Just came back from a run with HB. It's surprising what losing some weight can do to your physical stamina. I weighed 83kg in January. I now weigh 75kg. No, I'm not afraid to admit any of this. It's me, after all. Ran a proper 2.4km route just now, and surprisingly didn't feel tired at all after the 6 rounds. Well, maybe a little out of breath, but that didn't last. In the past, I used to get tired at the 2nd round. All this, even though I've never trained my stamina and running at all. I'm not trying to say that I'm very fit or anything, since I'm still fat, or inproportionally shaped to be exact, but it's good to know what I can do now. I'm pretty confident of at least a "C" grade for the NAPFA 2.4km run.

I'm soping surprising well with the loss of my phone, except that it still smarts to know that everything's gone. No phone withdrawal symptoms or anything; I was always careful to never get too attached to my phone.

My fuck bloody phone died on me yesterday, so don't call or sms my number yet. Or if you do, just don't expect a response anything soon. Fucking piece of shit, all my stuff was in there! All the pics I took, the videos (no porn or Tammy style stuff or anything), and...fucking hell all my contacts. Damned shitfuck crap. Sorry for all the swearing, it's just that I lost a LOT of numbers. Fuck.

Last week was English week at school, and to "celebrate", we had costume dress ups during morning assembly in which everyone got a chance to vote who was the best character (Sec 4 guys were to dress up as Shakespearean characters), a special hall assembly in which a particular Captain Francis came and talked about seafaring and how great he is (sorry, can't resist), a mini book fair and last of all, Grabble.

What is Grabble? Well you'll probably be able to gather that it's something like Scrabble, and in some ways it is. There's not board or anything though. The game is played by two sides of max 2 players each, and there's a referee present to deal out tiles with letters on them. So, basically what we've got to do is to form words with the tiles dealt out, and at the same time adding on letters to your opponent's words to "grab" their words while protecting your own by adding letters as well. Pretty fun game.

Anyway why the bloody hell am I talking all this crap? Because every class was to send 2 reps to participate in a school Grabble competition, and SY and me happened to be selected by the class. I pissed of or anything about it though; since I thought the game was fun, why not? So we spent a couple of recesses in one of the classrooms playing the game, and guess what? We emerged champs. Hehe. Not being proud or anything, but I thought we both made a good team.

It was nice, winning the competition and all, but sadly the prize wasn't as exciting. For the 1st prize we got 10 bucks worth of Popular bookstore vouchers. Pretty sad, isn't it? But it isn't about the amount, see I'd have preferred it if the money were spent on making a trophy or medal or something. No need to be anything flashy, but it would have been nice to win something more....I don't know, tangible?

Oh well, you can't have your cake and eat it at the same time.

Bloody 8th, that's what we got.

Deserved it, I felt we did not.

If it weren't for the twine and nerves we could have won,

And attracted gasps from all around.

The first for the unit it could have been,

Alas, it was not to be seen.

I don't know why the hell I'm composing this lame poem on a whim. The Campcraft Competition finals were held today, and you can probably gather that we got 8th position, out of a total of 150 schools. Not bad, you say? Unfair I retort. So much training, so much disappointment. Ultimately the better team won, but I can't say I'm happy about it. At least the unit's going to get it's 8th Gold next year for the UOPA. We tried our best, but unfortunately we didn't do our best.

Well as you can see, I've made (and still am making) a couple of changes to the design of my blog. It's sucked for too long you see, and the thing that's only ever constant is change. Unfortunately, my html knowledge isn't fantastic, I'm not the kind who can come up with beautiful blog designs in a jiffy, so it'll take a while. Let me know what you think after everything's done up.

The March holidays are almost over, and I haven't even smelt my homework yet. Oh well. I guess I'm just like that. But what with the First Aid Course from Monday to Wednesday and CC training every day except tomorrow after that, it's really hard to cope. Excuses I know.

My uncle just told me just now at my granmother's that I'll be the lector for his church wedding ceremony. I'm honoured I guess. It's not everyday a privelege like this falls on my shoulders.

My life began 2 days ago, at SJI Auditorium during the SYD Youth Rally. Corny, I know, but my life has changed, in some inexplicable way. In Secondary 2, I was what you would call nothing but a "Sunday Catholic", and a horrible one at that. In Secondary 3, I decided to get more serious about God. I paid attention during Catechism lessons, something I didn't always do in Secondary 1 & 2. I got confirmed on the 6 Nov 2006, and I decided to become a Youth Assistant Catechist. Why? Because I felt it was something I could do, and I could know more about God. Even then, that passion to know more wasn't always there.

My life as a real Catholic began 2 days ago. Since the rally, I've fallen in love with praise and worship. I like the songs, you see. And now, my heart is filled with a void; one of longing, longing for more, longing to have a group of friends whom I can share my experiences with, who can relate to these experiences. It's never been like this. I've gone a bit crazy, I think, but in a good way. Just now, I just walked into the Christian shop at the mall and bought a CD by delirious?, one of the bands featured in one of the promotional booklets given out in the goodie bags at the rally. Did you know they gave out free CDs at the rally? One in the goodie bag, another when you filled in a feedback form and returned it to them. I got all 3 CDs, as one of my friends didn't want his and gave it to me. So far I'm listening to Across the Sky, a Christian rock band. Not bad, they've got 2 pretty good songs, which is the same standard as almost all mainstream bands. The other 2 CDs, well one of them has quite good music, but I don't really like ballady songs, the last one I haven't touched yet. Well back to the topic. Since then I've cleaned out the skeletons I have in my closet, I'm going to try to eliminate the vices I previously had.

2 days ago, my life changed, and I hope that it'll last; I don't want this feeling of hunger to go away, and I don't want to return to the person I once was. Hmmm, also since 2 days ago, I can't stop thinking of a particular someone as well..not going to say who =D

Well, here's to a new me.

Went for the SYD Youth Rally yesterday, and...wow. Really good, with praise and worship, a skit and life experience sharing by a few people, and a session by one of the priests.

The rally, held over at the SJI auditorium was scheduled to start at 6.30pm, but the bus from church left at 5.15pm, apparently. Was a little late and missed the first bus, and had to settle for the second one, which ferried basically myself only. Put it another way; Another cathechist, Kate whom I hadn't met before and was in charge of the bus and me were the only two people on board, excluding the driver, of course. Talk about overkill. Haha. Apparently the others had decided to go by themselves.

The moment we got there, we had to walk into the auditorium, and damn does SJI have good facilities. A rugby/ soccer field, a street soccer court, and an auditorium. To think I could have gone there, but I don't regret for a moment, since I'm glad I joined MSHNPCC. Lame but true. Well anyway the moment I walked into the auditorium, goodie bag in hand, I was greeted with loud music from the worship band there. Cool.

Well, long story short, there was a skit during the rally. Maureen acted in it, and I must say, she's got talent. Fantastic performance, with realistic portrayal of her character. Nearly teared at one point.No need to say more, since it'll all be superfluous. Well later on the skit turned out to actually be snippets of a few people's lives, and these people came on to share their life experiences that turned them to God. Enriching.

All that was followed by a sermon of sorts by Fr. Pereira (dunno if I spelt his name correctly), before the Sacrament of Adoration and more Praise and Worship.

Well all I've said here makes the event sound pretty boring, but as I don't want to make this post too long, I'm cutting back on a lot of stuff. And I'm lazy. Haha. Well let's just say you have to come the next time to actually experience it.

Well, the campcraft competition results were announced a few days ago, and Maris Stella High NPCC got 1st position for prelims! Am I happy? Hell yes! For myself? Somewhat, for I'm more happy for the unit...but it's no time to get complacent. We've to work hard if we want to win the competition, and the way we're going now, let's just say that even though we're in the same boat it isn't moving in the correct direction. We don't even have the proper oars.

My "campcraft hand", as OC affectionately calls the damage caused by pegging and in my case, tying lashings, is not in very good shape now. Sure, the joke was pretty funny, except that my hand now has almost all the skin peeled off, in the area between my thumb and index finger and the pinky side of my hand. Right now the skin feels stretched, and if you look closely, you'll see flakes of skin peeling off. The skin's also starting to become cornified, and it always hurts when I tie a lashing. But I don't mind, all this's worth it if our efforts pay off. And even if the efforts don't pay off, I hope that after our pitch during the finals of the competition, we either win with glory or lose with pride. I hope it doesn't come to the point that we lose and cry because we know we haven't tried our best, or win and have everyone think it was just luck.

Well, anyway one of my cadets "complained" to me and asked me why my blog was so boring. No pictures, he said. So this time, I'm going to acquiesce to this suggestion. Here's a look at one of the few proposed designs of our campcraft team T-shirt. This particular one's done by me.

Simple enough, but I think it'll do the trick. Not aggressively flamboyant, and not cartoonish. The back design could do with a bit of tweaking, though, but I'm no Photoshop pro.

I'm watching The Apprentice as I'm typing this, so you've been warned; this post isn't going to be a fantastic one, and it's going to be short and rather uninteresting.

On Friday the Secondary Ones had thier Initiation Camp, and I was supposed to be Parade Commander for the promotion parade on Saturday, on which we also had our 1st class drill test, of which I'm sad to say I screwed myself up for WOC. Only way to pass now is to teach well for the MOI component. Wore the red sash with my full uniform for parade, but sad to say, I screwed up (again) a little during the parade. I was so caught up with thinking of what to do next after I'd done this and that that I forgot to salute OC two times when marching up to him to ask permission for pledge taking. Shit, now he's going to think that I'm "big-headed" and all again, which isn't true. I've long learned to open up my eyes to see people more capable than me. What I did was inexcusable, unfortunately. Anyway, got promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant, which is probably as far I as can go now, what with all that screwing up. Left school only at about 4.45, which meant I couldn't make it for catechism lesson. Crap.

That's everything summarised in a jiffy I guess. Like I said, not presented in an interesting manner.