Fear Lies In My Eyes

If I pass promos, I'll be able to

1. Lead Orientation 2006
2. Still be able to have the same classmates[the Bleach-obsessed SCG, the extended family, the sleeping and the slacking], tutors [I like my tutors, all of them], and attend civics lessons with nutsy CG mates
3. Be with my House Com [whatever it is I cant bear to leave you guys]
4. Take A levels with fellow TJC-CCHSM people [you know who you are, too many to name]
5. Pass down to my direct junior next year

If I fail promos,

I dont want to talk about it.

I nearly posted an open letter to all should I retain. Past few days I have been thinking alot about what will happen if I fail promos, who I will let down, what other options are there, but I have come to realise that the more I think about these, the more fearful I become.

Fear loves Maths. Taking himself as the vertical axis and time as the horizontal axis, he plots a curve of himself as a function of e to the power of time. Therefore, he porves that he is an exponential curve. As his presence grows exponentially, Hysteria comes along and joins in the fun.

Fear always has this incessant method of creeping into one's sanity. Undetectable at first, he builds up and reinforces his place inside a person. Also, Hysteria is not here yet, and he is never going to make it since Courage has come to the rescue.

"Courage is not the lack of Fear. It is acting in spite of it."- Mark Twain

Mathematically, this means that if Fear = e power time, I have to configure myself such that promotion preparation = (xe) power time, where x is any number more than one.

In short, I am going to grow more exponentially than exponentially can ever mean and outgrow Fear.

Scared you arh..

Small digression:

Tomorrow I have to make my way down to Depot Road [something tells me its at the far West]
for my National Service registration.

"The whole process will take about 4 hours." Should not have missed the online registration which I was already halfway through!

What's done already done.

So, for now, in order not to disappoint anyone and write an open letter on this page, I shall grow exponentially.

Beatles-Eleanor Rigby

Crisis

Your Superhero Profile

Your Superhero Name is The Dynamo Monkey Your Superpower is Accessorizing Your Weakness is Cold Weather Your Weapon is Your Slime Saber Your Mode of Transportation is Stilts

What's your Superhero Name?

Here I am, the Dynamo Monkey [but why do I have to travel on stilts? And why am do I have oddly coloured highlights in strange red hair? Are they implying that I am a self-dye addict? AND look at this why such a horrible *whining fades*.......]

Recently, 3 breakouts are imminent.

Dengue Fever

Spread via the vector [lowlife] Aedes mosquito, it is potentially fatal especially when it develops into dengue hemorrhage fever. Prevent by doing these, or just simply kill any mosquito in sight [just be careful not to let any morsel of the mosquito squash come into prolonged contact with any part of the skin since the microsporidian brochiola algerea living in the guts of the mosquito causes fatal myositis which again proves my point that mosquitoes are lowlifes].

Avian Flu

Caused by the H5N1 virus which is a strain of the influenze virus that has mutated who-knows-how-many times to become this supervirus that might cause an epidemic as serious as smallpox years ago [though officially declared eradicated in 1979]. Transmitted via birds especially poultry [no reason to avoid the chicken, ducks and geese yet since they are checked].

Promotional Exams

Outbreak onsets a spike in cortisol levels in blood and might result in hair loss, sleep loss, sanity loss, getting lost etc. Current prevention measures are minimal since it is an inevitable part of every college student's life

Sigh

12 more days!

On the negative side, there is very little time left [which leads to stress and hysteria, resulting in observable syndromes which mainly thrives on the facial area of students].

On the positive side, there is still time [which leads to complacency and the unintentioned thought that a little time can be spared to do every other thing except study].

Hmm.. I belong to the latter most of the time and this is getting on my nerves [but I surprise myself sometimes with my not-too-bad efficiency usually lasting for about 15 minutes]. Time to really grow exponentially I guess [and not let education leave me behind in the public toilet in Lim Chu Kang].

Dynamo Monkey to the rescue!!

John Williams & Boston Pops-Last Of The Mohicans

It's Been A Long Day/Night/Day/Night/Day/Night/Da....

I'm back!

With a shifted body clock and a strange sense of fashion.

Coming here at this unearthly time just before the sun rises can only mean one thing. I was awake all night long *cues A Hard Day's Night". The reason? I sleep when I go home after school, waking up in the middle of the night to "study" and then leaving for school straight after. Sounds fun?

Not when I feel like a brain tumour is growing within the thick and large skull of mine [the size of the black/white hybrid contained within is not clear yet since 'examinations' are only going to be next month] all the time during lessons! Especially when the PE department cheats your feelings [like yesterday morning].

During mass PE when we wear our nicely designed college shirt with the disastrous material, the PE teachers told us all about the electives coming up, and the games that we will be playing soon after in subsequent lessons. With hope that the PE teachers are going to remove the word "running X km" from their schedule for once, I actually paid attention to what Mrs Lam said [and I realised that there will be a gymnastics elective conducted by one of our own PE teachers!]. However, after Mrs Lam's talk [and telling us to break for our games], Mr Goh steps in and said he wanted to see the boys at the field. Then he started jogging and we followed.

At the right side of sports complex, after that one round around the track, he proceeded to doing all those warmups that is synonymous with a X km run. For me, whose body clock is shifted, the time of 7 am to me is what 4 pm would be like to a normal person. The need for an afternoon nap steps in and tried to take over my body! How to run? Whatever [I got punked!].

Run run run run run run run. With Jaryl then with Chun Kiat [tall] then run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run gate to gate.

Physics and Biology lecture follows soon after. I did not fall asleep and even managed to steal Edmund's [band] bag from under his nose. Come to think of it, I actually enjoyed Physics lecture [I think its due to Ms Kitty Tan].

Then PW. 2 periods of horrible deadlines constantly being drilled into our heads. Afternoon Nap made me look irresponsible as I fell asleep right when Miss Ho was talking to our group. Though I was quite sure it was the kind of 3 second brain-shut naps [I still understand what she was saying in between the brain-shuts], my eyes closed and I sure hoped no one noticed. haha

For GP, we did an essay in class [I'm quite sure that my essay is horrible though I brought it home and is intending to pass it to Ms Lim later]. A essay plagued by the wonders of I-Pods [Vivian has nice band songs in her Shuffle. Joseph also has nice songs in his Mini]. So a big part of the time was spent unnecessarily on band songs, talking about how Vivian almost always only listens to the horns.

Physics was without Mr Neo since he's at Reservice! Mr Chee relieves him but I fell asleep for the last 15 minutes of the lesson when he ended his summary of EM waves and Superposition.

1 hour to the next college day. Tie Day! TJ uniform is not that bad lar.

And today I shall treat my body well by bringing spectacles to school so that I can remove my rebellious contacts when they dry up and threaten to fuse with my eyes. This drying up effect produces the illusion that one is suffering from cataracts since the entire eye clouds up and vision in that eye is lost!

This is a dumb post posted cause I thought I had too much time to spare 1 hour ago. Little did I think that it would take me 1 hour to post this [while reading other people's blogs in between paragraphs]. So now I am left with 20 minutes! Sigh. Should stop being the multi-tasking hero I think I am.

Later!

Temasek Junior College-School Anthem

Beautiful River Song

The Shenandoah River [taken from here]

This picture made me think of how lovely the song of the same name is [first heard last year in Sydney during the Choral Presentation at Sydney Opera House which is part of the Music Festival that CCHMS band was part of].

The Missouri, she's a might river
Away you rolling river
The red man's camp lies on her borders
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

A white man loved an Indian maiden
Away you rolling river
With notions sweet his canoe was laden
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

O Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away you rolling river
I'll take her 'cross the rolling water
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

The chief disdained the trader's dollars
Away you rolling river
My daughter never you shall follow
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

At last there came a Yankee skipper
Away you rolling river
He winked his eye, and he tipped his flipper
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

He sold the chief that fire-water
Away you rolling river
And 'cross the river he stole his daughter
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

O Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Away you rolling river
Across the wide and rolling water
Away, we're bound away across the wide Missouri

[Lyrics taken from here]

Though the choir version was only:

O Shenandoah, I long to see you
And hear your rolling river
O Shenandoah, I long to see you
Way we are bound away
Across the wide Missouri

Rivers are beautiful and can inspire many tales of love and longing but they are also nature's way of telling us that She is still in control.

Like the sad incident that occured recently in New Orleans.

Listening to this American "River Song" while flipping through Time's special report of the aftermath of the wrath of Katrina touches one alot. Seeing the desperate faces of people trying to survive as much as possible [to the extent of giving food to one's dog instead of eating it], satellite pictures of the flooded city, and the state that they are in makes me think that we really are lucky. We either help or pray for them.

Pray hard.

Bloomingdale Senior High School Chorus-Shenandoah

Quite A Painful Day

Big big flurry of people

If one is ever in a rush, one should avoid Bedok Interchange for the risk of a Pasar Malam like this. At the narrow passageway between the interchange and the MRT station, it got so congested that it took me about 3 minutes to cover the short distance of 50 metres.

People [read: whole family] stopping in the middle of the already jammed up walkway to marvel at the Turkish ice-cream vendor's tricks played on the customer. People crowding around makeshift watch stall to admire the magic that $10 can create in a watch.

Resulting in the big jam and slow movement of the traffic.

Sometimes it would be nice to just slow down one's footsteps, follow them and just myself be absorbed into the buzz of the market. Not today though I am in a rush [not exactly a rush just that I was to meet my friends at about noon and it is already near 6pm].

These markets are already a big part of life in Singapore as depicted in "The Street Of the Small Night Market"[that little blue book that we all CCHSM people read in Sec 2 for English]. Its nice to have them around, but recently there is a trend for stalls to sell these handphone accessories that screams "LOOK AT ME" all over.

A close look [check] at myself shows that my left ear and left jaw joint together give me some "popping" trouble. Self-diagnosis [using this] shows that I might have TemporoMandibular Joint Syndrome.
Primary symptoms

• Poorly localized dull jaw pain (80%)
• Increased pain with chewing
• Limitation of mouth opening
• Ear clicking or popping

Secondary symptoms

• Earache (30%)
• Headache and/or neck ache
• Typically unilateral pain
• Increasing pain over the course of the day
• History of jaw and/or facial trauma
• Bruxism, teeth clenching
• Psychiatric history (30%)
• Dizziness (20%)

Physical

• Limitation of jaw opening (normal range is at least 40 mm as measured from lower to upper anterior teeth)
• Palpable spasm of facial muscles (masseter and internal pterygoid muscles)
• Tenderness to palpation (80%)
• Clicking or popping in the TMJ
• Tenderness to palpation of the TMJ via the external auditory meatus
• Crepitus over joint (in advanced disease)
• Lateral deviation of mandible

Causes

• MPD syndrome is believed to be a stress-related disorder.
• Centrally induced increase in mandibular muscle tension in tandem with teeth grinding and/or clenching results in muscle spasm, pain, and dysfunction.
• Internal derangement is caused by an organic problem within the TMJ.
• Mandibular muscle spasm observed in this entity is in response to the dysfunction.
• Spasm is not the primary problem as with MPD

Quite irritating to have your ear go "pop" whenever you open your mouth more than normal! On the bright side, at least I save my hearing from what I thought was an impeding ear infection [from the earache].

Later!
Breaking Benjamin-Rain

Armed With Broom And Dustpan To Clean This Yellow Page!

You are Zell! Hyperactive much? Caffeine and you should stay far from each other. You might be a little shy with the opposite sex, but in big groups you're extremely outspoken. Your emotions run strong, and though you might try to hide them, you seldom succeed. Take the Final Fantasy 8 Test here!

How's this? I believe I have to start with the same thing as I did previously, only replacing the "5 days" with "2 weeks"!!

I have neglected Final Fantasy 8 for a long time [very long time, much more than how long I have neglected this page]. How can I ever relive the time when the most basic gaming instinct of two Primary 6 boys busy [or ought to be] mugging for PSLE was curbed by this game [Isaac should know]. It managed to press down all thoughts of playing more than one virtual reality based game and actually 'concentrate' on the major life judgement.

So when I actually chanced upon the test [above] I completed it only to have the results showing me to be my favourite character [other then Rinoa whom we ALL love] from the game! Coincidental or what!

On the topic of neglect, I for one have neglected my studies like how the U.S. government care for sulphur vents lifeforms.

Like how I got 0/35 for this recent Physics test [ashamed ashamed!] and also how I screwed up Chemistry SPA by using the volume that I have calculated instead of the volume obtained experimentally [I supposed my thoughts sort of crashed then].

But its still ok. We have to move on.

On happier thoughts, the apparent success of Gamma House Party [not evaluated yet!] and how I have been attending lessons religiously these recent days puts me in a better state of mind.

How religious? Just last Thursday, Teachers' Day, I attended a religious event at East Coast Park. It was one of the many 7th month auctions held in Singapore during the month of the Hungry Ghosts [the kind that goes "50 dollars!! 50 dollars!! 50 dollars once!! 50 dollars once!!" all through the night and might very well be termed disruptive].

I got there because the seafood restaurant where my mum works "bought" a table for the diner and since it's her day off her boss invited her to attend. Somehow, the boss invited both my mother and myself! My rejections are rejected ["My boss already reserved one seat for you already!"].

At the table [under a well constructed tent at a not exactly flat area near East Coast Seafood Centre], I was initially traumatised by a few things around me.

1. The irritating fact that Singaporeans cannot ever make it to any dinner on time.
2. This elderly lady behind whose alter-ego I believe is a chimney.
3. The blaring loudhailer acting as a speaker right in my face.

I guess all of us commit the first point every now and then [and it is not exclusive to Singaporeans] hence I would not be pointing fingers.

Also, this elderly 'lady' behind me smoked a whopping grand total of 9 cigarettes from the start of the dinner to the end. Considering that the dinner started at 8pm [plus plus plus] and ended at 11, she have consumed 9 cigarettes in 3 hours. This makes an average of 1 cigarette per 20 minutes! I bet she knows the banes of the cigarette by now, but I guess she just cannot kick this habit [and is seriously addicted!]. The poor me sitting back to back have to suffer these noxious vapours emitted from both her little white stick and her nose [the vile thoughts!].

One more bad point about my seat. The horrible substitution of a speaker with a loudspeaker!

The kind used to ring sirens and warn people to get away. The kind used by a speaker to address a BIG group of people. The kind that compromises sound quality for volume.

Facing directly at me.

This made me resort to tearing the piece of paper available and stuffing it into my right ear [The right ear faces the hailer when I look at the stage, not that there is much interesting to look at].

Before the dinner/auction, they played hokkien oldies, but the remixed kind where a pulsating heartbeat goes on and on throughout all obviously different 18 artistes singing different songs 'smartly' strung together [what the fans call megamix]. During the dinner/auction itself, a gentleman [who goes "halo??!" whenever he picks up the mike] would auctions items proudly displayed onstage.
Most of them are household appliances, but there's also the famous "Oh Kim" [black gold a.k.a. charcoal] and a hamper of oranges that were both auctioned for many times the cost price.

The purpose of this auction [and many others] is charity. For what organisation I am not too sure but I am quite sure that a big part of it goes to the temple that organised this [temple building fund]. Traditions shall be traditions.

On the topic of food, I have this disgusting habit of eating at my computer. Yes at the risk of particles dropping into gaps in between the keys, an oily mouse, splatters on the monitor etc. None of these have happened yet except for the food in the keyboard part. I swear that there are a few times when I know some morsels dropped but I can never find on the floor [dissappearing without a trace?]. I'll clean out the keyboard when I am free. I don't want the one or two ants that I have actually seen crawling around my CPU to summon the whole nest to my computer!

Eating at the computer with the pig and the webcam staring.

I do not always eat at the computer though. It is only at times when I am watching anime, or some other blogs worth reading that I do so.

On the issue of anime, I got BLEACHED!!!!!
So addicted I was that I watched all episodes to the most recent one [#47] all within a week and a few days [inclusive of time spent downloading it and attending lessons]. The last series that got me so addicted was probably Kindaichi.




What Bleach Character Are You?


Hosted by theOtaku.com: Anime. Done right.


I would say anime is my childhood dream come true! So much more anime waiting for me to watch, so much more manga waiting for me to read. HAHA!

Note: the 28 km walk [orienteering wannabe] is still on! Though I am still trying to string together a few more interesting places to visit.

A good camera and a new bike would help greatly! Haha!

Later!

Coldplay-Fix You