Frankly speaking, I was quite surprised when I got back my English and Geography results. Note that I said Geography, not Geography + Social Studies. I scored a 33.5/50 for Geography, which is 8.5 marks higher than what I expected myself to get. I scored 9.5/10 for Map Reading!! I am a Scout. Haha.

And I didn't expect myself to get a B3 for English. I expected something like B4 or C5. I was lucky to score 17/25 for summary, otherwise I don't think I will score the B3.

Feeling a bit slack lately. Don't feel like studying or doing papers. I think if I carry on like this, I cannot stay in the same JC as I will be getting in next year.

Today I went to buy batteries for my calculator at a nearby electronics shop. This was the dialogue between the shop owner and I:

[Me]: Hello, do you sell button batteries?
[SO]: Which type? Is it for calculators?
[Me]: Yes.
[SO]: How many do you need?
[Me]: 4.
[SO] (as he bends over to get them): Now I tell you, my maths is very good. One battery for $1, 4 batteries for $5. Haha.
[Me]: Haha. Maybe you can help me fit in the batteries into the calculator and we can calculate the cost using that.
[SO]: Haha.

I am extremely happy with my Biology results, even though I am not going to use it for my prelims L1R5 (hopefully). As compared to my mid years, I improved by 30%. And my essay... I scored 4/30 for mid years, and I scored 21/30 for this prelims! Haha. That's an improvement of over 400%! And for my mid years, I scored 0 for my 2nd essay question, and this time, I scored full marks for my 2nd essay question. Maybe it is because the questions are easier. Haha.

Okay the release of my Biology results is just for me to be happy over this weekend. I think I will cry when I get back my English and Geography/Social Studies results. Or maybe I should plan which JC I can go next year.

I couldn't sleep well last night, due to 3 reasons:
1) I woke up at 1pm yesterday, so I couldn't sleep;
2) I hadn't done by testimonial; and the last and the most important reason,
3) I was worried about my prelim results.

I tried to sleep at 1am but I tossed and turned in bed until I could not take it anymore. I woke up at 2am and typed my testimonial on my computer until around 3am. I was feeling quite guilty having to lie exaggerate about my qualities. In the end, Mr Pang did not collect today but he said by end of next week.

Slept for only 3 hours. Went to school today hoping to receive good results from my teachers. We were greeted by Geography as the first lesson. Mrs Bala came into class and I was quite disappointed by what she said. She said we could only get back our results on the official release of the results, which is 1st October, and she has not even marked finish our papers. Argh!! Made me wait for nothing.

Speaking about lessons, the new timetable is very interesting. First, we have no assembly periods. Next, I am dismissed at 1.05pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 10.45am on Fridays, with the latest days being Wednesdays, at 1.40pm. Oh and after recess on Wednesdays we are going to have 4 periods of Maths. Today Mr Pang could not take it any more and dismissed us about 5 minutes earlier (he said it was a waste of time).

Looks like I will be dismissed earlier than many secondary 1s anyway.

I don't feel like going to school tomorrow, since we are not receiving any results...

Consider the following:
"There are 4 possible choices (A, B, C, D) for each question. Write down the option which you consider correct."

and
"There are 4 possible choices (A, B, C, D) for each question. Only one option is correct. Choose the correct option and write it down."

Do you know that teachers often give the instructions as according to the first one rather than the second one? The reason is because this allows them room for argument so they don't have to nullify the question. This is quite unfair because your elimination options won't work. For example, let's have a question...

What is 3+4?
A) 7
B) Seven
C) VII
D) 20

Obviously the answer is 7. But instincts tell you that A = B = C so if A is correct, B and C must be wrong, which contradicts what you think. So because of this, you put D because it's the odd one out.

So what happens is that the teachers realise there is a mistake in the options. But it is too late to change the options. So they changed the answer key such that those who answered either A, B or C get 1 mark while those who answered D scored 0!


On the other hand, if let's say you come late for a 1-hour MCQ exam by 59 minutes, you rush into the examination hall and grab a pencil for shading the optical marksheet, shade all your answers as B. The reason is that for exams which the setters don't know how to set options, the answers will mostly be either B or C. However, if you shade C, what if the whole paper is a true/false questionnaire? You get all the answers wrong.

Every time I go to school or pass by the school, I will always see the 131m-banner which our class painted during Victorian Challenge 2007. I can still remember our class doing it on that day itself. Because the banner was in 3 pieces, we splitted the locations of painting the banner into 3 areas. After painting, we sewed the 3 pieces of banner together (in black thread) using the sewing machine, then we folded the top of the banner and inserted a thick, super long nylon rope through it before sewing the top, so that the banner now contains a rope on top. After that, we brought the whole banner down and hung it up using fasteners every 1 metre. This is to ensure that the fasteners only hold the weight of the nylon rope (which in turn supports the banner), rather than the fasteners themselves holding the weight of the banner at 1m intervals so as to prevent the banner from tearing at those places.

Ok so that's wonderful. It wasn't thought by just one person alone. A perfect piece of idea of how to paint and hang up a banner, right? So here's the thing. Apparently the workers from our school were told to hang up some other banner at exactly the same place as where our banner was being hung. So what did they do? They remove all the fasteners, cut away the nylon rope and cut the banner into a few sections. All these just to hang up some other at-most-5-metre-long banner which was obviously printed rather than painted (note the difference).

And they got even smarter than they tried to hang our banner up again. Firstly, they sewed white threads on our black banner. What the heck! Did they run out of black threads or what?! Or are they worse than colour-blind?

Secondly, they got the order of the banner wrong, that is, that sewed it in the wrong order. Come on, OM Goh even sent Shi Wei down to help give instructions. Like what Shi Wei said on his blog, "Despite my best efforts to direct OM Goh on where the pieces fit together, they still managed to screw it up." Now it has the back in the front!

Thirdly, they didn't know how to sew it properly, or rather, the damage done while cutting the banner was too great. Now you see the letter 'd' near the school entrance out of shape, and you see white dotted lines manifested along it. And also, some parts of the white thread in which they used to sew don't seem to be quite effective in connecting the cut banner together, as I could see some parts detached halfway.

Lastly, guess what they used to hang up the banner? No wrong, guess again. Strings! They used normal strings to hang up the banner. The banner is so heavy and they used strings at every 1m to hang up the banner. Oh man. I mean, the banner is going to lean its weight on the strings and the banner is going to tear. Also, you can see the banner sagging at every midpoint between 2 of those strings. Come on, with the nylon rope, you should see how straight the banner was. Furthermore, they didn't even compansate us with the nylon rope which they happily cut.

Now it's in such an unsightly state, I'll rather that they don't actually hang it up at all...

Mr Alvin Lim's car.

No idea who did that.
But still, happy teachers' day.

Happy Teachers' Day!

Went shopping on Thursday for presents for our subject teachers: Mr Pang, Mr Ee, Mrs Setho, Mdm Tan, Miss Yeo and Mrs Bala (actually wanted to buy for Mdm Nabilah but don't know how to give it to her).
From the bottom from left to right, we bought notebooks for Miss Yeo, Mdm Tan, Mr Ee and Mrs Bala, respectively. From the top we bought a doorstopper for Mr Pang and a cup for Mrs Setho. The doorstopper was unique because it was a Mr P brand, just nice for Mr Pang. When we bought the doorstopper the cashier asked us whether we want them to help us wrap. So we agreed and we bought a 70c wrapper, with some of the paper left after wrapping. I decided to use the remaining wrapping paper to wrap Mrs Setho's cup (even though it was in a box), but there was not enough wrapping paper. So I did this:

There was just nice this side of the box which included that statement. And the wrapping paper was just enough to wrap 5 sides of the box. Haha.

Anyway, we actually planned to fake Mr Pang by giving him a toilet roll, just to see how he reacts. When he is about to leave class then we give him the actual present.

Yesterday, I was filming during class using Wei Liang's phone, and I suddenly thought, hey why not compile them into a video? Some more Blogger now allows us to upload videos. So here is what happened during class yesterday: