forest Fire, and some tutu train game. Lol, my mentee mingle kept asking for my facebook account, but i can't give for don't know what reason. Think is some 'professionalism' and 'business/service ethics' kind of thing.

Thursday - CS
Conceptualisation and Structure under ms stella again. Did a storytelling activity using story cards, got introduced to the module, and got back our CSM CA10 feedback plus scripts.

Friday - EP
Today. It was 'Scriptwriting 1: Entertainment Programmes' under ms swee lin. Quite an interesting lesson. Had some lecture sort of thing in which we learned about how the media industry work and the role of the scriptwriter. Watched lots of rather entertaining videos. After that, had a tutorial in which we brainstormed for a gameshow. (To us, gameshow = finding a way to torture the contestants as much as possible) Came to guangyi's house now and yup, i'm here now.

Going to watch Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Glam, the bollywood movie which mr esman told us to watch! :)

Cracks

2011-10-13T21:37:00.009+08:00

I dropped my relatively new phone quite a lot a few months ago, resulting in a crack on the camera lens. Of course i regret for not getting a phone cover earlier, and not taking measures like putting my phone somewhere safer and stuff, but that's not the point.

My phone's camera shows that crack whenever there is a particularly strong light source present in the photograph i try to capture, resulting in something like what you see in the image above. But, at times, due to this crack, the image looks better than it originally would have been. This crack, although imperfect, brought another possibility into the photographs i take. How many of your phone cameras have a crack too? I know it may sound like i'm justifying my mistake of dropping my phone, but what i'm doing is just seeing things in a positive light.

Like my phone, we are all flawed people. No one is perfect. Those who are are just putting on a front; they're being strong. Many a times, we feel really lousy about ourselves, we hate ourselves, we want to change and we just feel so scratched, like there's a crack somewhere in our personality. But if we pick up the courage to see ourselves in a positive light, and if we pick up the courage to love ourselves (i can't yet), i'm sure we'll see our own light.

Like my phone, our flaws has opened great possibilities to us. Success always start from failure. We all can do it.

And it starts from embracing our flaws.

PS: Embracing our flaws =/= Refusing to change
Embracing our flaw = Seeing our flaw as a positive part of our lives

The Personal Mountain

2011-10-10T00:00:00.001+08:00

During the LEAP foundation camp last week, i had learned the importance of stepping out of my comfort zone and taking risks. I had read a book about it before, but knowing is different from doing. I had been forced to apply this in camp.

What made this camp so special for me was that many people pointed out the fact that i was too quiet. They then proceeded to encourage me to speak and providing me with moral support. The thing is, we can't achieve what we want without stepping out of our comfort zones.

I wanted to be more outspoken and assertive. What one of my teammates said to me during the camp struck me: "You said you want to be assertive, but i don't see you being that." I realised that many times, i would say 'i want to', 'i will'. But in the end, i just procrastinated and let fear take over me.

My friend said that during the camp, she climbed 2 mountains: One is a physical mountain she climbed during trekking, the other is a psychological mountain of tolerance and temper control. I had climbed 2 mountains too: The trekking one and a psychological mountain of speaking out and being sociable.

It was uncomfortable trying to get heard and talking whenever possible, even when i didn't have things to say. But it worked and it helped me to become more comfortable with speaking. Though i still didn't completely feel comfortable, i know that it no longer matters. We need to step out of our comfort zone in order to learn, and eventually the discomfort zone will become our comfort zone and we know we grew.

I know that in the future, i will be more outspoken.

4 Days of Leadership

2011-10-08T18:41:00.004+08:00

These 4 days i went for the LEAP foundation camp (a leadership camp), which was awesome! It was completely unlike any other camp i've attended. It was not all fun fun fun. There were really solemn moments, and those moments can get emotional as well. I'll just mention those parts that were meaningful to me and how this camp changed me.

No leadership
I was one of the least outspoken and sociable person in my team, so my existence ended up being 'barely felt'. So, for the whole of the first day, i was cloaking into the surroundings. And on the second day, everyone was told to rate 3 top leaders and the 3 bottom leaders in the team. As expected, i appeared in most of everyone's bottom 3 because i was too quiet and they could not get to know me. We were supposed to go one whole round saying who the bottom leaders are and why, so it was quite tiring to hear my name again and again. Out of 13 people (excluding myself), 12 people had my name in their bottom 3. (We had to be honest in the camp)

After that, we were told to speak our minds out, so i promised that i will change and try my best to be more outspoken. I then asked for their support. And they enthusiastically agreed to help me, which touched me. So i did try my best and fortunately they realised and saw improvement in me :)

Trekking Leading
Day 3 of the camp was trekking, and i had volunteered myself to be the trekking leader, alongside with jun yuan. This was my first time leading a team, and what kept me going was that i got everyone's support and approval. My teammates were extremely respectful and no one looked down on me at all. They accepted me as their leader and listened, which i'm really really grateful for. I hope that i've lead the team well.

This period of leadership made me realise that being a leader is exhausting and stressful. When i was a follower, i just needed to follow and take care of myself. Being a leader is different; I had to take care of my whole team, take lots of initiative, be very aware, and be encouraging. But during this period, i realised my full potential and grew.

Overall
From now on, i will be more proactive and start to exhibit leadership qualities. I will also be more outspoken and confident and be able to lead a team to produce result. This camp is one of my major turning point.

Nakamas

2011-10-05T00:00:00.002+08:00

I realised that animes tend to have lots of themes revolving around nakamas(friends/comrades/etc).

Let's leave before the dawn shows
Let's go meet a tomorrow we haven't seen yet
There's no regret about this decision
(Oh I know what I'm supposed to do)

What kind of trial awaits ahead?
My heart just can't stop beating fast
The place I want to reach is just one
(Fly to the light)

The bonds I got at the end of the fight
I won't let anyone broke them
If I just open the fists I grasped
I find my strength lying there

So let's start
A new world is calling
Hey, look there
No matter how many seas will separate us
I'll always be there for you
Without any fear, heading straight
Don't ever forget
We fight together

I never compromised
On that day, wherever I looked up
I saw an high endless sky

I came this far
And the several oaths in my heart
Are not hesitating now
I'm carrying them on my back

The sun rises
and lightens my sadness up

I do believe it
One day we'll go find together
The future that connect us as one
There's no one who can substitute you
Don't ever forget
We fight together
Lyrics translation source: http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/onepiece/fighttogether.htm

Shoot them back

2011-10-02T01:08:00.002+08:00

When people are mean to you, they're giving you the permission to be mean to them too. Since you can, why not?

No matter how much we're afraid of some people, it's always because we let them intimidate us. So what if they make fun of you? So what if they look down on you? It's your thoughts that count.

You are allowed to be assertive to anyone. Don't need to care about hurting the feelings of those who don't care about yours. Be firm and superior to them.

I only realised this today.

Too Important

2011-10-02T00:00:00.002+08:00

Sometimes, we get really emotional about the things that we want. We put too much emotions into our pursuit for that particular thing, and eventually we become desperate. Sometimes we don't even realise. Our desperation then pushes away what we want to get.

Desperation is generally negative, because when we're desperate we think like "I really want to get ___! Why can't i get ___??". Thus, we become weak and sensitive over whatever it is that we want. And we lose our control over it. It's just like not being in control when we're angry, just that our emotions are not as intense, but last for a longer time.

Instead of being too emotional about what we want, we should learn to let go. It's not that we should stop pursuing what we want. It's that we should give our all, yet be relaxed enough to know that we can still live without what we want. It's that we should be relaxed enough, yet believe firmly that we can get what we want, without too much emotions involved.

In my opinion, sometimes desperation is caused by fear. We are afraid that we cannot get what we want, or we are afraid that we're getting it too slowly. I am definitely guilty of it, that's why i'm writing this blog post (many of my posts are dedicated to myself as well as people who need them). We have to be confident and sure that we can get what we want, and positive thinking is once again the key.

September 2011

2011-09-30T00:11:00.003+08:00

I've written lots of stuff today, so now i'm not really in a writing mood. But still, Today is the last day of September and i want to summarise what i've done this month.

Went for the mehmeh chalet 2 last wednesday (post: "That Temporary Home")
Started BP mentoring again (post: "A little while more")
Started a story blog (please visit! - link is above)
Created a twitter account (link is also above :)
Helped out as alumni to perform a skit for gyss graduation day (later at 10am :/)
Celebrated weijian's birthday @ Angus house (post: "Dear Mr Blog,")
Managed to think positively for a month!! :D

Yup, that's it :)

A little while more

2011-09-28T23:16:00.003+08:00

I know everyone is different. It's definitely true that there are people i constantly feel irritated at. I know there are some people who feel irritated at me. There definitely are because i had been quite a hypocrite and now i guess i'm still one, to people i hate and fear at the same time.

I know i am different too, in the sense that it takes much more time for me to adjust to new people, or maybe it's because i tend to avoid new people or something.

It had been only my third BP mentoring session even though today is supposed to be the fifth. Two weeks ago, i had food poisoning, that's why. Last week, i had chalet. I skipped the BP mentoring camp, and i skipped the bonding day. I'm not going for next week's children's day session and i'm not going for next week's bonding camp. I am missing a lot of CCA!

Even though there had been so many bonding opportunities (most of them i missed) and three sessions already, i'm still not opened up enough. I guess i need time. I mean, i know that sometimes we really have to force ourselves. But forcing ourselves need time too. I need time while forcing myself.

I do realise i've blogged about this same thing over and over again and i've talked to people about this over and over again and it's getting annoying. I will stop. Today i just want to get my voices out.

"I was just careless"

2011-09-25T17:39:00.004+08:00

Be really careful of what you say and write. Using just one extra or one less word, or choosing the wrong word, can reveal how you truly think. Either that, or you're sabotaging yourself with words that don't reflect how you think. Being too general makes an impact too.

And people can judge you by what you say and write.

If you don't bother to be careful and make sure you've not offended anyone with your words, others won't bother about how you feel as well.

That Temporary Home

2011-09-23T17:15:00.005+08:00

On the 21st to 23rd september, we had a mehmeh chalet 2 :) It was so much more fun than last time even though last time was also fun. Everyone brought lots of stuff like we're leaving singapore. At first, i promised myself to go for CCA despite this chalet, but it'll be too wasted if i go because my CCA's location is at the other end of singapore, plus the timing just clashes.

Day 1
Met up at j8, then tiong bahru, then pasir ris to take bus to the downtown east. Guangyi's mum came along to help us book in. Our room was at a corner and it was bigger than expected! Cycled till the evening, then started BBQing. After that, watched 'ah long pte ltd' on CD. Slept/slacked till about 3am, then went off for night cycling all the way from downtown east to changi beach to watch the sunrise. This time we were at the right location but it was too cloudy; there was an oncoming rain. We decided to return to the chalet. Ruwen and waimin took a cab while the rest of us paddled our way back through the rain.

Day2
Showered and slept, as we felt tired. Woke up and went for lunch at Streats Cafe. The food is nice. Went back to the chalet and had almost an hour of "pillow fight" before sleeping and then going to watch 'johnny english' at Ehub. It was quite funny. Went back and BBQed after that, round 2. Used vodka to play penalty games, like that guess-the-number thingy (guess a number, guess correct = drink). Got very high, but then went to sleep straight after.

Day 3
Woke up at 3am because of noises made by the rest of them -.- No one wanted to light lanterns, so we didn't. Instead, we played with bubbles and space balloons :) Went back to sleep again. Sadly, we had to leave today morning. Packed up, breakfasted, and left. Sent ruwen and waimin home. We were in the MRT for about 2 hours o.o Lunched, and then completed our vlog for this chalet. (We did a vlog, which i'll upload after jasmine is done editing it!)

Returned home and computered till now!

People Fear

2011-09-19T00:07:00.006+08:00

When i was in primary school, i didn't have close friends. I had one or two friends whom i always badmouth. I was really really antisocial. I remembered how jealous i felt when i see my classmates playing catching in the parade square, and when they were sitting in a large group on the table, eating. I would be standing at a corner (literally) of the canteen, munching on tidbits. On days i have CCA, i would walk rounds and rounds in the canteen, doing nothing but waiting, while i watch my other schoolmates run around the school together. I don't blame anyone. I used to, but not anymore. I was antisocial.

Even in poly, no matter how much i try to deny, i can't lie and say i'm no longer antisocial. While my classmates are having fun together, it just take so much effort to lift myself from the computer and join them, and so much effort to stay there, and so much effort to contribute to the conversation or fun.

I never quite understand other people. I never saw how they can talk normally and seemingly comfortably to one another when they just get to know each other without feeling threatened. I wouldn't mind talking, but joking around on my first few meeting with new friends i've made is something you won't see me doing. Joking around with friends i've made for half a year isn't something you'll see me do often. Meeting new people is always scary, and the scary part doesn't end there; it ends only when i know i've sustained the good relationship, and i never seem to know when that happens.

LEAP camp is coming. I am afraid but i'm taking a positive attitude on this. I am antisocial. I did try to change and will try to. This time, i won't beat myself up over not being able to make friends. I am positive there is someone there whom i can click with. I won't feel unworthy because it's hard to make friends. Instead, i will take it as a fuel to move forward. I am me and i need no one to define.

Bring it on.

Justice to Optimism

2011-09-16T21:49:00.002+08:00

Some people feel that they don't deserve to be happy. Sometimes people may say, "It's so selfish that you don't care about your flaw!" or "I don't deserve to be happy because people in Africa are suffering!"

But,

"It's not selfish to seek happiness. IT IS SELFISH TO BE MISERABLE! Happy people are more thoughtful and more considerate. It's unhappy people who are preoccupied with themselves." - Andrew Matthews, author of at least 5 bestselling books about happiness.

To make other people happy, you have to first be happy yourself, and happiness can only be achieved through positive thinking. In other words, if you want to be a happy person, you have to be optimistic.

But why should I be optimistic?

Optimism and pessimism are energies that spread. When you are happy, this energy will spread to the people around you. My own opinion.
As mentioned in the above quote, miserable people tend to be more preoccupied with themselves. I know this statement is true because i reflected on myself. (I included this sentence on purpose for those people who judge me and say things like "you never reflect on yourself") Optimism leads to happiness.
We live to be happy (and perhaps make the people around us happy), so why not be optimistic?

However, some people feel that optimism is plain stupid because it's like deluding ourselves.

Optimism is definitely not self-delusion. Self-delusion is self-delusion. If everyone says that your attitude sucks and you tell yourself "My attitude is awesome and everyone loves me", then you're not being optimistic, you're plainly lying to yourself. If this really makes you so happy, go on.

Optimism is when everyone says that your attitude sucks, and you tell yourself, "Nevermind, it's a good learning experience. Everyone's input allows me to change for the better!" Difficult, but possible.

Some people feel that being optimistic is impossible, because (insert an excuse).

It's natural that we tend to focus on reasons why we cannot be optimistic, and then we say "that's why we can't be optimistic!" But, if you're driving a car and there's a split in the road ahead, focusing on the direction you don't want to go will bring you to the direction that you don't want to go! Instead, focus on why it is possible to be optimistic. Sometimes it's really difficult. But it is possible. If not, then just don't think. No thought is better than negative thoughts.

Some people don't want to be optimistic because if they are to be optimistic, they have to change their natural thought processes. In this case, force yourself! :D

One last thing: The people who cause the most unhappiness are pessimistic people. It's not selfish to be happy.

Good Enough

2011-09-12T22:10:00.005+08:00

Many of us constantly feel that we have to change. When we decide to be the kind person who give and give, the world makes us realise that kindness doesn't pay off and it'll lead you to having a lowered self-esteem. It feels horrible, so we decide that we should be more selfish because, as many people say, we deserve to be nice to ourselves. So we put our own needs in front of others'. That good friend of yours suddenly come to you and say "How selfish...", or "You only care about yourself." So, you feel a need to change again.

You tell yourself, "So it's not right to be too selfless. It's not right to be too selfish. I shall balance it out!" But the thing is, to balance selflessness and selfishness, you need to have an equal amount of each, and we know that selflessness and selfishness are immeasurable. So how? We waver, and then we feel lost, and then our self-esteem drop even more.

We decide that we have to change change change. After putting in so much effort to change, our next step is to change. And then after that, we have to change. "I am never good enough, i have to change," we tell ourselves.

Eventually, we realise how tiring life is, how little we are, and how much we need to change. We know that we'll never reach perfection. We convince ourselves that we're not fighting for perfection. We tell ourselves, "I'm not aiming for perfection, i'm aiming for improvement."

But, improvement is not measurable. You will never achieve "improvement" because you never know when it is achieved or when to stop. In other words, we're aiming for improvement to the point where we cannot improve anymore, and that means perfection.

Stop.

We're good enough. We may have our flaws, we may be different, we may lose, but the most important thing in life is to be happy. To be happy, we must accept ourselves. We are not perfect, but we don't have to be.

Even that guy you find so irritating has great friends. That girl you bullied in class because she's "weird" turns out to be popular in her new class. There are always people who love us, no matter what. One of them is ourselves.

"I love myself. I am good enough."

Prosperous Rain

2011-09-11T13:26:00.005+08:00

Image from http://www.wallpapers-free.org/42/-/Rain_Forest_Tropic
Sometimes we find rain beautiful, but sometimes we really dread it. No matter what, rain always exist, and sometimes it comes at the least suitable moment. Rain is like problems that come and attack us.

Too much rain can cause floods, which take away animals' lives and cause destruction here and there. Similarly, too much problems take away our sanity and cause us great pain, and sometimes take away our energy to fight back.

But too little rain can cause desertification. The land without rain dries up and become nearly empty. No life can grow and it's the same as almost-complete destruction. Similarly, no problem causes us to be spoilt and lazy. It's the same as destroying ourselves. Fortunately, there'll always be problems unless we push them to some other people to handle them for us.

The best is having problems, but not too much, then our insides can be like a rainforest, full of life and beautiful species.

Some unnecessary info
This post is actually scheduled from one week ago to not flood my blog with too many posts at once. First time scheduling my post :D

I like metaphors because they make concepts so much clearer and easier to figure out. Astrology is also kind of metaphorical. It uses outer-space and planets as some sort of metaphor to Earth. Maybe that's why i like it.

Dear Mr Blog,

2011-09-07T23:50:00.005+08:00

Some things that happened recently:

Holiday - Exercise Resumed
Resumed swimming sessions with some of the mehmehs :) And initially i've made myself commit to going to gym once per week alone, but the my friends also wanted to, so we'll be going every week. I feel so productive :D :D :D :D :DDD Oh, and i feel that i've grown slightly taller! By a little :) Or maybe i'm lying to myself, but it doesn't really matter i guess.

Holiday week 0 - Thursday (Teacher's Day)
Went back to school last thursday for teacher's day. Feel abit paiseh for not buying gifts for my form teachers :/ The performances were good, i guess. Band + choir perform together, then band + dance perform together. And as school dancers ended, mr fathu suddenly appeared and posed and all the party poppers came out. Interesting o.o Taufik's dancing team went up to dance and there were videos and a "guess-the-teacher" game (which wasn't so fun for us graduates because they were mostly the new teachers). There was also a NCC kind of performance about terrorists attacking the school because the students didn't pay attention o.o

Went to see some teachers after that. Only managed to see ms tan and ms aljunied. Chatted with ms tan for awhile. (feel quite guilty for disappearing suddenly) Went to the staff room to find ms aljunied after that. Chatted for awhile and took group photo :)

Couldn't find ms liu and mrs cheong because they rushed off :( Felt like finding other teachers as well but time was short and they were rushing to have some teachers' day lunch.

Went to slack at j8 and then ang mo kio for pool and library. Wei Jian, joshua and guangyi went for pool while jasmine and i went to the library. Read up on a storytelling startup book. It was rather short, so i kind of finished it. Quite exciting. Went to regather again and then went to ruwen's mum's stall and ate and chatted and folded boxes :D

Holiday week 0 - Saturday (Present shopping 1)
Met up with guangyi and went to hougang mall to shop for weijian's present. Saw this shopping mall children speech thing about animals. Couldn't find stuff that weijian might want, so in the end we decided to just go back to junction 8 to chat. Chatted for quite a long time until night. Went home after that.

Holiday week 1 - Monday (Present shopping 2)
Met up with jasmine, melvin, guangyi, zixing and waimin and then went to ion to eat and then shop for weijian's present part 2. Managed to get something, and then slacked for awhile and went to nex to meet weijian and younice. "Surprised" weijian with a mini cake (but i think it was quite fail - even the candle [which doesn't have fire] fell off. No, actually it's not quite fail, it's super fail)

Wanted to watch 'crazy, stupid, love', but not anymore because of inconvenient timings. Separated with waimin and younice to go to ang mo kio for pool. Pooled, dinner, and then homed.

Holiday week 1 - Tuesday (Gym + Cake-baking)
Met up with guangyi, jasmine and weijian for gym at a super early time 8am in the morning, at j8. Went to the gym and sort of learnt to use it the proper way. Exercised, and then went to the track's shower room to shower because there's nobody in that room. Said weird things and actually had fun showering. Went to eat lunch at kim san leng and then went to drink liang cha (herbal tea?). Lied to weijian that we needed to go off, and then weijian went home alone.

Went to the library and find and printed a marble cake recipe. Went to shop for ingredients after that, and then went to jasmine's house to bake the cake. The process was fine, and then slacked and played with her dogs while she went to make jelly. Quite fun. Managed to make the cake successfully in terms of taste (appearance wise, it looks more like a hamburger than a cake) Decorated it, and then ate a half-jellied jelly.

Guangyi, jasmine and i went to have dinner, and then slacked at a playground. Got very high because of a slide. Guangyi went off, so jasmine and i chatted for awhile after that, before taking the bus home.

Holiday week 1 - Wednesday (Wei Jian's birthday)
Met up with guangyi, jasmine, zixing, melvin and waimin at braddell and had a seemingly very short train ride to orchard. While we were in the train, we tried stuffing random stuff into a mc donald family meal box meant to be weijian's birthday present. Reached orchard and ruwen got stuck at the gantry because it couldn't scan her card through her wallet XD

Rushed to angus house because we were late according to our booking time. When we asked whether they could help us store our mcdonald box, they were showing the ;O face o_o. So we decided to hold on to it on our own. Hid it under the table all the while. The food this time was fine, not as nice as what we ordered last time. I love the soup the most.

Cake came, cut cake, ate cake.

Gave a "giant chocky stick" to weijian. He looked terribly disappointed at our "gift" XD. After that, we gave him the real one and the moment was totally random and weird.

1. See one macdonald box - o_o
2. Open mac donald box and see lots of tidbits - @o@
3. We told him to dig in to find the real present. So he remove the tidbits and saw a plastic bag. He removed the plastic bag and saw another plastic bag. And then the present (batman shirt) was inside.

Went to cineleisure for pool. Got bored and went to shop a little. Found a pathetic corner to eat jellies. The rest of them went off after that while ruwen, guangyi, jasmine and i went to bugis to shop. Ate together and then MRT-ed home together.

Got super high in the train over small stuff :D

Life as a piece of art

2011-09-03T22:11:00.003+08:00

This post is dedicated to myself and those who constantly feel like a lousy being.

Life is like a piece of art. There is no such thing as "correct" or "wrong". It's just good, great, or excellent.
Beauty is in the eye of its beholder. Some people may think you're beautiful, while some prefer other type of people. This does not determine your value.
Art will never reach its perfect form. It can just get better and better (or worse and worse).
There is always a time to stop working on your piece, so in life there's always a time to stop and let your completed piece do the rest of the work.
Evaluation is key. Reflection is key.
Art is a form of expression, so is your existence. You exist to express yourself, so it's alright to show your true colours.
There are many different types of critique; There are those who analyse and evaluate closely and those who touch and go.

I've decided not to preach in my blog, so i shall just do a on-the-spot reflection for myself here.

So i am a completed piece of work. I've been editing and editing and editing myself. Now it's time to stop and just let my instincts do the rest of the work. I shall just express my true desires, and accept my flaws openly and i shall just see myself as "great". There is no perfection, so i shall just be flawed and me. I am completed and ready to be evaluated.

Those Emotions Given

2011-09-02T00:09:00.003+08:00

As an old saying goes: I won't forget how you say to me, but i'll always remember how you made me feel. (actually i don't know if it's an old saying plus i don't know the exact line)

This is really what happened. I don't exactly forget what people did to me, but i remember how i feel over them.

Since yesterday was teacher's day, i shall just write this post about teachers. It's not going to be a thank-you post dedicated to the wonderful teachers who had taught me, it's going to be how a teacher had made students feel, and how it impacted their lives.

I'll start with the negatives. I really don't like it when teachers become students' nightmares, especially primary school teachers. They rule you and make you afraid, and restrict your actions and find faults with you. And then they bitch about you in such an obvious manner that even you understood it when you were young. These are horrible teachers. I read a STOMP post about this group of teachers making fun of a special needs students. I think they have no rights to be teachers. I know you're going to say teachers are humans too and stuff. The thing is, they are, but their actions show otherwise. They, who students trust and needed to confide in, are actually the evil ones. This is really how much impact a teacher can give to a student.

But of course, many teachers are really nice. Some are directly nice. They never scold, never bitch but try their best to get you to work hard. And then there are those who always scold, always nag, make students hate them, but did what they felt was the best for the students. You can literally feel their care and passion in what they are doing. These teachers move the students forward. They make the students feel like they are not alone, and they always have a caring shoulder to lean on. Call me naive or whatever, but i feel that this is the positive impact teachers give to students.

Thank you, all the teachers who have brought positivity into my life :)

August 2011

2011-08-31T01:05:00.002+08:00

A lot had been going on this month, not personally, but generally. I mean things like the 7th month, fasting period, and the mercury retrograde, which i'm lazy to talk about.

Personally
Personally, i guess not much happen. Just the usual fluctuating moods, and the usual "I've grown" and stuff. If i'm to say i've grown this month, i'll say i've grown in terms of finding out more about myself and perhaps a greater sense of love for myself?

I realise i really don't dare to open up about some stuff, not because i'm afraid they'll use those stuff against me, but because i find them rather embarrassing. I see no need to, anyway.

I believe that though I'm just a baby now, I'll grow up as fast as how hard i try.

School
CAs are all over, and now is the holiday :) School, not much happened.

Outside school
Outside of school, not too much happened either. Just some minor meet-ups.

So there's really nothing much to summarise this month. Guess every month has its ups, downs, and constancy.

The Cleaner One

2011-08-29T19:07:00.002+08:00

Just a random post based on a conversation i had with someone a very very long time ago:

Cats dwell around in the drain. They catch bacteria and their fur collect dirt and stuff. Sometimes they make annoying noises and sleep on people's cars. I find cats cute. I sometimes dare to touch them despite how dirty they are and felt fascinated at them.

Cockroaches dwell around in the drain. They have mechanisms to "reject" bacteria. According to my dad, the bacteria-occupied part of cockroaches are just their legs. They are mostly silent and sometimes randomly end up somewhere in people's houses. I feel more disgusted at them and think of them in horrible manners.

It's weird how similar these two creatures are, yet form such different impressions in my mind. I'm guessing it's instincts inserted into our minds since we were born.

Random Typings

2011-08-21T00:37:00.003+08:00

I've recently spent some time with the mehmehs once again, though not all of them. I've spent more time with jt, guangyi, ruwen and weijian. Kept having study meet-ups, though in these meet-ups i do projects instead of study, which is what i'm supposed to do. And then one night we went to tiong bahru to eat dinner at ruwen's mum's stall and chatted. Today, met up with guangyi and studied, and then slacked and walk around. Went to the popular and i really want to buy some books, but i want to save money as well. Guess i have to rely on the library. Saw this amazing dog owned by an owner (the Chow Chow breed). It's like a bear-lion which is actually a dog. It's super fat and rather big sized. Quite amazing.

I'm really trying hard once again. I'll have to try even harder for my own sake.

Principles are principles. Beliefs are beliefs. There is no reason to judge.

I should really cheer up more :D

The Boiling Point

2011-08-16T23:42:00.003+08:00

I believed that hard work is key to getting what you want, but i just realised a new concept of life. Hard work doesn't necessary bring you closer to what you want. It's not about your definition of hard work, neither is it about working hard in the wrong way. These can be amended. It is about your limit.

You cannot boil a water forever. They'll boil, and then vanish into steam and vapour.

Like water, we cannot push ourselves and force ourselves to fight forever. One day, we'll reach our boiling point, and then we'll lose ourselves into the surroundings. We'll become what other people define us as, just like how water becomes part of the air, not an entity by itself.

I'm too tired to think of the "why" and the "how".

Sometimes you're really tired, but you keep fighting with the hope that someone will see it and tell you to stop. You wish that someone tells you it's fine, you're fine, and you've fought well. But the cold hard truth is that people are usually not aware. It's not that they're selfish, it's just that this is the maximum care they can spare. There's a limit even to care, so there's nothing that can be done about it.

There's no way you can take control of even yourself. There is a limit to controlling how you think, how you feel, and even what you do. This is why people do stupid things.

I've reached the limit. I need rest.

Happy knowledge, sad knowledge

2011-08-10T00:32:00.000+08:00

Sometimes people say that ignorance is bliss. There are times when i strongly agreed with this statement, but there are also times when i strongly disagreed.

One reason why i don't like books, articles and talks that tells you how to be a better person is because they carry the message "you're not good enough, so you must improve yourself by being kinder, braver, more hardworking, smarter, etc." It's really tiring following endless numbers of codes. Knowing too much "moral values" isn't good, but conscience kicks in when you start to breach these values. Of course, we need moral values and codes to make us "better people", but we all know that we can't be perfect, so it's really not blissful to learn more and more about "the right ways to live" and stuff like that.

Another case will be really knowledge. Knowing too much may not be so blissful. Astrologers who read interpret the planets too much get stuck in worries about stuff like mercury retrograde (i kept thinking about this recently because one of my lecturer mentioned it and it kind of intrigued me :D).

Recently i was talking to one of my friends. When i was talking to her, my whole body was faced towards her while hers was faced away. This is a small matter, until i recalled some body language facts which i read quite long ago. When your body faces someone in a conversation, it shows that you are engaged and interested in the conversation, and vice versa. I forced myself to not face her after that to not seem pathetic. At these kinds of moments, ignorance is really bliss.

But sometimes i hate myself for being so ignorant about some other stuff. Celebrities, songs, television and stuff has always been quite a "taboo topic" for me to talk about because talking about these just shows how ill-informed i am. It's not that i don't like talking about them, but it's that i know nothing about them and i don't know how to know stuff about these things other than watch a lot of TV, watch a lot of movies, look up on good-looking celebrities, listen to lots of music and stuff. I don't do these. Watching TV and listening to music always seemed difficult to me. I am weird :(

I think there must always be a balance. It'll be nice if we know enough but not too much, though it is hardly possible. I guess the best thing to do is still thinking positively.

Those Like Our Pasts

2011-08-06T21:45:00.002+08:00

We all have pasts, and i'm sure most of us have really happy memories from our childhood. Those memories of playing catching, watching cartoons, being silly, being spoilt, singing national day songs happily, going to new places, etc. It was so nice to be children. This is why i never fully want to grow up, and also why i like children.

Children are amazing.

BP mentoring
I've started BP mentoring last wednesday. Apart from meeting CCA-mates, a bond has kind of formed between my mentee and me. He's cute but have rather short attention span, but he's responsible and sensitive, and easy to click with. I shall not elaborate his strengths.

It's so easy becoming friends with children. They accept people so easily, are so direct, yet are so innocent. Only at my second time meeting with my mentee this wednesday, i already dared to be open, direct and close to him. Maybe it's partly because it won't affect my life too much as i only see him once per week, but still, if it's a teenage i will not be able to open up.

In BP mentoring, Baptist Student Care Centre group, each session is being splited into games and tutoring. Seeing the children being so enthusiastic, excited and happy about playing games organised by our seniors (soon it'll be us) was so great. Seeing them run about, shouting and smiling and laughing really warmed my heart. It also reminded me of my happy childhood times.

Kinderland
Yesterday, my class went to present our children's stories to children in Kinderland, a kindergarten in Singapore Polytechnic. They were sooooo innocent and so cute. And i loved how they were so enthusiastic about listening to our stories and interacting with our stories. They were particularly cute when they "helped us" to find Mr Red Man :D And one girl even responded to one of zhaoyi's questions really agitatedly, saying that the red man in traffic light was really important.

How i wish there is a "telling children's stories" CCA :D

In conclusion, children are awesome.

Bob

2011-08-04T11:35:00.001+08:00

☻/
/▌
/ \
This is Bob.
Copy and paste him everywhere you can.
Soon he will take over the world.

Crying for despair, crying for hope

2011-08-02T23:09:00.004+08:00

I get obsessed over one piece all over again every week because it's one episode per week. So, i shall just post two of my favourite scenes from One Piece here.

[SPOILER WARNING 1: NAMI'S PAST]

I like the voice acting a lot. It's really emotional and sad. And i can totally feel Nami's helplessness from this particular scene (after watching the previous episodes which sets this climax up). It doesn't use background music, just purely actions, strong words, great drawing, and voice acting. I cried the hardest ever while watching this scene, compared to other tear-jerking stories.

[SPOILER WARNING 2: ROBIN'S PAST]

This scene is also so touching. But it's due to dialogue, background music and hope. Quite the opposite of the nami video. But i love it too. Tear-jerking.

It's great scenes like these which give me lots of emotional inspirations :D

July 2011

2011-07-27T21:24:00.003+08:00

I feel like i haven't been blogging a lot this month. Even when i blog, it's either that the posts are repetitive or they are ranting. At first, it's because i've spent too much energy on CAs. Then after that, when the CAs "tided down", i had no mood to blog. But now i have the mood to blog.

I'm so happy today because today is a good day in disguise. I really wasn't looking forward to this day. But it turned out good and i've sort of overcame one of my greater fears to a point (though not completely).

Anyway, it's almost the end of the month, so i shall do a reflection of this month.

The mehmehs
The mehmehs are really great! :D Enjoyed the time spent with you all. Went to buy friendship bracelets yesterday :)

Family
Spent a little more time with my family this month because it was my brother's 21st birthday on 22nd july. We wanted to find a nice restaurant to celebrate it because 21 year old is supposed to mark the unlocking of the adult world for a person. But we ended up in this disappointing restaurant which left my mum complaining non-stop. Then my sis and dad got angry at the complaining. After that, we went home to cut the birthday cake and celebrate it with my brother.

The day after that, we went to watch Harry Potter and the Death Hallows part 2. I didn't read the books, so i'll say that it was awesome! Voldemort was a funny villain. He has such a funny face as well :)

Watching English Shows
Okay, this is not part of this month, but i'll just talk about it anyway. Usually, i don't understand english-language shows without subtitles because i somehow never seemed to be able to catch what the people were saying. So i never really liked to watch stuff because most shows didn't have subtitles. I love animes because people give them english subtitles. But it doesn't really make sense when english subtitles are given to shows spoken in english. When i asked, people told me that they naturally understood what was said. Why can't i? o_o Not self-pitying.

BP Mentoring
Today, I've started with my CCA, like finally. Meeting new people is always scary, but today i've struggled with my social fear and overcame it a little. I've actually made some friends :) And, i managed to not feel inferior talking to people older than me (i usually do, though not always).

I was super not prepared for this first session. I wasn't really prepared to deal with playful kids. I didn't know how to make kids like me (thus many of them ignored me :(, except for about 2 :D [is it a good thing that i wore a Naruto shirt today? Because it sparked conversation topics with them o.o]). Didn't end up being the mentor of my favourite kid so far, but my current mentee is cute and accepting :) And we were told to teach maths today. At first, i was pretty confident, until i remembered that primary school students don't use calculators. Managed to struggle and survived a session which ended up being quite productive. But from now onwards, i should be polishing up on my maths.

Overall, it was fun and interesting :)

Myself
As i've mentioned, today i managed to fight off my fear a little. And just yesterday, i've decided to believe in my own potential and stop trying to prepare meaninglessly for the future. It was successful for today and it felt like i had let go of a heavy bag containing rocks. Other than that, this month, i've became more direct. But my temper didn't improve.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

School projects
CA2s this month, the start of the second school term: HML, VC, CSM, DT, WMP.

Other than DT (Deconstructing TV), they were all group works. HML (Heroes, Myths and Legends) was the most successful. Also, it's the only module which let me earn marks i was satisfied with. The others were okay actually, though they could be better. So i was actually feeling really uncertain of my VC (Visual Communication), CSM (Creative Story Making), and WMP (Writing Across Media Platforms). DT was fine because it was mostly technical, research, and observations.

Tomorrow is WMP presentation. Quite worried because we haven't rehearsed yet. But i shall just kick these pointless worrying away.

Yay.

I believe...

2011-07-26T22:30:00.003+08:00

... in my potential.

Generic, i know. "I believe..." is actually the topic for our CSM CA10, but i'm not definitely going to use this as my theme. This post is about something that's been happening to me recently. Most of you won't realise, or won't see a big thing in it. Some of you will be quick to point fingers, that's why i'm really sick of telling people my problems. I'm sick of blogging about my problems as well.

I'll blog about the solution that i've came up with: To believe in myself.

I'm going to trust my own judgements. I know i should listen to people. I will. But, ultimately, my own judgement still holds the greatest significance in me. If i can't balance, then I'll rather tilt inwards. I will convince myself that the present is the most important, and i'll believe in my future capabilities. No more frantically planning ahead in pointless situations. No more worrying non-stop. No more getting shaken by people's thoughtless words (though some things that people say are really sincere). I'll just trust myself as i go. I believe in my potential.

I won't be destroyed by myself.

Swan you will become

2011-07-24T11:47:00.002+08:00

Childrens' stories really tell lots of morals, some of which applies to us now as well. One such example is The Ugly Duckling:

There was once a mother goose who laid some eggs. When the eggs hatched, all the ducklings which came out were cute and lovable, except for one of them. Thus, that one duckling which looked ugly got teased at and called "The Ugly Duckling". The ugly duckling was really sad. Everywhere he went, he got insulted by people and his family felt very unproud of him. One day, his mother abandoned him. As winter was coming, he had nowhere to go. Luckily, he got brought in by some farmers. However, the farmers soon found the ugly duckling to be a hassle and abandoned him. He continued living his miserable life through winter, going through hell. During spring time, he was alone next to a lake and he saw these very beautiful swans, but he thought to himself that the swans won't want to be with him because he was too ugly. However, to his surprised, the swans approached him and started playing with him. Just then, from his own reflection on the lake, he saw that he himself had become a swan. From then on, he was no longer despised and alone.

And this story applies to our lives as well.

Forming the Mirror

2011-07-15T21:50:00.002+08:00

Most of us can see. We can see what's in front, what's behind, and what's around. Some people can "see" what they don't literally see; they notice things other people don't. Some people, especially the nature-loving ones, see everything as a little more than what meets the eye, literally.

There is a group of people who can only see one thing: Themselves. Right in front of them, they've placed a mirror. These people observe everything they themselves do. They reflect, and they realise that they are so awesome, or they are so mean. But due to this mirror they have put in front of them, they cannot see any other person. They are too self-engaged, and too self-centered. Everything becomes "me", "me", "me".

"I am sad, so you should pity me."
"I am angry, so you should calm me down."
"I am a sensitive person, so you have to try and read my mind."
"I don't like David, so i'm not going out with you since david is tagging along."
"I love Alice, so i'm just going to hang out with her and forget about you."
"I am so pitiful. Shower me with attention please."

As much as i empathise with you, there is a limit.

Break the mirror and look around you, and notice that you are not the only one suffering.

Spare a thought for others.

Guardian of Your Heart

2011-07-07T19:13:00.002+08:00

In my opinion, we live in at least two worlds: An inner and an outer world (in one of my previous posts i call them "private world" and "public world"). Between the inner and the outer world, there is a door. This door is our brain.

The inner world is where we feel and experience subconscious thoughts. The outer world is where we transfer what we feel into what we do. There is an endless process between these two worlds: The inner world receives information from the outer world and generate an emotion. Then, the inner world transfer the emotions into actions in the outer world.

In other words, we experience something, then we feel something, then we do something.

But this process cannot happen without the brain. It is the brain which receives information from the outer world, reflect, and decide upon an action. After something happen to you in your outer world, you will think through it, and then your thoughts will generate an emotion. So actually, emotions can be controlled; all you have to do is to control what you think.

Simply put, by controlling how we think, we can control our hearts (how we feel), and we can control what we do and thus what happens next. In some ways, our brains are the guardians to our hearts.

Actually, i know that my posts are getting repetitive. But the main reason why i post this is because i finally see the impact of positive thinking.

June 2011

2011-06-30T18:33:00.002+08:00

It's time to conclude the month. The bulk of this month, for me, is on my personal issues. There's also the holidays and some friendship insecurity. Finally, the month wraps up with me feeling more insecure than ever, and realising that i need a good cry.

This conclusion is mostly thoughts i have been carrying around this month:

All the fruits in one basket
They say it is unwise to put all the fruits in one basket, all the candies in one jar, all your money in a wallet and so on. I've wanted to write a novel with this theme last year, but it lacks, and i lack the discipline and motivation to do it too, so i gave up. The story i wanted to write was about this guy who fell in love with this girl and cared a lot about her. Due to his obsession with her, he forgot to take note of the things happening to his friends, leading to a tragedy that stains his heart. In this context, we can say that the "fruit" is his care. The "basket" is the girl he likes. He focused too much on one person.

Now, if you think about it, won't you agree that this saying holds so much truth? It's more than just preventing your assets from getting stolen. It is preventing yourself from losing things that are precious to you: Your friends, your family, and most importantly, yourself. Everything should be distributed. That's why we have to be open-minded.

Stories from the past
Sometimes do you wonder if you have a repressed memory? This, from my understanding (i am not an expert, just someone who reads wiki), means that your memories actually picked certain traumatic events from your past to forget about. I have a loving family, i have food, clothes, games, and a rather big house which i love - That's what some of you may say, and i agree. I am so fortunate. I am so rich. I am such a spoilt kid. I behave the way i do because i need not suffer anything much, thus small things become big things to me - That's also what some of you may say. If you do, you judge too quickly.

Everybody has their own story from the past. It may not be something big like being abused, but this doesn't mean that the others who are luckier than some other people have had it completely easy. Also, when someone doesn't complain, it doesn't mean that nothing is wrong. People choose what to do for themselves; don't choose for them.

You're looking down on me
Sometimes you don't mean to hurt people. You don't mean to say that particular insensitive thing. Before you know it, your friend got hurt, and he got angry. This happens to me so much, but i'm usually the one who is oversensitive.

I just realised a few days ago that sometimes people are not looking down on me, but they are just being confident of themselves. I got angry at them secretly because i am insecure and uncertain. I know it, and i got angry at myself, but i love myself. I hate and i love myself.

This is when i realise that i don't understand myself as well as i thought.

Think too much, think too little
My friend once posted the following message on facebook: "People who think too much are often hurt by the people who think too little". How true. Sometimes, when people think too much, thinking less may work. Sometimes, people choose to do the opposite. When he thinks too much, he got confused, and thus he think even more, even harder to untangle himself. I do that, but now i'm losing grip.

Birthday blues
I don't know why, but usually when my birthday is coming, i'll feel really sad. For few 27th Junes, I've actually cried. I shall not tell you why because it is very personal, but please don't make wild guesses; they insult.

The miscellaneous
So through my primary and secondary school years, i've experienced obsessions, irrational hatred, paranoia, oversensitivity in general, irrational fear, insecurity and oversensitivity towards gender issues. I've overcame them one by one, and i was started to get comfortable with myself, and then "Bam!" It's all back.

I'm really sorry for such a personal post. You may think these are small matters or whatever, but all i needed was a space to rant. If not, i won't know what else to do. Please don't judge me.

My Birthday
On the bright side, this year is the first year people other than my family initiatively celebrated my birthday with me. I used the word "initiatively" because i remember shamelessly forcing my siblings and cousins to celebrate my birthday, which is pathetic and delusional. But this year was different. I really want to thank all of you so much.

Thank you, "OURspace" people, for planning a picnic and birthday celebration for wai meng, pascal and i. I am touched and really happy. And you spent so much effort on the planning, the cake, the gifts, and the cards! It was a happy day.

Thank you, my family, for celebrating my birthday with me all these years without forgetting. Sorry for forgetting your birthdays sometimes, really. I felt really guilty. Sorry.

Thank you, DTVM/1A/FT/02, for surprising hanissah, wai meng, pascal and i. I don't know if they were, but i was really very very surprised and touched that the whole class cared so much!

Thank you, Mehmehs! :D For the celebration at fish&co yesterday. What i wrote on the wall is true. Thank you so much!

Gou-er/Lottery/XiaoHei/Dre
Last week, my mum brought a puppy home. I'm lazy to tell the whole story again, but it's in my previous post :D But now it's not with us anymore :( It actually ended up with jt, but she's giving it to her mum's friend because her family can't keep it.

My brother started army
Things changed.

Changes are forever here.

Hello Friend, Goodbye Friend

2011-06-26T20:43:00.002+08:00

Is it appropriate to call a pet dog a friend? Or should i call it a family member? Okay, that's not so important anyway, i guess. What's important is that recently my mum brought home a stray puppy who had no mother. Usually no animal would end up being in our house because my dad isn't a fan of pets and he feels that none of us is responsible enough to have a pet. The only time we had a pet was when my dad was into fishes because feng sui said that they'll bring us wealth.

So it was shocking when i went home last thursday and my parents told me that my mum has brought a puppy home.

The Puppy
It was found in an SAF area. There, nobody own pets and sometimes stray dogs would be sighted. Somehow, my mum and her colleagues knew that this particular puppy was homeless when it was found by some guys, and no one wanted to keep it. My mum called my grandma and she said she want it. So, my mum brought it home for a few days before passing it to my grandma. But we all knew that grandma would end up giving the dog away because of one of my aunties who lives with her. I'll not badmouth her, so i'll just say that she may somehow injure the puppy.

In the meantime, we were sort of taking care of this puppy. I named it gou-er, my dad named it xiao hei, and my mum named it lottery. It pee-ed and poo-ed all around the living room, bite non-stop, and bark randomly in the middle of the night. But it was super cute and lovable. It was just tiring having to take care of this dog's pees and poos and stuff.

Strangely, gou-er seemingly enjoy biting cloth stuff quite a lot and it does not seem to like toys.

Now, it is no longer with us because we gave it to my friend's friend, who is probably truly capable of keeping it. It was kind of sad to know that we'll never see it again.

Birthday celebrations
Moving away from the puppy,

Going to celebrate my birthday with my family soon, because just on friday, my brother had been dismissed from his NS camp for a few days' break. My family wanted him to be present in the celebration, so we're doing it in advance.

Yesterday, stefanie, matin, avelin, hazel, joey, ziwei, meijun, waimeng and i went for a picnic at pasir ris park and also celebrated waimeng and my birthdays :) Had a rather long walk from Downtown East to a playground-area in pasir ris park. Picnicked and went to play around at the playgrounds. Walked a long distanced back to downtown east and watched some performances at the Cosplay festival. They were amazing. I especially liked a One Piece one (because it's my favourite anime~ biasness has impaired my ability to judge) and a .Hack/GU one (because of the voice acting).

Went to a table to play monopoly deal, and then home after that.

Holiday Climax

2011-06-19T21:47:00.003+08:00

This week plus the previous weekend had been a tiring but fun week. Met up with many of the mehmehs separately.

Last saturday, met up with guangyi, zixing and weijian to accompany zixing to buy his piano at peace plaza. Wondered if there was a place known as chaos plaza. Lame, i know. And after that, we sort of pranked weijian abit. We walked pass this beancurd stall, so weijian went to buy some drink, automatically assuming that we would wait. So, we didn't, and we walked like nobody's business. Soon, we heard a shout from behind. It was weijian and he was starting to run towards us. So, we ran as well, away from him until we reached a building which he thought was iluma even though it wasn't; is was laselle. Hid away from him until he couldn't find us. Then he looked left and right, and then back. And we were standing there in a row, staring at him. I wonder how it looked like. After that, they accompanied me to kinokuniya to buy a book. It was evening, so we decided to go home.

The next day, sunday, i went to meet jt and joshua for lunch. At first, we thought we were waiting for zhuning, so we went to buy koi, and then slacked at the "orgasm playground" (yes, we named it) for awhile. Thai-expressed after that. Jt went off and then we went to weijian's house. Zhuning was already there. Slacked abit and then played mahjong. Was kind of a "cold" game because none of us were feeling hyper. Mapled and then went home after that.

On monday, i had an interview for BP mentoring. Quite scary, but i really hope i can get in!

On tuesday, some of us attended this storytelling workshop, which turned out to be quite fun, except that i wasn't happy in my initial group, to be honest, because i felt that i was being ignored. So, switched group the moment i had the chance to. Anyway, it was a great workshop. Went to 18 chefs at tiong bahru plaza after that to have dinner with joey, waimeng, avelin, meijun, and stefanie. Never eaten there and it was good. Went home after that. And i suddenly ended up being in pulau ubin, and weijian saw a ghost there. Dorna got concerned and msn-ed us. In the end, it turned out to be a prank xD

On wednesday, met zixing and jt and had lunch. After that went to peace plaza again to accompany zixing to pay the full price for the piano, i think. Slacked at starbucks, and then went to explore a rather "ulu" shopping centre. Walked back to bugis and then trained to j8 to catch "Laddaland"! It was great. Horror plus some drama. It makes you wish that the main character die because he was such a horrible person, but when the main character dies, you wish that he didn't die. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS CONTOURS!!??" (inside joke)

On thursday, woke up at 2pm and went to meet jt at j8 to have super late lunch plus do some research on children and children stories at the childrens' section of the library. That section seems so much like a playground o.o And there was this librarian who was really weird. "Excuse me" was too difficult for her to say that she had to pretend that she had a sore throat (making the "Ahem!" noise) to get jt to move out of the way. When jt didn't move, she actually rammed the trolley on her. How rude. Heard about something disturbing that they said before, but i'll not mention it here. Anyway, had a chat near the bubbletea shop we used to buy bubbletea from, and then went home after that.

On friday, met stefanie, hanissah and ziwei for Creative Story Making CA2 discussion. Went to walk around after that and then went off. I went to meet guangyi, zixing, and jt. Ate lunch, and then went ice skating at stadium. It was really fun. Couldn't stop :D But eventually we had to due to time limit. Went to meet ruwen after that at tiong bahru for dinner, and then arcaded then slacked awhile at coffee bean.

Saturday and sunday had been resting days. Tomorrow is a resting day too. Going to resume my personal daily routines from tomorrow. Didn't follow it this week because it had been lots of going out. Don't feel like allowing the holidays to end :( But holidays are holidays and they do end. So i guess i'll just embrace the last week of it :)

Friendship from the Heart

2011-06-15T22:42:00.003+08:00

Life is hard when it rains. Life can be wonderful when the sun shines. Good or bad, a life journey is a path we all walk. In this journey, we meet people. These people start to become important to us. We form families, relationships, and friendship. With these people, we share the rainy days and we share the sunny days. That is why these people are important.

These relationships aren't built superficially. They aren't built by being talented, witty, the same, different, or by being acceptable by society. If they are, smiles are fake, life is hard, and you lose yourself. Relationships are built by love.

So is friendship. There is no such things as "The Ten Must-dos of a Friend", "Friendship Rules", or so on. Friendship isn't a system. It is a matter of heart. Friendship is driven by not only love, but sincerity as well. Sincerity is kind of under-rated, in my opinion. You need sincere care for your friends.

But i'm not here to define friendship. I am no friendship-guru. I'm not here to act like a know-it-all and teach you how to manage a friendship, because i can't do it well myself. This post i'm writing is a reflection of how important i think of my friends.

I am the kind of person who doesn't really like making new friends, but in our lives it is a must. I am shy. I'm surprised people know that because i tried my best not to be. But when i make friends, they are truly my friends. We have fun together, we quarrel, we talk for hours, we go for outings together, and we find out things about one another. Eventually, for me, my friends become my second family. I fully trust them and i let them know things about me. I open up, be myself, be lame, and behave like a child without restrictions.

At times, we'll feel like we're unwanted among our friends. They go out without us, they form inside jokes without ask, they have endless of conversation topics which we don't understand, they distance away, etc. We feel angry. We complain about it. We quarrel. "Nobody cares," we say, "they just think of me as part of the crowd". But that is not true. Important words are difficult to say. We all care, that's why we went so far together. The fact that we're unhappy proves that we care too.

People change, they have new friends, they prioritise friendship differently from us, they don't reply to our words, they ignore what we say. These are natural processes. I do feel sad and distanced from some of my close friends, and at times i feel irritated at those who didn't distance away for small reasons, to be honest, but this is just being human and true. At least it doesn't feel like "Oh, he's here, we must force ourselves to be kind and caring" or "I like my new friends but i cannot get too close to them because i'll distance away from my other group of friends". It just cannot be forced.

I just hope it still matters, because this whole thing is important to me.

In other words, things we can do to maintain friendship is limited. We can try to salvage it by finding opportunities to bond, but sometimes, nothing works anymore.

It takes two hands to clap.

The Sky that Speaks

2011-06-14T01:38:00.002+08:00

I've been studying natal astrology from a book recently. Don't know much yet, but managed to grasp the basic concept of natal astrology. And i totally got captivated. Space and planets are not just random hovering things, but they are representations of us, each and every one of us. A natal chart, which is a mysterious circular diagram filled with lots of mysterious symbols, is a representation of a human. By looking at a natal chart, you are looking into the insides of a human.

By now some of you may be whispering to yourself, "Are you serious? You look at planets to judge people?"

No. Astrology isn't used to judge (i hate stereotyping). It does not determine one's full personality. It is purely a description of his/her potential. It is what he is borned with and can easily carry across his lifespan. Being a Cancer doesn't mean you HAVE to be sensitive to everything. It just means you are borned to be and you can be if you want to. If you aren't proud of your sign, you can ignore it.

Why is astrology so interesting?

You're going to judge me by saying this (in fact, i often say things to get judged for just because i want to be honest): Astrology defines me. It tells me i am a cancer and that i have this ability that is unique to my type. It provides me with the security that i need, because losing myself is one of my greatest fears.

And just yesterday, it showed me another piece of information that boosted my confidence to another level. I shall not elaborate though.

I guess in this post, you got to know a little more about me :)

Two Worlds in My Hands

2011-06-09T01:05:00.005+08:00

I don't have many secrets. The me that you know is probably the me that i am. I like being honest and open so that nobody can use any secret against me. In a way, i am a really simple person. But, if i'm to think about things in another way, i'm not so simple after all. If i'm to have any secrets, they're probably things that i'm shy about. Either that, or things that people will deem as weird.

Many of us live in many different worlds. The world where we interact with one another is the "social world". I call this the public world. Perhaps some of us live in another world known as the "virtual world", where we are mages or archers or warriors and we fight monsters which are too cute to be true. There are probably many others.

For me, i think i live in two worlds. A private world and a public world. The private world i live in consist of only myself. It's not a physical world, which you probably would have understood by now; it's a mental world, or something like that. In this private world, i dare to do things which i'll not do in the public world. I dare to bring my passion to a level, perhaps i can say, to the point of delusion. It's very weird. My private world is really very private.

Next is the public world, where i choose which aspects of me to show, and which aspects of me not to show. Usually i'm not too worried about the "what-not-to-show" parts because it's natural instincts.

I was trying to write a poem but realise that i can't write a decent piece of poem. I don't know many sophisticated words. My words are all really simple. When i describe things, i can't actually paint the picture using words. These are not where i'm good at. What i'm good at when it comes to writing is probably just grammar, organisation and variety in length. Of course, this is all self-proclaimed. And i'm digressing (just recently learnt this word!).

So yeah, i was trying to write a poem about this topic but i failed. So i just had a word diarrhea in open office. In other words, i just typed and typed and typed without caring about grammar, length, word choice, organisation, etc. So i just managed to come up with a metaphor halfway: The public world which i mentioned about is a community website. The private world is "Documents" as it is written in the computer. I have all these stuff in "Documents". I choose which ones to upload to the community website. So yeah, this is how these two worlds work and connect. It's like an online and offline world in the computer.

There are benefits and weaknesses for both worlds. The benefit of the private world is also the weakness of the public world. In my private world, i enjoy freedom of thoughts and does not need to feel insecure about things that don't really matter. In the public world, i am really making a difference to my life. It is the world i'm spending the majority of my time in and it is, in some ways, the "real world". So, it's frightening and makes me feel insecure.

However, the public world is, as i've mentioned, the "real world". This makes what i do in the private world "unreal". It's meaningless. Me studying that book on astrology is meaningless because i'm not going to bring it to the real world except that i'm mentioning a little about it here in my blog. As i was thinking to myself, i don't like writing and talking about things that are affecting me because they make these "problems" become real. But i guess problems need to be solved. It really depends on the situation.

And one last thing about these worlds: Not only is the public world the real one, it is also the one where you interact and make friends. Unlike the public world, the private world is a lonely place. Just like how nobody laughs at me for being so delusional about my passion, there's nobody for me to share it with either.

Quality of Speech

2011-06-04T21:08:00.003+08:00

"What I say is more interesting than what you say, so it's alright to ignore you."
I suspect this is a thought that occur in many people's minds when they ignore what other people say even though they hear it.

It's a form of arrogance.

Magical Dreamers

2011-05-31T22:28:00.006+08:00

Magical Dreamers

Remember those days when we would whine and cry
When someone tells us there is no magic?
Remember our dreams we wish will come true
No matter how unattainable, how unreachable?

We believed in dreams
We believed in hopes
We believed in ourselves
And we believed in magic

Remember those days when we would cast
That spell that gives our future?

They said we can't
They said we're naive
But we still believed
Because we are magical dreamers

A poem i have written following the meter of a song from Chrono Cross, a ps1 game, "Radical Dreamers". But then i went to change it to make it more poetic. Radical Dreamers is a nice song. You should listen to it. I was sort of inspired by its tune.

May 2011

2011-05-31T14:08:00.002+08:00

This is the last day of this month, so i'm going to summarise the month again.

Family life
Celebrated mother's day this month. Bought this box with a bear design for my mum. Hugged my dad because we were told to do it. It reminds me of certain things that we have lost through time. And two days ago was my dad's birthday, though we didn't celebrate it because we needed to rush to my uncle's chalet and didn't have the time. And my mum believes that late celebrations are not good.

Yup, so that's my family life this month.

School life
All CAs were due this month. CSM presentation, WMP test, HML presentation, VC test, and DT presentation. Also had an extra GenEd presentation, which turned out fine actually.

Most of them were okay. I did what i intended to do for CSM, HML and DT presentation. WMP test was kind of worrying, but i guess thursday will tell us how well each of us did for the test. VC was actually fine, just that i was quite unsure. For GenEd, my group did a presentation on abortion. It turned out rather successful, though it was the typical read-from-the-slides-and-elaborate kind of presentation.

Creative Story Making (CSM): Did a skit with zhaoyi, hanissah, and elijah. XinDe Yue La, a story about a China version of "Cinderella" and her mother-in-law.

Writing Across Media Platforms (WMP): It was mostly a summary test. Summarising into an sms, 100 words, and a headline.

Heroes, Myths and Legends (HML): An individual powerpoint presentation. My slides were mostly pictures, with the help of animation. Spent a lot of effort on it! It was mostly metaphorical, i guess.

Visual Communication (VC): Had this test yesterday! 2 sections: Photoshopping and commenting on the filming of a video. The photoshop part was fine, but the video part made me feel kind of unsure. And it was troublesome.

Deconstructing TV (DT): "Ni hao, wo shi Lulu~ OH, Speak Engrish? OKOK" Today, we had a deconstructing TV presentation. My group (Meijun, yvette, and natasya) deconstructed The Noose. And we acted as 2 of the characters each. Felt really worried at first but soon it really ended up okay.

General Education (GenEd): Not a CA, but all classes do presentations, or most of them. So, maybe i should just talk about this for a bit. Did research on viewpoints of abortion, and then presented about it. My group presented "We are against abortion" even though i was kind of "For abortion".

Social life had been okay. Friends, eating, lunch, going out, etc. Okay, maybe not so much for the "going out" part, but still...

And at times after school, guangyi and i would meet ruwen, waimin and melvin at NP or clementi. Yup.

And there's something i really want to say but i shouldn't.

Personal growth and interests
I've became more direct and i've became less of a hypocrite. No more pretending to be nice. I am starting to be more direct. It's more effective.

I'm becoming tired of being pessimistic. Time to change?

Less swimming and exercises nowadays. These 2 weeks had been 0 swimming if i'm not wrong.

Felt really inspired by great lecturers and their unique teaching styles. Inspired in terms of teaching and writing. Maybe my future career will be a dilemma.

That's about it for this month :D

Hugging Pain, Making It Friend

2011-05-29T11:32:00.006+08:00

Yesterday, my family went to a chalet which my uncle booked. My sister, cousin and i did nothing much, just played cards, waited for BBQ food, and went to the beach area for a walk. As i was walking on the beach, sand got into my slippers, which was uncomfortable, and i knew that very soon we would just be walking on the sandless area. So, i went to the seawater and tried to use the waves to remove the sand. It failed. Now, there was less sand, but it felt more irritating. Since i couldn't do anything about it, i just walked casually on the sand again, and more sand got in. I wasn't frustrated anymore, because the "new sand" which got in made my feet feel more comfortable because now my slippers were not "some sand some no-sand" but "all sand".

Don't you think this situation occurs very much in our real life? I was kind of excited when i thought of this situation as a life-lesson because i felt that, with a logic derived from this situation, i can escape lots of unhappiness. You probably can too, Here's how:

You don't like camps. You are forced to attend a camp (the sand enters your slippers). In the camp, if you continuously try to make things "normal and back to your day-to-day life" (attempt to wash away the sand), you'll fail and it will make you feel worse (less sand more more uncomfortable). Now you've decided that nothing can be changed. What you can do is to fully accept the camp and your new lifestyle (allow more sand in). You will feel more comfortable.

Back to my story: So, after i allowed more sand into my slippers and felt more comfortable, my sister, cousin and i walked on the sandless area. Gradually, there were less and less sand on my slippers and feet. They sort of flew away/dropped off (???).

This will happen in real life as well. As time pass, the problem (which became comfortable when you accepted it) will become not-a-problem anymore.

You must think i'm crazy, but i was quite worried about NS life even though it's still quite far away. But this logic can be used in this area.

In a nutshell, by accepting our problems and being patient with them, we'll be able to handle them in a positive fashion.

An Education Boat-ride

2011-05-24T19:31:00.003+08:00

An update about my life~

So life in poly has been a "sitting on a boat on a stormy sea" experience. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it comes down. Actually, i just mean that sometimes it's nice but sometimes it isn't. Class activities were interesting, but i don't like GenEd. Now my favourite modules are Creative Story Making, Writing Across Media Platforms and Visual Communications :D Deconstructing TV and Heroes, Myths and Legends are fine.

Every weekday
So, the unusual burst of optimism which i got every morning since i started poly is gone. The optimism was due to self-psychoing in the first place. Now i'm too lazy to psycho myself every morning. And i've been rather stubborn and picky when it came to books, so i haven't borrowed a book for quite long, thus my journey to school had been rather dull. Fortunately, i managed to borrow one that looks quite interesting. Haven't read yet though. Starting to eat breakfast in the morning, especially monday mornings because every monday morning i'll be super tired.

Oh, anyway i think there's this mysterious bond between my handphone and i. Every morning, my handphone will manage to wake me up with its alarm even though it's so, so soft. And many nights, i will almost forget to set my alarm and somehow remember.

Life so far
Getting along with most classmates. Interesting class activities (lighting setups, photoshop, the name game, "Sam", etc) Okay i know the "Sam" looks quite random. It's just a random person my Creative Story Making lecturer came up with.

Just yesterday, we were coming up with "Matin's Love Story", which is supposed to be a story about matin's love for Sam, and ended up being some random soap opera thing which last for don't know how many million chapters. All we did was to come up with chapter "titles".

And just yesterday, i went to meet guangyi, melvin, ruwen and waimin at Ngee Ann Poly. And had dinner in the very spacious food court, and then went to "Our Space" to accompany melvin to do his project with his group. While melvin was doing his project, we were photoboothing.

CAs, then holidays
Just 2 more CA1s to go! Luckily for Visual Com it's a test. But for Deconstructing TV it's a project. Rushing like mad. But it's kind of exciting because my group has came up with this rather interesting idea as to how we're going to present our stuff. Both CAs are due next week.

And then after that comes the holidays! :D

Yeah, so that's about it. This post is kind of disorganised but nevermind. Imperfection is key!

I've never felt this way before.

The Missing Piece

2011-05-22T23:08:00.004+08:00

This video has lots of morals.
You may want to do some thinking about the following based on this video:
-Fitting in and being yourself
-Being superficial
-Looking for perfection
-Changes
-Giving yourself a chance

Not One Mistake

2011-05-16T22:38:00.002+08:00

Are you a perfectionist?

A perfectionist is someone who wants no mistake. He does not like seeing things not completely right. I guess i'm sort of one, though not completely.

But Asahina from "Diamond Dust Drops" is a complete perfectionist:

Asahina is a character from a not-so-famous anime called "Kita-e ~ Diamond Dust Drops". She is the director in her school's film-making club and she has won lots of awards. As a result, expectations on her are high and she became a perfectionist through time. The filming crew must be perfectly disciplined. The actors' acting must be perfect too. Every little imperfection ticks her off. Whenever she is not satisfied something, she totally cuts it off.

As a result, her life became very stressful as she constantly felt pressurised. Her daily life included her worrying about her latest film project everyday, with her thinking thoughts like "What if i don't win the award this year?" She became too critical with senseless films and she became angry at the filming club everyday. Her perfectionism didn't only cause herself to feel stressed, but it caused the whole club to feel tense too. Deciding that they had had enough of Asahina's unreasonably high expectations, the filming club did something to piss her off on purpose: Destroy the film they had been working on. Asahina could not take it and left the crew, intending to do up a film herself. So, she asked her boyfriend to accompany her to different places to film sceneries. However, none of the sceneries seemed to be perfect enough for her, so she didn't get anything done. Her boyfriend tried to remind her about the true purpose of filming: To enjoy the process. However, Asahina scolded him and said he did not understand the pressure she had been going through. She said that she would be happy if her boyfriend would stop bothering her.

And the next day, her boyfriend is gone. She had lost everything.

That was when she found a documentary sort of thing which her boyfriend made of her on the shelf.

It showed how she used to admit that she's just a novice, the times when awards were just extras to her and she filmed because she enjoyed it, not because she wanted to win. Asahina was astonished by who she used to be. That was when she finally realised that she was blinded by perfectionism.

Due to her perfectionism, she had lost everything.

I guess the moral of the story is pretty clear. Perfectionism can cause great stress to you and the people around you. If you seek perfection in everything, chances are, like Asahina, you get blinded. You get blinded that things are not good enough and you forget how to be satisfied.

And satisfaction is the key to happiness.

So what happened at the end of the story? Asahina actually learnt her lesson, and she began letting go of perfectionism. From then on, she smiled more and her life became happier. She eventually reunited with her boyfriend.

Of course, perfectionism has its good points: Higher expectations, better result. But still, nothing can be perfect. We all have to learn to be satisfied with what we have right now.

We can do that by technical means such as listing down things you should be grateful for. We can do that by repetitive thought patterns, like saying thank you to the world every morning. We can do that by looking at the bright side of the world.

Let go of perfection, and live life imperfectly. This is the beauty of life.

Story: Kita-e ~ Diamond Dust Drops by Red Entertainment
Image: http://www.animetaku.com/anime/kita-e-diamond-dust-drops::419.html

A Busy Week

2011-05-14T13:11:00.005+08:00

I don't know your definition of busy, but to me, busy means spending around 80% of your time doing things you are required to do, be it whether you enjoy it or not. I've listed down many things when i should do personally, and, added with school assignments, notes-writing (i can't write proper notes in class), plus a lack of motivation, i guess perhaps i can consider this week to be a busy week, though i sort of had fun being busy.

Poly - Continual Assessments
It had been four weeks into poly life. Somehow, four weeks seemed rather long already, even though in secondary school four weeks is usually just the start. But anyway, it had been quite stressful, needing to adapt to the poly lifestyle, poly people, and so on. Received 3 CA1 projects and 1 CA1 test is coming up on monday.

The first project we received was Heroes, Myths and Legends: "The Hero, The Villain, and The Story World", an individual project in which we were supposed to create a hero, a villain, and a world of a story. And before you go like "chicken feet, so easy, my course still need to ~bla bla bla~", i'll say that it isn't half as easy as it sounds.

The second project we received was Creative Story Making: "Another Cinderella Story", a group project in which we were supposed to brainstorm in a group and come up with many ideas of stories which follows the structure and elements of the fairytale, Cinderella. Then we were supposed to choose one of the idea, develop on it, write it out, and present it (my group did a skit). It ended just yesterday :D It was fun when we were planning, rehearsing and performing, though at the beginning we were mostly worried that the group could not get along well.

The third project we received was Deconstructing Television, a group project in which we are supposed to pick a genre and a television programme, analyse it, and present our analysis. Haven't started on it because the due date is in week 7 and we're just done with week 4, and right now we're focusing on the previous two projects.

The test we will be taking is headline writing and summary.

Friday
Yesterday was a little different from usual. Reached school earlier by one hour to meet up with my group for a final rehearsal before the presentation. Felt kind of nervous, and we were first group to present. Everything was quite successful, except for a part of the skit which we've decided to remove but still ended up inside the performance somehow. The other groups presented too. Slides, drawings, humour, puppet show, and recount. After class ended, ms wee told us a good news :D

Then we went to eat at foodcourt 5, and then i went for the interview and audition for theatre compass. The audition was okay... i've done all i could. But the interview was quite screwed. After the interview, went back to foodcourt 5 to do Heroes Myths and Legends CA.

Thursday
Thursday was awesome. It had its bits of negative events, but the more significant thing was melvin's birthday celebration.

Started the day with Writing Across Media Platforms. Played pictionary, did exercises to prepare for test, etc. Then 4 hours ended and we went to eat and requested ms wai leng to poke holes in our CA, and she did. I got rather irritated at one of my classmate for a reason. Went to rehearse for our presentation after that, and then i went off to find weijian, while chatting with zhaoyi on the phone.

And weijian was late for one hour -_- And then we went to buy and design cake, and then met the others in clementi mall. Chatted alot and went to fish & co. to have our dinner. I bought sweet and sour fish (sry ah, have to report this because fish & co isn't a norm for me) with the meal. It was great~ And it was enjoyable being with the mehmehs again so casually and peacefully. Went to ask the waiter to bring the cake out, and they did after around 10-15 minutes. Celebrated, birthday procedures, and then gave melvin his "matrix set", as zixing calls it. Which consists of a coat, sunglasses and hat. Made him wear them for awhile, and then ate the cake, took group photos, and went home together.

On thursday, i did many wrong things, such as being too pushy, picking on someone because i was pissed at him, and doing something insensitive. I guess mistakes are really unavoidable. Can't try being too perfect, and my next blog post is probably going to be on "perfectionism"!

Wednesday
Wednesday, we had HML (Heroes, Myths and Legends), and then went home after that. Thought that i would have enough time to cleanup my current room and my previous/future room, plus do goal setting for GenEd (a module), but i did none of them and instead went to watch two episodes of an anime -_-

And i went swimming with weijian in the evening.

Tuesday
Deconstructing Television tutorial, watched an episode of "Supernatural", and had a lesson on Revenue and Sponsorship. After that, my CSM (Creative Story Making) group went to the meeting room in the hilltop library to rehearse our skit and prepare the props.

After we ended, walked around with elijah, finding our classmates but failed, and then went to slack in the hilltop library awhile. After that, i went to meet guangyi.

Walked around clementi mall to wait for weijian, and then met him and shopped for a present. After that, went home. Decided to take a different direction in the MRT.

Monday
General Education: New class, new classmates, same class as Hui En (GYSS schoolmate)
Writing Across Media Platforms: Short lecture
Break: Wrote the script for the CSM skit, wrote the poem, made the slides
Visual Communication: Photoshop, logos

Last Sunday
Mother's day celebration. Bought mum a soft toy kind of box. Went to celebrate mother's day at my grandma's house. Buffeted, and then hanged out with my siblings and cousin (ping cheng). Kind of nostalgic.

So, yeah, that's the week. Today is saturday, and i need to do HML because the presentation is on Wednesday. Individual presentation, scared! But i'm feeling so lazy now :( ... :(

The Thing I'm Most Passionate For

2011-05-07T16:39:00.008+08:00

A concised "introduction"
1. By right, i should be doing HML now :(
2. I had not blogged for quite long because i was tired of my blogskin.
3. I had been physically unhealthy for 3 weeks (either sick or lack of sleep).
4. I have learnt that an effective writing is short and sharp.

My Greatest Passion
It's not writing.

I do love writing different sort of stuff, and i do not regret at all for joining DTVM (my course). What i'm most passionate about is teaching. And there's no teaching course in polytechnic, and i did not want to go to JC. And it is possible to go to poly yet become a teacher in the future, proven in a career guidebook which my secondary school recommended us to buy and was quite useful. Actually, i had planned to join this course but be a teacher all along. I was thinking that in the future i want to either be a teacher or a writer of some sort, but i wasn't sure and i went to do a mini-research on the route i can take and i've decided that joining this course would train me to be a writer but i can still be a teacher. I've also decided that i'll realise which one is more important to me after i join this course.

And i did :) but it may change in the future.

In the future, i want to be a teacher because i want to plan engaging lessons, nag, write notes (yes, i like to write notes), teach and just do something i enjoy.

April 2011

2011-04-29T23:01:00.002+08:00

It's about time to conclude this month. It is the month when all the poly thing actually started. At the end of march, i officially entered poly life when i went for the CASS orientation camp, which i blogged about. And then after that, for a few weeks, holidays continued. Did the usual stuff with the mehmehs. And then on the 11th of April, we had the mehmehs' chalet, which clashed with the Freshmen Orientation Programme. And i skipped the orientation programme for the chalet.

Initial Discomfort
I am a person who finds it seriously difficult to adapt to changes. It will probably take me about a week to adjust to stuff. And i'm glad i gave myself the chance to. I was seriously feeling very sad about not seeing my secondary school friends every day anymore, and meeting new friends whom i find very different. Everyone is different.

I wasn't comfortable with anything at all. Firstly, the transportation time, which is like 1 hour from home to school. It used to just take me 5 minutes to reach school from home because my mom drives me, and my school was just 15 minutes' walk away. Secondly, i could not think of anyone to be close friends with. Yes, i'm not the kind of "whole class together" person, but i'm also not the kind of person who stick to a group of people like glue and treat them like they are the only people in the world. Thirdly, i just don't know. New things just scare me.

And now i've adjusted to them all.

School
School started. Sat for several modules: General Education, Writing Across Media Platforms, Visual Communication, Deconstructing Television, Heroes, Myths and Legends, and Creative Story Writing.

I love most of them, but some get rather dull at times. I love the module creative story writing the most, but i like ms gamar's lessons on writing across media platforms the most.

School was very interactive and i was able to feel comfortable around any classmates, except maybe for a few whom i chose to be less open with.

So the pattern goes like this: Morning drills, bus to junction 8, MRT, read book in MRT (I'm reading Before I Fall right now, super good), reach dover mrt station, and this is the part when there are certain variations.

a) I arrive 30 minutes early and wait for my classmates to arrive.
b) I arrive just on time but my "just on time" is equals to my classmates' "almost late".
c) I arrive 30 minutes early so i go to the toilet to do business, and end up being "just on time".

School, lectures, lunch at super crowded foodcourts, slacking in the libraries (i like the hilltop library because it is near our school), and sometimes we go to the main library after school for board games.

Game of life, this weird mouse game, cluedo, and a wolf game.

By the way, the CAs have started, projects started coming. A group project by week 4 and an individual project by week 5.

CCA fair and my CCA choice
I really wanted to join a sport CCA in polytechnic and i planned to join swimming since i was in secondary school. But now i'm not joining any sports cca anymore. I'm not a really sporty person, i just exercise a few times per week. I like sports stuff but i am not committed to them. Sports is not my life. This is what i realised.

So, i'm joining BP mentoring, another CCA i had been planning to join since i came to SP to apply for the orientation camp and saw this brochure and got excited. I had not known the meaning of the "BP" in "BP mentoring" until yesterday; it is the shortform of the name of the company in sponsorship or something. This CCA is about teaching children and stuff.

Another CCA i'm joining is theatre compass. About performing stuff on stage one.

Went for CCA fair two days ago and yesterday. It was kind of fun deciding what to join and stuff. Watched some rather amazing dances by our school dancers. Basically, just hanged out around school.

Personal Growth
I've grown again. Now i do socialise. Now i no longer run away and don't talk to certain people. I have also grown in terms of becoming a more optimistic person. And a more energetic one, i think.

Wai Min's Birthday
Even with school, the mehmehs still kept in contact. We do hang out sometimes, and just on tuesday, we celebrated waimin's birthday.

It didn't turn out very successful. We ate at pizzahut and their service was not really good over there at that branch. And i got rather unhappy at certain things that some of us said.

But still, i hope that waimin enjoyed the gifts and the cake! :D

That is basically april.

Sometimes when you feel sad

2011-04-27T23:21:00.003+08:00

Sometimes, don't you just feel a need to show them what you're made up of?
Sometimes, don't you just want to feel like people see you as an individual, not just a part of something?
Sometimes, don't you just feel like you're lousy and you can't do anything about it?
Sometimes, don't you just find yourself being unnecessary weak?
Sometimes, don't you just feel that you piss people off no matter what you do?
Sometimes, don't you just become sad for no reason at all?

WHY?

2011-04-26T15:33:00.002+08:00

Okay, so all the people in my class are given a piece of homework, which is to write a 250-words blog entry about the most powerful word to each of us. There is no particular "most powerful word" to me, but after many days of consideration, i've finally manage to thought of one. That one word is "WHY".

To me, the most powerful word is "why". This is because this particular word can cause a lot of impact to our minds. Whenever we ask ourselves "why", we start to think for a reason. This can be a reason to why we are behaving the way we do, why some things happen, why there are certain rules, and basically anything. It can help us, and it can piss us off too.

To scientists, this word is their best friend. By asking why, why, why, they are opening up opportunities for themselves to make greater discoveries. These discoveries can change the world. Imagine if this word doesn't exist and people stop seeking reasons. How much will we miss out? We don't have to talk about scientists. Just in our everyday life, without using the word "why", we will not know why a mistake we make is a mistake. We won't know why we get a stomachache when we eat that biscuit which dropped onto the floor, and thus we will do that again. This word, "why", makes a difference.

I am an ordinary person, but because i too have such curiosity and constantly ask "why", i often think a lot. Many a times, I analyse my own emotions because i kept wanting to know why. Why did i feel unhappy when i do? Why did i fear certain things that other people don't? This word leads me to over-think things.

In other words, the word "why" is a bridge; it connects things and situations to their possible reasons. By asking why, we can clarify things and make us stable. But sometimes, just because we ask why, our minds start to waver and we become unstable. In a nutshell, "why" is power to our minds.

The Sequel

2011-04-20T17:08:00.002+08:00

So now polytechnic had started for the poly students, including me. I haven't updated about my life here yet. So, yeah, that's what i'm going to do. Right now, i'm at Singapore Poly's Main Library with guangyi. School ended and we're waiting for waimin and ruwen so that we can meet up and go walk walk, so i guess i should just write a quick post now. I would love to put in some picures that i've taken of the GYSS alumni bonding session which we had last saturday, but i don't have the cable now and it'll take up too much time even if i do.

Saturday - GYSS Alumni Bonding
So the gyss alumni had a bonding session last saturday in school. Played "Running Man". In this game, we were divided into 2 teams: The mission team and the chasing team. The mission team was supposed to find 5 magazines while the chasing team was supposed to stop the mission team from doing so by catching them before they find the magazines. We used walkie talkies to communicate (no idea where they got it from) and it was interesting but at the same time annoying especially when people like weijian just love to spam noise. Luck told me to be in the chasing team but i appealed and switched with someone in the mission team. And i got into the mission team.

I found one magazine due to tessa giving me obvious hints. The other team members found another magazine. It was fun. In the end, we somehow won. Feedbacked. So for the next bonding session, guangyi and joshua would be planning.

Went to eat at Long John Silver although i was beginning to have sore throat, and then went to play pool at AMK. Felt super tired halfway and went home.

Sunday - Shopping with Sister
Went to orchard to shop with sister. For once, even though i had sore throat, i tried out this ice cream cake thing which didn't taste all that nice but was super expensive. It would have been great if it was purely a cake. Bought famous amos cookies for the second time of my life. Even though i was having sore throat. For the whole shopping trip, only sis really shopped, but i just accompanied her around. Saw waimeng, congxu, chuanying and yvette (poly classmates) there. Coincidence. Anyway, towards the end of the day, went to kinokuniya and bought "The Secret", a book about the law of attraction and how to use it to help you make your life better. Took a bus to NEX after that, but at the bus stop while waiting for the bus, saw hweehong (secondary school classmate) and caught up abit.

Went to NEX and tried shui yan she, a bubbletea. Their smoothie is not so nice. Bought a laptop case and then headed home. Rested and then slept to prepare for school the next day.

Monday - First Day
Woke up at 6am in the morning and the first thing i did was to be as optimistic as possible because The Secret says that positive thoughts attract positive events. Did the usual morning routines (make coffee, leave the coffee to cool while i change clothes, pack back, drink coffee slowly, sit and do nothing until the time to leave is just right). I'm enjoying this routine actually. Headed off for school after that.

MRT was super squeezy i couldn't even move my bag to take my book out to read o_o

Reached school at 7.45 and then went to our General Education class with stefanie and elijah (poly classmates) because only we three from the same DTVM class (DTVM/FT/1A/02) were in the same general eduction class (yes, they've decided to separate us for this module which the whole SP had to take, i suppose). Surprisingly, GenEd (short form for general education) was quite fun. The first session was introduction to the module. It is sort of an all-rounder subject where we learn a bit about everything, such as environment, media, etc. But the first session was merely introduction to one another in class.

Homework: Research and prepare to discuss in front of the class about your favourite star and a big news about him/her. Don't know what i can do, i know nothing about singers and stuff. Maybe i should really do research.

After GenEd, we had Writing Across Media Platforms. It was rather interesting, as in we had already really started to learn stuff. 2 hours break. Ate at the steps near the food court and the multi-purpose field because the food court was super packed, almost like the MRT. After eating, slacked around and then went to have our third lecture of the day, a four hours lecture, about Visual Communications. The lecturer made us touch a rock, and then a crystal, and then told us that if we want to transform from a rock to a crystal, we have to endure the heat. Learnt a little bit about the content, watched many videos and after that the lecturer decided to let us play around with the cameras :D which was kind of fun. After that, went home because it was 6pm.

Tuesday - Second Day
7am, waking up in the morning~

School was at 9am. Just a three hours tutorial about deconstructing television. The most dull lesson so far. Still, we watched lots of videos and did some discussion and stuff. Maybe the subject of discussion just doesn't appeal to me, though i don't hate the TV and radios, which is what we discussed about. History of TV and stuff.

Wednesday
School was at 12pm. Had another 3 hours tutorial, which passed by kind of fast. It was an interesting session about Story Classics: Heroes, Myths and Legends. Discussed about heroes today. Firstly, a class discussion about what we think heroes are, and then a group discussion about the common characteristics of heroes, then individual essay about who we think our personal heroes are and why we consider them heroes. So, the session was mostly hero hero hero. It was actually interesting.

And after class, went to meet guangyi and ate super late lunch together because all i ate in the morning was 2 sandwiches and i didn't eat lunch. Went to the main library and here i am :)

Changes

2011-04-19T17:23:00.006+08:00

Recently, all of us poly students have started a new chapter in our lives (a cliched expression, i know); that is what i'll say if i can't be bothered to think of something different, and i was really intending to use that sentence to start this post (actually, i did anyway). But on second thoughts, i think that our lives are not books. If i am to insist on using books as a metaphor to life, i'll rather say that our lives are many books, not just one. Maybe our childhood is one book, our secondary school days is one book, our poly days is one book, NS days is one book, adulthood is one book and, finally, retirement is the last book, and in that last book contains all the lessons we have learnt through life. The last book will not be one of great adventure, but it will be one that is the most meaningful and contains the wisest words. In a way, the start of polytechnic for many of us is a sequel to our secondary school life.

Our secondary school life ended, and now we've started polytechnic. We can cry non-stop and say that we want to go back to secondary school days, perhaps no one would stop us, and perhaps people may even console us. But, at the end, nothing's really changing. We are still heading towards poly life. This is a change that we must face. We can be weak at first, but after that we must be strong and fight. After this change, we still have many others to face. I felt intimidated when i thought of it.

But we have to deal with changes. At times, we are not allowed to give up. In this case, we're sort of being "forced" to start polytechnic. We have no choice. No matter how uncomfortable we feel, we cannot go like "i don't want to do this anymore!" and then absent ourselves from school. I say that because i have this kind of thought from time to time: I don't want it, thus i avoid it. But in this world, what you don't want may come to you as well, unless you're proficient in using the "law of attraction" to sort of attract just the good stuffs to your life. I am honest about the law of attraction thing.

So, how do we deal with changes? I don't mean to sound all wise and stuff, but let me just share what i read, what i did, and some extra logic which i came up with.

According to "Happiness in Hard Times" by Andrew Matthews, when we face with a problem, we must accept the problem. This means we must fight the problem instead of run away from it. In this case, "change" is the problem. Instead of avoiding this change, which we cannot, we have to cope with this change. Firstly, we have to accept the fact that it really is time for us to change already. No more old days when you live just 15 minutes away from your school. No more strolling to school; it's now squeezing like orange juice in the MRT early in the morning to go to school. Secondly, we have to change our thoughts. I've not blogged about it before, but the second chapter of Happiness in Hard Times is about conquering crises. And throughout, it says again and again: The thoughts is the key. And if you read many other books, you'll see the pattern. They like telling you to change how you think! In this case, it's time to adjust. I don't mean we need to immediately get used to things, but that we can adjust our mindsets to save ourselves from misery.

According to "How To Improve Your Self-Esteem" by Elaine Sheehan, which i read some time ago, which includes a chapter about managing your thoughts, we can sort of "replace" our thoughts. Whenever a negative thought enters our minds, tell ourselves to stop thinking that thought, and then replace the thought with a positive thought. And it is possible to come up with a positive thought because everything has its good and bad. The good parts of a situation may be minimal, but if we focus on it, we can enlarge the good parts of the situation. Take for example, you're stuck in a cave with a spade. The entrance is blocked because of rock fall. You can only see a small glimpse of light coming in from a small hole. If you focus on that small hole and dig the area, there is a chance that you can dig your way out eventually. Or maybe i know nothing about caves but you get what i'm trying to say.

So, in this case, instead of thinking "Why must everything change... i miss my friends, i miss everthing. I don't want to go to my new school, i don't want to take the MRT... etc", think "If i can adjust to this now, i have no fear for a workplace far from home in the future."

Challenges make us grow.

If replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts is really that difficult, you can do what i'm doing now, which works so far: Stop thinking. It doesn't make you stupid. You can still think about other stuff, but when you start analysing why you feel unhappy, just stop and tell yourself that you are happy. You are not lying to yourself. If you tell yourself, "Everything is wonderful", everything will be.

Recently i just bought a book called "The Secret", which is by Rhonda Byrne. It is about the law of attraction, which is a physics law that says "like attracts like". Think good things and good things will come to you. Think bad things and bad things will come to you.

Two things that i find important in changing is, firstly, that we must be patient enough to adjust fully, and, secondly, that we must know that we are not alone.

If the start of polytechnic is the introduction to the book, don't expect it to be more interesting than the middle of your secondary school life. If you compare these two, you're actually comparing the introduction of a book to the climax of another, which doesn't make sense. Be patient.

Once again, i am not trying to act like a know-it-all or something. Whenever i felt bad, i would love to know that i'm not alone, and i would love to see a blog post or article that may be of some help to me. To be honest, i have not fully adjusted to this change yet, but i'm confident i will. Hopefully, this blog post did help you or at least be of interest to you.

Let's face changes and see the world in another direction together.

Living Together

2011-04-15T22:43:00.002+08:00

This week had been stressful, but meaningful and, more importantly (imitating mrs tan), fun. On a side note, i think i've gotten over the Friday fetish. It was stressful because of all those unimportant worries i carried in mind as well as the lack of any time to rest. It was meaningful because i've grown this week and i've made new friends. I was also reassured that my current clique loves one another as much as i do. It was fun because it just was. I'll talk about each day in this post and give each day a title.

Monday - Change
The most stressful day of the week. I woke up in the morning due to irritating construction (drilling) noise which did not stop even after i exited my house. Furthermore, i just bought a new phone this sunday and there were lots of things to adjust to. Touchscreen, different routines, more complicated, contacts and so on. I had to do these adaptations with the drilling noise going on in the background. I was rather pessimistic. After some time, took the MRT to school. Finished reading "Room". It was a great book. Felt kind of sad after reading it because of the ending plus the emptiness after something ended. Read my review on it in the previous post! :D Felt like everything had suddenly changed. After that, met my new classmates and didn't really get to know them well. Had SPICE training, which was actually just teaching us how to use the student portal and the library website. Sat beside Wai Meng, though i didn't get to bond with him anyway. Disappointed in the day, went to j8 to get stuff for the mehmeh chalet, then mum drove me home and gave me half of her dinner. Then, she and my dad fetched me to the chalet. Didn't take a picture of the chalet, but it's a terrace on top of a hill (Biggin Hill Terrace), and it looks dark and creepy actually. The floor is kind of dirty and the furnitures and stuff inside are not very impressive. However, i am impressed by its size. Furthermore, it's not the venue that matters; it's quality time you spend with your friends that do.

Got fetched into the chalet by them and went to look around. Slacked, ate fried rice which was cooked by melvin and then watched TV for awhile. Melvin's fried rice was nice :)

Went up to the room and played a game of Uno. Let me emphasize. We played a game of uno, just one, because that one particular game couldn't seem to end. Showered and then squeezed on bed to watch a lame and random comedy about these 3 people who went into a kind of another world thing. Watched Phobia 2 after that, but stopped halfway. Went to play mahjong and then sleep after that.

Tuesday - Don't want to let go
Woke up and saw jasmine beside my bed, talking to someone else if i remember correctly. She said something about not going for the Freshmen Orientation programme on that day. Fell asleep again after that, then woke up, and asked again. So it was not an illusion when she said that. Had coffee and then slacked in the living room while ruwen and some others made beakfast. It was western-style.

To be honest, i've never had such a proper breakfast before. Usually it's wanton mee or something, which is meant for lunch but i eat for breakfast anyway. After breakfast, we went to bugis to do some shopping. Didn't buy anything except for this key from fairy tail. It's a "Cancer" key, as in the zodiac sign, and it's my sign so i got excited because i had been passively looking for it for quite long already and i never really found it until tuesday.

Went to the arcade to watch weijian and zixing play street fighter. I tried playing using Chun lee. Ate super nice tokoyaki. Went around for more shopping, and then after that neoprints :)

Went to NTUC to buy ingredients for dinner, and then back to the chalet. Played mahjong and cards while ruwen and many others cooked nice pasta. I like the white-coloured sauce a lot.

Washed and cleaned up, then went back to the room to finish up the movie we watched the day before. Showered and then played cards, slacked and just spent time doing nothing much. Slept together after that.

Wednesday - New People
Noises in my mind, irritating noises. They sounded like music yet they sounded like noise. It was neither. Suddenly, my mind relaxed when it hear real music. The music went like "I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock, cock, your peacock~" And i woke up from my dream. And i was back in reality. I didn't want to leave the chalet. I didn't want to part and go off so early. I didn't want to be alone in the crowd of people whom i didn't know. I am not a very sociable person. I wanted to resist change. But if i skipped wednesday's orientation programme, i would be robbing myself of my chance of meeting new friends. I must go. And i did. I went for the orientation programme with my class.

It was a trip to sentosa. On the bus trip there, i socialised with wai meng, a new friend whom i met and talked to for abit on day one. Walked together for the whole day afterwards in sentosa. It was an amazing race where we were supposed to walk back and forth, back and forth. Fun overall, but troublesome. Convinced myself to adapt in my mind during lunch, and then went back to vivo with the class to watch the movie "limitless". It was boring and dull at first, so i fell asleep because i had 2 nights of short sleeps and 1 tiring day. Awakened at the interesting part and watched till the end. Not bad. Went home after that and happily gained back energy. Computered and then wrote some stuff, and then slept.

Thursday - Dawn

Thursday was our flag day. It was fun and i managed to really made friends whom i can start feeling comfortable with on this particular day. Collected donations and i collected $31. The class in total summed up to $660 :D My personal tutor is very nice. She made us bet and the winner of the bet gets a prize. I lost horribly because i bet only $300 -_- Stupid and lacked thinking. Went to a dark tunnel to have a walk with elijah, matin and wai meng (the guys), and then pranked the girls by returning late, being silent and acting traumatised. And eventually told them that nothing really happened. Guangyi accompanied me to ang mo kio to buy a durian cake for my mum's birthday. Went home and watched TV with my family. After some time, had a celebration of mum's birthday :D

Didn't capture an image with her face and i didn't noticed. It was kind of rushed so i couldn't take my own sweet time with the photos. Ate the cake. It was not bad. Chatted a little bit, then they went back to their rooms to sleep.

Friday - The Result
Swam with melvin, then went to the library to look at books and slack. Went to eat lunch with melvin and guangyi after that at pastamania. Saw Natalie ong, jonathan, yong ming and their friends there. Went to the library again, then home to prepare for commendation day. Went to school, watched performances, listened to Mrs Tan's long long speech and went up the stage to collect the prize. After that, went to the canteen to eat free dinner.

Conclusion
Tired but fun and meaningful week. Had some very emotional moments alone but i rather not talk about them. So, that's it. Goodbye! ^^

Book review: Room

2011-04-14T22:33:00.007+08:00

I've recently finished reading a book called "Room" by Emma Donoghue, and it was a super nice book. It uses simple language and some incorrect grammar that is fun to read. I am not trying to outsmart an author, but the reason why i say that the grammar is incorrect is because the author made those mistakes on purpose to reflect the grammar of a 5 years old child. The story is told nicely and it is a unique tale.

Anyway, i am going to write a review on this book. My review is going to be personal, so it's not going to be professionally-written. By the way, this is my first time writing a book review. This review is going to be classified into plot, character and expression.

Plot
This story is about this boy called Jack. He was borned in a room, and he lived in the room, which he calls Room. He had never gotten out of Room. To him, Room is the world, and the world is outer space. His stuff are his friends. He plays with his Ma everyday. Every Sunday, certain things he and his Ma requests for are going to be given to them by Old Nick as a Sunday Treat. One day, when Jack turned five, his mother revealed to him that there is a real world outside...

Not going to reveal too much of the storyline. I'll just say that even I, who usually cannot summarise stuff because i always end up giving too much detail, can summarise this story. This is because this is more of a descriptive story than a sequence-based story. Alot of descriptions are involved. This doesn't mean that the writer doesn't have ideas. This writer had a creative base idea for this story and every essence and detailed of it had been squeezed out and got expressed through words into a book. These little details are great ideas too. I love the plot and i got excited when the story suddenly made greater progress. In some ways, this story is really realistic. It doesn't have dramas and all, yet it reaches your heart. One part which i like a lot from this story is when it is implied that Heaven to one person can be Hell to another. The last few pages were bittersweet. It ended beautifully.

Character
I love the characters. And actually, throughout the story, there are only 2 very main characters: Jack and Ma. Ma isn't the real name, but the real name was never revealed. You can see naivety and kindness in Jack. He is polite, well-risen and happy. Without direct mentioning, it is almost a given that me make the implication that Ma nurtures Jack well. But Jack has his bad sides. Due to his lack of interaction with others, he became quite self-centered. Ma is nurturing, loving and has moral values in her. However, she is sensitive and assertive such that she often told people off just for slight insensitive moments that went through.

What i love most about the characters is that you can totally feel the love between Jack and his Ma. Jack loves Ma and Ma loves Jack. This is something that is expressed throughout the book; they went through thin and thick together.

Expression
This is the best element of the book "Room". It is how the story progresses, making every situation we deem ordinary into a situation considered extraordinary in the eyes of a kid. Like a praise for this book by New York Times Review, this novel gives "us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live." It is the style of writing, the chapter organising, and the structure, language and all these that brings out all the love, the fear, and the rest of the emotions. I couldn't believe how ordinary yet captivating the ending was.

Overall
An excellent book you must read, this is the first library book i ever finished reading.

Friday

2011-04-10T00:04:00.003+08:00

Don't know whether i've mentioned this before or not; i think i forgot to: Quite a long time ago, i've bought my laptop. It's Macbook Pro, as required by my course. Not used to using it. I still like the desktop more. But anyway, this is my first time blogging from my laptop. Have to get used to it!

Warning: If you hate Rebecca Black's Friday, you'll hate this part of this post.

6am, waking up in the morning. Gotta be fresh, gotta go outside. Gotta have my bread, gotta have coffee. Seeing everything the time is going tickin` on and on, but no one's rushing. Gotta get out to the bus stop (i live on the first floor). Gotta catch my bus, I see my friend (Wei Jian). Standing beside the pole, no seat left for us to sit; gotta make my mind up, which seat can i take~

It's FRIDAY! FRIDAY! Cross country on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend, weekend. FRIDAY! FRIDAY! Sentosa on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend~ Partyin`, partying` (yeah!) Partyin` partyin` (yeah!) Fun, fun, fun, fun! Looking forward to the weekend.

Okay, no more Friday from this point onwards.

This week had been kind of normal. Visited SP to let jasmine buy SP shirt and to inform the teacher-in-charge for my absence in some parts of the Orientation Programme. Bought some clothes because i was dissatisfied by the little numbers of them which i have. Now i'm rather satisfied though. Supposed to go to the zoo, but did not due to miscommunication and stuff.

This friday, woke up at 6am in the morning and ate breakfast alone, then went to meet weijian in j8 (but i saw him on the bus) to go to mac ritchie reservoir together, which is rather unwise because we live near each other and we could take a less crowded bus if we hadn't met at j8. Anyway, yeah, we reached mac ritchie. Weijian was wearing this white shirt with orange sleeve, and i think a teacher thought that he is a GYSS student from the house "integrity". So, some people couldn't come last minute, and xun quan wasn't very happy because the people prepared our certificates of participation beforehand. Anyway, we helped up abit and were required to, if we want to run, run the shorter distance. 3.2km. I gave my all and felt satisfied with myself, unlike last year. But actually, no, yes i'm contradicting myself, but still, no; I'm not totally satisfied. I was happy that i gave my all and managed to be there before many others (i'm almost 17 years old and they're 13 or 14), but i felt that that wasn't enough. It's time to pick up jogging and running again as a sport i do! Helped up afterwards with collecting number tags. One thing:It will be so so so so so so so great if you can stop nagging none stop. I was given contradictory instructions, and you nagged at me so many times it's irritating. Another thing: It's so frustrating how one who spends the effort gets looked down upon based on physical appearance. Since i'm ranting abit, let me just include one more random rant: GRATITUDE PLEASE. And don't accuse me. (not directed to the person who nagged at me)

Received certificate of participation, and then helped the scouts people to carry stuff into the bus, which drove us back to school. However, weijian and i dropped off outside bishan home together with the bishan home people, since we live near there. Rested for awhile, met up for lunch with weijian again then headed off to sentosa. "Fun, fun. Think about fun. You know what it is."-ed with weijian.

Met waimin and younice at sentosa and played monkey using weijian's ball. Sherlyn, bin hui, emyi and xun man reached after that. Played captain's ball among ourselves for awhile, then with another group of people. Jonathan reached soon after and joined us. Surprised emyi with a cake after that and then gave her a challenge to remove something from a corner of the cake with her mouth. Went to the other island with waimin for awhile, and then went back to palawan beach. Played in the water. Buried jonathan. After a long time, jasmine and valerie finally reached the beach as well. "Who the hell is Valerie????" asked Wai Min. Anyway, continued playing, and then cleaned up, packed up and went for dinner together. Chatted for awhile, then went home.

That's it for the friday. Fun, fun, fun, fun! Looking forward to the weekend~ *claps*

Saturday, went to pray for my ancestors and grandma. After that, went home, rest for awhile and then went to visit my grandpa in the hospital and went to eat dinner with my family after that :)

That's it for today. Next week is going to be exciting. I've also spent a lot of unseen effort getting things to work, so i'm looking forward to it!

Moments of Discomfort

2011-04-07T12:12:00.004+08:00

Sometimes we love our comfort zone too much we're not willing to step out of it for even awhile.
But the truth is, sometimes by being too comfortable, we are disallowing our own growth and sooner or later, we'll find that our comfort zone is no longer as comfortable as we want it.
So, before that happens, we have to occasionally step out of our comfort zone. It'll just last for a few moments.
Then, after it ends, we'll realise that we've grown.

Self-esteem

2011-04-06T11:47:00.007+08:00

When i write blog entries, sometimes i discuss about problems i face as well. As i type, i teach myself things which my conscious know but my subconscious don't. After a rather long time of not posting blog entries that are meant to help people realise stuff, i'm going to do so now. This time, it's about self-esteem.

One
You sit at one of the tables, taking a sip from your drink. Your eyes capture the image of happy people dancing to the music, feeling so high, feeling so comfortable with the surroundings. Then you think about yourself. You want to dance too, but you're afraid. You fear that you will look stupid, you fear that people will look at you with weird eyes, you fear that you'll mess up, and you fear that you're just weird and alien. You continue sitting where you are, and starts to emo.

Two
You stand right beside your friend, who is seated on a piano seat. In moments time, she begins playing a very beautiful piece. Suddenly, you feel that there is nothing you can do well enough. Piano was supposed to be your fort, but suddenly, you can't catch up to the standard. You feel lousy and begins to emo.

Three
You said "hi" to the new person in class, trying to be friends with him. Suddenly, your other classmate pops in and shouts "yo!" while hugging him. You feel lousy. Others can do better, yet why is it you who feel uncomfortable with casual greetings? You give up on being friends with that new person and starts to emo.

Why?
You lack self-esteem. You start to not believe in yourself. You start being afraid. You compare yourself with others and value yourself based on unimportant things. You lose sight of your strengths and start to focus on your weakness. Perhaps you start trying to eliminate your weakness. But, you will never achieve perfection. I don't know why, but it's impossible. Or maybe it's possible, but it'll take a long, long time and you would've given up on perfection by then. Might as well give up now.

What can you do?
None of the following are professional advice. They're merely my opinions.

1. Stop comparing yourself with others. Don't value yourself based on talents, social skills, comfort, etc. You are you, and you have things that you can do but others don't. You're blinded by your insecurities therefore you can't think of anything you're good at. For now, just give yourself as much love, trust and chances as you can. Stop worrying and just be as you are. Don't worry about improving yourself as if you're really that lousy. Everyone has potential, but many cover it up with a blanket of insecurity. You too.

2. Give up on being perfect. You'll kill yourself before you achieve perfection. Be grateful for whatever good moral values, adequate skills and so on that you have. Even if you think you have nothing, you are good as you are. On a side note, i find it easier to be friends with humble people. Low self-esteem is excessive humbleness, but as long as you believe you'll shine when the time comes, you will. By then, you would've learnt an important lesson of being humble yet confident of yourself. Those who've never felt inferior and never had low self-esteem may not be able to understand that.

3. Accept the truth in life. The truth is, problems and negative thoughts will always come to you. You cannot get rid of them.

4. Don't be superficial.

5. Read and watch. Read and watch self-help books and videos, "love yourself" articles, and generally positive stuff. Each may not have much impact on you, but combined together, they make you feel positive.

6. Be happy. When you're happy, you start to look at things in the positive side. Then you'll look at yourself in the positive side too! And this worked for me.

The following are learnt from various self-help books and articles that i read.

7. Praise people. I used to constantly criticise people, and therefore i became wary of my own behaviour too such that i began to criticise myself as well, which resulted in low self-esteem. The reverse also works. Praise people, become wary of your own good behaviours, and then praise yourself, feel praised, feel good, boost your ego.

8. Manage your negative thoughts. Whenever you start thinking negatively, tell your subconscious to STOP. Then, replace the negative thoughts with a positive thoughts. (eg. "I am lousy because i can't play the piano..." "STOP." "I can't play the piano but i try hard enough. eventually, i'll be able to do it super well! I'm good :D")

9. Manage your anger and be constructive. Instead of complaining about a situation, do something about it to change it. this way you'll feel happier, and happy people are more confident of themselves.

On a last note

Katy Perry's "Firework" MV and lyrics

March 2011

2011-04-03T13:33:00.010+08:00

3 days ago, March have came to a close. But the very last week of March had been so awesome. There was the kite-flying which was so fun and enabled us to hang out as the whole clique afterwards and the CASS camp, which was amazing. But school is coming soon. I can't believe that the holiday is coming to an end. In just 2 weeks, i'll have to start school. But nevermind, i'm much more optimistic today than the last few days because i haven't been having enough sleep the previous days so i wasn't able to be energetic enough to be happy (at times you need energy to be happy, that's why it's so troublesome to try to be, which is also why people choose to be sad sometimes). Anyway, i'm looking forward to next week, which is my last week of slacking during the holiday, doing nothing much but waste time in a fun way, and i'm also looking forward to the week after that, which was the Mehmeh chalet plus orientation week for the poly. Then the week after that is the start of school. Getting kind of excited, yet sad. I know i'll surely miss the mehmehs.

Personal growth
I think i've grown this month. The first thing is that i've found a new sense of individuality. I randomly came up with and agreed with this logic, "I'm creating my own route in life and i am living my life the way i want. Nobody will be able to mimic me." I recovered an interest that i've lost for some time: Writing. And i started writing again :D Speaking of writing, i'm really glad to find some people, not just one but more than one, who love writing! Found them in the CASS camp :D All from Creative Writing for Television and New Media one. Back to topic; I've also learnt to be slightly more hyper, thanks to the camp. I think now i'm slightly more assertive. However, it is really just slightly.

Oh yeah, by the way i want to learn the piano. And then maybe after that i may want to learn song composing.

Music and animes
A great song called "Friday" emerged. Yes, i called it a great song. It's catchy and nice, but it still has much flaws than strengths. The lyrics is weird and consist of too many repetitions, the one singing it isn't cut-out to sing this song (not because she is lousy, but because it is just not suitable). the MV is super weird and the beat is too fast. If this song is slowed down, if the MV is changed to make more sense, if Rebecca Black sings more slowly and try to be less monotoneous in the song, and if the lyrics is edited to sound less childish and more meaningful, it will be a great song. If i'm to use a glass of water to represent this song, i'll say that this glass is about 1/5 filled with water and 4/5 filled with sand. Not insulting.

And then i went to watch Naruto Shippuden, then got bored of it because Naruto goes like, "Sasuke, sasuke!" in every episode, and even though he's the protagonist, he had never fought even one real battle for the first 200 episodes. In part one he keeps harping on "Hokage, hokage!" Now in part two, he keeps harping on "Sasuke, sasuke!" And sasuke is going to be irritating too, i heard that he's going to keep harping on "Revenge, revenge!" The sakura who used to go like, "Sasuke-kuun!!" no longer does it and she becomes more normal than her 2 ex-groupmates. As a result, i paused watching it for quite a long time and went to catch up with bleach, one piece and fairy tail. One piece is amazing to the max. I noticed that both in Bleach and in One piece, the "climax" of the series just ended. On another note, i began to like Naruto's soundtracks more than the anime itself. Don't let this discourage you from watching the anime. The first part was great. As in, "Naruto" was great. It is only at "Naruto Shippuden" (part 2) where things start getting dull. To be honest, i think it is partly due to its dull and dark soundtracks.

Birthday celebrations
Celebrated 2 mehmeh's birthday on March: Joshua and Ruwen. We celebrated joshua's by baking him a cheesecake and buying him SNSD stuff, and then going to watch movies after that. And we celebrated Ruwen's birthday by bringing her an Awfully Chocolate cake at where she works to surprise her, and then giving her the camera she said she wanted. Glad they liked the celebrations and presents :)

Kite Flying

Went to fly kite with all the mehmehs except ruwen at marina barrage. It was fun. Could get my kite to fly up majorly due to guang yi's experience. And then i tried to get another kite to fly up with less experienced friends. And we failed. Then guangyi came to helped, but we still failed. o_o He said that the kite is too difficult to fly, so we changed kite, but then i got tired and wanted to rest. Then it began to rain. Oh by the way, the kite that guangyi and i flew up was the most successful and it flew into the sky :D We went to visit ruwen after that and chatted for quite awhile. After that, we went home.

CASS Freshmen Orientation Camp

By now, i'm feeling so tired of typing and typing. But then, there's so much to talk about for this camp.

After more than one hour of break, now i'm to continue typing this post. Although it makes no difference in your point of view.

Day 1:
Tense atmosphere, difficulty in making friends, trying to socialise. These were what happened at first. In fact, i felt super sian when i was the last one to make a friend. But i did eventually, which is great. Anyway, came up with group name, group cheer and then received group accessories and created out group flag! The first day was really kind of sad, that was until like during the evening when i started making friends :D So anyway, our group name was Masquerade. So our cheer went like, "cheer for the boys, cheer for the girls, and when we lose, cheer for the world" and then we changed it on the second day to "and we go BOOM masquerade, and we go BOOM masquerade, and we go HOO HA HOO HA HOO HA HOO HA BOOM masquerade!" During each hoo ha we covered and then uncover immediately our faces with our hands. Love my group. Group flag is like this:

So, the first day was kind of ordinary ice-breaking games, which worked well. Had wet games, and then after that, at night, we had this activity called the mass dance, where we were taught a dance using the song Peacock. "I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock, cock~" Fun :) Then we had night walk. Super fun :) One of my favourite part of the camp. Walking down a dark path with only lightsticks guiding us, curtains hanging on the ceiling, fake ghosts and stuff. Managed to socialise with my nightwalk partner, Haidi (sorry if i spelt wrongly), a bit. The nightwalk was scary but fun. The scariest part was when we were walking down the stairs and this fake ghost starting following us while asking us a question repeatedly. Then when we ignored her too many times, she screamed the question at us. The night walk was long, which was great. I love the check points too, because they gave us super nice biscuits (eg. fake oreos which tasted better than oreos). So after the nightwalk, we waited for the rest of the people (100 + people including another school campers whom we combined with, and we went 2-by-2) to finish their nightwalk, we went to sleep, at 3am.

Day 2:
More fun ^^ Stuff like tug of war, captain's random objects (captain's ball using tomato, soap and butter) and scavenger's hunt. The night was great. Another mass dance, followed by campfire. The campfire was super nice.

Sang camp songs and had friendship dance. Performed our performances after that in some dance studio thing. My group's was a mash-up cum skit of rihanna's songs, consisting of rude boy, what's my name, only girl, disturbia, shut up and drive, unfaithful, love the way you lie, umbrella, russian roulette, hate that i love you so and take a bow. Then we had a dance party after that. After awhile, i stopped because it was already 2am like that and i felt super tired i thought i could fall asleep standing. So, i went to sit in a corner with others who were also tired of dancing, and then i fell asleep. When we were dismissed from the dance studio, we went to our super comfortable bunk to sleep.

Day 3:
7am, waking up in the morning, still too early, go back to sleep~ Woke up at 7.45, washed up and then went to have breakfast, then telematch. this was one of the funnest part of the camp. Had a telematch with the other groups in which we are supposed to run across the field and stop at several spots to do some stuff, including spinning ten rounds and doing chicken dance, smacking our faces into a tray of flour to find a mentos, eating a biscuit with bitter gourd and wasabi, finding a ping pong ball from a pot of dirty water with random stuff, drinking a cup of water and sliding pass this blue mat thing. And throughout, they kept pushing our faces into the flour, pouring water on us, etc. Then we went to clean up and had our final mass dance. "I wanna see your peacock~" And then got debriefed. Talked about the camp with my group and then got dismissed. Received this duck toy thing and some food items as presents :D

That's basically March :)

Welcome to my insecurities

2011-04-02T23:17:00.003+08:00

I haven't concluded March, but i'm not going to do so in this post because i want to write about something else. This week had been awesome, from monday's kite-flying + full mehmehs get-together to CASS camp. I'm not going to blog about the kite-flying yet, because i want to write about somethings else, so i'll write about the kite-flying in my conclusion of March post. The CASS camp was great and it was the best camp i've been to. We also received lots of free stuff and food and we only paid $4, which is super super cheap. One meal in Thai Express can cost 3 times of that, and this $4 gave me 2 free breakfasts with milo, 2 free lunch with fruit punch and 2 free dinner. In other words, each meal costs about 50 cents, which is impossible because each meal is the $3-4 standard, except for the breakfast, which was bread. But eating bread in the morning is appropriate. The seniors are awesome. High, friendly, easy to talk to and cute :D And they spent soooo much effort planning the camp, and so much money for the camp props, food, presents, etc. Then there were friends i've made, very fun games, interesting campfire and basically everything was great!

But no, this is not what i want to blog about. What i want to blog about is how insecure i feel. If you haven't noticed, you may do so now that since reaching the end of last year, my blog had been almost rid of negative posts. This is partly because i made friends with the mehmehs. There's actually another factor that makes this blog consist of less negative posts; that is, the fact that i don't want to feel weak anymore. I've tried to be strong, be happy, be brave and basically positive. I succeeded to a certain extent. I did become happier because i wanted to, i did become slightly braver, i did become more sociable (i was far worse than this before) and i did become more positive. My efforts worked, but i just feel, right now, that it is just not enough.

I feel like an alien. Everyone goes on, singing and posting lyrics of songs on facebook, songs which i don't know about which are supposed to be popular and everyone-know-its, and then they know what to sing and choose what to sing in kbox, instead of dig out whatever song that he know, and then they know how to converse, and just so many things. I know so little. That's not all. I feel that i merely exist. As in, other people are the flowers, blooming and shining, while i'm a blade of grass. I'm coming to accept that it doesn't really matter because i'm not alone. In fact, there are more grasses than flowers.

Then, when i'm done with one inner problem, another one comes in. Just when i thought i was ready for poly, i was ready to socialise and set off for the real world, my imaginary bubble bursted like it was never there. And this happens alot. One time was when i was still in secondary school, and i felt that i was finally ready to "fit in", not as in becoming a duplicate of another person, but as in, i felt that i was finally able to belong. And then my hopes crashed in one day and the this world started to feel like another world, and then i felt lost and didn't felt that i belonged anywhere outside of home... until i changed clique. I've never changed a clique willingly until last year. Then another time when i felt this was when i felt that i was ready to take on the NTUC job, and then when i started working i just suddenly felt that life is so meaningless, everything is so different and things can no longer return. I missed school terribly, i missed my friends, i missed my family and i missed myself, because at that time i didn't know who i was anymore. And the worse thing is, there is no reason for me to feel that way no matter how hard i tried to think of it. And i hanged out with my family for one whole week. But still, everytime i entered NTUC during that period of time, it's as if there was a scar on my heart i got reminded of it all. But the thing is, THERE WASN'T EVEN A SCAR! Nobody hurt me, i didn't hurt myself, so why?? I didn't know.

Now, presently, my hopes were crashed once again. Prepared to set off for my new world, i got intimidated. People of my age are social butterflies. They're not even flowers, they're the butterflies who fly so beautifully. I am still a grass. Then i wonder, am i the only blade of grass left? The people in the camp clicked so well, they're so close they talk to each other like they've been friends for months already. And yet, i'm there, pathetically being polite, and just like that. People start thinking i'm weird because of something stupid, which i totally cannot understand no matter how i think of it. I asked many other people about it and, to my relieve, most people thought that those people who thought that i was weird had weird opinions. I looked at the facilities in SP. They are heavenly. There is EVERYTHING. I was fascinated. At the same time, i was intimidated. I am afraid. Is this where i am going to be? I felt lost again. I felt that they are aliens. They came from a different dimension and they're taking over my life. Or is it that i went into another dimension and started living their world? I desperately told myself that things that are still the same are still the same, things that have changed have changed. I am not in another world. I am still in the same place.

I don't know what to do. I talked to my friend about how i felt. After spilling it out, i felt better. There are things that i cannot blog about but i want people to know. There are things that comes to me only when i write.

Let's just make it clear here. I know very little songs. I can't do alot of things. I don't excel in anything much. I like writing, that's it. I want to join swimming as a CCA, but i only know the very basics. I am way too detail-oriented that i cannot stand a lack of detail, and i understand things poorly. I have weak ears, so i'll "sorry?" you quite alot. I have a small mouth and soft voice, so you'll probably "sorry?" me quiet alot. I am not the interesting hot guy who brings colourful light to your life. I apologise too frquently and i am just that kind of person who is quiet and needs to stick to a system.

Hate me? If you do just based on the previous paragraph, you're shallow.
Super shallow. In fact, i've never seen such a shallow person like you before.
You should just remain superficial and live your life like a puppet.

I know very little songs. Does it really matter? Or do what i wear matter? It is OUT OF TREND. So, i wear an out of trend shirt so i suck? I don't know anything about katy perry so i suck? I don't watch glee so i suck? The truth is, it doesn't really matter. I believe i am presentable enough. I'm a very black and white person, and this is because of my not-so-good colour sense. I bother and i try and i look at acceptable. I am not in trend but i'm alright. I don't watch this, i don't listen to that, but it doesn't matter. I'm not going to lie to myself and force myself to listen to songs that i don't like. I don't like to pretend to be someone else. Perhaps i really speak softly and have poor ears. But i tried! i did what i can. I'm not going to the doctors and tell them to change my voice box or to change whatever mechanism there is in my ears. I apologise too much, yes, that's because i respect. I respect you and i believe that you deserve to be apologised to. It seems that i apologise to things at times, which is stupid. But no, i'm apologising to the owner of those things. By the way, objects have emotions too. Everything that has water in it has emotions. I have inspirations and i am getting ready, nothing wrong with it. I am quiet and like to be systematic. This is my personality.

In other words, I AM LIEW SHAW LEONG AND I AM JUST MYSELF. I LOVE MYSELF AND I HAVE MY PERSONALITY FOR A REASON. There had never been a reason to feel lost and not ready. I am just myself and i am living my life my way feelings my emotions doing my things. I will meet friends alike to me because i just know i will. I will be happy. Then, i will do the job that i like and live my life the way i want. I am walking down my own path, a path i create by myself. Nobody can mimic me. They can be similar, but not exact. This is because i am not to be classified like merchandise in boxes. I am just me.

I feel insecure, yes, but that's it. I did what i can to feel secure, and this post was refreshing and it helped me to feel alot better.

End.

Life

2011-03-27T17:31:00.003+08:00

Everyone brisk-walking
Trying to be on time for a meeting
Rushing for the schedule and for friends
Forgetting to take a deep breath

People losing patience
Feeling so annoyed, tapping their fingers
Demanding everyone to speed up
What happened to patience through time?

Alarm clocks, honks of cars
We are surrounded by noise
We sped up, we lost peace
We forgot to look at the sky
To look at the sunrise brightening up our days

Then we start to live in a world of fears
Then we see ugliness in everyone's hearts
Can't laugh, can't cry
Can't let them know what we're feeling
Can't trust anyone of them

Then we start to cry every night alone
Then we smile in front of everyone else
So to show
We are sane and we are strong

When a Friday's coming
We start pretending to be happy
Though we have to start facing the truth
No more work to fill our minds

Then we say, "Let's party!"
We are society's slaves
"I am cool, I am in"
That is what we constantly tell ourselves
"Loneliness", that is our worst nightmares

Then we look at ourselves in the mirror
Then we ask, "Who are you? I've never seen you"
Who am i now
I am who they want me to be
I don't belong to me

Then tears start rolling down our plastic cheeks
Then we say, "I want to be myself!"
Be the one
Who once laughed without much care

Let's take off our masks and show our faces
Let's just say, "I am me. I am not your slave!"
I'm me, goodbye
I don't need you to change my life for me
I don't belong to you

Then tears start rolling down our genuine cheeks
Then we say, "I want to be myself!"
Then we laugh
As we once did with no care

Anime OSTs

2011-03-26T12:20:00.005+08:00

Recently i've been listening to lots of naruto and naruto shippuden OSTs (original soundtracks), then i went to watch fairy tail episodes which i havent watched yet, and i found out that fairy tail's soundtracks are also super nice! So, i've reached a conclusion that after i've learnt to play the piano, i'm going to learn these 4 OSTs from different animes

Naruto: Sadness and Sorrow

Fairy Tail: Past Story

Bleach: Soundscape to Ardor

One Piece: Haha Naru Umi

The End of Blindedness

2011-03-24T00:54:00.006+08:00

I was blinded for a few days. I can see with my eyes, but i couldn't see with my mind clearly on what truly mattered. I had been wavering these few months, being concerned about what i can and love to do. Someone told me that i should love myself no matter what i can and what i cannot do. I agreed, but yet i still felt very frustrated over the fact that i could not think of anything i could do very well. I got jealous when i see other people excelling in different things. I was blinded for greed for something. I called it a passion.

So, i went to look at internet, went to the library, and when my friends were playing their guitars and yoyos in the sky garden at suntec, i was going around looking for inspiration. And, in the end, i couldn't find any. So, i went to the playground and wrote some poems. I can only write out one of it here, and it's kind of negative, but i like how it turned out conveying what i felt like conveying at that time.

Searching For Something

Have you ever felt lost and empty
And you don't know what you're for?
You want something to prove your existence
And tell you that it's here for you

So you walk down the streets
Observing every stall
You walk into the library
Studying every title

After that, you tell yourself
"Nothing is for me;
he does this, she does that;
he has this, she has that"

What is this feeling of emptiness,
of not knowing your route?
What is this pain too slight to feel,
yet last too long to neglect?

Then you want them to look at you
To show you what you're worth
Then you want someone to take you
To show you you're loved

Then you want something to show you
What is your purpose in life

Then you start your search to find that one thing
To prove that you're here

That was about how i felt at that moment, just that i exaggerated it. I tend to exaggerate things in writing to produce more emotions. I felt drowsy and super tired after that. Negative thoughts can make people weak.

And then today, i developed my interest to writing abit more, and then my impatience and frustration of not knowing my "passion" reached the peak. I gave up and just did whatever i felt like.

Then, i tried again and realised how blind i was. Over greed, i've lost gratitude. I remembered how much i used to love writing. When my english teacher threatened to use essays to punish us, i was kind of happy. I actually looked forward to essay exams and i wrote all sorts of things on my own (though they make little sense now when i read them). What i called "my passion" had been right next to me. I love writing; that is why i got into the course Creative Writing for TV and New Media!

I opened my eyes and look forward to tomorrow. And then i realised something else: What i've desperately tried to achieve is to become a nerd. A nerd isn't soemone who sits at home and study the whole day. A nerd is someone who loves something alot. For example, an anime nerd thinks about anime the whole day. A music nerd thinks about music the whole day. A nerd is not an insult. It is merely a classification. Then i remembered myself saying something that make sense: Do not classify people, they are all individuals.

I do not want to be classified. I am me and i am living my life the way i want and i am making my own route. Nobody can mimic me.

I've opened my eyes twice today.

The Special People

2011-03-18T21:34:00.005+08:00

This week had been a rather active week for me. Let's talk about each different day.

Monday (14 March)
Went for swimming as usual in the morning, and then met ms liu at 3pm to have ice cream. So, joshua, weijian, zixing, guangyi, jasmine, jeanette, syahindah, ms liu and i ate chocolate fondue and giant earthquake. Talked about lots of things, of which many centered around education. After that, took a photo and parted ways with ms liu, syahindah and joshua. The rest of us went to watch My Ex: Haunted Lover and it was funny :D No, it isn't a comedy; it's a horror movie, but then the really scary parts are mostly not involved with the ghost -_- Either crows or people. Went to the arcade after that, and then this noodle shop thing for dinner. Went home after that.

Tuesday (15 March)
Went to school to help ms aljunied and the library to wrap some books. Learned a new thing :) Then, after awhile, went to have lunch with ms aljunied at delifrance. She treated. She's much more cheerful than she seems to be in class o.o Chatted about some things and then went back to school to finish up with the wrapping. Went to meet guangyi, weijian and zixing at dhoby ghaut j-cube after that, then went to look at guitars then went home.

Wednesday (16 March)
Met guangyi for lunch at coffee shop (officially on budget), then wasted time while waiting for weijian to reach. Went to dhoby ghaut to find ruwen's present, and then went to Red Cross to donate for the japan tsunami. Accompanied weijian to arcade, then went home.

Thursday (17 March)
Met guangyi, weijian, melvin and zixing at j8 in the evening, then went to orchard to meet waimin. Had dinner. Waimin seemed to be suffering from post-work irritation o_o Yes, i came up with that term myself. It means that waimin got irrtated by things which happened in her work even after she stopped working. Bought awfully chocolate cake, and then went to ruwen's mum's shop to surprise her. Happy to see her reaction :D

Friday (18 March)
Supposed to go kite-flying, but then half of us couldn't make it. So, instead, guangyi, jasmine and i went swimming, then shopping for clothes. Yeah, that's about it.

I want to learn piano! And i need money to buy a 88-keys keyboard! Someone give me $1200. NOW.
No, please don't, i'm just joking.

Alarm Clock

2011-03-13T12:51:00.003+08:00

Setting the alarm clock is a pain.
My favourite character in Naruto :)

A day after a day

2011-03-10T22:39:00.002+08:00

This is a cheesecake that jasmine, weijian, guangyi and i baked for joshua for his birthday :D We met up early yesterday to go to Singapore poly to apply for orientation camp plus look around, and then we noticed that the school of communications, art and social sciences is in quite a faraway place. (~~so we had a Dora adventure to the school!~~)

After that, we went to Toa Payoh's poon huat to buy ingredients for the cake. Then went to jasmine's house to bake, which consisted of "Just gonna stand there and watch you mix, that's alright because i love the way i don't have to do anything~" Played with her dogs while waiting for it to be baked. Then today morning we woke up early to go to jasmine's house to decorate the cake because we ended the baking quite late yesterday. After decorating, tried to prank joshua but failed and gave him the cake. Had some photos, but due to some transferring carelessness, the photos didn't end up in the computer. So lazy to do it again. And actually i wanted to put a photo of the school magazine which we collected after that here. Sadly, it also didn't end up in the computer. Wanted to use the school magazine photo to write a post about appreciation o_o

Back to topic. Gave him a SNSD set of stuff (reminds me, i haven't pay for it yet). After eating the cheese/cinnamon cake and seeing joshua appreciate his presents, went to watch "Big Mommas". Quite funny. Went to collect school magazine and o level certificate, then went to Auntie Kim's for Korean food. Nice. I like their pancake, super nice! But i forgot to take photos. Don't know why, but i keep talking about photos in this post.

Chatted with jasmine over milktea and then went home after that.

Anyway, recently watched Naruto Shippuden! And weijian introduced this game to me, called "Osu", which is interesting because there are many songs that can be downloaded, even anime songs. And an otaku-personality (otaku = crazy-over-anime people) is starting to surface on me, so i went to buy a naruto t-shirt :D

So this is about it. Lazy to conclude, so

THE END.

Steps

2011-03-02T21:08:00.004+08:00

You are at level 1 of this building. You want to get to level 7, so what do you do? You take the lift or use the stairs. No matter what, you are going up to level 7 from level 1. The thing is, how are you doing it? Did you enter the lift and the lift teleport to level 7? No. You went up level by level. You can never get to level 7 without reaching level 2, level 3, and so on. In real life, there is no such thing as Gameshark Codes. We all know we can only get up level by level, yet why do we often try to jump and skip some levels when it come to intangible things?

Let's say you just started learning to draw (ps Zixing and friends, not picking on you all, just a random example). What are you going to draw, and how? Are you going to start by drawing a city completely out of your creative mind, without referring? Chances are, you either give up halfway or feel demoralise. This is because a beginner cannot do something intermediate. Even if it may harm your pride, start with an apple or something. This is just like going up a building. You are at level one, so don't try to jump to level 3. Move up to level 2 first.

In other words, do things step by step. You may think that giving yourself pressure forces yourself to grow fast. That is true, but you have to give yourself pressure in a step-by-step manner. Some things really cannot be handled with pure determination. Instead, what you need is not just determination, but what you need is both determination and PATIENCE. You have to be patient to take things step by step!

According to "Mental Strength" by Iain Abernethy, a book which i mentioned in the previous post, we have to go against discomfort to condition our mind into succeeding. It also did mention that giving ourselves some discomfort is right, but too much is not. Just like when you do too much exercises, you will end up straining your "muscles" and it has a negative impact. The example about drawing which i mentioned above is a simple one that proves this point.

According to "Happiness in Hard Days" by Andrew Matthews, a book i recently bought, there is no one special day when we suddenly say "I'm cured!" from some sort of depression. If we want to fight depression, we fight it step by step. Do one small thing. When it succeed, move on to the next. You will continuously feel encouraged by your small successes. This way, you can grow your successes as time passes. This applies in going through hard days as well. Don't think too much about the problems you have to face in the future when the problem you have to face now is big enough. Just do what you can now and feel encouraged by your smallest successes.

This step-by-step approach can be used for most things. Even now, we, secondary school graduates who are preparing for poly, have to do tones of annoying things to apply for the poly. We don't just do everything at once and feel proud for it. We do one thing at a time. There is nothing wrong with doing things step by step. It doesn't mean you cannot handle difficulties. All successful people succeed because they took one step at a time. They didn't miraculously become successful. This is then true success.

Acceptance

2011-03-01T19:07:00.004+08:00

Recently, i've bought this book called "Happiness in Hard Times" by Andrew Matthews and it is a really great book. It is easy to agree with and helps a lot. The better thing is that it doesn't even require you to "practice" whatever activity that the book teaches for it to work. It deals directly with your mindset.

The first chapter is "Acceptance". After reading this chapter, i feel very inspired and want to write a blog post about it. I'm not going to summarise stuff that are in the book, but i'm just going to write what my mind came up with after reading the book. Of course, things written here are mostly inspired by that book.

"Acceptance is power" - Andrew Matthews. According to www.dictionary.com, power refers to "capability of doing or accomplishing something". By saying that acceptance is power, he probably meant that if you accept that you are facing a problem, you are giving yourself the capability of solving the problem. That is true. You cannot solve a problem without accepting that there is a problem in the first place.

It is difficult to accept the fact that you have problems, and in order to solve problems you have to change yourself and the surroundings. That is why when some of us face problems, we tend to pretend that everything is alright. When we pretend that everything is okay, we are deluding ourselves and running away, though we should not run away. Instead of running away from the problem, we should fight the problem.

Imagine that you are overweight and you want to become thin. If you say "I'm not fat", what happens? You stay fat. But here's another option: "I am fat. I like myself whether or not i'm fat. I now choose to lose 50 kilos." You accept who you are, now you can move forward.

"Happiness in Hard Times" - Andrew Matthews

It is important to accept your problems. Don't wait until the problem gets too big, and don't use excuses. Problems are troublesome and causes lots of pressure, but this doesn't mean you should give up easily. How can you expect things to become better just by sitting and waiting?

Another book i read long ago is "Mental Strength" by Iain Abernethy. The author mentioned that you have to fight discomfort in order to achieve what you want, and it applies in this solving your problem case as well. Unfortunately for me, i tried too hard to change my surroundings. I wasn't satisfied with my lack of talents, and i let it affect me while i tried to find something i excelled in, which failed. Then jasmine told me that i should just take it easy and change my mindset instead. Many a times, we accept our problems, then we tried to change things externally. Sometimes, what matters is what is going on internally, that means your mindset. By changing our mindset, we can become happier.

Easier said than done, yes, so we have to understand WHY it is easier said than done. The reason is because we hold expectations. According to the book, we have a "worry hierarchy". This means that when we have big problems, the big problems are our priority. When we don't have big problems, small problems become big problems and the big problems are our priority. This way, we can never be satisfied. To counter this worry hierarchy, we cannot just try to eliminate the problems. We must embrace and accept that problems and think of them as positively as we can.

When you suffer from a paper cut, you don't go like "Yes! A paper cut! I love feeling this kind of pain!" That is not what it means to embrace your problems. What it means is if you suffer a paper cut, you go like "A paper cut! I don't like this paper cut but it's alright because i can use this paper cut to remind myself that it feels good when there is no pain". This is because everything is a learning opportunity. It may sound stupid, but without these problems around, life is practically meaningless. Without these problems around, you won't know how happy your situation is.

A housewife without a maid will say that the housewife with a maid is lucky. "If only i have a maid, how happy i'll be!" After she gets a maid, she sees her friend move into a condo, then she'll be like "if only i live in a condo, how happy i'll be!" Then after she move into a condo, she sees her friend migrate, then she'll be like "if only i can migrate, how happy i'll be!" and it'll never end. Moral: Focus on what you have.

Do not postpone happiness, but accept life's challenges and embrace them for their learning experiences. However, this does not mean that you should just accept everything that comes your way. You can solve problems externally and internally at the same time. Good luck.

February 2011

2011-02-28T22:15:00.002+08:00

It's time to conclude what i've done this month.

It started with us going for shopping for CNY clothes, which often ended up being in the arcade or the like. After that, we all had our respective reunion dinners. For my family, it was not really a reunion because my grandfather was still in the hospital. He only got discharged after CNY, though he got hospitalised again few days after that.

During CNY, spent time playing monopoly deal. As usual, CNY tidbits, lots of sweet drinks and stuff. For the first time ever, i drank beer. It tasted yuck at first but became okay later on. The sad thing is, because i spammed myself with too much gummy candies, i fell sick after that. And i dragged for a few days before visiting the doctor. And, being stupid, i did not finish the medicine, so my sore throat had never completely recovered.

After that, both the washing machine and the water heater spoiled.

During that period of time, i have been going out for exercises with guangyi, jasmine and weijian (sometimes melvin) quite a lot, especially swimming. Also celebrated jeanette's and zixing's birthday.

During my free time, i watched Naruto and i wrote a review about it.

Recently (last monday) i fell sick and i became very depressed and lonely (falling sick does make me depressed extremely easily, no idea why). And this inspired me to buy a book "Happiness in Hard Times" and i bought it today.

And two days ago, my family went for a chalet, which was fun but boring. Overall, it is fun.

I want to play pokemon and plants vs zombies.

End.

A break (or a duty, maybe)

2011-02-27T23:51:00.003+08:00

Some months ago, my cousin, Hong, and her husband booked a chalet at changi and they invited lots of relatives there as well, including my family. Because they had one extra room, they have gave it to us (Ping Cheng, my siblings and i) for one night. So, this weekend we had been i the chalet.

Yesterday, started the day as usual, watched naruto and all those, and then set off for the chalet in the evening. Ping cheng and my brother weren't there yet so there was only my sister and i, in terms of people we talk to. So, we went to check out the surrounding area. It's very beautiful but have very little facilities. Right beside a beach and there were some platform thing that made the house go one level above the sea. There were no park and all those stuff. So, after checking out the area, my sister and i went to the room and did out own things - laptop and psp. When the adults were ready, they started barbecuing, and we started waiting for the food. Thus we played monopoly deal. Ping cheng and brother reached soon after that. Because we ate very little from the barbecue, we continued barbecuing satays after the adults got tired of barbecuing. And therefore we spent time like this, and then went back to the room to rest after that. While my parents went home, we played the card game "Bridge". Complicated, but once you understand how the game is played, it is fun. Like this, we played till 4am and then went to sleep.

I woke up at 12pm or so and started enjoying the peace and quietness (and bread) alone for quite a long time before getting a warm shower (finally, because my house heater spoil) and watching "Tom and Jerry" in cartoon network. They finally woke up and we started wasting time with cards again. Somehow wasted the remaining time until 6pm. Parents came back to the chalet and they started having barbecue round 2. We waited for the food again. This time, we played ball with gabriel, my nephew. Also tried to "play" with two extremely cute cats. After much patience, i finally managed to stroke the cuter cat a few times. Fed them. Got tired, so went to play "Plants vs Zombies" in the living room using my sister's laptop while my parents and aunties chatted about NS, children and another auntie of mine (let's call her "Crazy Auntie"). This Crazy Auntie is really mean. She kicks people when they are sleeping, suffers terrible mood swings, throws her neighbour's stuff, demands people to return her presents she gave out, etc. But i shall not elaborate. So, after awhile, we went home.

But this post shall not end here. I want to rant about my nephew Gabriel because he is so arrogant, bullying, attention seeking, loud and the things that he says doesn't make much sense. In other words, he is downright annoying. If he is not a young child, i would've hated him a lot.Arrogance: He thinks of everyone of being in the same level, even his parents. So he commands people to do things for him. And the way he say it, it's as if it's our business like that.Bullying: He anyhow threw my sister's monopoly deal cards so i patiently told him to pick them all up. Then, he SMILED, picked them up and threw them upwards, scattering them. And he was very HAPPY. One of the card dropped into an unreachable area, and we got angry. He did feel guilty, but after awhile he started commanding us again. He told us to go into that unreachable area to take it. My sister got angrier and said "You so pro you go in take la!" at him, then he said "Don't want. I don't want to make my hands dirty!" -_- Attention seeking: Needs no elaboration. Loud: I don't get why, but every sound he make is not a "said", it is a "shouted". Which means he shouts instead of saying. And his pitch is super high. It's irritating to no end when he shouts next to you. And he continuously screamed at a cat on purpose to "play" with it -_-

Luckily, today he got pushed down by another kid today and he cried :D Then he tried "playing" with my cousin's dog but the dog was more enthusiastic than him, and he ended up being scared. These should be lessons for him. Anyway, he is not spoiled. In fact, i think that his parents are way too strict with him and shouts at him for every small thing.

So yeah, this is what happened in the chalet. To some people, it should be a break from their work, but for the very negative people, they may see it as a duty o.o (like my dad) Whether it is a break or a duty, it is up to them to decide, just like in life it is up to us to choose which perspective to see things from.

Naruto: My First Impressions

2011-02-20T15:19:00.005+08:00

Okay, so i've been wanting to write reviews about animes for a very long time. I got inspired by those reviews about Jigoku Shoujo, Fairy Tail, etc. But, i have absolutely no experience in writing any sorts of reviews, and i will not have the motivation to run an anime blog to review about animes. Thus, i'm just going to do a one-time review on Naruto, a popular anime which i've just recently started watching.

This review will solely be based on episode 1 up to 33 of the series. I will divide this review into 4 parts: Character, plot, visual quality and sound.

Character
Like other animes, there are many characters in Naruto, so i'll just mention who seems like the 3 main characters.

Naruto
Naruto is the main character of the series. He is a cheerful and determined yet attention-seeking and somewhat shallow boy who is often the last to find out about things. However, there is a story behind why he is so attention-seeking. A long time before this series started, there was a nine-tailed fox which ruined the village where Naruto was borned in and killed many people. It was finally sealed, inside of Naruto when he was a baby. Knowing this, the villages did not like Naruto as they saw Naruto as the nine-tailed fox itself. Naruto had also never had parents. So, he never felt acknowledged and he wanted to be needed. This crave for attention gave him a goal to become the top ninja of his village, known as the Hokage.

In my opinion, the story behind Naruto was good but his personality was not unique. He can easily be compared to Luffy from One Piece, another popular anime, and i'll say these two characters are extremely similar. Not accusing any series of copying the other. At the start of the series, i almost gave up watching right at episode one because i hated this character a lot and i didn't want to continue watching him and his attention-seeking, but i'm lucky i didn't stop watching just then, because the character development is there in a suitable pace and you'll grow to like the characters.

Sasuke
Sasuke is the second main character of the series. He is a serious, cold and arrogant person who has a goal of killing his own brother, i don't know why (haven't watch until that far). He is a talented ninja from a clan known as the Uchiha clan. More is probably going to be revealed further on.

I also hated this character a lot at first. He is not only very arrogant, he also gave me the feeling that he thinks that he is very cool and that everyone likes him. But, this was mainly because many people in the series indeed liked him in the romantic way. My opinion proved to be untrue as i witnessed his character episodes after episodes. I also started finding him to be cool and stuff, but only to a limit. Also a rather typical character.

Sakura
Sakura is yet another main character of the series. She is self-centered, love-obsessed, weak but intelligent girl. She seems extremely imperfect at the beginning episodes, but these imperfections were quickly eliminated by her realising certain things after awhile. Residing in her is an "inner Sakura", which is basically her true feelings to certain things. She can say "Naruto, you made me so worried!" outside but inside her mind she could be shouting "I'm going to kill you later for for making me worry for nothing!" It seems like she doesn't have any background story as she had a proper family and she cared about small stuff like getting scolded by her mother. However, it was showed that she used to be picked on a lot due to her inconfidence of her high forehead.

This was initially the character that i hated the most. I also found the inner sakura thing very redundant. However, thanks to character development, i stopped hating her and she is probably becoming my favourite character. Oh, one thing: if you've watched bleach, you can say that Sakura is another version of Orihime, at least until where i've watched. All she knew how to do was to spam "Sasuke-kun!" But the good thing is that she would get scolded by her sasuke-kun for not doing anything at times.

The 3 characters were being put into the same group by the ninja academy and they shared a love-traingle and hate-triangle relationship at first. Naruto loved sakura while sakura loved sasuke. Also, naruto hated sasuke, sasuke hated naruto and sakura hated naruto. Sasuke also seemed to have a rather bad impression of sakura. However, through their missions and training, they started building close bonds and genuinely cared for each other. This is a unique relationship triangle and i enjoyed watching it.

Plot
To be honest, the plot is unclear. I don't really know what Naruto is trying to get at. It seems like the main thing about the story is showing how the main character becomes a hokage, but it makes little sense in a way. I don't know, but where the story is getting to isn't that important. Long animes often lose their purpose in the middle of the series. It is the various acts that is important.

Act One: Land of Waves Arc
The first act was about a country being taken over by this evil guy called "Gatoh", which resulted in it being in poverty. This gatoh guy hired an illegal but cheap ninja to help him kill a man who was trying to bring the country out of poverty. This man was trying to build an important bridge. So, basically, naruto and his group had to fight this ninja. This ninja that gatoh hired is called "Zabuza", and he had a close friend called "Haku". They were supposed to be bad guys, but haku was actually very kind-hearted, to the point that he tried not to kill his enemies. Usually, in this kind of animes, the first few battles were supposed to last very short, which isn't a good thing because long battles often ends up being interesting (not to be confused with long-winded and unnecessarily draggy battles). For naruto, their first battles were already long and interesting. It makes you want to find out what happens after that and so on. And the battle didn't just end with the two antogonist ninjas losing. It ended in a touching manner, showing you Haku's past and his relationship with zabuza. That really touched me and gave me a very good impression of this series.

Act Two: Chunin Exam Arc
The second act was less emotional, but there were lots of suspension. Do you believe that a 1-hour written test can last for 2 episodes in an anime? Usually, there is nothing to show about anime characters doing a written test, but naruto made it special and showed 2 episodes of its characters doing a written test, in a very interesting manner. It then went on to show sasuke being afraid of his enemies and sakura feeling useless in battles and cut off her hair etc. It was very interesting and exciting. It was only at episode 30 or so when sakura broke out of her uselessness and started trying hard to fight to protect her precious friends. And it is this kind of thing that makes animes interesting, in my opinion. I have not finished watching the second act, so i'll stop here.

Visual Quality and sound
I find the way they animate this anime quite good, although not excellent. The colour is really bright, which kind of annoyed me a bit, just a bit. Other than that, it's great.

The drawing of the characters was also quite good. At first i could not get used to how short the characters are, but it is realistic and convincing about their age. In Naruto Shippuden, i know that the characters will become taller "2 years later".

The sound effects were okay. You won't find it irritatingly unsuitable. In fact, for most parts it is suitable.

The soundtrack lacks variety but i won't expect there to be a diverse range of soundtrack right at the beginning of the series, so ignore the first phrase of this paragraph. There are some really emotional sad background music, which really adds on to the atmosphere.

Overall
It's quite obvious that i enjoy this anime right up till episode 33 where i stopped watching just yesterday. I am going to continue watching. Hopefully this anime not only stays at this level of interest but gets more and more interesting. You should watch it too. One important thing that i've forgotten to mention: Naruto is about ninjas.

It's the same

2011-02-18T23:13:00.003+08:00

No need to think about what is the same, because if you do so your mind will be in total darkness. You can think for nine hours, but in the end you won't get it. Inside joke.

Saturday (12th February)
Went to Weijian's house for Chinese New Year celebration. Started with several rounds of mahjong, and then had steamboat after that. Played running man, which was really fun. Weijian's sister went to hide 6 hong baos and about 5 of us needed to go around 3 blocks to find them. 5 other people had to catch us. I got trapped by Seng Hwee and Melvin. Went back to weijian's room after that. Spammed ourselves with candies and got super high due to sugar. Light saybah-ed after that (i know this sentence doesn't make sense). And then we went to j8 for arcade.

Sunday (13th February)
Met up with jasmine, jeanette and jing yi to celebrate jeanette's birthday. We were supposed to have a picnic, but we went to sit at the entrance of a basement carpark to have our food. this was the day when i first discovered that Starbuck's cheesecake is delicious like mad. Took photos in the MRT ride home :D

Monday (14th February)
Went jogging with Jasmine and Guang Yi at bishan stadium. Intensively exercised. Ok, everything is intense to me. Guangyi went to meet his cousin for jubeat after that, leaving Jasmine and i alone. Slacked around near GYSS. Went to Be Here For Good Stuff to look at toys. Jasmine and i planned a horror movie inspired by a doll, which we're not going to execute.

Tuesday (15th February)
Went for swimming. Unfortunately, i was too tired for anymore exercise. Thus, we went to practise qi gong on the baby pool. Accompanied jasmine to buy her bike at AMK xtra, then got caught in the rain after that. Invited jasmine and guangyi to my house to cook cup noodles and then slacked at the nearby playground. Continued chatting with jasmine at j8 bubbletea area after that.

Wednesday (16th February)
Went for a job interview with jasmine. A 9-days temporary job. Met this disgusting gay who tried to flirt with me by telling me that he peeped at me peeing. I just frowned at him in disgust. He couldn't stop looking and smiling at me after that. How sad, he must be thinking about all these stupid things every single day. Felt disgusted, though i pity him for his sad life. Went to buy zixing's presents, my notebook and jasmine's organiser after that, and then went home.

Thursday (17th February)
Angus House + Zi Xing's Early birthday celebration! Met up with melvin, guangyi, weijian and jasmine earlier at j8 first and then went to orchard together. Melvin, guangyi and weijian shared money to buy a fantastic Nerf Sniper Gun for zixing. Ruwen joined us during the purchase and zixing reached soon after that. Walked around and then went into Angus House for our lunch! Started with cauliflower soup, which was creamy and delicious. Came next was bread and butter. Salad after that, which was... vegetably. Main course was next.

Okay, my camera quality isn't very good, so i went to adjust the cantrast of the picture and added a border. Food is amazing; it can make you cry. The main course i ordered was something Seafood Lunch. It was really nice, but then what i liked most wasn't the prawn, the scallop and the other thing. What i liked most was the POTATO. It nearly made me cry. After the main course, we received our coffee and tea and the people there got a mistaken signal, therefore they brought out zixing's birthday cake bought by ruwen.

Happy birthday zixing! :D And then we had our dessert. I ordered Mango Sherbet. That was it for the magnificent lunch. Neoprints after that. And, those neoprints turned the whole clique except for ruwen into ahguas who look shitty in make-up. Ruwen was also affected in another machine. So in the end, we were all affected and looked yuck. Arcade after that. And then pool. Pool was fun, but the charges were not so good. Stupid misleading promotions -_- The others went off during or after pool, so only left with ruwen, guangyi and i. They accompanied me to pastamania after that, and then went to do some shopping. Headed home after that.

Friday (18th Feberuary)
Met guangyi for swimming. After finishing our warm-up, jasmine came in to wait for us. Swam and exercised, then went to weijian's house to slack. Ended up playing mahjong and playing with soft toys randomly. Went cycling plus dinner after that. I love the scene at the canal-side with the full moon and water. The darkness reminds me of "night at the beach". Interesting fact: Do you know that by taking a photo with your friends in TOTAL DARKNESS using flash, you appear to look like you are in a beach? Haha. Yes, i capitalised total darkness for a purpose. Went for Gong Cha after that, and weijian drank it all in one go. And became very sugar-high. This was worsened by what jasmine said: "OMG this tea is freaking nice. I'm having orgasm with it!" Dirty jokes related to Jasmine's ginger milk tea after that, which made weijian super high, high until use a slide also can't stop laughing. Biked home after that.

Why I write

2011-02-16T18:29:00.006+08:00

Quite a long time ago, all of us received our JAE posting results. I got posted to Creative writing for television and new media in Singapore poly, and that was my first choice. Why did I put this as my first choice? My siblings were both in Ngee Ann polytechnic and there is a direct bus from Bishan Interchange to Ngee Ann, which means that if i had chosen to go to Ngee Ann instead, i could have gotten about an hour extra of rest in the bus (with a seat). So why did i chose to go to Singapore poly? The reason is that i chose not because of the polytechnic, but because of the course. SP is the only poly with the course that i wanted, one that enables me to write.

What's so fun about writing anyway? Actually, I don't know if "fun" is the right word to describe writing. I write because i like storing and expressing information using words.

I used to enjoy drawing, but i gave up. I had ideas, but i could not express them. After many years, i realised that the best way for me to express my ideas was through words, which means writing. By writing, i am painting images in people's minds. Maybe i'm not skilled enough yet so the pictures i painted were blur and simple, but a good writer would paint a clear image. He can also create a beautiful voice. He can create anything. This is why i believe that writers don't tell a story; they show a story.

In one period of time last year, i got really stressed up and quite depressed because of all the small useless pressure around. I had lots of plans in improving my life, but i could not execute them because there were too many things for me to remember. I feared that i would forget and lose my future to darkness. It was a notebook which helped me. I started writing down everything in that notebook. By everything, i meant my plans, my feelings, my interest and all sorts of random stuff. I enjoyed it a lot and it also helped me a lot. That is because i had stored information in the notebook. Those words had carried the burden of remembering for me. Whenever i wanted or needed to remember, they will return those information to me. Writing relieves lots of stress.

Another example of how writing relieved my stress was some months ago. I felt like i was being looked down upon by many people. Arrogant people. I felt unhappy, and these unhappiness led to stress. I ranted about it in my blog and it worked. In fact, my blog used to be filled with unreasonable and mean rants. In 2006, I complained a lot about my "best friend" in primary school over a stupid online game. and it actually helped me to ruin people's impression of that guy. In 2007, i actually became better but i still ranted on random people in the same mean way. Skipping to 2010, I ranted my way through the first half of the year. When i read them months later, i still believed that they made sense.

Even though i enjoy writing, i cannot write long things. I cannot write pages after pages after pages. I'll eventually stop. Maybe it is because i am not passionate enough. I'm not shocked if that is the case. I don't want to be a writer in the future, instead i most likely want to be a teacher. The career guide said that i need a diploma to be a teacher if i go to polytechnic, but there is no teaching course. So, i guess any diploma should work. And by taking Creative Writing for TV & New Media, it can help me improve my English. Maybe i can teach English in the future.

I write with a purpose. If i have no idea i am not keen on writing. I like to express ideas, but i don't enjoy rambling meaninglessly unless it's about something i enjoy. For example, you will never see me write a blog post about politics and governments just because i want to write something. That is because i have absolutely no interest in politics. So, the reason to why i write is to store and express information.

Depreciation

2011-02-15T22:38:00.004+08:00

If you have taken Principles of Accounts in secondary school, or if you just have this word in your vocabulary, you will probably know what this word means. According to Dictionary.com, it means "to lessen the value or price of" something. This word "something" didn't appear in the definition, so i wrote it outside the quotation. But, isn't something way too general? Actually, no, it is not, because it is supposed to be like this. I am going to talk about three main things that depreciate, and you'll see what they are in the following paragraphs.

The first thing i want to talk about is objects. We all know that objects depreciate. They lose their value. Why? It is because they deteriorate seconds after seconds, hours after hours, days after days, months after months, years after years. And then one day, they get fed up and stop working. I'm actually thinking about my house the washing machine. It spoiled. So did the air conditioner. So did the water heater. So did the pipe under the kitchen basin. But somehow my dad managed to fix the air con and the pipe. The water heater and washing machine cannot be fixed. Anyway, the water heater case is the worst. It is actually connected to the wall, but it did not just spoil. It rusted a lot and fell down from the wall, crashing onto the ground and breaking into pieces. It was really dangerous. But, not only machines spoil; objects containing part of your memory depreciates too. Appreciate every moment you share with these precious things. They may "lose it" any moment, so you have to make sure that you don't regret your time spent on these things.

The second thing i want to talk about is time. And by saying "Time depreciates", you can think up the rest on your own. We are contantly losing time. So what should we do? Spend every single minute wisely? But, what does wisely mean? We cannot lose a single second so we must think about the important project while waiting for the bus? We cannot lose a single second so we must discuss about important things every moment? No. We must enjoy every second. This is the only counter to the depreciation of time.

The last thing i want to talk about it relationship. Unlike objects and time, relationship does not depreciate. It is special. You don't hate the people more and more everyday. I am talking about relationship with people you are close to. You can fight, quarrel, disappoint one another and ignore each other, but the love you felt for each other is genuine. It is something that will never lose its value. In fact, i should say "Love does not depreciate". Enjoy every moment you spend with people you love. Their physical form may depreciate, but who they truly are never. Appreciate them. Don't force yourself to hate.

Because everything except relationships and love depreciate, we must appreciate and use fully everything that we have. Even though relationship don't depreciate, we must still appreciate them fully. This is for appreciation brings about happiness. Of course, easier said than done, but let's just try out best to stay happy. Don't destroy all your last hopes; gather them.

Edited (added on)
I just noticed. Appreciation is the antonym of depreciation. Makes sense.

Gather Together

2011-02-04T23:55:00.002+08:00

After the reunion dinner with my family on wednesday, even though my paternal grandfather was still in the hospital, we went to my maternal grandma's house. Played with ping cheng "Monopoly Deal". Had some fun, although there were only the four of us (Ping Cheng, sis, bro and i). Went back home to watch the countdown after that.

On thursday, went to my maternal grandma's house again. Went downstairs to play monopoly deal with my siblings, Ping Cheng, Kim Cheng, Kenneth and Flora. It had been really long since we actually even talked to Kim Cheng a bit. After awhile, Kenneth went off to meet his fiends. After awhile more, Flora left for home with her family. So, we went back to grandma's house and sat at the round table outside. We prepared five cups and two cans of beer to use as forfeits for certain games. After the beer ran out, we changed to coke, so it became "reward for winning" instead of "penalty for losing". After that, played "police and murderer", which was fun :)

On friday, went to my maternal grandma's house yet again. It was boring. Played Ping Cheng's monopoly deal among ourselves (my siblings and i) and then went to 7-eleven with ping cheng to buy stuff. Ate cup noodles and went to a dark fitness corner for sparkles after that. Only 6 sticks for 4 people - Pathetic. Went back up to grandma's house for one more round of monopoly deal after that. That's all for these 3 days.

We've seen Gabriel quite alot these few days. He behaves like a dog, not in the bad way. He fetches stuff and runs back and forth unnecessarily. But he's abit attitude.

I don't like arrogant people.

Before Chinese New Year

2011-02-02T18:14:00.006+08:00

Going to have reunion dinner soon, so i shall blog at faster speed. Knowing myself, i'll still end up elaborating too much and the post may still end up being quite long, so i guess i'll just have to be mentally and physically faster, which means think faster write faster, and i should refrain from writing meaningless paragraphs of useless introduction, not that any other part of this post is going to be useful.

So, before chinese new year, we went to do some last minute shopping for CNY clothes. On monday, we went to Nex first to just look around. We ended up spending too much time there doing the miscellaneous stuff, like going to comics connection and all that. Went to bugis after that to shop for clothes for real, though zixing bought some clothes at Nex. Anyway, bought the stuff and went to iluma for a drink plus arcade. Played at those stuff, and i actually tried out the dancing game, which was truly difficult. But it was fun :) When joshua and weijian went off after that, zixing, guangyi, jasmine and i played some table thing where we were supposed to hit something and stuff. Ok, actually, to put it simply, it is like table tennis, but instead of using a racket, we're supposed to use this weird sliding thing. Instead of a ball, it's a big coin-like thing. Instead of the ball flying around, the coin is sliding around. Nevermind if you don't get it. It was very fun :) Guangyi, jasmine and i did some final shopping, and then went for a chat back in bishan.

On tuesday, jasmine and i met up to go to peninsula. Bought quite alot of things that i'm happy with at cheap price. Guangyi joined us halfway. Jasmine and Guangyi got a martial arts shoe each. Jasmine and i went swimming after the shopping, and we learnt that swimming after shopping is unwise as it causes lots of inconvenience, especially when you're carrying those shoe boxes in shopping bags around. But i didnt swim much because both my legs cramped (probably due to over exertion of energy?).

Today, jasmine, guangyi, weijian, joshua and i met up at 8am outside GYSS. But, we were not allowed to enter the school because the vice principal said that no outside people are allowed to enter, even if we're past pupils. Only certain people managed to enter because they were early and probably not stopped by the VP. -_- Stupid rule, even primary schools allow visitors. So, went for breakfast at long john silvers, and then went to AMK to play pool with the said people plus xun quan (so long never hang out with xun quan already!). Which was fun. Managed to "dig out" coins for the last amount of money i have for mineral water after that. Jasmine and i accompanied guangyi back to peninsula as he needed to change size and colour of the shoes he bought yesterday. Sat at the KFC to slack and talk after that, and then went home. Had some interesting zodiac personality talk in the MRT. It may not be interesting to you, but i like all these stuff, so it is to me. After reaching home, rested and then quickly blogged. I'm done with his post and i'm going to eat reunion dinner now.

Just right :D

Borrowing Things

2011-01-30T08:21:00.002+08:00

This is my second post today. I just finished writing one not too long ago, and i got inspired to write another one. This one is about borrowing things.

When you borrow something from someone, you actually have to return it responsibly, fast and with quality. I'll use two examples: Money and comic books.

When you borrow money from someone, you don't only have to return it; you have to return it fast. I failed to do it when i borrowed money from jasmine. I am sincerely apologetic. That is because that person who lends you money also needs that money. Let's say you borrowed $10 from me. I lent you this $10 not because i did not need this amount of money and feel like distributing it away. I did so because you seemed like you really needed this amount of money and it happened to not be of much importance to me at this moment. I stress: At this moment. Which means, i may not need it now but i may need it urgently four days later. If, because i lent you this $10, i fell short of $10 cash to buy something important four days later, it is actually partly your fault. Of course, i am at fault too for lending you money, but you are at fault for not returning it promptly. This is especially so if you made a promise like "I'll return it to you tomorrow". Actually, i truly hate it when people break their promises and agreements. Promises and agreements are not meant to be broken; they are meant to be followed through. So, the point is, you have to return whatever you owe others, promptly.

When you borrow comic books from someone, no matter how close he is to you, you have to be considerate and not destroy it. I sincerely hate it when someone does not take care of what i lend him. Truly. If i'm to lend you a book, and i did not say that you can fold any of the pages, you should NOT fold any pages. If you want to, you should ask. It is not your book, it is mine. I don't know about other people, but i happen to be a very possessive person who believes that people should be considerate, not self-serving. My siblings and i have lent someone some comic books before in good condition. To our astonishment and unhappiness, when this person returned the comic books to us, they were wet. All of them. And this happens most of the time when we lend him something. The reason is always "aircon dripped water". You have to return whatever you borrow in good condition!

Be considerate please. You not being particular about certain things doesn't mean other people not being particular about the same thing, so you should always ask. Even if it's taking a cup of water at someone's house.

Early Hours

2011-01-30T07:04:00.008+08:00

I like my blogskin. But, blogskin alone doesn't make that big a difference to my blog. Maybe I should write a good post. What should i blog about next? About "conscience is key"? Or about "skepticism"? Thinking about it, skepticism isn't interesting at all. There's nothing to write about. Maybe i should write about the conscience thing. But then again, it's not really interesting either. This is my blog, so maybe i should write a bit about myself.

Okay, i'll just check whether anything's going on in facebook. - What's this? Today is Mr Oh's birthday? How come i didn't notice until now? Wa, how come nobody wished him happy birthday? Is it a prank? Oh, now i noticed! It's 12.30am now, which means it's just been 30 minutes since his birthday. No wonder. Okay, i'll just wish him.

Anyway, back to msn with guangyi. - What should we talk about now? Talking is such a difficult thing to do. It's always too difficult for me to come up with something to talk about. This is the reason why i talk so little. Maybe we should discuss about our ambitions. Okay, now i'm waiting for him to reply. I should do something else until he replies. Maybe i should check my bookmarks.

Wa, my bookmark is kind of rubbishly; full of websites that are dead and full of websites i no longer hold interest in. Maybe i should do something about it. Not now, though.

So, this is how the conversation ends. Everybody has to sleep. So, he went offline. What should i do now? I'm feeling kind of drowsy, but i don't feel like sleeping yet... Maybe i should just watch one more episode of bleach... Before that, i'll make myself a cup of milo.

"!!" - The lizard stood on top of the scissors. Okay, now the pair of scissors is dirty. Nevermind. "!!" - Shit, shoudln't i be making milo, why did i open the 3-in-1 coffee packet? At night sure cannot sleep already. Wait, maybe brother wants to drink coffee, i should go and ask him.

Okay, so now i can finally make the milo. And then watch bleach.

This episode seems to be quite short... But nevermind, have to go sleep already. I think i'll just skip the brushing teeth and eye exercise tonight. Doesn't really make any big difference. I don't know why but the bed and pillow seems especially comfortable tonight.

But i cannot sleep.

I cannot sleep.

No, i must say "I can sleep" because the law of attraction said that you get whatever you think of. And that website i visited just now implied that i must trust the law of attraction fully for it to work. But sometimes, genuinely trusting is a difficult task. "Trust" is often a superficial action. It is difficult to trust from deep in our hearts.

Okay, shit it's 6.30am already. And i'm hungry... I'll just go and eat some bread.

This silence is kind of creepy. Did someone just came out? Oh, it's dad.

"You should make some milo for yourself, later the bread too dry," he said.

Yes, i really should. "!!" - What's that. Something just moved over there. Is it a cockroach? Oh, it is... "!!" - I like those thoughts that just went through my mind! It's almost like narrative. "!!" - I should write a blog entry like this!

Okay, continue eating bread. Finished eating. I should go and write the entry now, later the inspiration and motivation all gone. But before that, i must take something from the room ---- "!!" - The sky! The colour is so unique! I must write a poem about it.

Tommorrow Is Here

I was sitting at the living room just now
I was eating some white bread
It was quiet
The sky was black

I walked towards the room just now
I looked out at the window
It was quiet
The sky was turning purple

I looked at the window now
Rain started
Rain made noise
The sky is getting brighter

I wrote this poem
While the sky gets brighter with every word i write
With every lines i skipped

By the end of this poem,
Everything outside turned blue
This is a new start
Tomorrow is here

Woots, finally finished typing this blog entry. I find it very different. Hopefully you understood it! :D

January 2011

2011-01-28T15:29:00.005+08:00

I've decided to make a conclusion of every month in my blog from now on.

I just bought a $99 bicycle from ntuc xtra (where i worked) this monday. So far i haven't used it much. Only went out to cycle for like half an hour yesterday. Recently i've also went swimming quite often. Last week i did so once every 2 days but this week i've only went once so far. But anyway, i'm not getting bored of it yet :) I'm quite happy for myself because i used to not go anywhere alone. Wherever i went, i needed company, or at least i wanted it. So now that i've became slightly more independent, i'm happy for myself.

We have received our JAE posting results this wednesday. I got into Creative writing for television and new media in Singapore poly. Happened to be in the same poly as guangyi and jasmine, and the same school as jasmine :D

So, during this month i've not done much fun things other than picnic with family, universal studio and hanging out. But, i've actually done some constructive things that move me closer to my goals and also discovered about myself more (my true desire especially) :) I've also decided not to work anymore. If i need money i'll just use my savings accumulated throughout the years in my bank, and then i'm going to work next time to "top it up". Hopefully during poly holidays got mood plus time to work.

In my free time this month, i've actually rewatched the anime bleach and its fillers (www.urbandictionary.com: 'Fillers, as the name implies, "fills" an episode with non-canonical material'). When i started watching bleach last time, i only watched from episode 1 until 20+, and then stopped watching for awhile then started watching again from 60+ until 200+, skipping the fillers. So there were parts which i've not watched here and there. Anyway, with anime, there is always meaning to life. My theory. Hopefully this stays true forever.

Chinese New Year is coming next thursday. Next wednesday is the eve already. Actually, i can't wait for chinese new year to come because of the cny tidbits, visit to grandma's house (CNY is different from usual), visit to weijian's house and basically the atmosphere, although nowadays the atmosphere is getting less and less joyous/celebratory.

PS: I gave Ms Aljunied a note on the day when we collected our results, and she replied to me through email :D Just saw it today. I think it's worth mentioning.