[Me] (in Chinese): Good afternoon teachers. May I sit down please?
[Examiners] (in Chinese): Sit down please. Can I have your IC?

(sits down, hands over IC, accidentally pushed the table because the chair has got wheels and I pushed my chair forward and couldn't stop in time)

[Me] (in English): Sorry.
[Examiners] (softly): *grunts*

...

(halfway through conversation)
[Examiners]: Are there any shopping centres near your school?
[Me]: Erm... No.
[Examiners] (both suddenly looked up and stared at me): No?
[Me]: No.


And I heard afterwards that one examiner is a Chinese teacher from TKSS and the other the HOD of Chinese from TKGS.

I was feeling quite sad already when I left the premises, and even worse when my friends laughed at me when I told them that I said "sorry" to the invigilators.

Today was surprising.

There were hard platic plates and bowls in the school canteen being used rather than the typical styrofoam ones that we used to use. I heard that the change was due to students complaining after the school showed us a video talking about environmental degradation.

But the change brought about some good news, better news, bad news and worse news.

Which one do you want to know first? Good news?

Good news is that we don't have to wash the plates and bowls ourselves, but rather the vendors will wash them for us. This means that we can just dump our plates and everything into the trays provided.

The better news is that the canteen vendors won't be charging us extra on the food even though they are doing the washing. That's what the principal said this morning during assembly.

Bad news is that it is very confusing, because there are different coloured-plates for each stall, and they have to separate the Halal ones with the non-Halal ones, so they actually have 2 different sections of trays for putting the plates. I still don't know which is where, so for today's lunch, I threw my plate onto one of those trays which match the colour of my plate, after eating. Haha.

Okay, the worse news is that though it was claimed that the vendors won't increase the prices of food, what they did was they decreased the food sold to us with the same price. So I was quite shocked when I saw my plate of rice sold at $2 less than what can be bought with $1.80 last time. 所谓 "羊毛出自羊身上"!

Not too good for a start.

I have been sleeping at wee hours these few days, so it isn't really surprising that I am blogging at this time now.

Just received news from North that I got into Singapore Mathematical Olympiad Special Round for both Senior and Open sections. Well, for the Senior section it was kind of expected because I got into it last year as well, so this year should get in too since they are of the same standards. I hope to get at least 2 questions fully correct (the paper is 5 questions, 10 marks per question. I scored 18 last year, but I dunno how it was distributed).

For the Open section... hmmm, I think I am going there to submit blank paper. I tried looking at the past year paper and I can't do a shit. I don't even understand the solutions.

And North started off the conversation saying, "Get into the IMO Team!" Hmmm, IMO team is chosen by selecting the top 6 scorers for the Open Section, and includes all the JC people, lol.

Ah well, wish North good luck into getting into his country's IMO team?

Sometimes I feel that my life is quite screwed.

Haha.

But I am not complaining. I know there are people out there far worse than me.

It's 12.11am now. I have shifted the time 20 minutes earlier to fit the date.

Today was a tiring day. Practice was very disappointing, but the barbeque wasn't too bad. It was more or less the same as last year, just that I didn't need to help out in the cleaning all those.

Thanks to the sec 3s, and the sec 2 committee members as well, for the barbeque, and thanks to the present committee for their tributes. All the best for making music in VSchoir!

Chua Hian Hou

1 June 2007
Straits Times

(c) 2007 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

Japanese animated cartoons distributor sending letters to culprits warning of legal action

PRICES of anime DVDs here are the world's lowest, but fans of these Japanese animated cartoons prefer to get them online - for free. Now they may land in the soup because a crackdown has been launched, and they are the targets for downloading these English-subtitled cartoons through file-sharing networks. Local anime distributor Odex, which brings in the DVDs from Japan, has sent out letters to culprits it has identified as having downloaded these 'fansubs' using the Internet and peer-to-peer systems like BitTorrent. 'Fansubs' are the works subtitled by bilingual fans of anime as a service to the community of non-Japanese-speaking anime fans.

(Read more + discussion at SGEduLab forum)

Every holiday is the same - we are always bombarded with homework. This is something which we cannot avoid, since it is usual for the teachers to keep giving us homework during our "holidays". Wow, what a way to enjoy our hols.

For this June holiday it's slightly different from the holidays I have had so far. We were given 2 E-maths, 5 A-maths, 5 Phyics, 5 Chemistry and 1 Biology FULL papers to do, meaning 18 full examination past year papers. And if you add up the time limits for each paper you get a whooping 69 hours of exam papers to do! Then plus some other homework like Chemistry Workbook on organic chemistry, that will be 3 days of doing homework non-stop!

And to think that 1 week of holiday has passed and I have only done 2 and a half papers, so at this rate, I'll probably finish my homework 3 weeks after the start of Semester 2.

I'm complaining because 17/18 of these papers that I am doing are subjects which I am stronger in. As a result, I have very very little time to practise my weaker subjects, namely Biology, Geography + Social Studies and English (forgetting Chinese).