Highlights from Oral Defence today:

Nic Chee:
Nic: "...no, my greatest takeaway isn't having a KFC in our school." -smiles expectantly
Class: -silence-
Nic Chee looks disappointed.

2min later

Nic: "...it is my drive to find myself that has been driving me on in 4 yrs in RI.
It has been my drive to my many apexes.
It has also been driving me insane." -smiles expectantly
Class: -silence-
Nic: "...I'm also very bad at telling jokes."
Class: "AHAHAHALOLOLOLZORKEKEKEKEONEONEONE!11!!"
Nic: /wtf

and...

"Participating in the Inter-School Scrabble Competition has taught me how to think quickly, and solidly, under immense pressure."

"In fact, that's what I'm doing now."

I take a break from rushing Showcase Portfolio to bring you...

(no, not a blog post, well yes, it's a blog post, but that's not the point)

...some advice!

Okay listen because this is really, really good advice.

#1. If you have a project that involves writing a 10min script, content page, cover page, reflections, especially if they're 5 reflections, each of 500 words, on stuff you honestly don't care about (well, except APCG...) do NOT start the aforementioned project on the day right before it's due.

#2. If you do, then don't start it at 8.00pm.

Ive spent 3.5 hours on this already, and I still have 2 reflections to go. I think I'm going crazy. Want to know how the Joker got his scars? He wrote reflections.

I'm probably going to stagger in to Mz. Kuang's class tomorrow with white/green/red face paint, laughing hysterically, and perform tricks with a sharp pen, a tabletop and Your Head.

It's 1.35am.

There are blogs that you read because they're interesting, there are blogs that you read because of the tagboard, and there are blogs that you read because you want to know what the person actually did.

And then there are blogs that you read because you must, because they're good.

I will now do shameless advertising for 3 people on my links, because, well, I like how they write. Their posts are still entertaining even when they have zero content at all, because they have a certain talent, a certain style in their writing.

#1: Eden. Read her last post (26/7); her local adaption of Dead Men's Path (I actually have absolutely no idea what it's about) is hilariously funny and priceless.

#2: Joou. I don't know exactly what it is about her writing, but I enjoy reading her posts. And It's 1.43 am now, so I'm not going to elaborate because elaorating requires thinking and, believe me, you don't want to think at 1.43am.

#3: Alvan. Unfortunately, his blog is dead after 3 posts, which is kinda expected, BUT those 3 posts were funny enough. He writes with his typical blend of bullshit/humor/exaggeration. Like his non-spoiler b*nkr*bbery.

Okay end post bye.

I just spent my Saturday afternoon, yknow, the Saturday before the killer week with 3 CCTs and the Showcase Portfolio presention? Yeah, that Saturday, watching the RGELDS production.

The play itself was decent, I suppose. The premise and the plot were interesting enough, although the ending was a huge disappointment, partially because I was looking forward to seeing how they would wrap the whole play-which-is-not-a-play concept up. Then again, the script wasn't written by them, so I guess they had no control over the ending either. The acting was brilliant in general, especially a few specific actors.

The atmosphere wasn't anything much. The audience, excluding the various different plants (by the way, by plants I mean actors planted into the audience, not greenery--or slouching shrubs, for that matter) was quite small, so yeah there's wasn't this huge wave of laughter/appluase at the appropiate intervals. I'm guessing it'd have been better for the night shows; matinee shows often draw less people.

It definitely beats dramafeste anyway, which, no offense to the multitudes of people who have reluctantly been ponning class to go for rehearsals, isn't very good. If the Raffles Players can only produce, at best, mediocre productions, what're the chances that random people from your house (essentially a smaller pool of students) can do anything better?

Great, I just alienated an entire section of people.

Still, preparing and staging a play is hard work, and I respect that. Sometimes I wish that I had an opportunity to try something like this for myself. Then common sense comes knocking, I remember that I have essentially zero talent for acting/directing/whatever else you need to stage plays and I stop wishing. I think I might just have the ability to play a tree (spirit), though.

Haiwei bought a rose and gave it to the assistant director. Now isn't that nice.

This is a short anecdote.


I just read someone's blog. Let's call him/her x (so if you want to know who she/he is, you have to find x, yknow, like your maths teacher asks you to all the time. -cringe okay that was an awful joke. Back to point.) Either way, x doesn't read this blog, so I guess I can write freely.

x wrote about how, in the past, he/she kept comparing him/herself to other people, envying them, wondering why they were so good, so talented, in comparison to him/herself, wondering how he/she could ever be like them.

End summary.

Yknow what's so ironic?

x was always one of the people I compared myself to.

Draw your own conclusions.

Epically funny excerpt from today's Helpdesk (pg. 22), Digital Life, The Straits Times (22/7/08)

Q. "My notebook also suddenly switches off the Wi-Fi mode and I have to restart it to be able to surf the Internet."

A. "There could be several reasons why your notebook suddenly switches off the Wi-Fi mode. The most obvious is that you may have accidentally touched the button which disables it."

No comment thanks.

~

On a completely different note, Thunder is a brilliant song. It isn't pure lyrical genius, but the lyrics are simple and moving. And it sounds good.

Your voice was the soundtrack of my summer
Do you know you're unlike any other?
You'll always be my thunder, and I said
Your eyes are the brightest of all the colors
I don't wanna ever love another
You'll always be my thunder
So bring on the rain

Thunder -- Boys Like Girls

One more APCG post. Because, as Chris points out, how can you post about APCG without mentioning SiLence?

I still remember when we were first grouped, back when we didn't know anything about each other.

Do you still remember all the effort we've put in? Our plans for the orientation, our countless meetings during the holidays, our last-minute trips to J8 to buy stuff we forgot. Of course you do. How could we ever forget?

It feels kinda surreal that APCG's over, that we aren't going to meet any longer to prepare anything. We aren't SiLence anymore, we're just 10 students from RI/RG. I'm going to miss that feeling.

Cass, Charmaine, Chngyan, Chris, Haiwei, Junsean, Liying, Xuewen, Zhixuan, thanks for all the memories. I'm going to miss working together with all of you.

How do you begin to write?

I'm not going to post photos. They're overused, they speak so little, and they aren't personal.

For 47 people, APCG started 2 months ago. For 3 people, it started in January, when they did something that none of them would have normally done. Remember?

Fast forward to 2 months ago.

We all had no idea what the rest of our group would turn out to be like. We played the various games that they asked us to play, we dutifully copied the various points from the Powerpoints they showed us. We learnt how to faciliate. We learnt how to ask probing questions. We celebrated skipping 2 days of school just to learn all this crap.

We drafted the orientation. We planned the orientation, down to the minute. We presented our plans. We got shot down. We redrafted the orientation.

Fast forward to 6 days ago.

We realised we had so much left undone. We panicked.

5 days ago, we learnt firsthand that everything taught to us during all our previous meetings wasn't crap at all.

The post starts here.

We arrive in school early on Day One. We set up our orientation stations, panic when we realise that hey, the Balancing Act board's floppy and WHY ARE THE HOCKEY PEOPLE TAKING OUR ASTRO AND PLAYING WITH THE SOFT BALLS but we solve these problems anyway.

The RJ facils tell us that they don't know how to conduct the icebreakers, so we take over, successfully, to great relief. The RJ facil-in-charge saunters in late. Chng Yan glowers at him from afar.

We meet up with our groups and fail to remember their names. We watch Charles and Sherry sing reluctantly as Stamp hides her face and Pee Mai tries to get everyone's attention and Joyce and Zhiting have their own private conversation somewhere in the far recesses of the table.
We talk to them.

It's largely a one-way conversation.

They go for their City Tour. We go home.


We arrive in school early on Day 2. The Opening Ceremony goes relatively well, although Ms. Maas was in a state of frenzied panic for a large portion of it. I spend the time ushering the DHS Guzheng Ensemble here, hi, would you like some light refreshments, oh, I see, no problem, thanks, bye, RIMB WHY DOES YOUR BASS DRUM NOT HAVE TOMS ON IT?!

Everyone else passes the time playing games at the Raja Block. Such is life.

I sleep, unintentionally, through Sternberg's lecture, and spend the rest of the free time hurriedly coming up with facilitation questions with Cass, Charmain, Liying and Xuewen. I attempt to anchor facilitation, and probably did relatively well, although I really have to thank the aforementioned 4 people for helping me whenever I got stuck.

Liki brings us away from our point. We attempt to nudge him back to it. He brings us away from the point again. We panic, summarize as best as we can and hope everyone listens to us and not to him.


We arrive in school early on Day 3, and join the participants for their different programs. Haiwei and I sidle into the 3M room, hoping to sit innocuously in the corner, but get persuaded to take part in the activity instead. It culminates with Joyce and Zhiting winning the competition, and my group accidentally demonstrating why it is a very bad idea to try to catch a falling egg with a catcher half the size of the palm of your hand.

We go to the hall, learn the Fun Dance as best as we can and play games with our groups. Everyone participates, and we give ourselves a pat on the back because, well, it's satisfying when you see the dramatic change in Stamp from day one to day three.

We watch the campfire, and learn that:
1) RI has very bad dancers.
2) If you're going to recite a cheem poem, you should memorize it first.

I learn that I can't get a lift to the Botanic Gardens, and that a 5.00AM waking time beckons.


I wake at 5am, grab a taxi to the Botanic Gardens and find out that almost everyone else is half an hour later than us. We introduce the participants to the various delights of the Rubber Tree:

"...the latex of the rubber tree can is used to make rubber, which is used to make products such as rubber bands, tyres, and rubber ducks."

I guess the only other thing of note on Thursday was our facilitation, with Cass anchoring. It was so much better than the facilitation on Tuesday, and much more emotional. I guess we were coming to the realization that APCG's ending, and this facilitation was one of the last times we would ever spend time as a group together. Charles makes a beautiful speech (beautiful, I tell you) and Cass almost cries.

Charmain suggests that we can take over the world.

Thursday night ends with half of our group rushing our presentation on Friday. Much thanks to everyone who stayed up late just for this.


Friday was our last day together. The entire APCG summit really ended on a high note; we were all flushed with emotion. Theodore almost made everyone cry. Yes, APCG's over and we did everything successfully, but APCG's over. That's the point, isn't it?

And because this is going to be my one and only APCG post, I won't end it yet.

Group 8 did well. We were strangers on Day One, we were close friends on Day Five. The fact that people from all walks of life, with so many different backgrounds, can be integrated so seamlessly is a testament to how effective APCG was, and how powerful our friendships are as a result.

I've learnt so much from APCG. Not only from the student leaders, but also, and especially, from the participants and my fellow facils.

To Group 8: I hope that you'll never forget the friendships that you've made at APCG. The lectures are useful, but honestly, they aren't as important as everything that you've learnt from each other.

And finally, to my fellow Group 8 facils, who'll probably never read this blog.

Cass, Charmain, Liying and Xuewen: I'll keep this simple, because, really, it is.

I've learnt so much from all of you. Thank you.

I have links! I have links!

Edit: I really should stop editing.

If the social circle of a person is defined by
1) The number of links he has on his blog, and
2) The number of links there are to his blog, then
3) Your definition is wrong.

End edit.

I love the floor of my new room, it's wooden and hollow so I can tap my feet on the floor and get a really echo-y sound; perfect when I'm blasting songs from my laptop.

I guess most people'll be expecting me to post about APCG, since's it's just over and all. And yes, I really want to, and I will by my next post. But first I want to talk about emotions.

We often hear about anger, or hate, or love (Harry Potter, anyone?) as being the most powerful emotion. That's wrong.

The most powerful emotion is Jealousy, also known as Envy.

We never want anything--be it toys, physical abilities, mental cognition, etc--for the sake of possessing them. We want things that others do not possess. We want to better others. Naturally, when others possess things that we do not, we envy them.

Do you think anger and hate are powerful emotions? They stem from jealousy. Those people you hate are better than you in some way. You want to be like them; not exactly like them, but you want to possess the characteristics that they have and you do not.

You might think you're contented with what you have--but honestly speaking, you're still envious of someone, envious of that person who's just that much better than you in some area. You may not admit it. That doesn't mean it's not there.

Edit: Have you ever tried so hard to get something, to be someone, only to fail? That's bad enough. Dya know what's worse? It's seeing someone else be exactly who you wanted to be, do exactly what you were trying so hard to do, almost effortlessly. As if it was nothing.

Well, you can't blame him. He didn't do anything wrong; you did. It's entirely your fault. That's what makes envy so powerful.

Envy isn't a positive emotion, but it's a strong, destructive one. Believe me.

It's the first time in ages that I've had the time to post.

APCG's really impressive. It's just so satisfying when you see that all your months of preperation beforehand paid off, when everything you plan goes smoothly, when people appreciate all your effort

(Charles, to us: "I've learnt so much from this camp, from the lectures, the teachers...and especially from you guys."

us: "! THANKS AWWWWWW")

, when you see your group bond from 10 strangers into 10 teenagers with a friendship that transcends all racial boundaries, and, most importantly, how we transformed from a random bunch of 10 people into a focused group.

Tomorrow's the last day. It should rock.

This post isn't going to be worth reading. But sometimes you just have to type, I guess. Don't judge me. Forgive me if I sound arrogant, because I probably will.

I wouldn't call service today a waste of time. But it wasn't exactly inspiring, or moving, or even relevant, for that matter. Isn't service a time where you worship God and listen to His word? Isn't the message a key part of service? Isn't the message supposed to be relevant, at least?

Service today wasn't about His word, or Him, at all. It was a lesson in parenting. As far as I could tell, the scripture was irrelevant and taken out of context; phrases were intepreted liberally. Maybe I'm missing the bigger picture, but I honestly just don't get it.

I don't come to church to study parenting, or child psychology, and, no offense intended, definitely not from someone without any qualifications in the subject whatsoever.

Maybe it's still the culture shock. Maybe I'm still new. But I'm used to services--and the messages--actually being relevant; to being about Him.

I don't mind if you want to emphasize the importance of excelling academically for whatever reasons you have; I can think of a few cynical ones. But please don't disguise it as a sermon.

It's really disillusioning.

This may seem trivial, but WHY THE HELL ARE THERE ADVERTISEMENTS POPPING UP WHENEVER I VISIT MY BLOG

1) I DON'T WANT TO ADVERTISE FOR YOU
2) THIS IS MY BLOG, TAKE YOUR ADVERTISEMENTS SOMEWHERE ELSE WHERE THEY'RE WANTED
3) NO ONE REALLY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE ADVERTISING FOR
4) STOP SCARING POTENTIAL READERS AWAY, THAT IS MY JOB, DYA HEAR, MY JOB

So, in conclusion, does anyone know how to get rid of the advertisements?

Hey congratulations Christine on getting into VJC.

By the way, you aren't supposed to see this, because you aren't supposed to be reading my blog.

APCG's next week!

Time really flies, doesn't it? After these hectic last few days of preparations, and one week of fun (well, it's going to be fun for the guests, why not for us?) we shall all disperse and never meet again. Life can be really sad.

Until next year, of course, when we all realise we're in the same school.

School is crazy. Both SS Documentary and English Biography are major projects that are slowly, but surely, leeching my energy away from me. For those of you who know not what pain we suffer:

1. SS Documentary, the most tiring project atm, is basically about

1) Finding interviewees

2) Getting rejected
3) Faking interviews

4) Narrating
5) Compiling, and

6) Persuading your SS teacher that no, the person being interviewed isn't your mother, yes, you know that she looks remarkably similiar, but then it's just a coincidence, you see, really, ha ha ha...

2. English Biography, on the other hand, is irritating because it just won't go away.

You interview the person, you think you're done, oh wait, you have to do a trailer, is it done now, no it isn't, you have to do a powerpoint, fine, here's the powerpoint, oh yes and your stand, fine here's the stand, okay good, oh wait, you need to write your 2000 word biography.

Of course, there are many more people under more stress than me. But I can complain, can't I?

Well, Vivian pointed out that we shouldn't be afraid of posting anything on the Web as long as it's true, so...

Don't you think that going to a bunch of performers you've invited to your school, most of whom are 13-14 years old, and telling them that they're ugly and have no stage discipline is slightly overboard?

Argh 18 JBJ is a really good show. It's ending in 2 episodes (read: tomorrow); I'm going to miss it.

(This is probably going to be a really lengthy repeat of my previous post.)

I used to hate drama serials because they were so damn stupid. Girl meets guy, girl falls in love with guy, guy/girl gets killer disease (cue hospital scene), miracle happens, end of story. I used to hate chinese because it largely involved repetitive memorizing of dead phrases.

JBJ's a romantic comedy, and somehow, it pulls off romantic comedy far better than any English movie I've watched. Perhaps Hollywood is epic fail at producing movies (what was the last good movie you watched...?), or perhaps Chinese just sounds better than English (yes, really!) but either way it works.

Of course, it helps that all the main actors (well, except some of the guys, but the male actors aren't important, right?) are all damn pretty.

I guess this proves that as long as you really enjoy something, you'll learn from it. No matter what.

I used to hate drama serials.

But, honestly, 18 JBJ is the first thing that actually made me wish I spoke Chinese as a first language. Stuff that sounds so cliched and stupid in English--High School Musical, anyone?--sounds so...moving in Chinese.

Ep. 14 is one of my favourites so far.