perspicacious

2011-11-15T05:10:00.000-08:00

A nurse turns out of the corridor and calls what I think is my name. But she pronounces it wrong, and instantly I am torn- do I answer? What if it's not me?

She calls again, sounding just a little bit more irate. I decide to risk it, and tentatively raise a shaky hand.

The nurse sighs and comes over. "Ho York Leng?"

She has the intonations all wrong. "Ho Yoke Eng," I say.

"Ho York Leng?" she repeats, and she is still wrong. We do-si-do for a while, but she is starting to look annoyed, so I give in and admit to being somebody that I am not.

She says something in English, and gestures to a board with flashing numbers behind her. I do not speak English, but I gather from her tone and how she rolls her eyes skywards is that she is berating me for something about those numbers.

I look at the board, and the numbers swim. I try to apologize, to tell her that I didn't do it willfully, and that I didn't know what those numbers were for, and that I am not what she thinks I am. But words fail me, and I am left stammering away in Chinese.

The nurse seems to sense my discomfort and her eyes soften. "Have you eaten?" she asks me in Chinese.

This courtesy is one that I am familiar with, and I nod, finally able to find my ground in this alien and terrifying environment.

But it seems that was the wrong answer to give- her expression instantly returns to that now-familiar annoyance. "You weren't supposed to eat! You have to do a blood test, and now that you've eaten, you can't do it anymore!"

I am lost. No one had told me that before- at least not in a language I understood. I open my mouth, wanting to say something in defense of myself, but she has turned away in exasperation to tell on me to the doctor.

I close my mouth. Once again, I am a lost child, trying to understand the world of adults, who show their wiseness by jabbering away in English, and feeling exasperated by this slow old lady who does not understand the simplest things.

Do they know that as a child, I, too, was top of my class?

Seniors make me laugh

2011-04-16T23:34:00.001-07:00

I overheard this dialogue between seniors on the shooting line that day, and it was so very random that it made me laugh:

Senior 1: "ehh. I want to shoot the centre target. You shoot extreme left la."
Senior 2: "YOUR MUM. I'm shooting centre."
Senior 1: -pokes senior 2 in the eye with an arrow fletch-
Senior 1: "BALLS what did you do that for!!"

Observing how guys interact with each other is really amusing. Their propensity to use creative swears which don't even relate to the topic- "your mum"- is so very hilarious.

2010-09-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Perhaps?

Inbreeding

2010-09-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

I fear that someday, we shall all become inbred children of generations of elite-school-kids.

You see, the IP crams people together from the moment they accept that invitation in P6. Hence poor children who don't know better are immediately dunked into one of a few IP categories-- back in my day it was just Raffles or Hwachong, depending on what JC you were set to go to, but now apparently ACS and VJC have their matchmaking offices up too.

Matchmaking office! I love that word. It's like, they get a constant inflow of boys and girls from their feeder schools, who are thrown together for two years and eventually fall in love and get married and have 2.1 kids, just like the good civil servants they have been bred to be.

So from that moment you accepted that invitation in P6, your destiny to become part of a giant inbreeding conspiracy was sealed.

Think-- what happens to the 2.1 kids of the couple of said JC? Let's just use RJ for simplicity's sake; you may substitute it with whichever JC you are currently schooling in and its respective feeder schools for RG and RI. The phenomenon still stands (arguably stronger in certain JCs, but yeah.)

So. RG girl and RI boy meet in RJ. They fall in love, due to the hormones they have been repressing (or, shockingly, not) in their respective single sex schools. They have 2.1 kids. And these 2.1 kids (obviously a boy and a girl) grow up, take their PSLE/apply for DSA and which schools will be their first choice?

This evidently results in a vicious cycle, the product of which are what now appear as "2nd-generation Raffles", "3rd-generation Raffles", and even "5th-generation Raffles", as appeared at our Founders' Day last year.

In a couple of generations (depending on how fast people act) you will have people going: "And my mother was from RGS. And my mother's mother was from RGS. And my mother's mother's mother was from RGS. And my..." and this will not be an exaggeration.

Obviously this rate of population growth is rather unsustainable, and within a number of generation all Raffles people will be related to each other. Your seatmate will be your second cousin thrice removed and your CCA chairperson will be your great-grandaunt. Eventually the population might dwindle to the point where there is only one boy and only one girl left, and they will be forced to mate with each other despite being siblings. And then it will proceed from being inbreeding to incest.

Okay what the hell I don't really know what I'm talking about, knowing next to nothing about population growth/shrinkage, but the inbreeding trend still applies.

We have got to stop inbreeding before Singapore becomes divided along the lines of IP schools. The pledge will have to be changed to read "regardless of race, language, JC, or religion". Is this a future you want for Singapore?

Stop inbreeding today.

2010-09-02T03:30:00.001-07:00

I think DCT and Functionalism are both equally annoying theories, and both equally inaccurate.

DCT totally fails when approached with the Euthyphro dilemma (Is stuff moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral?) unless you accept the argument that God is by definition moral, which I don't. That generally requires some other standard of morality in the first place.

And then there's functionalism, which ascribes immoral motivations to moral actions. So the only reason why I'm not killing people right now is because I don't want people to kill me.

(Then again, yeah, that is the reason I'm not on a killing spree right now.)

But then it of course ascribes odd motivations to every nice action, saying that people generally don't do nice stuff for the sake of being nice. So that nice uncle who bought you a sweet when you were 5 didn't do it to see the smile on your face; he did it so he could kidnap you/rape you/murder you.

I MEAN, HELLO, HOW MUCH MORE CYNICAL CAN YOU GET?

There are times I wonder whether I would have been more idealistic if I hadn't learnt Philo. But then of course I would be dumber, which would have not been very nice.

I saw this quote in a Bertrand Russell essay which I liked: something about people around you: even though they have bodies and semblances of thought, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have a brain.

This reeks of elitism, but I assure you it was in the context of skepticism: I know that I exist, but how do I know that YOU exist? Just because you say you exist doesn't convince me a bit. My dreams tell me they exist too.

How do I know my blog isn't completely devoid of readers now?

DO YOU EXIST, READERS?

Nah, I thought not. I am sure that I'm the only one who actually exists around here.

2010-07-14T06:20:00.001-07:00

Why does this Preston MS mouth piece guy keep writing the same articles? It's like saying Feminine hygiene products work better on women then men. Why do the Microlemmings keep trying to compare who has better security when it's a non issue on the Mac? For having such bad security why do the PC IT guys spend half there time chasing virus's and I spend 0

2010-04-05T01:57:00.001-07:00

I have finally figured out what I aspire to be in life!!

I want to be as disturbingly honest as Mr Azahar. And I'm not worried that he'll read this because like he said, he "doesn't use the internet". And claims not to be part of the "they" that don't O:

So anyway, that day when we were doing research in the library, he came over and asked who I was. Which was kind of disturbing, because I HAVE been trying to speak during class. Maybe I don't make much sense, but hey at least it's the thought that counts, right?

So I told him who I was, and he was all "Ohh. Yeah, I know WHO you are, but because you sit at the back I can't read your nametag, so until now I didn't know what your name was."

All this in a very disturbingly matter-of-fact tone.

And then "Girls, please don't email me. I never read my email. Except emails from the principal. My students in Sec 1 emailed me. I think I still have unread mail from 2006."

And today: "I collated your powerpoints. This one was very good, but there was this chunk of text that I didn't understand. So I deleted it."

I DUNNO HOW TO SAY IT BUT IT'S VERY JOSHNG.

So I totally aspire to be like the both of them. Because I think it's totally cool how they can be so very honest and still feel unperturbed about it.

Lit short story

2010-03-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

“Ah sao, 100 eggs please.”

“Wah, making red eggs already? Congratulations on your new grandson!”

“Yah, so fast already man yue. Seems like just yesterday he was born.”

“Who does he look like?”

“I think he looks like his father, but his parents thinks he looks like his mother. But nowadays, all these young people—what do they know? Just yesterday, my daughter-in-law suddenly says that she wants to order the red eggs from that shop, that Bengawan Solo or something. You tell me, how can?”

“Correct lor, store-bought things still not as good as the ones you make yourself. 100 eggs, right? Let me see, 10 for $1.30, so 100 for…”

“All these young people nowadays, they think whatever is branded is good. Must buy don’t know what corn eggs ah, organic eggs ah, so confusing. Some more so expensive. Eggs how much again?”

“Ah, $13. That day my daughter also, went to buy so many baby clothes from that shopping mall. So expensive, you know, one small shirt already cost $20! Next door that clothes stall, two for $5!”

“Which reminds me, I need to buy more baby clothes for him also. They grow so big, so fast! $13, too expensive lah, give it to me for $10, can?”

“Okay, since it’s your grandson’s man yue. Congratulations again, ah.”

"Thank you.”

II.

The old lady moves slowly, but steadily, up to the sugar cane juice stall. It’s not particularly famous; it doesn’t have those pictures of the stall owner shaking hands with famous actors. In fact, it is an ordinary sugar cane stall, of the exact same kind that can be found opposite her house.

But when you’re old, you have ample time to spend, and it is always in her interest to stay out as long as possible before returning to that empty, empty house. So although she had to change buses twice to get to this market, just to buy the sugar cane juice that can be found opposite her house, it doesn’t matter to her.

After all, when you’re old, you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want, including changing buses twice to get to a market for sugar cane juice that can actually be found opposite your house.

III.

A group of ladies seat themselves around a table, armed with their usual fare of chee chong fun and Kopi-O. However, there is something unusual about today’s gathering—one of their number is absent.

“I wonder how Chun’s mammogram is going,” murmurs one solemnly. “I had a friend who went for one of these, and then they found out she had stage 4 cancer. I don’t think I’d want to know if I had cancer.”

“Choy! Don’t say things like that. It’s good to do all these checks early. My doctor, he says if you find it early, it’s very easy to treat,” adds another, nodding reverently at the mention of the doctor.

In response to that, a flurry of conversation bursts out, exchanging snippets of what various doctors and specialists had said previously at various visits.

“Now cancer is not the dangerous thing already, it’s that osteoporo—osteoporosis. The one where your bone disappears, or something.” One of them offers up, in an attempt to point the conversation in a less morbid direction.

The one on her right starts excitedly, the jade and gold bangles on her hands clinking together. “That’s why I drink that Anlene milk, you know, the one that Michelle Yeoh advertises. And I take those calcium supplements, every day, twice a day, if I don’t want to end up in a wheelchair when I’m 80.”

“But I also heard that taking calcium isn’t enough! I mean, I also take, but they said that you must also take some pills to seal the calcium in, otherwise it will all just leak out again.”

And so the conversation continues on and on about the benefits and detriments of various pills and supplements, just like any other conversation they had in their younger days about makeup, or clothes, or anything else under the sun.

IV.

They sat down at an empty table, that mother with her children and her maid supporting her on either side. She orders a bowl of pork porridge, and a cup of tea, and stares at it for a while, without saying anything.

“Your Pa used to love eating this-”

She trails off, perhaps thinking back upon the times that they had shared. Something glistens in her eye, but she quickly blinks it back. Picking up a spoon, she scoops up a little of the porridge, and tries it, almost tentatively, as though to see what would happen.

“Ma, are you okay?” Her son is concerned. His mother had been melancholy ever since the passing of her husband, and he was silently worried that going to pray to him this morning would make her depressed all over again.

She sits, and observes the porridge for a little while longer. “Sheng, lao, bing, si. People are born, people grow old, people get sick, and then people die. That’s just how life is.”

“Yes, that’s how it is,” she repeats, with more conviction. “That’s just how life is.”

And she continues eating, as if on behalf of her late husband, having found strength in the truth that she has just discovered.

2010-03-08T05:43:00.000-08:00

I really hate it when people can't differentiate between two words that LOOK similar, but mean horribly different things.

For example, someone once sent me many many emails, before finishing off with a "Sorry for all the spasm!"

Apparently, someone thinks that all those emails that usually go into your Junk folder are called "spasms". So I wonder what those jerky actions that come about as a result of fits or something are called. I suppose she would refer to them as "spam". Like, "Damn, could you please stop thrashing around wildly over there? You're really spamming me!"

And of course, you'd get, in your Inbox:

"What? I'll get a million dollars if I give you my account deta-ARGHHHH SDFDKHGJHFDJ HAHGJ HASDJFHAJ SDHFJ ADFHKAJSDFKJASKGJKSDFJKSJDHS??!!?!?!?!"

...spasm mail.

If you didn't get that, shame on you. It was such an obvious joke.

2010-03-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

Tis the night before NOI, and I'm freaking out.

I spent the last half an hour doing calming stuff, and trying to boost my confidence by looking at the score table, where I have JUST overtaken Zhanxiong. (Sure his problems are more difficult, but WHATEVER.)

And then feeling sufficiently calmed and confident, I logged onto Facebook, and saw this:

"

XXX: yeah! got pyhumod working through my e220 on my mac. worked up a nifty python script to mass-sms from a text file :D takes 25 seconds to send 9 messages!"

And then, in the comments, this: " just like my Cobra SDH12C92SK23!"

This is my worst nightmare. A bunch of geekgods talking about cheem computer things that consist of a series of capital letters and odd numbers.

I think this is a sign. I am going to die tomorrow.

2010-02-25T05:20:00.000-08:00

My uncle was cremated yesterday.

We all said the appropriate prayers the night before, and we knelt on straw mats and burned joss sticks and wore white shirts like we ought to.

Before they closed the coffin, they told us all to take a last good look at him, and we did, and most of us cried.

They moved the coffin into the van, and we walked behind it slowly, and holding to some semblance of tradition, wearing only thin socks that made us only too aware of the noontime asphalt beneath our feet.

Like all corteges, we cried.

And then, at the main road, we stopped to get into an airconditioned bus.

Somehow it only made me sadder-- while we were walking on the hot road it seemed at least fair: the ground burned our feet, but it definitely didn't hurt as much as dying. To follow behind in a comfortable bus seemed rather sacrilegious.

Mandai was strangely high-tech. They had all these machines to transport the coffins and everything. They wheeled the coffin into a service room, where we prayed one last time, and then this guy came and wheeled the coffin out. We watched the coffin move towards its cremation from afar, not carried by human hands but transported along this track, on an automated machine with doors that opened automatically.

It was extremely efficient, but somehow I can't shake this feeling of emptiness; I was already feeling kind of guilty for not getting to know him earlier, but seeing him sent off by machines, not us, made me feel even more guilty.

I don't know; maybe it's just PMS (hopefully).

And I felt totally like a huge idiot because I had to explain to Mr Toh why I needed to take leave of absence, and he was very sympathetic about it and somehow it made me cry :/ And then I think it might have kind of ruined his reputation a little bit, because all these teachers were staring and I think they might have thought that he made me cry by being mean or something.

Sigh.

2010-02-02T02:29:00.000-08:00

I have coined a new term: Munslut.

It's pronounced mahn-slaht, not moonsloot or however you might mangle it.

It is basically two words combined: Mun, as in Model United Nations, and slut, which is pretty self explanatory. So that should give you a rough idea of what the munslut is.

Usage is as such: "You're a munslut." "She's such a munslut!" Not very creative, but enough for you to get the idea.

The munslut, as suggested by the "mun" part of it, prowls around MUNs looking for new prey. She (or he) exchanges MSN addresses with them; all done in the name of making alliances, but seriously what goes on in MSN stays in MSN and so no one will ever know if it was an alliance or a date that was made.

During the actual conference, they sit there, trying to look pretty, and may occassionally make an airheaded or stupid comment, something along the lines of "XXX effect is an effect which has an immediate effect." She may not actually understand the issues being discussed, but why let that get in the way of -bimbo laugh- socialising?

Then at the dinner and dance, they unleash their true powers of evil. Cue slinky dresses that are too short to cover-- OH MY GOD IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS!!! and makeup-- by the truckload, please.

They grab a hapless victim, and then drag them into their lair, and start making out with them. But that is by no means a gurantee of their affection, for they might bore and switch targets within any time between 5 seconds to an hour. Some take it a step further and, so I hear, even get laid.

So there you have it. A munslut.

2010-01-14T06:14:00.001-08:00

"once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour," 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!" quoth the server, 404."

the reverse graffitti movement

2009-10-02T02:52:00.000-07:00

After RALA ended at three (fifty-nine) Crystal and I made a furtive dash for freedom, more commonly known as the wanton mee shop at Far East. Sorry, but when it's 4pm and you haven't eaten lunch yet, you kind of get really desperate for food.

I was happily finishing off a bowl of wanton mee faster than lightning and at the same time reading the table, because the wanton mee shop lets you graffitti all over the place. And who doesn't like a bit of educational literature during meals? (Yes, when I was little I used to read playgrounds too.)

Anyway, I saw something that looked long and tube-like and remarked to Crystal: "Gosh, people seem to have this weird urge to draw middle fingers whenever they graffitti stuff."

Crystal examined the table and said, "Where?"

I pointed it out to her.

She looked at it, and then looked up and said in a rather apprehensive tone: "Vic, that's not a middle finger."

I looked at it again, and it was long and tubular, just like middle fingers are. "It looks like a middle finger to me."

Crystal smiled.

I looked puzzled.

She smiled even bigger.

I continued to look puzzled.

"Vic, that's a human phallus."

I fairly screamed. Middle fingers are okay, but phalluses (phalli?) are just disturbing. I indicated the other long tubular objects around the human phallus. "So these are phalluses too? I thought they were middle fingers!"

In any case, I came up with a new idea: reverse graffitti! Instead of going around drawing phalluses, we draw good things!

Like Barney, which is the emblem of all things cheery and child-suitable. I drew a huge barney at the side, as well as a huge "THOU SHALT NOT" next to a stick figure which seemed to be grabbing his... ahem.

I was saddened to read your letter

2009-06-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

I WAS saddened to read the report, “Stop hogging that priority seat!” (my paper, June 1).

The seat hoggers are young, are likely to be well-educated and seem to lead a comfortable lifestyle, judging from their clothes and laptops.

The examples shown in the report say a lot about Singapore’s education system, social norms, its people’s values and the failure of families in bringing up their kids well.

If this behaviour goes on, the authorities might well have to resort to enacting laws to punish priority-seat hoggers. This is the last thing we want to see happening in Singapore. We have been there, from littering fines to a chewing-gum ban. These laws have cemented Singapore’s unique place in the world and have made us an international laughing stock.

Such rules are unnecessary in a gracious society.

Before drastic measures are needed, I have a few suggestions on how to alleviate the situation:

1.Play announcements
Install buttons in train carriages which passengers can use. A press of the button would trigger an announcement over the PA system, telling riders to give up priority seats to those in need. It would be even better if speakers for such announcements could be fixed just above priority seats, but that might not be cost-effective.

2. Have alert-song download
Train operators could start a paid download service. Commuters can access this service to
download a song on their mobile phones, which they can play to alert others to the fact that
someone needs a priority seat. Telephone numbers for the service could be put up in trains. The pressure of a few commuters playing the song loudly would send a strong message to priority-seat hoggers. Train operators could also gain some revenue from charging for downloads of the song.

3. Up number of priority seats
Increase the number of priority seats to three or four in each row of seats. The seats should also
be brightly coloured.

Mr David Lim Phai Ik

Taken from mypaper, 3rd June 2009. I shall now provide a disclaimer, in that I am slamming this simply because I think it is absolute crap, which I shall justify later in my arguments. I am not slamming it because I have elitist attitudes, or whatever. And now, I shall proceed to slam it.

1. A triple-fallacy argument
P1: All seat hoggers are young.
P2: All seat hoggers are well-educated.
C: OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM SUCKS!!!!!!!!!111

Like, whooo it's so edgy being anti-government. Not all seat hoggers are teenagers. Just because the three measly photos caught in the actual report happen to be of young people, you can't conclude that based on three measly photos, all seat hoggers are young. DING DING DING DING DING HASTY GENERALISATION.

And can you really blame just about everyone for the kid not turning out, as you say so poshly, "well-educated"? Isn't that so very convinient? If you turn out to be a bad egg simply because you didn't listen to CME lessons or your parents or social norms, would it not be easier to just admit that it's your own fault?

2. We have to enact laws?
No. We don't.

3. You're the laughingstock.
Sure, because every other city around the world doesn't have littering laws as well. That's why their sidewalks are always so clean, and pristine, and OH DAMN WHAT SUSPICIOUS LITTERED OBJECT IS THAT ON MY SHOE?

And you CAN eat chewing gum in Singapore. The ban's only a technical one. When was the last time you saw someone getting prosecuted for chewing gum?

4. Your First Suggestion.
Please, sir, do take the train. They actually make announcements telling people nicely to get off their asses and give up the priority seat. And besides, since you have such a low opinion of Singaporeans' social responsibility, what makes you so damn sure that you won't get some itchyfingers kid pressing that button about a million times? "Please give up your seats please give up your seats please give up your seats please give up your seats" gets kind of annoying after the first billion times.

And yes, it's good that you know that installing dedicated speakers to blast annoying announcements into people's ears is not particularly cost-effective. It's heartening to see some display of thinking skills. But since you already know, then why put it in?

5. Your Second Suggestion.
See point 4., part about annoying after the first billion times.

Also, you might have noted, on your biannual train trips, that some people sleep on the train. Some people are really tired to the extent that they really cannot help but catch a few minutes of well-deserved sleep on the train. Would it justify waking all of them up every few stops just to ensure that someone gives up his seat?

Not all commuters enjoy your taste in music. If you want to blast music, buy yourself a train and not do it on a public train. It gets irritating and disturbs other commuters as well.

And I have a suggestion for you too. I know a cheaper and more direct way to go about doing this. If it irks you so very much, go up to whoever you perceive is "seat-hogging" and tell them to stop it. If you have a fear of confrontation, then live with it. Don't hide behind a wall of anonymity and feel secure. If you really believe in it, then you ought to stand up for it.

6. Your Third Suggestion
Like I mentioned earlier, you might want to actually consider taking the train. Maybe then you might notice that there already ARE four priority seats per row, and they are fairly brightly coloured already.

--

In any case, I'm really annoyed with all these people who get so holier-than-thou over priority seats. The way I see it, priority seats are a luxury, and not a right.

And besides, I wish people would stop looking at a young person sitting in a priority seat, and an old person standing up, and jumping to conclusions. I have, on occassion, offered my seat to an old person, only to have them 1. stare at me indignantly and go, "no need! I can stand!" or 2. "nevermind, you sit la. I'm getting off at the next stop."

Perhaps then, I ought to stand up and bodyslam them down into the priority seat?

And I hate it when there's a notion that if you are young and you sit on the priority seat, you don't deserve it and you most certainly do not have any extenuating circumstances, like a sprained ankle or a killer stomachache.

Or then, maybe, before sitting on a priority seat, should we announce loudly to the entire cabin: "DEAR EVERYONE. I HAVE A SPRAINED ANKLE, AND THEREFORE I SHALL SIT ON THIS PRIORITY SEAT NOW. HERE IS MY DOCTOR'S CERTIFICATE. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COME TO ME TO CHECK IT IF NECCESSARY."

Ah well. These people who constantly write in to the forums really annoy me. They fancy themselves frightfully opiniated and agents of change, but in reality they're just whiny losers with too much time to spare.

2009-04-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU SPOTTED IN MEXICO! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU SPREAD TO USA! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU CAN PASS FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"
"VIC! HAVE YOU HEARD? SWINE FLU! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

That, roughly, is the gist of what I've been hearing the last three days. Swine flu, swine flu, swine flu, we're all going to die woohoo.

PEOPLE. SHUT UP. WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE.

Human-to-human contact? YOU MISSED OUT THE "LIMITED" IN FRONT. LIMITED human-to-human contact is NOT the same as rapid, widespread, epidemic proportions human-to-human contact.

Augh if I had a dollar for every ridiculous statement made regarding swine flu, I'd be a millionaire. Sure, knowledge is important, but we could do without the generous heaping of paranoia on the side, thank you very much. Everything that come out of the mouths of people nowadays is twisted beyond recognition, creating a whole generation of paranoid people.

I was at Serangoon Interchange just now when I choked on a bit of my drink. Instantly the group of people surrounding me took one step away. And then I sneezed, and they tried to shift as far away as possible without actually turning around and screaming.

Sigh I'm not making much sense now, but I am really, really, REALLY annoyed by people who think that providing people with little snippets taken out of context is really useful.

According to news reports, researchers believe the worst is over in Mexico. That, people, is a relatively fast turnaround time. And yes, flu viruses do mutate, but as long as you don't go crazy and eat like 5 boxes of Tamiflu a day we'll be more or less okay.

Oh and please stop comparing this to Spanish Flu. Things are abit different. For one, we have better hygiene. And better drugs. And this is not 1918. So stop going all "OMG LOADS OF PEOPLE DIED IN 1918 THEREFORE WE'RE GOING TO DIE IN 2009!!!!!!!!!!!"

Go do something more useful like read xkcd. It, incidentally, has a comic about swine flu. I liked it :)

speak mandarin ads criticised

2009-04-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

I quote from today's Life!: "They [Chinese kids] weren't as good on camera or couldn't speak as fluently, so they were cut out."

No, really, serious?

Even though you took footage of kids (read: China natives) from Beijing and Shanghai? Their Chinese wasn't as good as angmoh kids? REALLY?

My god, what were the odds? All those who were brought up on Chinese can't speak as fluently (bs) or weren't as good on camera (all of them? bs) AS COMPARED TO angmoh kids?

Such pure luck and coincidence, really.

So now the aim of the Speak Mandarin Campaign has turned from making people appreciate the Chinese culture (which experts who write our compre passages often claim is the only way to make people learn Chinese) to following the in crowd, whether the in crowd happens to be Hossan Leong or random angmoh children.

People in charge of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, get this: FADS DON'T LAST. OKAY? THINGS GO IN AND OUT ALL THE TIME. Turning Chinese into a fad is just laughable, considering how much it has been emphasized that Chinese is a singularly traditional thing with, I dunno, 5000 years of history? So everyone ought to learn to go back to their roots by following a fad.

And come on, all that ad proves is that these 6 children are fluent in Chinese. Surely we can find 6 people in Singapore who are Singaporeans who are fluent in Chinese. Surely we can find people in Singapore who are more fluent in English than, say, Americans. But do you see Singaporeans on American ads?

Of course their accents would be all nice and Beijingish if they had a Beijing teacher. So unless Singapore intends to hire singularly Beijing people to be Chinese teachers in Singapore, don't expect us to have that accent.

Plus what is up with this statement: "But another viewer might be encouraged to practise more because he sees these fluent Chinese-speaking foreigners as role models."

YEAH, because everyone wants to be able to recite "xiao bai tu, bai you bai, ai chi luo buo he qing cai" fluently. And if I were to choose someone as a role model for speaking Chinese, my first choice'd be someone from China; a native speaker of Chinese, and not some random foreigner.

No one's stopping foreigners from learning Chinese, but I find it exceptionally irksome when we are expected to follow them simply and learn Chinese just because they're foreigners.

In my opinion, this ad was done in the poorest taste possible, and I simply cannot emphasize that enough. Know your audience and cater for them; if this had been done using Singaporean children I would most probably have embraced it. After all, it would have been more logical and much more effective in inspiring Singaporeans to pick up Chinese.

Screw the speak mandarin campaign. If I feel inspired to learn Chinese, it's not going to be because of a bunch of foreigners and much less because it's a fad.

evil villians with a conscience

2009-04-12T02:17:00.000-07:00

Now I have to add this disclaimer here for clarity's sake: I've never watching a single episode of R.E.M. 2, and I have no idea exactly how good they are or how much they suck. This blogpost has been pieced together entirely from the viewing of 1 ad.

So anyway, I was watching TV just now when an ad for R.E.M. 2 came on. (Incidentally, I thought R.E.M. was a really old show dating back from when I was in primary school, and about a smart girl, a bimbo and a tomboy getting together to solve crimes. I'm quite sure they moved past series 2, though)

According to what I've seen, this decade's version of R.E.M. seems to be a trio of girls with long, rebonded hair who fight crimes while dressed in the latest fashion. As a fellow female, I understand the intrinsic desire to look good all the time, but is it really practical to wear your favourite D&G white miniskirt out when fighting evil villians? And besides, wouldn't it help more to have your long rebonded hair up in a ponytail or two instead of having it swishing away in your face all the time? "Eat this, baddie- damn! I can't see! Someone get my hair out of my face!"

Plus if it's anything like the original, R.E.M. should be no stranger to the not-so-glamourous side of crime fighting: the getting knocked out with whatever happens to be on hand at the moment, and the getting tied up. Most people with common sense would have that happen to them once, and then forget it--I'm out of crime fighting. But interestingly enough, R.E.M. doesn't mind doing that not once, but about a billion times. Such masochistic tendencies.

And the most ridiculous thing about the ad: It showed one of the crime-fighting fashionistas screaming at a villian while being tied up: "YOU'RE SICK!!!!!!"

If I were the evil villian getting shouted at, I would definitely stop, put my knife down on the floor, and go: "You're right. I-- I never knew." And then I would untie them, and turn myself in at the nearest police post or check myself in for psychiatric evaluation. Because really, all evil villians capable of murdering lots of people have consciences hidden deep inside them which can be triggered easily by the average bimbo.

And of course, everyone goes home happy and contented in time for their next facial. The reality levels of some Singaporean dramas are so deplorable that the possibility that we're all part of a giant computer simulation doesn't seem that far fetched anymore.

templates for angry letters

2009-03-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

#1: The Jane Austen Angry Letter.

"Dear (insert recipient here),
I am currently penning this letter to express my severe unhappiness in your (insert service here). It is with much distaste that I report (insert incident here). I sincerely hope that my comments will be addressed and thus corrected to prevent further recurrences of such unpleasantries. Thank you for your prompt and correct attention.

Yours sincerely,
(insert writer's name here)"

#2: The Angry Angry Letter.

"Dear (insert recipient here),
What the *bleep* is *bleeping* wrong with your (insert service here)? I had to *bleeping* put up with your *bleep* (insert incident here. Punctuate with *bleep*s.) My *bleeping* comments had *bleep* well be addressed or I'll personally drag my *bleep* self over there and shove your *bleeping* (insert service here) up your *bleeping* (insert orifice here). *Bleep* you and your *bleep bleep bleep* (insert serivce here).

*Bleep*
(insert writer's name here)"

Sigh. Conceived on one of those tired 156 bus journeys home with Crystal. Not one of the better posts, but then again it's better than nothing and I am not a puppet of pop culture D:

Credits to today's RALA lesson and a discussion on angry letters for the sad post today.

assembly

2009-03-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

Sigh this whole spate of "sign each other up" things are really getting out of hand.

First there was the whole thing about Yvonne being "geh kiang" and signing everyone up for the Chem survey thing by Ms Nina Chun. And to think that this was supposed to be a "voluntary" survey, as emphasised by Ms Chun, whoever she is, herself.

I opted out, so I am thankfully freed from the burden of having to wake up especially early to go to school for the survey. I'll be in school from 7:30am onwards either way; but at least I don't have to sit for 1 hour doing a survey against my will.

I honestly hate it when people attempt to boss us around.

Quote: "I'm really sorry for sounding like a bossy bastard" Unquote. Oh, the irony. Sounding like? Sounding like is saying that you'll make us go for it, but not carrying it through. BEING, on the other hand, means that you'll say you'll make us go for it, AND THEN making us go for it.

And I'm SORRY for breaking your pipe dream, but apologizing after doing it makes no damn difference at all. Perhaps fewer people might want to wring your neck, but I resent it all the same.

It would be much less of an issue if she'd just said that; at least she'd just have been a bossy bastard and not a bossy bastard who makes full use of emotional blackmail too. I don't care if the teacher in charge is a saint, I don't care if she's the freaking second coming. Whether or not I choose (note: CHOOSE) to go for her survey has absolutely nothing at all to do with how nice she is. And that fallacy just serves to make people feel bad for saying "no", when it should be a right given to them in the first place.

Sometimes I'm quite glad I'm an emotionless and unscrupulous asshole.

And just when that was over, suddenly in comes this Lit Assembly thing. From what I know, it's supposed to be an inkspiration thing. All fine and dandy; no one's stopping inkspiration from doing their little publicity stunt or educational assembly, but I seriously don't see why they have to pull RALA in.

No, wait, let me amend that. Why they have to pull the whole of RALA in. It was at first an inkspiration thing, according to my understanding, and I was planning to stay fully out of it, when all of a sudden BAM it became a RALA thing.

I pretty much resent the implication that if you're in RALA, you should contribute to inkspiration because, well, we're in RALA and therefore supposed to be enthu about writing. I'm not. I have more things on my platter and more things to concern myself with than a hall assembly thingum. Inkspiration and RALA's boundaries seem to be fading and melding together, and I wonder how much longer we have as seperate (well, as seperate as two miscible liquids can be) entities before one becomes subsumed under the other.

And when I say I don't want to help out in this, I get emotional blackmail like "Oh, it's fine... but we really, REALLY, REALLY TRULY MADLY DEEPLY HONESTLY *insert adjectives here* need all the help we can get."

If people keep lumping inkspiration, RALA and CAP together as unseperate non-entities, I will quit RALA next year. I signed up for RALA, not inkspiration, not CAP. And honestly, that's all I want-- RALA, not inkspiration, not CAP.

freud

2009-03-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I had a very disturbing dream yesterday night.

I dreamt about NOI, and I didn't get a medal because my codes just sucked. And then I dreamt they were going through the answers and I suddenly realised that I'd misread one of the most important lines in the first question, and thus my answer was absolutely worthless.

And then I dreamt it was NAPFA, and I did 20plus pull-ups.

So is this dream indicative of the future, or indicative of what's NOT going to happen in the future? Both parts of the dream seem to be contradicting each other.

But for the record, I'd rather get a medal for NOI than be able to do 20 pull-ups.

Gosh, that was strange. I think it must be something to do with being sick :/

{EDIT} Ahhh I wish they'd just give us the results already! I've been obsessively refreshing the NOI webpage like 4832590923489 times a minute, but nothing. Nada. Zilch. I have resorted to repeating Zhenghao's words like a mantra:

Zhenghao:
ok anyway that was very well done!
i think you probably did just as well or better than the ri side

Damn the stupid Hwachong bugger who did 3 questions.

stupid little freaks

2009-02-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

People.

This "Little Mister, Little Miss" thing?

IT IS HORRENDOUSLY GAY, STUPID, AND PASSE.

Now, can we, as a culture, PLEASE move on?

I have seen about 56 updates involving Little Mr and Little Miss pictures, and I am getting BLOODY BORED OF IT. I do not want to know who is The Smiley One, The Fatass One, or The Weehee Let's Tag Everyone I Know Into A Little Miss Or Little Mister Picture Yay One. I do not CARE.

I have received about a gazibillion photos from Facebook telling me that I have been tagged in a dumb photo and casted as a primary-coloured blob. It is not particularly flattering. And while it might have been amusing the first, second, and third time, by the 4286798346273562th time it got quite annoying.

In fact, even the Mr Messy picture I was planning to put up in our control room is starting to look like a dumb and sheep-like attempt to follow a craze that originated in the 80s or so. Already RALA wants to have a Mr Loser and Miss Uncreative tshirt. If anyone else proposes a tshirt like that, I will flip and go Miss Jack The Ripper on them.

--

Sigh. Maybe the only reason I'm in such a grumpy mood today is because it's thundering, it's raining, I want bubble tea, I have two exams tomorrow, and I've developed a sudden inexplainable pain in my left leg which impedes my walking.

Then again, I really think Little Mr/Miss is really, really lame.

emergency contact

2009-02-26T05:18:00.000-08:00

Hello all RGS girls.

If you are one of those annoying dipshits who have yet to fill up the Emergency Contact List, CAN YOU JUST PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FILL IT UP?

I am bloody sick and tired of seeing that damn Emergency Contact List announcement at the top of the page of inet. If I ever find out that you are one of those shitty annoying people who have contributed to my angst and anger, I will club you over the head with a baby seal until you are knocked senseless.

On to less morbid things. I think baby seals are actually really cute and fluffy, and I wouldn't want to waste a good baby seal on annoying people who can't read font size 648957238965234 violet and red font, so maybe I'll tie them to a porcupine or something.

--

During RS we were having a little argument over who should go downstairs to wait for our student mentors and then usher them up to a classroom. Xinyuan wanted to go down, Crystal wanted to go down, I wanted to go down, and Yoon Jung was going to go upstairs to look for Charisse. We wanted to split the work equally-- 2 people to go upstairs, 2 people to go downstairs.

Me: I want to go down.
Crystal: I want to go down.
Xinyuan: I want to go down:
Me/Crystal: You don't even know what our mentors look like. ._.
Xinyuan: Someone has to go with me!
Me/Crystal: I'll go! *glares at each other*
Crystal: Well if YOU go, who's going to go up with Yoon Jung?

Xinyuan and I exchanged glances, and simultaneously yelled: "YOU!" and ran off. And then we skipped happily into the foyer. Xinyuan was walking in front of me, and she turned around to say something to me when she suddenly started laughing hysterically at something.

*terrified expression* "... she's behind me, isn't she?"

Yes, yes she was. -_- She nearly punched me or something, I dunno. I didn't stick around long enough to get punched. Our entire MPP group spent the whole of RS block waiting in the foyer for our mentors, who stood us up. Sigh.

Went to SAM for SAP today! I thought it was going to be super ulu, because cmon seriously NO ONE goes to an art museum unless made to by their teachers. Mr Wong told us worriedly that it would be rather crowded, and to stick together like a "kettle of fish", and none of us believed him because... art museums are just not crowded.

Then we got off the bus, and saw this huge crowd of HCJC people coming towards us.

We walked in, and encountered another group of students.

We walked further in, and these two cute little short HCI guys trotted past us with highpants.

Mr Wong was explaining some art piece to us, when this teacher, trailing a whole load of Yishun Sec (?) students came in and went all, "OHAI MR WONG! YOU'RE HERE TOO!"

dodgeball

2009-02-25T04:38:00.000-08:00

I'm aware that there are guys who read this blog, and therefore may feel somewhat discomfited about what I am going to post about shortly. Therefore, I shall highlight the offending paragraphs in bright red so you know for sure which ones they are, and will be able to scroll past comfortably without any damage to your sanity, purity (cough) and impression of RGS.

You have been warned.

In any case, I shall try to break this as gently as possible.

WHY IS RGS ASKING FOR OUR FREAKING BUST SIZE, OF ALL THINGS? What is wrong with going with the normal shirt size? Is this simply an attempt to pry out more private information out of RGS girls, and make those who don't have it feel inferior? (Don't have information about what your bust size is. Not don't have a bust.)

It also engenders awkward conversations to those who don't already have prior knowledge of this. Take for example this fine specimen (really happened):

Person A: Hi B! Please tell X that my bust size is *insert number here*!
Person B: *splutters*

And that is mainly the gist of what we were shouting about before exams today.

Person X: I think my bust size is maybe... 40cm?
Person Y: YOUR HEAD IS 40CM IN CIRCUMFERENCE. ARE YOUR BOOBS THE SAME SIZE AS YOUR HEAD?!
--

Guys, you can continue reading here. Hehe I actually kinda just realised that I have nothing to blog about today apart from the whole fiasco outlined in red above (YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT) except that Dr Sakhar was very nice and smsed us all in RALA the night before:

"Hey ralativists, gd luck with tom's paper and don't fret! You'll be find, we do pizza end of term to celebrate, ya? Actually it's just an excuse, but who gives a shite, as the Irish would say ha ha! Take care, and god bless for tom!"

Somehow I was one of the few who actually managed to figure out that it was Dr Sakhar and didn't sms something like "GOOD LUCK TO YOU TOO!!!" back. I thought it was pretty obvious really, considering how Dr Sakhar's the only one who uses so many bad words -_-

Crystal was imba la. Couldn't even figure out what "tom" stood for. She was asking me and fretting about it during freetime today, and to shut her up, I told her:

Me: Tom as in Mr TJ Lee la.
Crystal: Ohhhhhhhh.

-5 minutes later-

Crystal: WAIT, YOU MEAN MR LEE SET OUR LIT PAPER?!
Me: Aiya obviously tom as in TOMorrow la!

On a side note, it's kinda disturbing how everyone seems to call Mr Lee "Tommy". It makes one think more of his SON.

Hehe some class was boasting about how Mr Lee liked them so much he showed them a picture of his son. But they were telling me and Xinyuan this, and it was obviously a Bad Idea because we'd seen a picture of his son before also -_- crouched up super cutely in a little cupboard or something. PLUS WE'D SEEN HIM IN THE FLESH HA HA HA.

"They should call you Mario because you just got 1UP-ed."

and they wonder

2009-02-23T05:05:00.000-08:00

Cherylchan had to leave early during SLI rehearsal for some reason, and she tried sneaking up on me again but HAH I CAUGHT HER.

Anyway she was all "So Vic how? I leave you here you're okay right?"

I thought she was being warm and concerned and fuzzy so I replied in the affirmative.

Cherylchan: "If not okay I KILL YOU ARH!"

Sigh and everyone wonders why I'm scared of her. Actually I'm not really THAT scared of her. Not like absolutely terrified of her or anything. Except when she's being all serious and threatening and whatever. Hmm :/

So I sighed in a very long-suffering tone and whispered to Belinda, who'd heard the whole death threat: "Yah. Now you see why she's scary?" Belinda nodded fervently and got whacked by Cherylchan. Who then grinned at us and left, with that cute little fat pink bear bouncing off her red crumpler. HOW CAN ANYONE CARRYING SUCH A CUTE BEAR BE SO VIOLENT?!

Random quotes from the day since I'm half-dazed (Oh Mr Lee offered to give me back my SS FA, but I staunchly refused it. I hope he doesn't deduct my marks more upon further investigation.)

Random person below: "AV PEOPLE, CAN WE INCREASE THE VOLUME OF THE MIKE?"
Mr Lee: "NO."

Huichen: "EH! Stop tapping the mike! If you tap the mike, we'll tap you! We'll get our chairperson to tap you!" *cue disturbing imagery of Cherylchan going up behind the emcee, tapping her on the head, and watching the emcee disappear into the ground*

"I BONG YOU! HANDS UP! THIS IS A BONGGERY!"

awesome AV seniors

2009-02-22T04:42:00.000-08:00

My dear bloodthirsty AV seniors noticed my numerous plasters as soon as I saw them, and asked me what happened.

Without even waiting for an explanation, they immediately came up with their own.

"HAH I bet during Chem you were like all 'Oh, my chemicals over there', reached over, and got burnt by the bunsen burner. Then you saw a plaster on the other side, said 'Oh, must get plaster', and then got burnt again!"

Walau. Abit no confidence in my Chemistry abilities.

In any case, the first AV seniors I saw could only come up with that. Then they saw Mr Lee, who enquired about the bright yellow plasters I had on. "Well, I'm allergic to the-"

Seniors: "NOOO WE TELL YOU!"

And then they started on the Bunsen Burner story. However, they couldn't explain the plasters near my shoulder, because according to them, "where got people get burned by bunsen burner there one!"

The dearest, most bloodthirsty AV senior: "She spilt conc. acid on herself. >)"

Sigh. And my Chem practical exam is in a few weeks. How cheery.

But in any case, the next time people ask me about my plasters, I shall sigh and go, "It involves bunsen burners and conc. acid. You don't want to know."

hm

2009-02-16T01:16:00.001-08:00

I feel mischievous today!

(Maybe Mr Lee's repeating "HAHA I SHALL BE NAUGHTY AND DENY *insert teacher's name here* OF SUPPORT FOR *insert function here*" finally rubbed off on me, but hey!)

I found Cherylchan's profile on facebook with minimal snooping, and I'm thinking if I should sneakily create a fake account and suggest Hann Lam as a friend for her, since according to her profile she has no friends.

Aww.

Maybe Hann Lam could have the honour of being the first!

Haha but I won't do it. Because she is an expert on sneaky behaviour. Today she snuck up behind Ningxin and zapped her just for the hell of it.

Come to think of it, she was also the one who thought of daring Crystal to SNEAK up behind this guy listening to an iPod, pull out his earphones and start singing in his ears. Needless to say, unsneaky Crystal failed horribly and the guy saw her and pulled out his earphones by himself.

But in any case it's never a good idea to try something sneaky on someone equally, if not more *horrified look* sneaky. Plus I don't want to get snuck up upon and zapped/have my earphones pulled out.

Well, pulling out my earphones I don't really mind. It's just the Crystal singing part. Zing! >)

This post is written in a very un-Perspicacious style. Plus it's nothing really important or whatever. I just thought the word "sneak" was very cute and wanted to use it as many times as possible in a post. How sneaky is that?

happy unattached losers week

2009-02-10T04:11:00.000-08:00

Warning: This post may insult PSLs and other people who are absolutely ~~turned on~~ excited about Friendship Week. I have nothing against PSLs/other enthu people in general. It's only when they get really enthu that they annoy me. And Friendship Week happens to be one of those times.

So if you're a PSL/enthu person with no sense of humour, don't read on.

--

Why, everyone, happy Unattached Losers Week! Yes, I know the official name is *really* Friendship Week, but why use euphemisms? It so happens to be the week just before Valentines' Day, and come on, everyone can tell that it's just a way of comforting the poor, sad, hoardes of people who don't have a significant other!

Yeah, boyfriends are kind of hard to come by in a girls' school, if you've noticed. Which is kind of why everyone is crushing on anyone within arm's length with a Y-chromosone, and thinking that they have *sexy voice* sexy voices.

But in any case. To be politically correct, we shall hereon refer to Unattached Losers Week as Friendship Week. Following me, people?

We have a whole long line of activities designed to make you feel comforted this Friendship Week! It's okay if you don't have a significant other with a Y-chromosone; a significant other with two X-chromosones works JUST FINE AS WELL! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE! And if you can't even get one of those, it's okay. You (probably) have friends! And friends are just as good as have a relationship! Yah! Really! Don't look so skeptical! We shall now start to prove to you that it's all fine and dandy in your sad little world.

To start the week off, we will have Sexually-Assault-Your-Friends Day! As the name suggests, you go around pouncing on friends, and then sticking them with a sticker that states that they ~~now belong to you, and you reserve the right to pimp them howsoever you wish~~ are LOVED.

And to make this more exciting for the comnerdgeeks out there, we'll be giving each sexually-assault person TWO STICKERS, which they can go around sticking on the people THEY sexually assault! YOU GET A BINARY TREE! ISN'T THAT SO EXCITING?

(Sidenote: I got away relatively unscathed during that day. I only got hugged by Joanna, because she's nice. :D After that, I drew a little biohazard symbol on a sticker, and whenever people tried to hug me, I told them I had Ebola. At first I wanted to say SARS, since it's contagious and what not, but I kept mixing it up with AIDS since they're both plural-ish 4 letter fatal diseases. After a few weird looks from people after I told them I had AIDS, I decided to switch to Ebola. More biohazard-ish anyway.)

SO, my dear unattached losers, go forth and prosper! Make believe that you have a relationship when you actually don't! Do not be tempted or swayed by the mushy bullshit that will inevitably surface, now that *shudder* Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Do not feel pangs when you see twits going all "IIE LURBB EUUZX LA0G0NGZXSZXSZXSZ". Remember, you have your FRIENDS.

--

Disclaimer #2: LOL I didn't actually mean all the crap I said up there. I just thought it'd be funny. I think Valentine's Day is sweet if you're attached, but otherwise annoying because attached people keep pushing other unattached people's noses into the fact that we're attached. I shall hurl a mouldy banana at any young couples I see being mushy and soppy to the point of puke-inducing in public on Valentine's Day.

mandopop (?)

2009-02-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

Out of an act of goodwill, I shall now teach all readers of perspicacious how to write a teenage-girl-killer chinese song.

Step 1. Find a suitable metaphor, relate it to love.

Don't let conventions hamper you. Use anything that seems romantic enough, like wilted flowers (representing the death of your significant other/end of your relationship) or children playing at the playground (fond memories of you and your significant other playing tag when 5. Although, on a somewhat unrelated sidenote, why do people fall in love with their childhood playmates? Isn't it somewhat... incestuous? I figured once you see someone making and eating a mudpie, you wouldn't want to go out with them.)

Step 2. Scribble down random things regarding the metaphor/love.

If your lover has left you, you might want to whine about how "yadda yadda you said you'd love me forever oh boohoo our love is like a wilted flower". Or if you've just fallen in love, you can chatter on unneccessarily about how you call your significant other about a gazibillion times a day, but why doesn't he/she call me back?

Step 3. Select a few choice phrases, and repeat them through the song a few times. Not too many, just about a thousand or so.

For example, if you are an uncreative blob and can only think of the cheesy "WO AI NI", repeat that in a variety of tones. Maybe high, higher, low, high, low low low low...

Step 4: Read through the first draft of your song. Go through the checklist below:

4a: Is your song whiny? Yes/No
4b: Is it sufficiently repetitive? Yes/No
4c: Does it utilize enough metaphors? Yes/No
4d: Is there a specific message targeted at your lover? Yes/No

If you answered no to any of the above, work through the song again to correct it.

Step 5: BONUS: If you intend to make a music video as well, and your song happens to be of the emo variety (eg why did you leave me, i loved you so much blah blah blah), make sure that you have a shot of the main character kneeling in the rain.

Because the main character (ie the singer) never thinks to bring out an umbrella, and we must acknowledge that even though it might be scorching hot and 43* outside (Melbourne!), there is a really, really, REALLY high chance of rain.

Also, if your lead singer happens to be female, make sure she keeps her eyes open in a way that screams- I mean, whispers. Shunus never raise their voices above 10dB. It would be *huge, wide-eyed look of horror* so... *whispers softly* uncivilised......... Anyway, whispers "protect me, I'm helpless......" Always have her trail a long string of dots behind. Dress her in white dresses in order to make her look innocent and frail, and make sure she has long flowy "reborn-ed" hair.

On the other hand, if your lead singer is male, highlight his hair brown. Make it stick up in spikes at the back, but ensure that his fringe is long, straight, and covers one of his eyes. He must be dressed in dark shades (a little bit of leather never goes wrong. Wrap him up in a cow, baby.) and look perpetually sulky. It's okay if he looks a little dumb, or if he looks somewhat gangstery. Girls will want to take him in and attempt to make him "gai guo zi xin".

Tada! You've got an instant bestseller! Teens will love it! They'll listen to it, scream that it "SPEAKS TO ME, OH, ON SO MANY LEVELS" and go around singing it nonstop and playing it from the loudspeakers on their handphones in the bus, so as to expose more people to the beauty of lovesick music.

we wear stockings

2009-01-30T04:35:00.001-08:00

Today during spotcheck during assembly, Crystal, Xinyuan and I were flaunting our legalness -- socks above ankle, pinafore past knees (SORRY LA WE'RE ALL SHORT CAN), belts near our badges, etc.

So since we were all in RALA, we decided to make up a song about it! Albeit a rather tuneless one, but you get the idea.

Credits go to TK for providing the whole inspiration and the perfect first line, which we absolutely worshipped for the wittiness and amusingness of it all back in Sec2.

Here goes. *clears throat*

We wear stockings,
So we don't get bookings,
We go sleepless,
If we lose our badges.

Our fringes are so short,
We look like we have no hair.
We feel so naked,
If our ankles are bare.*

We think it's best
When our belts're at our chests.
We're such good girls,
Our pinafores are at our ankles.

We button the topmost button,
We tuck in our shirts.
Our pants are really high
And so are our skirts.

Our fingernails are really short
But we think they're so hot.
We wear only earsticks
And bring our ties for assembly every week.

*There was an alternative line for this: 'We feel so we-ird/if our
pinafores don't cover our underwear.' But we decided that it would
imply that most people's pinafores don't cover their underwears, which they do.
I mean they cover their underwear. Not that they do not cover their underwear.
ARGH.

Anyway yeah it's a work in progress. We did the first two stanzas together but I thought it was too short and I added in the last 3. I researched on the school attire rules for this song okay! I couldn't resist adding in the highpants part, even though it's like RGS and all. Highpants are like a universal phenomenon.

In case you're wondering what tune this goes to, it's a pretty much tuneless affair. Sing it to any tune you want, I don't really care. :D I mean it's the cute lyrics that matter right. If I'm not wrong we named it the Sec One Song officially, but "We Wear Stockings" is so much easier to refer to it by.

Credits to TK most of all, and Xinyuan and Crystal for the first two stanzas. :D

toddlers

2009-01-28T04:49:00.000-08:00

...are not worth the trouble.

Cavorting with my toddler niece and nephew, even for a couple of hours, has once again left me reeling and considering a vow of celibacy. (Although, admittedly, the fault lies with the kids and not the guy.)

At least I don't have to talk to them. I've heard them talk before and it reminds me horribly of goo. I don't know why, but it DOES and that's the whole point.

And that, in a way, has alienated me from the rest of my maternal family since they all think that toddlers are perfectly adorable and can do no wrong. Thus they happily offer up their backs for donkey rides and their butts for slapping. It sounds vaguely masochistic, and I suppose that's why I chose not to partake in the strange ritual of getting bullied voluntarily. If any toddler came up and treated me like a jungle gym and generally pissed me off, I'd hurl him out the window so hard he wouldn't know what hit him.

You might find me harsh, but until (and if ever) I get kids of my own, I'm sticking to the firm belief that one should not be taken in by the charms of toddlers, which they will, oh, turn on you and make you weak at the knees, upon which they will seize their chance and climb onto you and make you play horsie with them.

I very nearly got taken in by their charms yesterday. The threeyearold Niece and fouryearold Nephew were both sick, and I was deliriously hoping for some peace and quiet and less inane games like CRAYOLA UNLIMITED WOOHOO!!!! However since toddlers were apparently put on this earth to make us pay for our sins or whatnot, they were anything but quiet. They were annoying and whiny. They ran off to climb high up onto a table, onto to come running back sobbing when they discovered that gravity bends for no man and they fell hard onto the concrete floor.

Anyway even playing Blackjack was not safe. We were there gambling and some of us were swearing rather colourfully, but still the Niece and Nephew wandered up and decided that it would be fun to paw at our cards and our heaps of money. If it were up to me I would have slapped their hands and then put them safely in a corner where they could do no harm to our petty gambling, and also learn good moral values instead of hokkien swear words.

But obviously I have no say in the disciplining of the Niece and Nephew, and they were allowed to roam free, turning over cards and upending piles of coins.

Anyway as I was preparing to go home to my safe and toddler-free haven, the Niece ambled out the door behind us and waved bye to us. All the adults immediately melted at her feet; you'd think she'd single-handedly saved a third world country from starvation or something. I thought it was kinda cute, and was almost going to revamp my entire image of her.

--

I woke up this morning, drowning in mucus and with a freshly-sandpapered throat, germs courtesy of the Nephew and Niece. It's kind of lucky they live relatively far from here. Otherwise, I'd have dragged my incapitated self over to their house and clawed their throats out.

Toddlers are evil in disguise. Therefore, we should all do what the author of Gulliver's Travels proposed, and eat them.

How do I eat thee? Let me count the ways.
There's tossed in yusheng, sliced up into tiny raw bits.
I could always roll them up in prawn rolls and pop them in whole.

But I digress. Sigh. I can only hope that I wasn't quite as terrifying as them when I was a toddler.

channel 8

2009-01-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

I have a proposal for a hit new Channel 8 drama series: The Little Author.

It shall be set in Shanghai, 1797 and will star a main character called Xie-Li Ma Ri.

The story starts from the day of Ma Ri's birth: her mother, an ardent feminist, dies shortly after giving birth to her. Her father brings her, and her illegitimate half-sister up single handedly for a short period of time. However, Ma Ri's father soon lands himself in debt and thus remarries, a quick-tempered woman who favours her own (also illegitimate) two children above Ma Ri and her sister. Ma Ri soon comes to hate her with a passion.

Ma Ri was educated by her father, who often brought home scholars to, uh, conduct discussions with. Ma Ri falls in love with one of the ~~gayest-looking~~ most dashing and handsome ones: Peh Xi. Peh Xi and Ma Ri (22 and 17 respectively o.O) begin meeting secretly at Ma Ri's late mother's grave, and they declare their everlasting love for each other there, culminating in a kiss that spans 10 episodes.

BUT Ma Ri's father objects to Peh Xi's and Ma Ri's romance, especially since Peh Xi is already married. However, Peh Xi and Ma Ri (whom at this point is already pregnant with Peh Xi's child) elope to France, and bring along one of Ma Ri's illegitimate sisters: Ke Lair. Peh Xi leaves his (also pregnant) wife behind.

The trip uses up all of Peh Xi's and Ma Ri's money and they are forced to turn back. Upon return, Ma Ri discovers that her father has disowned her (cue emotional scence with daughter clutching father's leg and sobbing, while father spits on the ground and kicks her away)

After that, Ma Ri and Peh Xi's relationship worsen, as Peh Xi's wife has given birth to a boy and Peh Xi is overjoyed. Furthermore, Peh Xi is spending more and more time (nudge nudge, wink wink) with Ke Lair. Ma Ri meets Ho Gu, whom she initially dislikes but comes to like. Peh Xi encourages Ma Ri and Ho Gu to become lovers, but Ma Ri's heart belongs only to Peh Xi.

Ma Ri gives birth to her first child, a girl, who is sickly and dies soon after. She is inconsolable, but only for a short while because she gets pregnant AGAIN. Peh Xi has a windfall, and the three of them (Ke Lair, Ma Ri and Peh Xi) travel to Guangdong to spend some time with their mutual friend, Official Bi Run. During this time, Ma Ri starts writing a novel, inspired by a dream and a ghost story competition. It is about a Chinese zombie being called from the dead by an elaborate ritual, and then abandoned.

Additional information and plot thickener: Ke Lair had an affair with Official Bi Run previously and is now pregnant.

However, as in all Channel 8 drama serials, good times must not last for more than 2 consecutive episodes, and another of Ma Ri's illegitimate sisters writes a note to Ma Ri, telling her how depressed she is. Peh Xi is worried for her and immediately rushes off to see her, only to find her dead with a bottle of poison and a suicide note in her hand. Around the same time, Peh Xi's wife commits suicide by jumping into a river, after discovering that she has been made pregnant by a man other than Peh Xi.

Peh Xi and Ma Ri get officially married, and Ma Ri gets pregnant again. Official Bi Run agrees to raise Ke Lair's child, and Peh Xi and Ma Ri go travelling with their own children, seemingly happy.

Well, the children both die. Ma Ri turns to writing to ease her sorrows, although the birth of a fourth child, who is named after Peh Xi, makes her cheer up. They move to Beijing, where Ma Ri gets depressed due to Peh Xi's playboy-ish ways.

Peh Xi soon gets threatening letters from two servants he previously fired, claiming that he made one of them pregnant. He adopts the child, who dies soon afterwards. Ke Lair's child also dies from typhus, and Ma Ri, pregnant for the fifth time, has a miscarriage and almost dies of a massive haemorrhage (?) However, being the main character, she must be immortal and therefore is saved in the nick of time by Peh Xi, who dumps her in a bath of ice to staunch the blood flow.

But despite saving Ma Ri, the couple's relationship did not improve. Peh Xi spent more time with his mistress, Ah Jian, leaving Ma Ri to sink deeper into depression. However, playboys get their retribution, and he drowns on a voyage at sea.

Ma Ri, Official Bi Run, and a foreigner called Trelawney attend his funeral. Official Bi Run asks for Peh Xi's skull, but Trelawney, possibly secretly having a crush on Ma Ri, refuses, since he knows that Official Bi Run only wants to make it into an ashtray or a cup or something equally morbid.

Oh since this is an emotional scene, I shall attempt to give more details:

As Peh Xi's body is being prepared for cremation, Ma Ri remains composed, but as Peh Xi's body is set alight, she suddenly breaks down and starts yelling. Trelawney, wanting badly to help Ma Ri, runs up to the body in slow motion and grabs Peh Xi's heart out of the flames, badly burning his hand. Ignoring the pain, he gallantly presents Peh Xi's heart to Ma Ri, much to the fury of Ah Jian, who is standing near by. Ma Ri keeps Peh Xi's heart in her purse from then on.

After that, Ma Ri is forced to write in order to support herself and her child by writing. She faces many obstacles, like people who want to blackmail her. However, she is *airy voice* a pillar of strength, and overcomes them all. For example, one annoying stalker threatened to publish letters she had sent him, but a friend of her son's, who conveniently happens to be an official, seizes the letters and all is well.

Ma Ri dies at the age of 53 from an untreated brain tumour. Her only son, Peh Xi the second, marries and has a happy marriage. The End.

--

I'm quite sure that "The Little Author" will far exceed the popularity of "The Little Nyonya". It BREAKS OUT OF ALL KNOWN CLICHES YAYYYY!!!! without actually breaking out of any channel 8 cliches.

But the best thing is, it was all based on a true story.

2009-01-17T23:09:00.000-08:00

OMG I WANT YDSP.

Sigh.

Maybe I really ought to cut down on wanting things. I mean there's definitely an overload point for everyone and maybe I'm starting to push mine already.

Between SAP, AV EXCO (thus National Camp 09) RALA, NOI, possibly MPP, wanting WEP, maybe wanting OSL, wanting YDSP, something has got to give.

(Interesting sidenote: everything up there is an acronym! Isn't that awesome :O And because it IS a mash of alphabet soup, I'll type it all out nicely: Special Arts Programme, Audio Visual (club) Executive Committee, Raffles Academy Language Arts, National Olympiad in Informatics, Moot Parliament Programme, Work Experience Programme, Overseas Service Learning, Young Defence Scientists Programme (?) Maybe that's why they acronym-ize everything. Typing all that out and then looking at it made me want to faint.)

Anyway I don't want to give any of it up! I mean without stuff to occupy my time I feel very empty, and besides compared to most RGS people I'm already an underachiever. How DO they do it?

2009-01-14T05:39:00.000-08:00

I shall steal a quiz from Keyun's blog!

It’s harder than it looks!
Copy and paste to your own journal, erase my answers, and add your own.
Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following questions.
They have to be real places, names &/or objects, but nothing made up!
Try to use different answers if the person you got this from has the same 1st initial.
You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.
And Have Fun With It!!!

1) 4 LETTER WORD: Very.

2) BOY NAME: Victor (LOL)

3) GIRL NAME: Veronica

4) OCCUPATION: Vampire? Or vicar.

5) A COLOR: Violet

6) SOMETHING YOU WEAR: VEGGIES! :D Sorry lor V doesn't exactly give you many choices.

7) BEVERAGE: Vitagen!

8) FOOD: Vicodin. LOL HOUSE.

9) SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: a VIRUS.

10) A PLACE: Vietnam!

11) REASON FOR BEING LATE: Vein exploded. Lots of blood. *cue fainting attack*

12) SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: VITUPERATION!!! :D

Okay actually I dunno why the whole vituperation thing popped into my head. But it's cool! And I'm proud of my *ahem* somewhat coherent answers.

2009-01-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

victoria!: HAHAHA what did i tell you! omg everytime we put something regarding an instructor on our pm another one of them comes to ask about it ._. so what did you tell him? :D

keyun: i said... it had sth to do with stetosauruses(?) and he asked me if it was a programming problem :p so i said no, its quite far fetched so don't think about it ^^ it feels great to switch roles hee

HEHE. (:

<3 stegosauruses! :D

2009-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

I want nobody, nobody but you! *clapclap, clapclap*

If this song weren't so catchy, I'd have slammed it already for its somewhat inane lyrics. But the sheer rhythm of it just screams "BIG HIT!"

"I want nobody, nobody, but joo! *clapclap, clapclap*"

Although I must admit, the lyrics are typical of one of those kinds of songs. Rather committal, and always gushing about eternal love and that sort of thing. They ought to add a disclaimer behind that goes something like "I want nobody, nobody but joo!*

"*Terms and conditions apply: If still single with a ring finger conspicuously bare of a diamond by age 35, will settle for less. For example, a random face I saw in a crowded place."

Speaking of which, WHAT is the appeal of James Blunt?

He's so whiny.

If I were feeling mildly better I would have slammed it, but as of now I'm shang tu xia xie-ing, a common byproduct of stomach flu (Wencen suggested that I should shang tu, and then xia xie, instead of the other way around, for some graphic reasons that I may describe when I feel better) and therefore shall KIV everything until I feel better.

{P.S.: I just reread the post, which is my custom before posting, and realised how horrible it sounds. My blogging standard drops when I'm sick. ): Oh well. }

the allure of forbidden knowledge

2009-01-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

The last time Keyun and I were talking on MSN, we were still on a post-NOI-training high and also bored, which is never really a good combination. We started discussing (yes, of all things) our instructors' MSN nicknames and emails ._.

We decided that Daniel's one made the most sense.
Pang Wei's one was the most... hmm. Concise.
Minghan's one was the most bimb.
Zhenghao's one was just plain weird.

So being the nice little curious kids we are, we googled it. Apparently it was Greek (!) for hubris, of all things. The cheemdeepness of all the stuff we found scared us half to death so we decided to embark on a different train of thought.

Daniel's email was weird. We searched it but didn't come up with anything.
Minghan's one was extremely businesslike. Nothing to search there.
Zhenghao's one was typical. Nothing to search there either.
Pang Wei's one was weird. We searched it...

...and discovered that his email is also the name a of game. Specifically, the name of a character in the game-- a "cute little ball of purple fur".

Disturbing.

Yeah so anyway after that Keyun and I gave up googling stuff we didn't know, because we were scared of what we'd find next. More cheemdeep stuff?

And Keyun then said to me: "Next time when you study Frankenstein and the teacher starts talking about the dangers of forbidden knowledge, you'll know what to say: don't google stuff you don't know."

Yeah well anyway she forgot the whole part about how Frankenstein's forbidden-knowledge-creation came back to haunt him.

--

Many days later: I'm sitting in the RALA classroom being intimidated by everyone's accents, and then suddenly the teacher mentions hubris.

I am so stunned I don't talk for the rest of the lesson. Not even when the teacher mentions Faustus.

2009-01-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

Hello. Since I'm in a relatively good mood (urm, actually, I'm supposed to be either coding or enjoying life, so I took the enjoying life option. I'll code... later.) I shall give you all a piece of useful advice.

And you know why you should listen to my advice?

Because the last time I tried to persuade Crys to sign up for DMP with me, she refused. But when Josie showed up at DMP one day, she spent super long berating herself.

"WHY OH WHY DID I NOT SIGN UP FOR DMP WITH YOU?! If I sign up now, it'll be too obvious D: D: D:"

And that was the most recent time I've heard "bu ting Vic de yan, chi kui zai yan qian". There may have been more, but I'm lazy to think (why do you think I'm not coding -_-) and therefore it shall be so.

Anyway, if you have a blister, you shouldn't burst it, even if it's tempting to.

Yeah. That's it. Will either go code or- *yawn* sleep. Probably sleep. I have freaking third lang until 6:45 tomorrow.

I'll work on the code tomorrow. During freeblock. Or the 3 hours between dismissal and 3rdlang. ): But I'm lazy to lug my laptop around...

Ah well. I'll write it out, and face 430 compile errors, if I have to, I will.

smokers suck

2009-01-05T00:37:00.000-08:00

Are you sick of smokers blowing stinky, asthma-inducing, lung cancer-causing smoke into your face whenever you walk past?

Well, fret not! I, after months and months of careful research and planning, have come up with a solution! The NO-SMOKE-ANATOR! Or maybe the WHO'S-COUGHING-NOW-ANATOR! I dunno, anything that sounds Doofensmfirtz-ish.

Here, let me explain the relatively simple process of how the NO-SMOKE-ANATOR or the WHO'S-COUGHING-NOW-ANATOR works, with the aid of some badly drawn drawings of stickmen.

#1: Find a smelly smoker. Can usually be found lurking on the sidewalks at Orchard Road, or 5m from the entrances of buildings, competing to blow the most secondhand smoke into the lobby.
(Sidenote: The smoke is not in greenblackwhite just because I'm from RGS. The white smoke just shows how... well, smoke is white. Black is because cigarette smoke causes cancer. And green is because it just smells bad.)

#2: The NO-SMOKE-ANATOR or the WHO'S-COUGHING-NOW-ANATOR will extend it's extendable arm and grab the smoker. The cigarette will then be put out by an extendable hose (not in picture)

#3: Smelly smoker will be transferred to a small room with bad ventilation, and many many many many MANY boxes of cigarettes. (Lazy to draw. Sorry lor.) The only air entering the room will be from a small aircon, which takes the original air from the room itself.

#4: Smelly smoker will probably take the bait after awhile and start smoking the many many many MANY boxes of cigarettes. Puff puff puff.

#5: As the aircon's rate of pumping air into the room will be slower than the rate of the smoking (we'll make sure of it by calculating the time taken to fill the room with smelly smoke, at the rate the smelly smoker is smoking) soon the entire room will be filled with white smoke, black cancer-causing smoke, and green just-plain-smelly smoke.

Unless the smelly smoker is really thick, it should be enough to put him off for life. And if it doesn't, the carcinogens in the air will halve the time taken to get lung cancer and he'll shrivel up and die. Never mind. One smoker down anyway.

Of course, the NO-SMOKE-ANATOR or the WHO'S-COUGHING-NOW-ANATOR will only be directed at smelly smokers who smoke out in the street where many people can smell it (ie being a general health hazard/public nuisance)

Now, anyone want to sponsor me to build it?

first aid

2009-01-03T05:35:00.000-08:00

I feel like I've achieved the pinnacle of self-actualization: the ability to perform first aid on oneself! Yay me! *clap clap clap*

Anyway, back when I was in Red Cross, the first aid lessons always bugged me because I was (and still am, actually) a selfish person and I hated not being able to do stuff for myself. Okay that doesn't make much sense, but maybe an example will help.

Sure, I know what to do if someone gets stabbed (pile on the ring bandages, baby) but what if I get stabbed? Do I have to sit around with a knife in my innards, moaning piteously until help in the form of another first aider arrives?

I hated the feeling of being so helpless. Plus I wouldn't want to see the newspapers have a field day reporting stuff like, "First aider dies of stab wound LOL". Therefore, disenchanted and disillusioned, I quit Red Cross and set off the explore the world on foot.

Nah, I'm just kidding. About the exploring the world on foot part. I mean like c'mon, I hate physical exertion. And I think exploring the world would be pretty boring. But I DID quit Red Cross.

And because my skin is exceedingly sensitive to bug bites and sunlight (whooo ezcema!) I was forced by circumstances to learn how to apply basic first aid to myself. ); *cue teary gaze off into the distance*

But to cut a long story short... it worked. Yay I just finished dressing the rashes/blisters caused by the latest bug bite/ sunlight exposure, and to make things better, ONE OF THEM WAS ON MY BACK :D

YES. I have not only mastered the art of administering first aid to myself, but also dressing wounds on my BACK. (:

Perhaps some more accomplished Red Crossers here are scoffing, but hey, it's harder than it actually seems. :/ Well, to me at least.

And as insignificant as dressing wounds on your back may seem, it really helps alot when you manage to dress and clean your own stitches and not have to rely on other people to do it for you. Blisters/rashes, too.

One step closer to being fully self-reliant. (: It's only a short jump from there to mountain top hobo then. Yay! :D

little nyonya

2008-12-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

Despite all of Channel 8's attempts to look like it's finally breaking out of the normal nonsense they so love to churn out, Little Nyonya is in exactly the same mould.

I've been pondering this question ever since I woke up to the truth that Channel 8 dramas are all crap; why do they so adore putting mentally challenged people into dramas?
Take Little Nyonya for example: the one episode I actually bothered to watch so that I could critic it contained... you guessed it, a retarded person asking for duck rice. Does this remind you of the other 58349672490752 Channel 8 dramas which all contained retards who could also be easily pacified with, say, duck rice or fishball noodles?
And for some strange reason, all the retards are extremely peaceable and all have useful talents, from picking birds' nests and solving Rubik's Cubes (this was in the time when solving a cube could still be considered a unique talent), and they all have this person whom they adore. Also, somewhere along the series, the abovementioned adored person will get attacked, or compromised in some way or another, and the retard will just happen to pass by and witness it, which will work him up into a frenzied rage where he will run in screaming "YAAAAAAAA" and beat the compromiser up.

However, my mum and grandma remain avid fans of the Little Nyonya show, which they believe has broken out of all known conventions.
I blew apart their theory rather lazily one day in the car. My mum and grandma were discussing the latest development of the show, which was that some random aunty got pushed over a railing during (what else?) a scuffle where she found out a deep dark secret, and in the process of trying to conceal his secret, an over-zealous person inadvertently pushed her- whoops a daisy- over the railing, out of a window which so happened to be conveniently opened.

Note that she only mentioned the part about the random aunty getting pushed over, and I extrapolated the other lengthy bit myself, based on evidence I've gathered over the years regarding Channel 8 shows. But I am right. I just asked my mother for confirmation.

Anyway,
Mum: So how? Do you think she'll die?
Grandma: I dunno. First floor only, so she probably won't.
Me: Don't bother arguing la. She'll definitely die.
Mum: But she only fell from the first floor!
Grandma: Yeah, and the main character fell into a well and didn't die!
Me: That's because she's the main character. The main character could get shot in the chest a gazibillion times, and she'd still miraculously survive. But the random aunty's not a main character, so it wouldn't matter if she fell from a height of 1m onto a soft fluffy mattress. She'd die.
Mum/Grandma: I don't believe you. :/
Me: Wait and see. You'll find out I was right.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I was right.

Little Nyonya is just a scam. You THINK they're breaking out of the monotonous regime of formula-based Channel 8 shows, but they're NOT. They just transported it into... the Peranakan time.

Oh btw my grandma just called. She told my mum I was right. >)

2008-12-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Keyun says:
oh oh you can make announcement over the pw!
Keyun says:
*PA

2008-12-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

(Quoted from Keyun re. NOI training)

A list of things that made me smile:

1. Despite this whole thing starting on a really bad note the night before(which resulted in practically no sleep), it turned out much better towards the end. :) For one I could actually code something for the test and despite it being PE all over it actually works!

2. I've gotten less afraid of asking questions :) I think. It's another matter altogether for answering questions though.

3. Zhenghao isn't that scary now. :) He's been very patient and nice for the whole time and though I felt really bad making him explain over and over it was very amusing with all his weird analogies and koping tic tacs/chocolates practically everytime he passed by. Not to mention forgetting to bring money for the lunches everyday except the first and having to ask from Daniel/Minghan :p

4.Pw came on the last day! :D Surprise surprise. The duet was a total failure though(no chair so we played standing up, and both of us made mistakes everywhere coming in at different places with no moqi at all :p) but at least we played it together (: He's surprisingly very gentle for the secondo part while I.. hmm. Managed to stuff the money inside his file with no suspicion aroused(I hope.) The best thing is he seemed fine so I feel a little bit more relieved.

5. Okay I have to say this now haha. It feels strange to imagine them with dads! Somehow when Zhenghao/pw said their dad was picking them up (on diff days) it sounded wrong. Like they're not supposed to have dads. Maybe it's because they behave maturely(which coming to think of it, they don't.) and we just have this impression that they should be independent.

6. The way Minghan goes around going"Questions? Problems?" is really addictive and cute! Then when you ask him a question in response he'll sort of ascertain it by putting it into his array of "questions" by saying "Question." Hahaha.

7. I never realised Daniel was so violent :p It's been very entertaining watching him do bad things to Zhenghao heehee.

--

AWWWWWWW :) That made me smile so hard I almost... uh, well, smiled too hard.

I wanna make a list too.

2008-12-25T04:50:00.000-08:00

My PM today was "Yule Shoot Your Eye Out", because everyone else's was the typical "Merry Christmas" stuff and I wanted to be... different.

(5:14 PM) Daniel Chia:
haha what this i see about shooting your eye out
(5:14 PM) Daniel Chia:
lol
(5:14 PM) ♥victoria!;:
it's a song
(5:15 PM) ♥victoria!;:
hahaha all shooters seem to get really excited everytime they see the word shoot
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
haha
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
of course
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
that's why we're shooters!
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
:P

Walau lor. He totally missed the whole "Yule" part. So much for festivities.

a solemn vow

2008-12-22T20:30:00.001-08:00

I have sworn a solemn vow to myself than I will code at least one problem each day, in preperation for NOI.

And I've been, uh, doing well so far. I submitted Gift yesterday, and Prime today.

Although in my frank opinion, Gift was kinda like a cheat because I coded it in all of 20 minutes. Debugging included, which with me usually takes about an hour and a half and a MSN convo with whichever instructor's online at the moment.

Prime... well, Prime was actually more of a three-days-worth of work kinda question. I've been working on it since Sunday, where my program screwed up and I asked Zhenghao, who told me that I should try recoding it. So on Monday I tried recoding it, but it screwed up again. And finally today, Tuesday, I asked Pangwei for more help, and then I discovered a bug. -_- I wonder why my debugging instincts only ever kick in AFTER I've asked someone for help and disturbed them.

Anyway the program was still buggy after that, and I couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong until Pangwei pointed it out to me: the 10000th prime (Which I was supposed to be finding) is 104279, and I'd mixed up the numbers and was checking until a number smaller than 104280. Lol.

But at least Prime was finally solved. After three damn days.

Gosh, I hate debugging.

sudo

2008-12-20T04:45:00.000-08:00

Today when Pangwei came, he was wearing one of his cool T-shirts again.

(Random sidenote: HAHA now I kinda know what every instructor wears! Almost all of them wear formal shirts tucked-out with jeans, except that Zhenghao never buttons the first button, and Pangwei always has damn cool T-shirts with funny stuff on them.)

So today's T-shirt was a dialogue between 2 stick figures that went as such:

Stickfigure1: Make me a sandwich.
Stickfigure2: What? Make it yourself!
Stickfigure1: Sudo make me a sandwich.
Stickfigure2: Okay.

I read that and reread that, and by the end of the lesson I still hadn't got the joke and was pretty pissed, because I got almost all the previous T-shirts. Like the mathlete and robots in disguise one.

It bugged me enough that I had to go to Pangwei and ask him to explain his shirt. ><

Pangwei: Oh. Sudo is a Unix programming term. It means Super User Do.
Zhenghao (who was listening in): No! It's a swear word! It's Spanish for the f-word!
Pangwei: No it's not.
Zhenghao: Yes it is.
Pangwei: Who you trust more? Me or him?
Me: LOL from experience, Zhenghao is a scammer :D

But I couldn't resist checking once I got home. I googled Sudo, and yes it does in fact stand for Super User Do.

I still googled Sudo Spanish as well, because there was always the off chance that Zhenghao wasn't scamming me this time and I'd have learnt a useful new swear word. (Imagine: "Array you!" "Huh?" "Well, sudo you!")

Well, guess what. Zhenghao scammed me. Surprise, surprise. Sudo IS a Spanish word, but it is, according to wiktionary, the first-person singular present tense of "sudar", which means "to sweat". LOL.

("Well, sweat you!" Not particularly threatening.)

2008-12-18T05:33:00.001-08:00

Reading the NOI webpage makes me feel very zi bei!

Gosh our instructors are super pro.

JJ went to IOI in SEC 3. :O AND SEC 4. (where he got BRONZE. OMG.) AND J1.
And then there's that crazy Chris Moh person that Zhenghao always tells us about. Gosh he got full marks for the 2000 NOI. Scaryscaryscary.

Oooh Daniel went twice! AND GOT A GOLD MEDAL ONCE OMG WOAH.

Pangwei went twice also! And got a bronze once!

If I get anything at NOI I'll be super happy already lor. ): Although, according to the NOI results page, there have only been 7 (!) female medallists since 1998.

They had a surprise award for the best female medallist awhile ago though. It's kinda sexist if you think about it, but hey if there's an extra medal up for grabs who's complaining!

But note that I doubt I'll actually get anything. If I DO get something I'll be like whooping and dancing around.

However, since most people interested in programming are guys, and there's only Keyun and me from RGS in the programming class now, and as Zhenghao very nicely pointed out, each school can only send at most 5 people, and 2 < 5, therefore it logically follows that both Keyun and I will be representing RGS, since our Infocomm club is, to tell the truth, pretty sucky and probably knows nuts about programming.

Having 2 people doesn't mean anything much except that RGS will definitely NOT get ranked as one of the top sec schools.

Well, good. They didn't want to pay for us to have the course, and it was only because Pangwei Zhenghao and Daniel were kind and decided that, um, I dunno, our interest was enough to pay them and let us come for free. Awww :)

I dunno if RGS paid them in the end, but I doubt so because RGS hates technology and other futuristic stuff like that. Anyway it's fine I don't mind. RGS can't say that they're one of the top schools in NOI, but Pangwei Zhenghao and Daniel can take the credit, because they totally deserve it anyway :D

earliness

2008-12-17T02:25:00.000-08:00

Q: What's the earliest example of recursion?
A: When God said: "I am what I am." in the Bible!

LOL and we were all thinking along the lines of Fibonacci.

Zhenghao showed us a graph. Not the y=x^2 nonsense but real programming type of graphs. Which are nodes with edges! And then when we were all like :O he said, "But that's okay. We're only doing trees!" Which are still nodes with edges, but still. A node is basically just a cheem way of saying "circle".

Zexi was being annoying and decided to ask cheem questions like: "Can you have a tree where a node is both the root AND a leaf?"
Zhenghao: Uh can. It looks like this: *draws a node* It's called a self-sufficient tree.
Daniel: No! It's a circle!

Anyway we were trying out DFS today and Keyun and I couldn't get around it ): So we saw Pangwei on googletalk, who was apparently checking our OJ submissions from home, and spent super long arguing via our pm thingys on gtalk about who should ask Pangwei. I suggested that maybe we just ask Zhenghao, and then Keyun wrote on her pm, "Zhenghao is scaryyyyyyyyyyy". We'd both thought that Pangwei was afk when all of a sudden (just as Keyun realised that it was incriminating and was about to take it down) he said to Keyun, "hahahahahahahah what did Zhenghao do?"

Then we got scared that he'd tell Zhenghao that so we asked him a question to distract him. (: Something about how to code DFS.

And then the next thing we knew Zhenghao was zipping over to help us code DFS. ._. We were pondering for awhile over whether Zhenghao really was psychic or not, because he suddenly asked, "Did you ask Pangwei anything about programming? Anything at all?"

In the end all was revealed when Zhenghao's handphone buzzed. He picked it up, looked at it, and shouted across the room: "OI! JOSEPH! ARE YOU USING -insert random cheem programming term here-"

Joseph: :O HOW'D YOU KNOW?!?!?!
Zhenghao: I have eyes everywhere >) And ears everywhere >) And a handphone. :)

We finally finished coding our DFS and were playing with it.
Daniel: You two aren't still playing with Anagram, are- well, clearly I was wrong.

Then Zhenghao walked past us with Daniel on their rounds awhile later.
Zhenghao: OMG you're still playing with Anagram?
Daniel: I think this would be a good time to bang your head on the table.
Zhenghao: Uhh no the table's too low.
Daniel: I bang your head on the table for you :D

But anyway debugging my code was super hard. Because for some weird reason I found it very amusing whenever the code wouldn't compile and kept laughing.
Daniel: The only person I know who gets so happy whenever their code won't compile is you *points at Zhenghao*
Zhenghao: What?
Daniel: Last time, he sent me a code to compile and when I tried compiling it there were 430 compile errors. 430!

They were so happy when they finally finished debugging my code that they got up and hugged each other and thumped each other on the back really hard.

For some reason during lunch, the caterer forgot to pack Zhenghao's share, but gave us two bunches of bananas.
Daniel: Oh. Looks like Chen will have to eat bananas >)

Anyway Zhenghao ate cupnoodles so there were loads of bananas left over. Cue more of Zhenghao's weird comparisons. Halfway through our coding...

Zhenghao: CODING... IS LIKE A MARATHON.
Everyone: Is this some inspirational bs? :/
Zhenghao: Wait la! CODING IS LIKE A MARATHON. YOU NEED LOTS OF BANANAS. Here, I've got bananas for everyone :)

yay

2008-12-16T02:54:00.000-08:00

I have weird friends. They are willing to bribe me to pass my 2.4.

Crystal Ong says:
okay so let's lay down the ground rules
Xinyuan says:
hmm okay 5
Xinyuan says:
go on
Crystal Ong says:
if vic passes she gets, uh, $4.50
Crystal Ong says:
max i'm willing to pay
Crystal Ong says:
if she passes with D she gets $5.50,
Crystal Ong says:
with C 1 mcspicy meal,
Xinyuan says:
C only mcspicy?
Xinyuan says:
just give her the money for a mcspicy lah
Crystal Ong says:
it's not just a mcspicy, it's a mcspicy MEAL
Crystal Ong says:
also can switch for money la
Xinyuan says:
whatever, give her the $ for a mcspicy meal then
Xinyuan says:
with c $7 lah :D
Crystal Ong says:
the amount the mcspicy meal costs
Xinyuan says:
eh do you have next year's running timings reqs
Xinyuan says:
is?
Crystal Ong says:
i think it's $6+
Xinyuan says:
oh okay
Xinyuan says:
but isn't it more convenient to give her $...
Crystal Ong says:
if both of you beat my timing i pay $15 to be added to vic's atm balance
Crystal Ong says:
(so that i can pay in instalments)
Xinyuan says:
then if only vic beats your timing she doesn't get the $15?
Crystal Ong says:
uh, maybe $8
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
okay so i clarify
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
if i beat both of your timings
Xinyuan says:
yeah, it'll be humiliating if vic beats mine
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
and xinyuan beats crystal's timing
Xinyuan says:
you get $20
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
i get $15 from crys, and $5 from xinyuan

I told them that if I really were their friend, I'd help them save the money and fail it even more spectacularly this year.

Anyway programming today was funny, as usual! Zhenghao uses VERY WEIRD ANALOGIES.

Zhenghao: Okay, a struct is kinda like when you take two variables and... tie them together with string.
Me: What?
Zhenghao: Uh okay put it this way: A struct is like... zha cai fan! And the variables are like meat, and veggies, and rice...

And then there was debugging time.
Josie: Zhenghao, there's something wrong with my code.
Zhenghao: You're hardcoding too much.
Josie: No I'm not!
Zhenghao: The actual solution is like, 20 lines. Yours is 207 lines long.
Josie: ...Not very long what...

For the first time in my life I coded something entirely without help (: Except for debugging, which even Zhenghao admitted was a cunning bug. (: Yay me! *clap clap clap*

2008-12-15T04:53:00.000-08:00

I know this sounds like an angsty teen punk-rocker wannabe, but my life is absolutely screwed up.

I just got the worst news, and gosh I absolutely cannot believe it because it's just so wrong. I shan't elaborate, because I figure it's the person's news to spill and I already feel kinda bad for blabbing to one person. ): But it is way unfair and just proves the theory that life is horrible.

That was screwed up in a bad way. But the next thing is screwed up in a somewhat mildly amusing way.

I also recently discovered (only last night, in fact) that my surname's not supposed to be Yeow but the more commonly seen Yeo, but is only Yeow because of a clerk working the name registering department a long long time ago, who screwed up.

My granddad's surname is Yeo, and therefore my dad and thus my surname ought to be Yeo too. Even though the chinese character is still pronounced yao. It's just a weird dialect... uh, mutation? of yao. But apparently when my granddad was registering my dad's and my uncle's names, the clerk decided to be clever and added an extra w to make the English version sound more like the chinese one.

Whatever (: Yeow sounds cooler anyway.

go fug yourself

2008-12-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

There's a Facebook group that goes something along the lines of "People who t@Lk Lyk D1z should attend English class more often".

Well, I'm not going to join that group because I disagree.

People who t@Lk Lyk D1z should not be made to attend English classes more often. They should just curl up and die, period.

Why you should not taLk Lyk D1z:

For one, it is SO irritating to type. If you're sharp you'll have notice that I replaced the @ above with a normal "a", because blogger keeps reading this as a mail address and hyperlinking it, never mind that I doubt there's a mail server called Lk.

And what is wrong with normal "a"s and "i"s? Oh, alphabets not cool enough for you? Must replace it with funky signs? Or are half your keys broken? If words were meant to be spelt with dollar signs, @s, and exclamation marks, they wouldn't have invented a 26-letter alphabet.

According to linguist David Crystal, you have to KNOW your words before you can PLAY with them, which means that all these people mutilating words (in a bad way, too) CAN spell their words. Either that or they just hopped on the bandwagon; if you're one of those hop-on-the-bandwagon-even-though-I-can't-actually-spell-the-words-properly people, go and die. There are better trends to follow. And for those people who actually CAN spell the words but for some obscure reason choose to waste time typing out weird forms of the word, (I grudgingly excuse some forms of sms lang that actually shorten the word. It's those that don't shorten the word, or in fact, lengthen it, that piss me off) you go curl up and die too. Why waste English lessons on people who can spell but don't want to?

(Speaking of sms lang, why the hell do some people shorten "tomorrow" to "tomolo"? It sounds like some obscure cousin of the pomelo. Tomorrow is rarely ever pronounced as "tomoLO", unless of course you can't pronounce the letter r. In which case, why spread your inability to pronounce the letter r to your writing too?)

I buy Teenage just to read the love declaration sections whenever I'm feeling emo, because then I can ridicule the language of the soppy messages and ponder why people would go to such lengths to make their messages un-understandable. HELLO, this is real life, not a James Bond movie. We don't need codes!

Look at this fine example of code:

"To: other honey
hh0neyy, I lurbb3rzx euuzx al0tts w0rhhszx!
pw3ase acceptt muaiizx lubb3zx w0rhhszx (:
From: honey"

I'm sorry, did you experience violent tremors while your fingers were hovering above the "h" key? And the "y" key? And the "b", "u", and "t" keys? C'mon. Say it out loud. Not so cool now that you sound like a stuttering freak, eh?

"H-h-zero ney-ey, I lurb-buh three ruhzuhsss eu-ou al zero tuh-tuhssss wzero huh-huh ssszuhsss."

Also, is there a need to put "zx" or "szx" after practically every word? You are not a bee. Bees probably have a better command of English than you do. For the life of me I just cannot see how people can actually think that making a weird zzzzz sound is actually cool.

AND WHAT IS UP WITH "LURBBBB"? I hate the way I sound when I have a cold or an otherwise blocked nose, YET people here are trying to imitate a blocked nose. I'll give you a blocked nose.

And to any twit zzzzing in rage right now, save your trembling fingers from having to type anymore. Go read a dictionary. In the (oh, very short, I'm sure) time you used to type a retort which I'll just laugh at and then mock again later, you could possibly learn the proper spelling of the words on the first page of the dictionary.

Disclaimer: This, any insecure readers, is not elitist. It is merely how I demonstrate my language purist feelings. I don't care whether "honey" or "other honey" come from either Pulau Ubin Ulu Sec Sch or RGS; I'll mock their language all the same. So please don't vent your insecurity by calling me an elitist because you have an inferiority complex and happen to ttalkzx lykzx d1z w0rhhzxszxszxszxs.

I, for the thousandth and second time, have nothing against people who hail from neighbourhood schools. But I do have something against people who refuse to respect the sanctity of the English language.

Oh, and don't even get me started on bad grammar.

japanese ice cream

2008-11-30T04:43:00.000-08:00

My mum changed her mind when we were at the tour agency. We're going to Tokyo and Osaka, because Hokkaido is rather... uh, scenery-centred, and the most exciting thing there is the Bear Ranch, which will probably be a whoop because it's winter and bears hibernate in winter.

There's a deer park in Osaka, and she says the deer there are really daring and will nudge you in the butt to get food.

Anyway I like Tokyo. The ice cream there is pretty cool. The last time we went there, there were these ice cream shops EVERYWHERE, and they all had this cute menu pinned up to the window. The menus were super pretty with all these colourful cones on them.

I was P3 then and couldn't read Jap, so I ordered ice cream based on either the colours, or the occasional Romanji printed under some of their better-selling ones, like, "sakura".

But now I'm equipped with a pretty good knowledge of hiragana/katakana, so YAY I am going back and ordering BASED ON THE FLAVOURS WHOOOOO!!!

Which is good in another way, because according to some research I did, there's lots of really strange flavours going around now, like jellyfish (with real jellyfish cubes! :O), corn and cheese, and... RAW HORSE :O

Gosh, what if I look at a random icecream and think that it's a nice colour, cos it reminds me of horses, and then I take a lick and "Oh damn! It IS horse!!!!"

Must brush up on katakana :O

2008-11-25T23:43:00.001-08:00

HAHA OMG I was blogsurfing, and then suddenly I came across my Jap classmate's blog. She had one of those yay-thank-everyone-I-know posts on it and I was reading the section on her Jap classmates.

J2.16...

andre: the joker in J2.16...always made us laugh..and sensei
pissed(:
angus:twin brother of andre...the zai japanese..always
top.(exceptfor one ca)
zhuosheng:the anderson 2/1 guy...quite zai
too...
kitchong!:from p5 till now..same class for one sub?haha...you are a
super super nice guy...
zai in jap....always joking...and very funny..and yr
funny expression and actions all made a day for me!(;and all yr jokes and
sacarsm(:
hilary:the girl from anglican who goes xiao wang zi to
kitchong...you noe a lot of cat high guys from kitchong class eh...haha..stay
funny.. and pro in english too...
yingjia:a very sweet
voice...(:
melodi;nice name..and nice person..
kuiyan:sacarstic teck lee
and swati class mate...always there for me...though sacarstic.and
funny..
victoria;gd friends with joshua...helpful
angela:pon
japde?
joshua:dun care abt jap?
kimberly:nice name...nice
person...
yeqi:not familiar with you..but looks like a nice
person.
aloysious.:the one kana joked by andre most of the time....makes an
effort to be zai in jap??
tan sensei:the 'mean' teacher who doesnt give us
breaks...but his teaching sometimes very scary...PMS but funny and fun...(:he's
a nice teacher(:
haha(:

:O NO WONDER I thought she and Kitchong were, uh, in a BGR la! But hey it's a good start :D

But I can't believe that she couldn't think of anything more to say about me than "good friends with joshua", and well, "helpful" (:D). And I can't believe I even projected the image of being good friends with Joshng lor wth! D: I mean I kick his chair like all the time. And the only reason I always pair up with him for pairwork is because... uh, because he's the nearest person around?

HAHA anyway Joshng's comments are rather amusing. "Don't care about jap".

And she's partly right la. I don't make an effort to be zai in jap. ):

Gosh I can't wait for next year's Jap to start again.

lol quiz from xinyuan

2008-11-25T04:38:00.000-08:00

Read the title.

A Long Meme -- from Xinyuan.
Instructions:
1. Do the "Letter MEME".
2. Tag no less than 5 other people.
3. Then copy the "How-to" Letter Meme, and finish your Journal entry.

Template:

Dear (the last person who text messaged you):
I don't really know how to tell you this, but (1). I think I realized it (2) (3) and I saw you (4) (5). I'm sure you're (6) enough to understand (7). I'm returning (8) to you, but I'll keep (9) as a memory. You should also know that I (10) (11).

(12),-Your name-

1. What's the color of your shirt?
Blue - Our romance is over
Red - Our affair is over
White - I'll join the monastery
Black - I dislike you
Green - Our horoscope doesn't match
Grey - You're a pervert
Yellow - I'm selling myself
Pink - Your nostrils are insulting
Brown - The mafia wants you
No shirt - You're a loser
Other - I'm in love with your brother

2. Which is your birth month?
January - That night
February - Last year
March - When your dwarf bit me
April - When I tripped on sesame seeds
May - First of May
June - When you put cuffs on me
July - When I threw up
August - When I saw the shrunken head
September - When we skinny dipped
October - When I quoted Santa
November - When your dog ran amok
December - When I changed tennis shoes

3. Which food do you prefer?
Tacos - In your apartment
Pizza - In your camping car
Pasta - Outside of Chicago
Hamburgers - Under the bus
Salad - As you ate enchilada
Chicken - In your closet
Kabob - With Paris Hilton
Fish - In women's clothing
Sandwiches - At the Hare Krishna graduation
Lasagna - At the mental hospital
Hot dog - Under a state of trance
None of the above - With George Bush and his wife

4. What's the color of your socks?
Yellow - Hit on
Red - Insult
Black - Ignore
Blue - Knock out
Purple - Pour syrup on
White - Carve your initials into
Grey - Pull the clothes off
Brown - Put leeches on
Orange - Castrate
Pink - Pull the toupee off
Barefoot - Sit on
Other - Drive out

5. What's the color of your underwear?
Black - My best friend
White - My father
Grey - Bill Clinton
Brown - My fart balloon
Purple - My mustard soufflé
Red - Donald Duck
Blue - My avocado plant
Yellow - My penpal in Ghana
Orange - My Kid Rock-collection
Pink - Manchester United's goalkeeper
None - My John F. Kennedy statue
Other - The crazy monk

(Sidenote: this question is mildly disturbing, and therefore I'm just going to pick the answer I think is the most amusing. It has absolutely no bearing on the, uh, colour of my underwear.)

6. What do you prefer to watch on TV?
Scrubs - Man
O.C. - Emotional
One Tree Hill - Open
Heroes - Frostbitten
Lost - High
House - Scarred
Simpsons - Cowardly
The news - Mongolic
Idol - Masochistic
Family Guy - Senile
Top Model - Middle-class
None of the above - Ashamed

7. Your mood right now?
Happy - How awful I've felt
Sad - How boring you are
Bored - That Santa doesn't exist
Angry - That your pimples are at the last stage
Depressed - That we're cousins
Excited - That there is no solution to this.
Nervous - The middle-east
Worried - That your Honda sucks
Apathetic - That I did a sex-change
Ashamed - That I'm allergic to your hamster
Cuddly - That I get turned on by garbage men
Overjoyous - That I'm open
Other - That Extreme Home Makeover sucks

8. What's the color of your walls in your bedroom?
White - Your ring
Yellow - Your love letters
Red - Your Darth Vader-poster
Black - Your tame stone
Blue - The couch cushions
Green - The pictures from LA
Orange - Your false teeth
Brown - Your contact book
Grey - Our matching snoopy-bibs
Purple - Your old lottery coupons
Pink - The cut toenails
Other - Your memories from the military service

9. The first letter of your first name?
A/B - Your photo
C/D - The oil stocks
E/F - Your neighbour Martin
G/H - My virginity
I/J - The results of your blood-sample
K/L - Your left ear
M/N - Your suicide note
O/P - My common sense
Q/R - Your mom
S/T - Your collection of butterflies
U/V - Your criminal record
W/X - David's tricot outfits
Y/Z - Your grades from college

10. The last letter in your last name?
A/B - Always will remember
C/D - Never will forget
E/F - Always wanted to break
G/H - Never openly mocked
I/J - Always have felt dirty before
K/L - Will tell the authorities about
M/N - Told in my confession today about
O/P - Was interviewed by the Times about
Q/R - Told my psychiatrist about
S/T - Get sick when I think of
U/V - Always will try to forget
W/X - Am better off without
Y/Z - Never liked

11. What do you prefer to drink?
Water- Our friendship
Beer - Senility
Soft drink - A new life as a clone
Soda - The incarnation as an eskimo
Milk - The apartment building
Wine - Cocaine abuse
Cider - A passionate interest for mice
Juice - Oprah Winfrey imitations
Mineral water - Embarrassing rash
Hot chocolate - Eggplant-fetishism
Whisky - To ruin the second world war
Other - To hate the Boston Celtics

12. To which country would you prefer to go on a vacation?
Thailand - Warm regards
USA - Best regards
England - Good luck on your short-term leave from jail
Spain - Go and drown yourself
China - Disgusting regards
Germany - With ease
Japan - Go burn
Greece - Your everlasting enemy
Australia - Greetings to your frog Leonard
Egypt - Fk off now
France - In pain

And hence, the story goes:

Dear Joshua Yeo,
I don't really know how to tell you this, but I'm in love with your brother. I think I realised it when your dwarf bit me with George Bush and his wife and I saw you sit on Manchester United's goalkeeper. I'm sure you're scarred enough to understand that we're cousins. I'm returning your ring to you, but I'll keep your criminal record as a memory. You should also know that I am better off without eggplant-fetishism.

Best regards,
Victoria.

OKAY. THIS IS BEYOND DISTURBING. And completely incomprehensible, too.

I don't tag anyone D: It's a free-for-all. Brrr disturbingggggg.

PLEEEEEASE spell properly

2008-11-23T05:11:00.000-08:00

I honestly cannot cannot cannot stand it when people spell simple words wrong.

What is "sumg"?

S-M-U-G. Say it with me. S-M-U-G.

RARGGHGHHGHHGHGHGHHGHGGHGHGHHGH.

2008-11-22T05:53:00.000-08:00

I.
I know what you did on the train,
the train before that,
and two trains before that.

I saw you the other day.
I asked for your number and smsed you a few hours later;
To you, I am but
"that guy from school"
To me, you should be but
"that girl from school".
But we, we are so much more

II.
We will take flight on gossamer wings,
drink nectar from the sweetest flowers
And partake in our shared passions
like meeting on the NEL,
reading Suchen Christine Lim
and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
You cannot ever leave me.
For when we are gone,
we will forever live on
entwined
in indelible ink,
immortalized today, yesterday, since forever

III.
But meanwhile,
I do know
That you read a book,
in the third from tail carriage
on the purple line towards Punggol
at 1806h
alone, but with me
earlier today.

--

Original poem taken from Crystal! :D

hello, ocd?!?!

2008-11-22T05:33:00.000-08:00

OMG LOL this cannot go unblogged.

Sherman smsed me to ask for Crystal's number. And since he'd asked nicely and with perfect grammar, I gave it to him :) Her home number. I told Crystal and she agreed that I should have given it to him, since he'd made the effort to use ploper engrish.

Awhile later, after I'd forgotten all about it, he smsed back asking for her handphone number. I didn't memorise her number, so I had to ask her for it. And then because I was kaypoh but at the same time not wanting to appear despo, I said Crystal wanted to know why.

He replied something like, "I'll sms her directly! :D" and added his thanks as an afterthought.

Obviously I immediately told Crystal to play along, and then tell me because I'm super kaypoh. (: (Random side info: she insisted that she hadn't received anything for awhile, and then said she wanted to go to the toilet and asked if she ought to bring her phone along to check in the toilet. ._. Why is everyone so open about their... toiletary habits?)

Soon the reason was revealed though. He smsed Crystal to ask if she was on a train at 1806h this evening. Yes. Really. 1806h. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Crystal was super flustered. Because he always sees her but not vice versa.

And then she replied that with, "I suspect so. Which line?" and got "Purple towards Punggol, 3rd carriage from tail. =]"

Apparently she was furnished with the same opinion that I was, that is, SHERMAN IS ABSOLUTELY BORDERING ON OCD, and therefore smsed back something along the lines of "Do you write everything about your train rides down?"

Sherman, however, puts it down to: "Nope, I can remember some stuffs temporarily."

:O :O :O :O :O

Mister, you've got detail-orientedness times ten.

Grah it's people like Sherman who make me feel totally moronic. ):

2008-11-20T18:48:00.000-08:00

OMG yay I realised I forgot to blog about what we did after finishing SDMA. Yay!

Obviously after finishing SDMA we were all in a post-SDMA induced state of euphoria, and since we couldn't express it by guzzling McFlurrys (they hadn't arrived) we decided to take it out on the ghastly iMacs!

Wenjing discovered that if you swoosh the mouse a certain way, it goes to another screen with a little red ball that you can bounce around, using your mouse. LOL ball games for techgeeks.

But our excitement at discovering that was soon overridden by something ELSE we discovered: the iMac's TRANSLATOR! Apparently it translates between English and Chinese, so being wuliao, we decided to input all sorts of shitty lines and see what it came up with. One of our favourites was: "gay is happy!"

It translated to: tong xing lian zhe shi yu kuai!

Then we translated it back to English, and got something like: homosexual is being happy

Chinese: tong xing lian zhe...

...

After a number of such cycles, we got this: the homosexuality is being excited

YAY! The homosexuality is being excited! :)

it rocks to be in av

2008-11-19T01:35:00.000-08:00

I know I complain alot about how AVPA people have the short end of the straw, but it so owns to be in AVPA.

Operation Convince Mum To Suscribe To Cable was an absolute success. I showed my mum an episode of Phineas and Ferb on youtube, and she consented. Well, not for the same reasons that I did, which is that Disney Channel totally rocks and so does AXN, and Nickelodean, but because sitting at the computer wasn't doing anything much for my posture. :D

But well, same end anyway.

Then after awhile she got even more hyped about getting cable after she realised there was Discovery Channel (she'd watched a documentary on the cruise and totally loved it) and kept bugging me to go find out more about cable.

And so that's why today I went to meet her during her lunch break and we went to Starhub and YEY WE GOT CABLE! Yeah so the person was all, "Um, would you like to install the box yourself?" My mum decided to save the $32.10 and ask my dad to do it when he got back, but...

Hee. :)

Seriously it's not that hard :D I mean, RGAVPA is famous for... um, well, interesting methods of troubleshooting. *psst Sprite bottle psst*

And so when I called my mum to tell her that I'd singlehandedly installed cable for our house, she wasn't that surprised. Much.

Me: Hi mum! I installed cable!
Mum: What?
Me: I put together everything. Without waiting for dad. It was rather easy really.
Mum: Uh. Okay. Gosh are you a guy or a girl?
Me: An audiophile :)

SDMA darlings

2008-11-18T05:27:00.000-08:00

Smile for the world dearies; 'cause it's quite so blithsome (:

2008-11-17T04:31:00.000-08:00

WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE SO MANY WEIRD EXBATCHMATES?

Um, not weird in a good way, but weird in the "oh YAY someone invited me to a group I shall join it HEE HEE HEE even though I don't fufill the criteria!" kinda way.

HELLO, are all you P6'06 people brain dead or something? WE'RE FROM THE DAMN BATCH OF FRIGGING 2006, NOT 2007!

Plus even if she realised (at last) that we're actually one year older, THAT'S STILL NO REASON TO JOIN! The group name is still Primary 6 Cohort of 2007, and THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SEE!

Do you want the entire world to think you got retained or something?!

AND HOW CAN SOMEONE "FORGET" THAT THEY WERE FROM THE BATCH OF 06????

I mean, you forget to bring your textbooks. You forget to sign a form. You forget to call a friend. But you don't forget which batch you were in! Puhlease you barely graduated 2 years ago! You're not a cenetarian with Alzheimer's, for goodness' sake! And basic, bloody simple maths would tell you that 2008-2=2006!

So PLEASE, if you joined that idiotic group, QUIT. YOU ARE NOT FROM THE BATCH OF 07.

2008-11-15T07:30:00.000-08:00

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

EEEEE DR D, PETER THE PANDA IS CUTE AND ALL BUT CAN'T YOU SEE, YOUR NEMESIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE PERRY ): YOU TWO WERE SO MEANT TO BE!

Ohmygawd Perry is so super cute cute cute cute squeeeee!

I made my MSN name Perry coloured to, um, honour him! :D Teehee it goes from Perrycoloured to Perrybillcoloured.

I want a secret agent platypus, too. ):

here i go

2008-11-15T05:31:00.000-08:00

I don't care I HAVE to do this. I badly NEED to shave off at least 9 seconds, if I ever want to break the Singapore record, and trust me, there is nothing more that I'd like to do. 160's the mark to beat and damn, I'm not even making 100. But that's not going to stop me, oh no, I'm going to make it and hell yeah I'll do anything it takes, including learning a whole new method after I've been using the same one for 8 freaking years.

Embracing, expecting, executing change. Who knew it would actually come in useful.

that makes two

2008-11-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Actually, joshyeo, you're wrong!

(10:42 PM) Joshua Yeo:
i think i'll just wear a shirt

(10:42 PM) Joshua Yeo:
and jeans if i feel like it

(10:43 PM) ♥victoria!;:
._.

(10:43 PM) ♥victoria!;:
please tell me you're not going to show up bottomless

(10:43 PM) Joshua Yeo:
haha

(10:43 PM) Joshua Yeo:
YOU NEVER KNOW

Research and chatlogs ftw :)

epicphayle

2008-11-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

I have just been invited to join the Facebook group "Rosyth School. Primary 6 Cohort 2007" by someone called Sarah Tan who I at first thought was Sarah my seatmate.

Well, two things. 1. The abovementioned Sarah Tan isn't anyone I know, and is most likely a weird Facebook stalker wishing to be like the Ben Tan everyone knows but no one actually knows. Hell, maybe they're related.

2. I am not from the primary 6 cohort of 2007. I was from the primary 6 cohort of 2006. And I should bloody know. I was the valedictorian.

Anyway, what is more disturbing than the fact that she invited us all to join a group which is obviously a misnomer, is that 3 out of 4 of the group members there are ALL FROM THE CLASS OF 2006.

The said 3 out of 4 people are actually people I know; namely Sherman, Jia En, and Josie.

JOSIE, I'M ASHAMED OF YOU! I THOUGHT YOU GOT PLATINUM IN SMOPS? Get this: If we graduated in 2007, we'd be Sec 1 now, not Sec 2.

And according to the group's homepage, the creator's email is manutd1994_9@hotmail.com . Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe people born in 1994 generally graduated from primary school in 2006? Unless of course she got retained. (Which, come to think of it, might actually be possible. Everyone knows that 2008-2007 is 1, not 2.)

So no, I shall not join that group. I'm from the batch of 06, and bloody proud of it. And please, if you're from the batch of 06 too, USE YOUR DAMN BRAIN. Do not be a sheep and click "accept" just because you see the words "Rosyth School" and your brain stops functioning. WE ARE NOT FROM THE BATCH OF 07. CLICK REJECT, PROUD AND STRONG!

<3 6GE06 aerodynamic elephants truckloads!

hsm3outing

2008-11-14T00:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't been updating on perspicacious for super long, so since I have loads to say and it doesn't seem very... well, I dunno, it's just like I can't put it on anotherentrance because I already blogged about yesterday, and well I just plain don't want to.

Plus no one reads this blog, so it wouldn't really matter if I said anything extremely inflammatory that people could use against me for blackmail, like maybe that I'm a pedophile or something like that.

For the record, I'm not.

Oh and these stuffs are really random and I dunno exactly what to classify them under, so that's why it's not going on anotherentrace. ):

Damn, perspicacious is starting to feel a little bit like a reject blog. Like all the stuff that didn't make anotherentrance just goes straight to perspicacious. That's super sad. And it makes anotherentrance sound... elitist, if that can be used to describe blogs. Maybe I should just create an I-Hate-Victoria site or something. It'd probably get more hits than poor perspicacious.

Anyway I have conclusive and damnable evidence proving that guys are really weird. And all from the 1 hour or so that we spent walking around Vivo after HSM3 yesterday.

(Oh, speaking of HSM3, it was awesome. I laughed so hard at the emo Troy parts that I cried. I had to stuff my fist into my mouth to stop laughing, but that just made me tear. Jaslyn threatened to throw popcorn at me for that, but Joshyeo made a remark which made Joshng laugh, and Jaslyn decided to throw popcorn at them instead. I don't know what he said; I wasn't within hearing range and Jaslyn refused to repeat it. But anyway the whole show was so cliched and dumb. Take this for example:

Troy [holding Gabriella's hands tenderly]: "You may be ready to say goodbye to East High..."
Me: [rolls eyes, cheesy voice] "But East High isn't ready to say goodbye to you."
Troy: [sincere sounding voice] "...But East High isn't ready to say goodbye to you."

I laughed so hard I think I might have bust a blood vessel or something.)

Yeah well anyway after that Jaslyn and I learnt that we shouldn't eavesdrop, the hard way. We were trailing behind Joshng and Joshyeo, since Joshng apparently knew his way around the place and we didn't want to risk getting lost. And we couldn't help but hear one of them say, "Hey, Joshua, just now when you were peeing-"

We immediately dropped back and gave each other a :/ look. Because I don't think either of us were really interested (or wanted to know, for that matter :O) the sordid details of What Happened When Joshua Was Peeing. (I don't know which one. They both call each other Joshua.)

And then at the Kopitiam, Joshyeo showed Joshng a picture of something on his handphone, and they both started laughing hysterically. I tried peering over his shoulder to see what it was, but I couldn't make it out.

Jaslyn: "What was that?"
Me: "I dunno. It looked like a sandcastle wearing sunglasses."
Joshyeo: *shows picture to me*
Me: "What is it?"
Joshyeo: "Sheep balls."

And then they all started cackling while Jaslyn and I tried not to puke.

sketchie :D

2008-11-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

Am rather pleased with how the sketch turned out. Too lazy to do the background though; I don't think I can handle loads of foliage and stuff like that when I just spent the better part of today trying to get the main focus right.

Didn't manage to capture the proper essence of the picture though, but I'll save that for another time if I ever get better.

May have unwittingly made the subject look rather fat though :/ oops.

Anyway Wesley said he'd show me his sketchbook or something. I dunno if I'm supposed to SKETCH the sketch or just look at it and ooh and aah or perhaps get inspiration. LOL the thought of a sketch of a sketch is somewhat amusing :D

little red riding hood

2008-11-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

Crystal and I were totally sick of the cheesy morals at the end of the stories for Drama Night so we made up our own Red Riding Hood without morals!

-Mum sends RRH to Grandma's house with a basket full of heroin.
-RRH smokes a cigarette and drops it, setting half the forest on fire.
-RRH meets wolf, who wants to kidnap her and sell her to a brothel.
-RRH takes out AK-47 rifle from her basket and blasts the wolf to high heaven.
-Meanwhile, Grandma is playing strip poker with the wolf's accomplice.
-RRH arrives and Grandma helps her make pot brownies.
-They all get drunk and the wolf kills Grandma and sells RRH to the abovementioned brothel.

Gosh, AV people DO get up to weird stuff when we're bored and hungry.

2008-11-02T04:28:00.000-08:00

Gosh I have a horrible headache and I really feel like puking.

Bloody pissed off that I can't break 18secs for 1 question. I need to halve the damn time.

ARGHHHHHHHHH I NEED MONEY.

...and panadol

alliteration

2008-11-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

Click and read!

Anyway that's one person who eats, sleeps and dreams alliteration for sure ._.

japan

2008-11-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

I know I've said I wanted to migrate to China previously, but after the melamine scare I decided against it, because I don't want to come back with some new rare disease again. Besides, who knows if I'm actually ingesting bits and pieces of, I dunno, cars or something with my curry puffs? (CAR-ry puffs hahaha)

Anyway, I have a new destination in mind.

JAPAN!

Of course it's not for some shallow reason, like their sushi is better than the sushi in Singapore (I still think sashimi tastes better cooked.) or anything lame like that. But it IS for my abacus AGAIN, because according to my teacher Japanese people are like super ownage at abacus and stuff. They hold the world record, despite the abacus homebase thingy being in Taiwan and all.

And because of the influx of annoying kiasu parents in Singapore, the sole purpose of abacus classes nowadays is to teach our whiny young how to count past ten without using their toes, and somehow, miraculously imbibe them with 23920520958293 IQ points so that they can all get into GEP.

(I hope all you readers got the catch 22 above.)

Which means that practically no one from Singapore competes at the international level, at least no one that I know of. In all my 8 years of learning this I've only seen 2 competitions organised: one Singapore-Malaysia one which I didn't want to go for, and one tentatively going to be organised next March. The tentative one is most probably based in Singapore, and thus all the exposure I'll ever be getting will probably be confined within this little red dot.

Since learning abacus has now been redefined into boosting our future generations' chances of getting into GEP, there is little, if none, competition training availible. Thus even if I DID have the talent, I wouldn't ever be able to make it big in the international arena because in Japan, Taiwan, and other parts of the world, there are fewer such FREAKING, KIASU, OPPORTUNITY-RUINING MOTHERS WHO THINK OF ABACUS AS A MERE STEPPING STONE TO THEIR KIDS GETTING SMART.

I really like my teacher, and she's totally nice and all, but I can't help thinking that if I moved to Japan, I'd actually be able to refine my technique and maybe get faster and better, something which I won't be able to do well in Singapore because of all these hindering parents who don't give a shit about how they're actually ruining other people's lives.

In Japan, the children start learning it from super young and thus they are all imba fast. And they keep on learning, and they STAY imba fast. There's no way I'd ever be able to compete with them, not with the facilities in Singapore. But if I could actually learn from the Japanese teachers... well, who knows? It can't be worse than the situation here.

I really wanted so terribly to be talented at something, but I guess I can't be.

SAP

2008-10-30T06:17:00.001-07:00

OMGZXSZXZSXZS YAY SAPPPPPPPP!!!!!

I got selected to apply for SAP woohoo!

I am super happy can. HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHA SAP!!!!!

Me: MUM MUM MUM I got shortlisted for SAP!
Mum: Didn't you tell me that 5 minutes ago?
Me: No, that was RALA.
Mum: Isn't it both art?
Me: Um, SAP is art. RALA is LANGUAGE Arts.
Mum: GOSH GET A LIFE!

My mum is kinda worried that I'll get into SAP, because she thinks I'm already too nolife and SAP will take up more of my free time, making me more nolife. She keeps trying to get me to exercise, but I told her that I'll only exercise if she goes with me, and hehe.

Plus she showed me the first painting I did. It was three splodges of paint on a huge drawing block. I looked at it and my first reaction was, "What happened to the rest of the paint?" The second one was three streaks of paint on a huge drawing block. And the third one was numerous streaks on a drawing block. The following ones were drawing blocks covered entirely with paint.

My mum is worried that I'll be bringing more of these home. She has a cupboard full of them from my painting stint from ages 2-6. I own. :D

i didnt have to know that

2008-10-29T20:50:00.001-07:00

Joshua Ng says:
ok
Joshua Ng says:
byebye
Joshua Ng says:
i need to go shit

bad impressions

2008-10-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

That "xiao bao bao, da wen ti" (small baby, big problem) show on Channel 8 is really getting on my nerves. And my mum's too. Not that we actually watch it, but the advertisements are annoying.

From a nonfunny and totally serious point of view, why the hell are they telling people that having kids is a big problem when the gahmen is trying to raise the birth rate?

Everytime I see the ad, I turn around and ask my mum, "Was I that much of a problem?" and she goes, "No, you slept all the time. When I put you on the sofa you'd stare into thin air for hours. Everyone thought you were retarded."

For some reason that wasn't very encouraging. D:

But today I am especially irritated with it because it showed a group of kids doing abacus, from that yellow book with the picture of the guy and the girl on the front, and the girls stacking up counting blocks on the back (it's the same picture from nooby books all the way to pro books. Quite cute.) and some kiasu mum waving a Rosyth test paper (I saw the freaking crest.)

So now, Rosyth is going to be flooded with kiasu mums wanting a place in our school, which doesn't really concern me much, considering that Mavis completely disowned us from the time we left.

BUT the CCs too will be flooded with the same said kiasu mothers, wanting to sign their kids up for abacus classes. And I swear, if I have to put up with one more freaking kid sobbing for his mummy and wailing, I will walk right up to him and slap him as hard as I can in the face.

I am bloody sick of having to listen to kids throw tantrums in class, and having to watch the teacher waste time on coddling them because their parents cannot be bothered to discipline their damn kid.

And they're not even learning it for the right purposes. Annoying kids. They piss me off no end.

2008-10-29T01:23:00.001-07:00

Gosh I honestly miss Camp Crew lor. All that organising and whatever just gone like that in a short one and a half days of paisehing Cheryl.

Like how I almost threw a tantrum and didn't want to change into AV shirt, but Cheryl hustled me out of the door before I could do anything :(

Oh, and who could forget Mrs S. Tan's speech where she was calling all the poor ACSI guys "young men" and freaking them out to no end? Poor Julian got asked (in a kindly tone, sort of) "So, let's ask this fine young man here, why did you join AV?" After many many hours of silence she just gave up and went: "Enjoy your camp -.-"

HEHE and when Cheryl walked past Yuhan grinned at her and said in a very matter-of-fact tone, "Cheryl, today you look extremely like a walrus." and Cheryl spluttered for 5 minutes or so before managing a feeble "SHUT UP!"

And Hann Lam talking in a gay voice amusing Cheryl no end (OOOOOOOOOOH) and gamely striking a pose to question what I meant by "poser" when I asked him about Justin .

Me: Hey Hann Lam, do you know someone called Justin Mao?
Him: Justin Mao? Sec 2?
Me: Yeah. Is he in waterpolo?
Him: Uhh. I dunno. Maybe maybe not. I only know the good players you see. :D

Wesley S insisted that he'd seen most of us before. I asked him if he was psychic and to my amazement he claimed he was. D:

Goshhhh I can't believe so many people were checking out Anderson lor. I guess once someone's your assistant group facil it automatically disqualifies you from liking them. But well to tell the truth, it was kinda shocking when Crystal and I accidentally stumbled on him demonstrating all his imba atheletic abilities. I think our gasp was kinda loud.

HAHAHAHAH CAPTAINS BALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

And oooh ghost stories! That spooked me no end, but still.

<3333345678910 Camp Crew 09 manzxszxszxzsxzs!

hoohoo

2008-10-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

Today I had a wonderful surprise when I went for morning assembly. The Sec4s hadn't bothered to keep the mikes after the longlonglonglong morning assembly yesterday, which Xinyuan and I left halfway because it didn't involve us and we were getting bored. So we didn't have to set up the mikes. HEHE. Cheryl wasn't very amused.

SDMA briefing. Mr Lee brought a laptop down. I wonder how many electronical gadgets he has, because he had that super tiny laptop which he claims everyone "doodles on" during staff meetings, and now this imba looking laptop. The wallpaper was this small kid (presumably his kid?) crouched on a shelf. Even Xinyuan couldn't help but coo, "So cute!" at it.

I did notice a small MapleStory desktop shortcut though ._.

LOL collection of MPP consent forms was rather amusing.

"We've got a really good response. *holds up totally filled up sign up sheet* 40 people altogether. Actually they only allowed us to send 30 people, but SOME SCHOOL sent 39 people, so we told them, 'If they can send 39 people, we can send 40 people!' And so they agreed."

Competitive much?

Drama night auditions were kinda boring la. Our class was the coolest la :D 211's one was rather in the style of an OM performance, what with all the rhymes and whatnot. Crystal was dressed in a sacklike costume for her performance ._. The small Charmaine kept trying to push me off the gallery because she was wondering what would happen if someone jumped down from there and I told her to try it.

Sabreena and Atiqah were grousing about how unfair it was that we have to wait for Sec4 to learn how to play soccer, and I mumbled something about how unfair it was that we have to learn to play soccer, period, and they all gave me a scandalised look.

Sabreena: YOU DON'T LIKE SOCCER?!?!
Me: I hate everything involving physical exertion. Kinda.
Atiqah: WATCH CRISTIANO (?) RONALDO (?) PLAY! THEN YOU'LL LOVE SOCCER!

My knowledge of soccer, however, is still limited to bits and pieces that I pick up from listening to Joshua and Joshua talk. And then I repeat them to other people. :D

3rd lang briefing pissed me off muchly. If I want to take the bloody O levels as a bloody private candidate, I so will and to hell with your administrative red tape.

I MIGHT write an irritated post about it later, if I feel like it.

great aspirations

2008-10-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

I have great aspirations.

By the time I leave RGS, I will have done 1 pull-up.

I own.

When I told my dad my great ambition, he said: "1 nia? DO SOME MORE LA!"

When I told my mum, however, she said: "1? You sure you can? Make it half la. And make it by the time you graduate."

I already can do half a pull-up. (Oh and when I say pull-up I mean IPU not those kind which NCC people in my jap class like to do, yanoe, like, grabbing the door frame then hoisting themselves up and grunting like crap.) So obviously my next goal will be 1 pull-up.

I have a great feeling about this. I think I can totally achieve it. Man, I'm pumped. I CAN DO THIS WOOOHOOOO!

(Ya. I'm serious. I think I can.)

jellyfrogs

2008-10-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

My dad just caught me crouching at the refrigerator, munching on the gummy frogs that he brought back from Melbourne. Considering that the last time he caught me doing that, I was around 4, he wasn't too shocked. :D

camp crew day 2

2008-10-25T02:06:00.000-07:00

WHEEE <3 GROUP 1 and EXCO!

LOL on the bus to ACSI, our fantastic Sec 2 batch occupied the back seat and started singing Cobrastyle. Or at least our own version of it, since we could only make out stuff like, "He press people he no press people button."(?!) and of course, our favourite part: "BOM DIDDY BOM DIDDY DANGLY DANG DEE DEE DEE DEE" which we all screamed in various levels of out-of-tune-ness.

ACSI is still as big as ever. ._. Their equipment is... oh gosh, it even bests the HCI one which all AVS participants worshipped and told tales of fantasticness and coolness back to our other RGS AV people who lapped them up with huge eyes of wonder.

We ate chicken rice for lunch and then ran off eagerly to buy MORE food even though we weren't exactly really hungry, but because ACSI canteen food is just... Woah. We discovered that we all specially brought extra money just so that we could buy ACS food. :D

Truth or Dares all around today! Hann Lam was forced to go up to Cheryl Chan and ask her to dance with him, but Cheryl Chan dissolved in a fit of giggles while Hann Lam stood there getting redder and redder and kept pleading. I dared Crystal to go pinch Jeremy's cheek. At first Jeremy was all "WTH NO!" and told Crystal to pinch Joshcheah's cheek, but Joshcheah apparently didn't wanna be pinched so he grabbed Jeremy and was all, "Oi, quick, I hold him down you pinch him!"

Cheryl set Xinyuan and Crystal a very amusing dare. There was this guy sitting there listening to his iPod and hoboing. They were supposed to sneak up behind the guy, pull out his earphones, and start singing in his ears. But Crystal so unsneaky la pranced right in front of him and started trying to explain, so he took out his earphones by himself. -_- NOT FUN LA YALL!

Whoopie I was walking along and I saw Anabelle trying to pull up her culottes so I went up to her and said, "LOL Anabelle culottes abit short arh..."

She looked right back at me and said: "Eh... Why I roll so high mine still cannot be as short as yours..."

HEEHEE I have become a bad influence. :D

After lunch (Yeah I'm jumping around unchronologically because I'm like that) Crystal and I were walking back to LT2 when Joshcheah started singing in a really high voice and we gave him this "wtf?!" look. He got pissed and started going all, "Hey! It's a GIFT to be able to sing so high okayyyy! Can YOU sing so high? I can sing all the girls' parts you know!"

This really impressed us a whole lot.

Then Huilian and Huichen and Delia were acting retarded while walking through the door and tinyguy (aka Julian) got irritated and squeaked: "Eh! Can go inside then be spastic anot!" So Joshcheah decided to be gentlemanly, pushed his way through the crowd and said, "LOL small boy say go inside be spastic hor." Julian looked somewhat miffed but to make up for all the injustices he'd suffered I offered him an M&M. He took it with much pleasure, squealing "OOO! M&Ms!" Apparently the offer of M&Ms overrules the not-very-nice manner in which I said it, which was, "Hey, small boy, you want M&Ms?" (SORRY LOR I DIDN'T KNOW HIS NAME!)

YAY Captain's Ball. Julian was the goalie for his team. EXCO played vs Group 5 I think, and even though all RGS AV people are kinda... not very atheletic, the ACS people more than made up for it. Hann Lam was super sporty and even did some cool ball tricks like jumping out of nowhere and grabbing the ball, and we had Joshcheah, who blocked the goalie fully just by standing up. (The goalie was on a CHAIR lol.) The other team had no chance la. Everytime the ball came towards them, Joshcheah would just reach up (almost lazily) and tap the ball halfway across the field. Plus we had Anderson, who is SUPER DAMN MUSCLEY. In fact all the guys could hurl the ball 3/4 way across the field. ._. EXCO pwned Group 5 12 to 1. :D

Then after that it was Pro Players vs EXCO, which Julian volunteered himself for. That guy, although small, is SUPER DAMN SPEEDY CAN. He was whizzing all the way across the field, but hehe EXCO still owned. Anderson also did another ball trick just to piss them all off.

However the ACS guys don't seem to know their balls. In LT2 a group of them were showing off their soccer tricks with a basketball ._. Then for Captain's Ball they made us use a football. ._.

Closing address was amusing.
Hann Lam: "Well, I'd like to thank RGS for all the effort they put in. *claps* Cheryl, will you join me on stage? *pause, Cheryl walks up to the podium* As you know, this is not MY event. It is... OUR event."

The whole LT2 started catcalling and whooping. Mr Lee had to go up and go, "Uh, I think we all agree that this is not a wedding speech...?" HEHE.

And as is the case with every single AV camp, Jiayi told ghost stories. ._. She always has super scary ghost stories lar wth. Crystal and I jointly told our Perth one though! :D

<3 Isabelle Hazel Zixin Vietanh BrianC. WesleyS. Anderson me!
<3 Cherylchan me Xinyuan RachelP. Yunteng Karmun Jiayi Hannlam Anderson Shoban Joshcheah and dunnowhoelse!

CAMP CREW FTW!

wao

2008-10-24T03:17:00.000-07:00

Everyone has thrilling tales of OBS on their blog. But since I didn't go for OBS (and probably won't either yay) I don't have any such exciting stories so instead I shall tell you about CAMP CREW!

<3 Zixin Hazel Delia Yuhan Isabelle VietAnh WesleyS.!

GROUP 1 FTW!!!!!!

HEHEHE for ice breakers we played this game where everyone was given a piece of paper with something written on it and they had to go around finding their pair. We saboed Han Lam (spelling?) to play it as well and he got "roadrunner" :D So he kept whining at Cheryl and me: "ARE YOU SURE THIS HAS A PAIR?"

In the end he found his soulmate.
Han Lam: Yo! Is your item super tall?
Tiny guy: *nods*
Han Lam: Is it a chicken- I mean a bird?
Tiny guy: *nods*
Han Lam: Is it a cartoon?
Tiny guy: *nods*
Han Lam: Damn fast one?
Tiny guy: *nods*
Han Lam: *hugs tiny guy* HAH I'VE FOUND YOU!

And then after that everyone was given a block of ice which we were supposed to melt. Our group damn pro la we ran to the hand dryers and just put the ice under there and watched it melt super damn fast. Crystal's group tried to be smart and they threw their ice in the bin, which earned them a forfeit muahahaha. Finally all the groups finished and we went back in...

...before we discovered there was still this pathetic group huddling around their ice block on top of an aircon vent.

Wesley S. was an idiot la! He told us the "SARAH, I'M ON THE FIRST STEP" story, and I forgot at the end the person would scream, and then suddenly he went all "RARRR!" at us. Our whole group screamed like crap, including Viet Anh, who'd heard it just 5 minutes ago. -_- Then he kept insisting that he'd seen Yuhan, Isabelle and I somewhere before. I told him he'd probably seen Crystal and mistook me for her, but when he looked over he saw Jiayi and was all, "Oh. I saw that girl before also. Lol."

After that we all just started swapping lameass ghost stories, including the "You didn't use DYNAMO!" one. Hehe.

We had a random extra game of Dog and Bone after Station games, and Han Lam, Cheryl and Melissa were taking turns to shout out random stuff. At first it was all the numbers, then it progressed to sums, which was when the playing got super dirty. The other team kept kicking the toilet paper roll (which was supposed to be the bone) back to their side. :( But after we banned kicking the random stuff got just plain weird.

"Um, EVERYONE ABOVE 150cm!"
*everyone rushes out*
"Oh crap. OH EVERYONE BELOW 150cm!"

There was a long pause before this tiny guy trotted out to claim the bone without competition.

Abovementioned tiny guy seems to be bloody pro at running though. When everyone was trying to stop each other getting the bone he'd either kick the thing back to his group, or pick it up and run pell mell for leather back to his group. Everyone was looking at him with newfound awe after that, because he seemed like the typical pasty-skinned AV nerd.

Some more stupid random stuff included:

"WHOEVER THINKS THAT THEY'RE DAMN SEXY!" (Viet Anh went up unchallenged)
"EVERYONE UNDER 35kg!" (Tiny guy went up unchallenged)
"WHOEVER THINKS THAT THEY HAVE TWO LUNGS!" (Everyone daoed this)
"EVERYONE WITH PIERCED EARS!" (Surprisingly, I went up unchallenged)
"PEOPLE WHO GOT ABOVE 280 FOR PSLE!" (Quite a lot of Sec1s went up)
"ANYONE WHO CAN EAT MORE THAN THREE BURGERS!" (Ashlynna, Xinyuan, and Viet Anh went up ._.)
"EVERYONE WHO BROKE THEIR HAND!" (Xinyuan sheepishly walked up and claimed the bone with her un-fruitwrapped hand)

2008-10-21T05:18:00.001-07:00

Hello blog readers.

Just because this is perspicacious and not anotherentrance doesn't mean that all the usual stuff doesn't apply ._.

Why can't yall be more perspicacious and tag using your own name?!

It gets seriously confusing and bloody annoying when I have to trawl through tons of cbox records to find an almost-kind-of matching IP address, which is in itself absolutely inconclusive -_-

I mean the first and third things were okay, because that's the whole point of tagging so, but "name."?

You have a name. USE IT.

And um, "name."? The Joshua Tree I was referring to, as specified in my earlier post, is a "furry cute desert plant thingy", and not the name of a U2 song. Don't be lame already -.-

furry

2008-10-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Today we were at the library during free block. Crystal lamented the pointed lack of non-cheemdeep books in our school library (all we have are obscure, filled with literary meaning books.) and got extremely pissed when she couldn't find a single Princess Diaries book to read. She kept muttering to herself "CAB! CAB!" and checking all the "C" shelves over and over again, until Xinyuan pointed out to Crystal that "B" came after "A" and checking the "CAA" shelf would be rather pointless.

I spotted a book with "CAB" on it, and I pulled it out, but it turned out to be the book titled "The Joshua Tree", which I mentioned in some previous post either here or on anotherentrance. We all convulsed into silent fits of laughter in awhile, since (no offence) Joshng DOES indeed have the height and general build of a tree.

In a bid to seem literary, I decided to try reading that book while Crystal indulged in some good old Harry Potter.

However, perhaps because I am not a Joshua, I was confused as soon as I read the first page. Apparently the Joshua Tree was narrating, and it was in... JoshuaTree-ese, which being not a Joshua Tree, I couldn't understand at all ._.

Also, as is the case with most cheemdeep literary books, it did not have accompanying pictures except for random aboriginal drawings in the margins. I stopped reading after page 30something, because 1. I couldn't understand it at all. o.O Maybe you have to be a Joshua or a Joshua Tree to understand the book. 2. Without a proper image of a "Joshua tree", I kept having disturbing images of a grinning green (LOL) Joshng parading through my mind. 3. Free block was up.

So in order to rid myself of the Joshng-as-a-tree images, the first thing I did when I got home was to power up my laptop and google "Joshua tree". SURPRISINGLY, there really IS such a thing as a Joshua tree. It is apparently some furry cute desert plant thingy. o.O

But for some reason the green Joshng is still parading through my mind D: Must be all the bad influence lar.

hehe

2008-10-21T01:42:00.001-07:00

HAHAHA CRYSTAL YOU ADMIT HE'S HOT! YOU ADMITTED IT HEHEHE!

WAHAHAHAHA!

(Oh crap but don't tell him!)

yeah, big, big.

2008-10-20T03:27:00.000-07:00

I was happily mapling and training at MP3 today while I was rather disturbingly reminded of why I hated fellow Maplers so much.

There was an idiot who was in the party with me. At first I thought he was a pretty okay guy, but then he ordered me to go cover Lanes 2 and 3 of Mp3, while he happily slacked away at Lane 1. For non-maplers out there, or for ex-maplers who've been as out of touch with the game as I have, Lane 1 is by far the easiest lane because there's a very convenient pedestal there for you to stand on and heal/throw stars at the monsters.

Lane 2 and 3 have no such pedestals, and the spawn rate is bloody fast there (way faster than lane 1, at any rate) and for a mere level52 cleric like me, it is practically a death sentence. Note that Mr Slacky was a level74 hermit. -_-

And he still had the cheek to tell me to kill stuff faster -.-

The lack of chivalry was one thing I was prepared to overlook, but he was quite obviously leeching my exp. So I quit the party (why disadvantage yourself when you can do so much better on your own?) and told him that he was leeching all my exp.

The irritating retard kept whining: "EH, JOIN MY PARTY LEH..........."

Me: "No."

Irritating retard: "PLS......."

Me: "Piss off and die."

Irritating retard: "YOU JOIN MY PT OR CC.........................."

I hate it when they do that. Stupid people just cannot see when people are walking through any given map and they immediately start to whine "cc pl0x! cc pl0x!" Plus, what, his grandpa owns the map issit? Hello, a map is public property! Don't want to share with people then ask your abovementioned rich and influential grandpa to buy over Maple la!

I pointed out to him that he couldn't possibly handle the whole of MP3 on his own (considering that he needed to push around a level 52 cleric who's been out of touch for super long) and since it was going to be horribly underutilised, why not let someone else share it? -_-

Since his brainpower obviously couldn't comprehend the logic of that argument, he hesitated for awhile and then brought out the single sentence I hated most: "I CALL MY GUILD HERE!"

I honestly CANNOT stand it when people do that. It is a sheer sign of cowardice. This is between me and you, dude. Where's your sense of fair play?

But apparently people who aren't chivalrious are also not above neglecting fair play. He kept up with the threatening to call his guild in, until I couldn't stand it anymore and logged off. Of course I would have liked to slap him soundly across the face with a smelly tuna fish, or saw his balls off with a safety scissors (thanks Maddox/Tuckermax. I read it on one of their blogs.), but circumstances disallowed it.

It puzzles me how some people are just so above logic.

Oh, and not to mention people who have so much acash they can afford to spend it on megas screaming at people. Everyone's peaceful mapling experience will probably have been punctured before by people who think that their sole purpose in life is to prove that they're superior, and start screaming via megas: "XXX HUMJI ARH? COME LA KS LA WE HAVE GUILDWAR WANT? NOOB NOOB NOOB NOOB"
5 mins later, you get: "XXX JUST NOW SCOLD SO MUCH WHY NOW DONT SAY ANYTHING? CHICKEN ARH YOU. HUMJI. BUYING DEFAME FOR XXX LOLOLOL"

Occasionally it goes on to insult the other party's mother, sister, grandpa, crazy aunt locked up in attic, etc.

Excuse me, but are you so boring that you have to keep reiterating your point in so many megas? ONE IS ENOUGH, BRAINLESS FISHHEAD. WE GET IT. NOW SHUT UP AND GO BACK TO YOUR LOSERISH EXISTENCE OF SUCKING SHRIMPS FROM THEIR SHELLS OBSESSIVELY.

SO annoying.

crystal is a meanie

2008-10-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

Sheesh Crystal is such a meanie.

She just told me I look fugly in my dp.

Crystal Ong says:
actually can i tell you something about your dp?
[c=27][a=1][b]♥clarisse t is WEITING for you!; sexysixfifteener![/b][/a][/c=0] says:
yes
Crystal Ong says:
it's a terrible shot of you
[c=27][a=1][b]♥clarisse t is WEITING for you!; sexysixfifteener![/b][/a][/c=0] says:
o.o
Crystal Ong says:
you don't even look as ugly as that in real life :/
[c=27][a=1][b]♥clarisse t is WEITING for you!; sexysixfifteener![/b][/a][/c=0] says:
implying that in real life i do look ugly
[c=27][a=1][b]♥clarisse t is WEITING for you!; sexysixfifteener![/b][/a][/c=0] says:
thanks a lot
Crystal Ong says:
no lor
Crystal Ong says:
you don't look ugly, but in this picture you sure do

Thanks a whole lot. -_-

But then again it's true la. Lol. Not the picture. As in I really do look ugly in real life. Lol.

i am a horrible person

2008-10-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

LOL I realise that I'm a horrible discriminatory asshole.

But I don't care I don't care I can and I WILL make the choice whether or not to dislike someone after reading his or her blog ^^ Even if I've never met the person before and all.

BECAUSE I HATE THE WORLD HEE HEE HEE! :D

LOL not really. Just some people. Whom I've, admittedly, never met before and don't know if they're actually super nice kind souls, but I don't care because I am prejudiced and discriminatory and all that! Whooooo!

dumb cowpat

2008-10-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

Joshuayeo just informed me that perspicacious is one of his favourite words, and it means "acutely intelligent or wise".

Oh dear. Considering that I am neither, maybe I should rename my blog "slime on a mangosteen". But even that doesn't sound as nice as perspicacious, which I chose precisely because it sounds... well, pretty.

Shallowness alert BIMB BIMB BIMB BIMB BIMB

I was considering using it as my blog URL, just to piss people who can't spell perspicacious from memory off, but I realised that most people would just follow the link from anotherentrance, which is infinitely easier to spell. Not to mention that I think if people can't spell perspicacious, they just won't come to perspicacious.blogspot.com. Hopefully clandestine is easy enough.

Today as I was pouring myself a cup of water my mum leant over and ripped the bandaid covering my stitches clean off. I roared in pain. "WHAT'D YOU DO THAT FOR?!?!"
Mum: "The stitches want to breathe."
Me: "And you know this for a fact?"
Mum: "...Yeah."

But it turns out she did me a favour, because the fact that my stitches can survive having a bandaid ripped off them shows that they have healed enough for me to not wear a bandage anymore :) THEREFORE I can finally show Rachel my stitches, and she can stop feeling an urge to sneak up behind me and rip a plaster off. :D

unfair lol

2008-10-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

I created a blog because I have so much to say and I want to say it to the world!

But damn, as soon as I clicked "New Post" I promptly forgot everything I wanted to blog about.

Oh but Uncyclopedia owns. The Lemony Snicket page particularly amused me.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Lemony_Snicket

Don't read if you're a ignorant cultural philistine. And don't ask me to explain it to you if you don't understand it. Once I explain it it won't be funny anymore.

They even have a LOLcats page.