That feeling has returned.

One of hopelessness and despair, pervading my consciousness.

For I am alone, and there is no one there.

An unspoken urgency, an anxious dread.

Who can truly claim to empathise?

Oh, how the years have gone by. No I'm not going to reminisce about the days that have gone by, as you might think.

There's this show on TV now. Must be pretty old, at least about 5 years, I think. See, it's not just the movie quality. It's the fact that Bruce Willis still has lots of hair while acting in it. Like all movies, you have music to bring out the mood, right? Some movies have instrumental stuff, others have songs that go on to be big hits. Anyway, I was surprised when in one scene, the song that played was "Superman" by Five for Fighting. Weird. Haha.

I was grossly insulted on Sunday. Some 8 year old (I think) kid called me "Uncle". Do I look that old? Shit.

Kid: "Excuse me, Uncle!"

Kid: "Excuse me, Uncle!"

Kid's dad: "Excuse me!"

[Kid comes up in front of me]

Me: *turns around surprised*

Kid: *holds out a 5 dollar note* "Is this yours?"

Me: *checks pocket* "Um...yeah, thanks."


At that point in time, the thoughts running through my mind alternated between "WTFBBQ?! Uncle?!" and "Damn, I really need new clothes". Of course, I was grateful that someone was kind enough to do such a thing, and granted, I was dressed rather horribly, some hippy-looking T-shirt combined with ugly pants, but making the transit from 16 to 65 sure is something. Maybe I can be some kind of master spy someday. After all I have the ability to change my appearance at will (or lack of it, since dressing like a slob doesn't take much skill).



Kawaii is the new cool ^_^

Now that was totally random.

It's 3.50am now and I'm still awake. I've managed to prodigiously and phenomenally screw up my body clock, all thanks to some of that dilute liquid they call coffee at McDonald's. Not that I'm spending it fruitfully in any way, as you can see by my blogging about this, which is rather sad.

I noticed something rather ironic. You know that "Flab-e-los" machine thing by OTO? The one that's supposed to help you lose weight if you spend 15 minutes on it everyday? Yes, the one that revoltingly asks you to "Shake, shake" in that TV ad? Well, it's rather amusing to see that the only people that try the machines at all in public are thin people.

I stabbed myself with a needle pretty hard just now. No, I'm not suicidal. Not masochistic either. It was an accident. One of the "Say NO to Drugs" badges I had pinned on my pencil case (which I had in my bag) came off and the needle got all bent. It protruded out from the base of my bag, and the moment I unslung it and tried placing it on my lap in the car, it hurt. The needle went straight in for a bit. There's a hole in my thigh now. Really. Doesn't hurt that much though; like a bit of a bruise.

Shall try lying on my bed for a bit and attempt to fall asleep.


EDIT: Realised that the badge read "Drugs are not child's play" and not "Say NO to Drugs". Apparently needles aren't, either.

ROFL now this was some funny. Quotes extracted from Adrian on MSN:

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i wana buy pokemon diamond

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
T_T

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i shall buy diamond

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
yes

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
;(


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i wana catch pokemon

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
;(((((


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
The protagonist must simultaneously thwart the agenda of the criminal organization Team Galaxy.

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i want beat them

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
;((((


There's more! =p


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
pokemon r cool

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i wana catch em all


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
and become pokemon master

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
thats my life long dream


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
Below Shin'ou is an underground world, used for multiplayer gaming

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
zomg

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
i can battle with other pro trAIners like me

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
^^

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
The biggest addition to the series is the ability to go online via Wi-Fi and not only do battle against other trainers, but trade and collect Pokemon on a world-wide scale


lawl aresenal stun tio says:
andrew

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
catch em all wif me

lawl aresenal stun tio says:
;((((



*COUGH*

um...nevermind.


It's nice to see how Adrian is all grown-up now *sniff*


HAHAHA <3

Life for you has been less than kind

So take a number stand in line

We've all been sorry, we've all been hurt

But how we survive, is what makes us who we are

If you ask me to describe how I'm feeling about Biology practical, it's this.

Livid.

Of course I can say I'm that I'm fucking pissed with the ambiguous instructions and myself, in addition to being absolutely disappointed (an understatement) that I gave away half my marks, but I think livid should suffice.

I didn't finish a quarter of the paper. Absolutely blank. Okay here's the deal; One O level answer booklet, one graph paper. We were supposed to draw some effing outlines of rings of onion on the damned piece of graph paper. I didn't know we weren't going to hand it up. Sure, the fucking instructions said that "at the end of the exam, place the graph paper on the bench", but it didn't say that we weren't going to hand it in at all. I thought that the graph paper would be collected as part of the exam script as well, and I spent about half an hour drawing and labelling everything nicely. Son of a bitch. Why the hell didn't my examiners point out the fact that THE GRAPH PAPER WAS FOR MEASUREMENT PURPOSES ONLY? IT WAS DONE IN THE OTHER LABS. Bullshit double standards.

Left 12 marks worth of questions undone. And when the time was up, I flipped through the question paper and I KNEW HOW TO DO ALL THE DAMNED QUESTIONS. Maybe not get all the marks, but almost all.

What pissed me off even more was that in the AV theatrette during lockup, people around me were bitching about how they'd lost 2-3 marks. Some slightly worse; 5 marks? 8 marks? Sorry but I lost about 15. The last time I checked 15 was a larger number than 8 i.e. 15 > 8 if you don't understand what I mean so get lost, dumbfuck. You like bitching in my face? How about my fist in yours? Naturally, I'm not trying to offend anyone on purpose, but if you read this and are offended, then it's because you're one of those assholes who were whining. If you're not one of them and are still offended, then I really must apologise.

If someone had just said that the graph paper was not going to be collected but rather shredded at the end of the exam, things wouldn't have turned out like this. Of course, a bit of the blame has to be put on me for being such a fuckwit, but in this case I felt that the instructions given weren't good enough.

Thanks for screwing up my Bio, examiners! It was supposed to be my cushion subject, the one where I was supposed to be an almost guaranteed A1 in.

Here's a fantastic example of how dysfunctional I am:

O level Biology practical exam is in 11 hours time, and all I'm concerned with right now is to frantically load songs into my PDA so I can bring it and listen to songs tomorrow during the lockup period after the exam. Normally I listen to songs on my phone, but after bringing a handphone almost everyday to school for the past 2 years, I've decided to abide by the rules for once. No sense risking it in an O level exam.

Now why can't my damned laptop read my 2GB memory card?



P.S. KY take all the photos from me you want. I won't sue you for IP theft =P


EDIT: Finally figured out how to transfer the songs. About 9 hours left, and I'm still transferring songs. 20+ more to go, I think. I liken myself to a sitting duck waiting to be shot.

My blog layout was screwed up, I got pissed off and I erased the whole thing and replaced it with this. It's still screwed somewhat, but at least I know what's wrong now.

Biology practical exam is tomorrow! Time really does just slip by. Damn, life really does give you a good kick in the balls when you're not looking. You don't use your time well, it slowly trickles away, which is what has happened. AGAIN. I'm not going to read every single chapter like some people do, no offence of course, simply because I think it's a bit of an overkill. But I do hope I'll be prepared by tomorrow morning. Going to do a bit of math, of which I'm still horrible at, a dash of Chemistry and I'll be done.

I've nothing else to type about right now, and I'm not going to scratch my head over it, seeing I need the brain cells to study, so today's post (or at least the one for now) will end, just like that.

The ten years of Maris Stella life are officially over with yesterday's Leavers' Ceremony. Wow. Just like that, you know? The memories of last night will always be poignant ones kept close to my heart. The video and slideshows. The ambience. The performance. The ceremony and the dinner, a fairly grand and well-planned affair complete with lighted candles on a round table sprinkled with flowers. And the photos. Gosh. I'll never forget. Of course the photos I took will help me as well =P

Final L1R5: 16. Looks like the further moderation after the first round didn't do anything.
L1R4: 9. Haha now 9 points for L1R5 would look fairly good on an O level results slip.

Got a Merit award for CCA. They don't base what you get on points though, seeing I got 37. But it doesn't matter anymore.

Anyway, here are the photos I took or had someone send me:



Adrian and I. I have eyebags =(



Felix and me ^_^ Notice the red tie I have on.



From left to right: Mr Denis Koh, Zhi Yi, myself and Nigel



I notice that I'm grinning in every photo I took.



Bing Wen and Felix. They weren't looking at my camera. Or phone that is =)


Miss Tan and myself =D. I'm slouching, though.


BW and Miss Tan



mforce



meeekeey




There are more photos, but I kind of missed them while uploading. Well nevermind that. Once again, I need to start studying. And I shall start on Monday. Which is what I told myself last week. And the week before that. Yikes.

Going off for SAJC open house now.

Normally I try to stay away from politics and other serious matters, choosing to dwell more on more lighthearted issues and boring dictations of what happened during my day, but this time I feel it's different.

North Korea has successfully conducted a nuclear test. Now, I'm not going to act as if I know it all and say that I understand everything this entails, but I know enough to know that it's really bad. For a long time now the North Korean (Democratic People's Republic of Korea? It's a Communist country for crying out loud. Oh the irony.) government has acted like nothing more than a petulant schoolboy, throwing tantrums and getting back at the US by counterfeiting the greenback. Countries opposed to them have responded with economic sanctions and suspension of food aid, and still North Korea persisted. Not in a good way, I might add. If you take a look at a timeline of events leading to the nuclear test, it's apparent that North Korea never was serious about the six-party talks, only wanting to gain financial relief for other countries in exchange for not developing its nuclear programme. Well it did anyway.

It seems that the North Korean government counterfeited extremely high-quality fake US dollars in an attempt to destabilise the US economy. Now I don't really support the US, but a government actually counterfeiting the currency of other countries? Shit. Now I've seen it all. And their government, instead of spending all that money to develop the country uses it to develop missile and nuclear technology instead. Wow that is some smarts there. You can't even support your own people, your citizens are living in poverty and you still want to develop nukes for "national security"? What kind of crappy analogy is that? What a joke. And Singaporeans love to critique our own government, which I admit openly I support. People here always seem to take our security, stability and uncorrupt governent for granted. Go over to North Korea, I say. Maybe you and Kim Jong Il can be best buddies. If he doesn't shoot you, that is. While you're at it, please get him to change his hairstyle too. Millions of bucks spent a nuclear programme and he can't even get a proper haircut.

We have a world crisis on our hands, and someone really should get a proper hairstylist for the president of North Korea. What's next? Iran, now?

Last Friday was the last official day of school for the graduating class of secondary fours 2006. Ten years in the school have gone by. Just like that. It always seems like forever when you're in anticipation of the future, but the past always seems to shimmy by, like sand in the hourglass. Each moment you partake of in the present, immediately becomes a thing of the past. You want to savour the moment, but it has already made the transition into the next. Maybe the next will be better; maybe it will take a turn for the worse. Who's to say?

I still remember life in primary school. Zero studying. Only had to read through my textbooks for PSLE. If only school life were still like that now. Haha I wish. Of course, that isn't what I find most memorable. I have glimpses of memories fond and bad in both secondary and primary school, and some that have no significance whatsoever. But now this chapter in my life is coming to an end, culminating in this Friday's Leaver Ceremony and the O levels at the end of it. As one door closes, however, another one opens. Let's just hope it's a good one.

Got back all the class photos we were supposed to get, including an individual photograph of each of us in blazers. I must say, don't scroll down if

1) You've just eaten
2) You're still eating
3) Your pastime is sniggering at others' looks


Absolutely horrible. I don't why they photoshopped my face. I have pimples and spots, dammit. Touching up a little by removing the pimples is fine, but making my face totally spotless makes me look positively embalmed, like some cadaver propped up on a stool with eyes pried open. I know I'm not good looking but I'll say I'm not particularly hideous, either. This, however is totally ridiculous. Once again, don't look if you're squeamish.

Here is my absolutely horrific individual photograph:




Ouch.



Compare this to how I look in the class photo:




Granted, my hair's still bad, and it is from a distance after all, so my imperfections aren't that obvious. Still, my point is that photoshop isn't always good, especially when someone you don't know is doing it for you.


That's all for now, I think.


P.S. I don't love myself so much that I want to showcase how 'good-looking' I am. If I really were that narcissistic, I'd only post all the nice photos. I'm only trying to make a point.

The air outside sucks. Not something you hear everyday, I might add. Saying that the food in the school canteen is crap is one thing, with comparisons to dog food commonplace, but the forest fires in Indonesia are making normally incongrous-sounding remarks sound totally okay. And that is not okay.

It's those damned farmers with their slash and burn farming techniques. If you want to pollute your own damned air, by all means be my guest. But now the wind's blown all that stupid haze here, and there'll be no dearth of respiratory complaints, I'll say. Bloody hell.

Walking outdoors everyday is killing my lungs. I've got phlegm constantly lodged in my pharyx and it's giving my voice an irritating nasal quality sometimes. In addition to the negative effects to health, the air positively stinks too. I mean, it's totally more than enough that I'm shortening my life here, now there's insult to injury by having the air smell as well? Just great. If the problem is insidious and nobody really knows, fine, that's screwed enough. But now we have to live with this problem and can't do nuts about it.

It is in this light that I would like to suggest a couple of things that we can do to solve this problem:

1) Build hundreds of gigantic fans and blow all that damned haze back to where it belongs. But since our government is always looking for diplomatic ways to resolve problems, maybe solution #2 is more feasible.

2) Build hundreds of gigantic vacuum cleaners to suck all the haze in. Smelly smoke goes in, clean air comes out. Voila. Problem solved.

3) Since none of these solutions actually work, maybe we can all take an out-of-the-box approach to all this. I read a report somewhere that scuba-diving course fees are going down, and that more people are taking it up because of this. I say, what the hell. Everyone now has an addition excuse to go for such a course, since we all now have the opportunity to practice scuba-diving with oxygen tanks and a mask on land first. Who needs water when you can practice carrying the equipment on land? Better still, you won't need diving suits, flippers or any of those things. Saves money too.

I hate the haze.

L1R5 moderated to 16 points. An A2 now for English, which is still crap. A2 for E Math, which isn't bad - was originally B3.

I have arrived at the light at the end of the tunnel. The one that illuminates the surrounding area, and yet that very light fails to penetrate the pitch darkness of the next tunnel I must negotiate; the one leading to the O levels is filled with potholes and alternating paths.

And so it is with human nature - reluctance to give up comfort and solace to venture into the unknown void. No, I must be careful now, not to be enamoured by the effulgence of this light and neglect to take the next step. Because the battle's only half-over, and all the effort will go to naught if I fail to deliver the killing blow at the end.

L1R5 total: 19 points.

English B3
Biology A1
Chemistry A2
E Maths B4
Combined Humanities C6 (moderation saved my arse)
Chinese B3


Not happy about it at all. Screwed up my English, Combined Humanities and Chinese. Damned prelim 1 pulled my Chemistry A1 down to a 2, and my E Math B3 to a 4. Didn't meet expectations for anything except Biology.

Oh well. Take away 4 points from that for CCA and affiliation to CJC and I should still be able to make it for the first 3 months. If I'm going, that is.

Had a fight with my dad. No, not a physical fight.

I was supposed to meet Hao Bin at McDonald's last night at 8.30pm. Last minute thing, you know, he asked me online and I agreed. So I told my mom I was going out, dad flared up, shouted that he didn't believe me. I got pissed off simply because he couldn't say it nicely. So I shouted back. Had a little bit of an argument. Seems I've got the louder voice. I'd like to think my voice carried over to the surrounding blocks. My word of command won't suffer, then.

I'm not particularly angry anymore, but it's always fun when your dad doesn't believe you, isn't it? Whoops, sorry, forgot to turn the sarcasm off.