Just got back my mid-year results. I dropped by 22 positions as compared to last year... time to buck up!

Plus the teachers are really freaking me out by putting up a big notice board with currently: 24 more days to Prelims; 79 more days to 'O' levels.

My paternal grandfather passed away on the 6th of July, so I gotta fly back to HK to attend the ritual (Wednesday) and burial (Thursday).

The ritual was held in the same place as where my maternal grandfather's ritual was held. That one was held I think around 10 years ago already, and I still remembered myself playing with my cousin around that place and peeping other dead people in other rooms. I didn't do that this time ;).

I didn't really feel sad about my grandfather's death. I was quite close to him when I was younger. I remembered him bringing me out to play quite often, until he suffered from a stroke which got him paralysed. He could still recognise me for a year or so after he was paralysed, but couldn't after a few years, probably because I have grown and didn't really get to see him often.

I am his youngest grandchild in terms of age, but also his eldest grandchild (长孙), because I am his only son's only son (meaning my father is his only son (youngest too), and I don't have a brother).

On Thursday afternoon, after the burial, I sat around with the old people (and that include my parents) for a while since my niece was hogging the computer, and they were chatting about family history. Interesting stuffs came up, like if the daughter marries a husband with the same surname as her mother, they will have no sons (only daughters). This has happened for 3 continuous generations already, haha.

At night 17 of us were squeezing in a confined space having dinner, with some of us standing while eating. And we were chatting so much and so happily such that we seemed to have forgotten all about grandpa's death already.

Just came back to Singapore today. My sister was supposed to come back with me too but she was forced to stay in Hong Kong because she was unwell. She has been unwell since around 2 weeks ago, and she was admitted to the hospital twice today. Get well soon!

I learnt a lesson for not studying (or even reading through) the whole of microorganisms.

Biology essay question
8a) Describe how a named hormone can be commercially produced on a large scale by using a named microorganism. [5]

A: Place it in a fermenter with suitable conditions. Maybe can produce progesterone for contraceptive pills. Then there will be less babies. Hoho.



8b) Briefly explain how a gene coding for the hormone is inserted into this organism. [5]

A: Through human intelligence



I scored zero for this whole question.

Primitive sewing techniques.


Modern sewing techniques.


Here's another one. It's done at the other end of the banner.



Is using the sewing machine to sew more productive than hand sewing? Explain your answer. [13]

Finally, our class successfully completed our Victorian Challenge!

Before we embarked on our challenge, we first drew the design and everything onto a long strip of paper of 4cm by (131 x 4)cm, which is a scaled down version of the 131m by 1m banner. And on Tuesday, we chalked down the design on around 3/4 of the banner.

Yesterday, at around 8.50am, the Guest of Honour for both the Victorian Challenge and VS 131th Speech Day, Mr Teo Ser Luck, lit the Victorian Challenge flame and Principal, Mr Low Eng Teong, started the 24h countup timer.

We spent the first hour in class briefing each other about how we are going to carry out the project and the schedule for the day. We planned to finish by 11pm that day.

The banner actually came in 3 parts. I heard that Shamir is going to ask for a refund because he had told the tailor to sew up the whole 131m. So our class was divided into 7 groups which one was the sewing team, which was our team haha.

On Wednesday we approached Mrs Lim to borrow some sewing machines, because not only do we have to stitch the 3 banners together, but also the whole entire length of the banner so that we can attach the nylon rope to hang up the banner. She told us to look for her on Thursday instead. So at around 10am of the Victorian Challenge day, we went to the Home Economics kitchen to look for her. She was really very very busy with 2 classes using the kitchen to cook things. With many people who kept asking her questions and stuffs, we could tell that she could faint any time. Haha.

When we finally got hold of her, she asked us whether we knew whether we know how to operate the machine, and we said no, so she attempted to teach us (while still busy with the 2 classes). After trying for a while, she could not sew properly so she told us that she can't teach us. Our group decided that we hand sew instead, but I thought, 131m is really very long for hand sewing. Furthermore, if our whole class hand sew, by right each person has to sew 3m to 4m, which is quite a lot too. We cannot possibly get 40 needles and not everyone will be present at any time, so each person has so sew more. Plus I am the determined kind of person, so I told them that if they want to help out the painting first they should go ahead, but I would be staying in the sewing room to experiment out with the machines.

Wei Liang stayed with me and supplied me cloth (from his CO room) while I tested out the machine. After trying out for a while I got the machine working fine. I don't know what was wrong with the machine Mrs Lim used, but I used another machine and got it working through sheer luck.

So in the end we borrowed 2 machines, which was barely enough.

When I went back down to the canteen area, my classmates were busily painting the banner. So I thought since I had nothing to do, I might as well find Mr Aw Yong to edit the recording accompaniment for the Speech Day song.

At around 2pm, I went back down to the canteen area. Making much progress already. After lunch, I got my hands on a little bit of painting (cleaning up of edges). It started drizzling some time later so everyone's reaction was to move the banner indoors. We moved it through the whole parade square staircase (the one nearer to the main road). By the time we finished moving it, it stopped drizzling -.-! In the end, part of the banner was smudged with bits of paint here and there. Thinking back, we could just have left the banner there on the road, because if the paint has dried up, it doesn't matter, but if it doesn't, we just have to repaint that small area. But if it rains heavily then we still have to move the banner indoors. But then again we don't know if it would continue raining, so moving the banner indoors is still a smart move.

Anyway, the 3rd section of the banner was painted on the 2nd floor. I heard that it got touched up and re-touched up over and over again. Haha. I didn't manage to see it though, until around evening when all the 3 banners were brought up to the parade square.

We were only allocated the canteen area for the painting of the banner, but because the 70+m long banner (middle section) occupied the whole space already, so we had to use the indoor corridor on the first floor for the 1st section and the second floor for the 3rd section of the banner.

So we started sewing the 3 banners together. It was really weird because we had some people lifting part of the banner up while some of us operate the sewing machine. While sewing the 2nd and 3rd banner together, the needle of the sewing machine broke due to excessive pressure, so we used the other sewing machine.

After that, we spent the rest of the time trying to sew the entire length of the 131m-banner. We planned to hold the machine stationary while some people move the banner. It was frustrating at first because 1) the machine kept getting jammed, and it takes quite long to fix it; 2) the bobbin (the bottom spool) can only hold a few metres of thread, so it needs to be refilled regularly (fortunately, someone can refill it using the other machine with the broken needle, but it wastes time on the main machine as the sewing has to be stopped); 3) the fastest the machine can go is around 5cm per second, but the faster the machine goes, the higher chances of getting it jammed (as speed is directly proportionate to the chances of getting it jammed); 4) the people holding the cloth were enthusiastic at first to move the cloth, but after a while, less and less people bothered to move the cloth because it was very sian to wait. It was going quite well after a while but still frustrating because of mainly reason number 2 above.

After dinner at Parkway Parade and helping out with the sewing for a while (at around 10pm), I went back to class and slacked. What happened was only Teck Boon was in our 4A classroom, but 1/4 of the class was in the unoccupied classroom beside ours playing xbox. Haha. Then soon more and more people joined that room. I didn't touch the xbox at all, nor the ps2 whereby some people set up in the main 4A classroom (but didn't play after a while because it didn't work well). I played cards all the way to around 4+am, then just stoned for a while before sleeping for around 1 or 2 hours.

Oh yeah, at around 11pm or so, I heard that the needle of the sewing machine broke, so they had no machines to sew, but fortunately it was left with the last 10 metres so they hand sew it. The needle for the maching is a special type and is different from the needle used for hand sewing.

The next morning, that is, this morning, I went down to see that the banner was being hung up at the school fence. Mr Pang was there too and he looked quite angry because there were quite a few people who were not there to help. But in the end we got it hung up around 10 to 15 minutes before the 24 hr was up.

Here are some pictures taken:

6 minutes left!



5 minutes left! From left to right: Gabriel, Aditya, Wei Liang and Rahul. This picture is much clearer because it is taken by me :). You can see me through the reflection of the glass door.



This challenge seemed quite easy to me. We were very cooperative, nobody complained about others slacking, everyone helped in some way, there were no disagreements at all. It really has bonded us well as a class. But being the best class academically in the school, if we can't do such things well, who can? Right? 4A rox man!

Anyway, this is a short post written by 4F about our class challenge. They also included every class challenge on the main site (except for their own one).

Tomorrow is Victorian Challenge. It is a challenge held once every 4 years, and what we have to do is to complete a challenge that our class came up with in 24 hours. So our class came up with this idea of painting a banner with some quotes here and there regarding our school, like some from our school song. And no it's not like 10m or 20m, it's 131m!

Well actually we still need to sew the whole cloth into 131m (because they are divided into 3 parts), and need to sew it again to hang it up. So within the 24 hours, we have to do all these.

Going to stay overnight tomorrow in school even if we have finished painting the banner.

Oh yeah, a few rules written on the board (quite randomly):


- Sleep early the night before the Victorian Challenge. No late night 'mugging'! (this is because of the fact that our class is claimed to be the best class, so naturally some people may 'mug', but I guess it's only for around 10% of our class)

- No bringing of textbooks. All textbooks will be confiscated!

Last Saturday I went to NUS for SMO Senior Section special round. 3 hours to attempt 5 questions (no part a part b all those). Haha. Not bad eh.. in the end I only could do 2 questions.

Then yesterday I went to NUS again for SMO Open Section special round. This time, it was the same number of questions but 4½ to do! So it averages to 54 minutes a question. Haha. I also only knew how to do 2 questions, and spent around 2 hours on one question but in the end, I still didn't know how to do.

There were 2 questions which I did not attempt at all. One of them was:

Let a₁, a₂, ..., a_n be n real numbers whose squares sum to 1. Prove that for any integer k ≥ 2, there exists n integers x₁, x₂, ..., x_n, each with absolute value ≤ k - 1 and not all 0, such that

"What's that brown colour rectangular patch?"
"Oh, it's our school field."

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