School holidays are around. But to many people, it's just a week to study at home rather than to study in school. Sigh.

Anyway, went back to both my primary and secondary schools on Friday. Teachers' Day celebration. Was rather boring but it was nice catching up with my teachers. And I am nearly the only JC student who went back to visit Temasek Primary teachers. Talked to Mrs Chong, Mr Gan, Mr Neo and Mrs Sharma. Too bad Ms Neo was not there.

This picture is so abstract right? It's not me in the picture by the way - I am not so imba like TanImba. I think the VS people did this in the VS lift to aggravate Mr Chia. Oh that reminds me, I did not manage to see him. I know many people went into his office to wish him Happy Teachers' Day... just for the fun of it.

Sigh VS boys... sexually deprived...

Different people view relationships differently. In this context, my definition of relationships is between two people of opposite genders, not the family kind.

In primary schools or even kindergarden, you would have met a cute girl sitting opposite you. You decided to start a relationship with her, although a little childish, but still worth a try. You became very close together.

After graduation, you realised that your previous girlfriend was merely just a close friend. Because both of you moved on to different secondary schools, you were unable to see each other every day. Your girlfriend was not a necessity but was merely a close friend. Both of you decided to break up. Both of you were cool with it. So it was all right.

In secondary schools, you thought you met the dream girl of your life. She's pretty, adorable, and is friendly. Furthermore, both of you seemed to click very well. Both of you decided to be together, this time, you asked her to be your counterpart with more confidence because you had experience.

Soon, you realised that you cannot tolerate her. She had terrible mood swings, and expected much from you. She did not view you as a partner, but a guardian instead. She complained to you every day, often doing things which would benefit her rather than benefit both people. You started to reconsider your decision. Perhaps she was just taking advantage of you. You found her as an irritant. You decided to break up with her.

To add salt to the wound, she started to complain to the people around her about the break-up, because she had no one to take advantage of. People have a bad impression of you, and no matter what explanation you gave, you were unable to convince others to support you.

In junior college, you have grown more matured. You know which kind of girls to choose. You know inner beauty predominates outer beauty. You know that girl has to do her part as a girlfriend. You found a suitable candidate. She is one whom you have taken a few months to consider. Furthermore, she likes you too. This is good news. You felt that you have never made a better decision than to ask her to be your girlfriend.

She is okay. She cares for you very much. She spends time with you, cheers you up with you are down, laugh with you when you are happy, emo with you when you do not feel like talking. All well seem well, until one day you see her with another guy. Platonic relationships are okay, so you think. But that platonic relationship develops into something more. You found out that she has been unfaithful to you. You decide to break up with her...

---

Before I continue, I must say that whatever I have posted above does not reflect me nor any of my friends. It is just a sudden outburst of imagination which I thought should be written into text. If it really happens to reflect anyone, it is purely coincidental.

What you have realised above is potential reasons for break-ups between couples. Firstly, you are unable to see each other often and your love for each other fades. Secondly, both of you grow tired of each other. Thirdly, one of you becomes unfaithful to the other.

Some people take relationships lightly. It is all right, as long as both parties have the same frequency. If you are not careful, you may be thinking of relationships as a tryout or a warm-up exercise for a real relationship which you may potentially be meeting in the future; whereas your counterpart may be thinking of a real serious one which she hopes that both of you may last for a lifetime. When such ideas clash, it is usually very hard on one of them when facing a break-up - usually the one who thinks that relationships should last a lifetime. However if both are comfortable with relationships being just short-term, it is totally all right. It should not be viewed too seriously by any third parties ready to criticise the fault between the relationships when a break-up occurs. Different people view relationships differently.

However, I feel that getting into a relationship should not be taken with a pinch of salt. The simple reason is, you do not know what the other person may be viewing the relationship as. If you are very carefree about the relationship while the other is viewing it seriously, you hurt the other very deeply when a break-up occurs. The result of this misery does not bring you any benefit at all, so why bother adding the net misery to the world? Conversely, if you are serious about the relationship while the other is not, you end up only hurting yourself when a break-up happens. This is more noble and selfless than the former example, so instead of crying over it, you should feel glad that you have matured from this failed relationship.

Before you even start a relationship with the one you like and the one you will potentially love, you need to consider the worst case scenario. What happens if you are unable to see each other for a long time? Will the love fade? The more important question is: are both of you willing to make the relationship last as long as possible? Of course, do not be too pessimistic and consider the scenario as so bad such that it seems like your counterpart is not doing her part properly in maintaining the relationship.

One important aspect to consider is whether you are able to put up with whatever weaknesses or incapabilities your partner has. Let's break away from this serious discussion for now and think of it in a humourous way. Imagine a conversation between a couple goes...

[Girl]: Darling, I have something to tell you.
[Boy]: Yes?
[Girl]: It's something quite bad. Will you still love me after I tell you?
[Boy]: Yes, as long as it is not so bad.
[Girl]: I... snore when I sleep...
[Boy]: !!!
[Girl]: ... and I fart in my sleep.
[Boy]: OMG! LET'S BREAK UP!!

What's the problem here? You love your girl in almost every aspect. Because of some small obstacles, you propose a break-up. It is very unfair to the girl. Why is it that both of you got together in the first place? Did you not like her because of who she was, and not just her physical appearances alone?

Why do people get into a relationship in the first place? According to Maslow's hierachy of needs, the most basic need that you can get from a relationship is sex. But this need can be fulfilled in a brothel, for example - I shall not go into detail. So if relationship is not about sex, what is it about? The second and third levels of the hierachy states that people need safety, and love and belonging, something that going into a relationship can fulfill. Potentially, the couple can get married and protect each other from financial difficulties, and health and well-being. Social needs are also fulfilled, such as intimacy and having a family which you can communicate to and depend on.

To fulfill these needs, you want a relationship to last as long as possible. This is because it is important to build up your relationship to foster a stronger bond between both of you, so that both can lead happier lives. Relationships should not be viewed simply or carefreely, otherwise you will not have a lasting relationship.

My father just came to Singapore, and he brought with him a 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube (aka Rubik's Revenge) and a Megaminx. The more interesting one is the Megaminx because it is not a cube. I have played with cubes from 1x1x1 (ahem!) all the way to a 5x5x5 but I have not seen nor touched a dodecahedron-shaped puzzle before.

It is a 12-sided puzzle with a different colour on each face. There are altogether 12 sides to turn (just like a Rubik's cube has 6 sides to turn) and each side can be turned in intervals of 72 degrees. There is a centre on each face which is immobile, so it is similar to a 3x3x3 or a 5x5x5 cube. Excluding centres, there are together 2 types of pieces: corners and edges. Each corner contains 3 colours and each edge contains 2 colours. Each edge does not seem like an edge actually because it is actually made up of 2 triangles (the points of the star on each face) jointed together. To solve the Megaminx, you have to make sure that all the pieces on each face are of the same colour.

It can be quite confusing and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, solving is easy. You will definitely need to know how to solve a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube to solve this puzzle, and it's better to know at least 2 methods (the First Two Layers (F2L) and the Block methods) so that you can solve it easily. You don't really need to know how to solve 4x4x4 or bigger cubes to solve the Megaminx.

I took around 2 hours on my first try, excluding dinner time. Now it is ok already, I can take less than 10 minutes to solve. It is more troublesome than a Rubik's cube because firstly, you have to deal with 5 corners at a time, as compared to the Rubik's because it only has 4 corners. After solving the F2L on the Megaminx, you are faced with the F2L again, twice! So you are doing F2L 3 times in total. In both times, you have 1 hand tied behind your back because you cannot mess up what you have achieved earlier.

Solving the last layer is the most troublesome. Because the formulae used for the Rubik's are useless in the Megaminx, I have to develop my own method. On my first try, I got myself confused when solving the last layer because I had to memorise the way I 'messed up' the puzzle so that I could 'unmess' it back, but my brain could not store so many things. So in the end I messed up the cube partially so I had to redo the last few steps. But eventually, I managed to solve the puzzle.

For those who want to try the Megaminx, I suggest you go ahead and solve the Rubik's first. If you know how to solve already, go and figure out how the last layer works, because you will need the idea before you can solve the last layer of the Megaminx.

Oh yeah, in its 'solved' state, the Megaminx is actually very nice.

This is my fifth post since about a month ago, but it is the first post which I am (intending to) put some effort in writing. The last four posts are, for your information, posts which I type for the sake of typing, for the sake of updating my blog, for the sake of not letting my blog die.

I cannot guarantee that I will update my blog like this from now on. Perhaps after typing this post I may leave it even more outdated. If I could I would update like this, of course. But laziness is a factor. Time is another factor.

Laziness has always been a limiting factor for me. I know very well I can stretch my potential further, but you know actions speak louder than words. I never seem to be meeting my own expectations when it comes to being hardworking. You know like how they grade your Project Work, from best to worst: Exceeding Expectations, Meeting Expectations, Approaching Expectations, Nil. I'm somewhere between AE and nil.

I wonder why people use "actions speak louder than words". Of course I am no exception, because I can't find a shorter and a more powerful string of words to use. This idiom in itself is powerful in argument, but literally, it is meaningless. Actions speak louder than words, but it does not mean that the softer party always loses. The loud one shows that he is confident of what he is saying, confident that he is correct. Being soft does not mean that he is not confident, he probably has already given up trying to argue back with the loud one, the adamant yet stupid one.

"Time is not just a magazine". It was said by a senior. Upon entering a Junior College, it just dawned on me that this is really true. Time is so precious that no money can buy. Every minute is precious. You will get a scolding from the Principal for being in the hall at 7.42am when you have to gather at 7.40am. But on a more serious note, time seems tighter the older I get. I did not really see the problem of time constraints last time. Teachers seemed to finish their lessons on time and did not rush for time. But things here are different now. You have lecturers rushing through 20 pages of lecture notes within 1 hour, and not even being able to finish the lecture. The lecturer's name is not important, so let us call him 'Mr Chang'.

Once I was waiting outside the chemistry laboratories for my practical session. While waiting I took a look at the notice boards just outside the laboratories. I noticed that the whole year's lectures timetable was printed out already. And just a side note, we were quite behind time for the chemistry lectures. From there I noticed how tight time was. There was almost no more buffer weeks that they could afford. That means do or die, the lecturers have to complete their lectures by a stipulated week. That explained why Mr Chang was rushing through the last part of his lecture. I never had this problem in Victoria School, when the teachers seem so free in their schedule. Now, every minute is so important, there is absolutely no time to waste.

Because of that, whatever I do requires a schedule to follow, a timetable, a structure. Of course the timetables I come up with do not work on me. Take today for example. I planned to finish chemistry and mathematics tutorials, assignments for the latter, finish studying chemistry to prepare for this coming week's lecture test, read General Paper article and do some Physics. But so far I have only done mathematics and studied for chemistry lecture test. This proves my point exactly - time is so tight that I got to finish all these by this weekend, but my laziness got over me.

I am not really sure if it is VS or VJ which has taught me to be more structured, but my guess is the latter. VS (and its geography elective) has taught me to bullshit, like what I have been doing so far. VJ has taught me to bullshit while following a format. Education certainly has something to progress from! Notice that this post is quite structured. First two paragraphs introduce why I have not been updating and give two reasons. The next two paragraphs talk about the first reason - laziness (actually paragraph four is bullshit if you have not noticed) and the next two is about time. Then the discussion shifts to being structured. I have no idea how the rest of this post will be about, where it will lead me to, where it will end, etc.

Being structured is not easy. Firstly, you have to know everything that needs to be said/done. If you are really smart then you do not need to write them down, but if you cannot process everything in your mind then you should jot down these things. After that then can you start arranging the points into a certain format to follow. It seems easy, but it is not. Some things are not like science where you can just 'know everything' and just jot them down. Also, arranging these points into something logical and something which flows is no mean feat too.

In case you are wondering, I was actually referring to something I had done for VS choir. I planned early this year to talk to the new committee. Talk about what? Choir stuffs of course, but the topic is so broad that I did not know where to start from. But by forcing myself to find an area to talk about, I have gradually built up the skill to be able to be structured, a skill which will remain with me for the rest of my life. By the way I have lost an interest to talk to them, mainly because of two reasons: lack of time (no, not because I am lazy now), and because I feel that the new committee should be able to manage on their own.

Being structured has its downsides as well. You become too inflexible in the things you do. You do not take into account human nature. You become too involved in the schedule you have to follow. This will lead to criticisms to your actions especially if you hold a high post in a particular co-curricular activity, and especially when that CCA has members who are leaders in themselves. Issues need to be brought up, discussions need to be made and time and effort need to be spent (read: lack of time and laziness).

The solution? To strike a balance, so that people will not argue with you. You cannot be too structured, yet cannot be too flexible (otherwise you do no productive work). It seems easy, but if you think you have struck the balance, do think again. Are you feeding the baby on the nose? Are you sure you have struck the balance? You cannot feed the baby with food too high in nutritional value (being too structured) because it will not eat too high quality food. The other side is the same. You have to add some garnish to make it look appetizing, and a bit of salt and pepper to make it taste nice. In this context, you have to know exactly what you are doing, by memorising the whole schedule in your head and not just follow it blindly or not even following it at all, then use the schedule to suit to people's needs. Being structured is level two, level three is knowing how to strike the balance.

These levels increase with increasing level of maturity, and longer time of course. So let M be the level of maturity and T be the length of time. So the equation M = kT is set up, where k is a constant. The constant varies from person to person. Some people have a small k, which means that they take longer to become more matured. Some people do not even fit into this equation, their level of maturity against time goes like a logarithm curve, like M = p lg(T), where p is another constant. For those who cannot visualise or are lazy to take out a calculator, the curve shows a decreasing rate of increase in maturity with respect to time. Although the curve has no horizontal asymptotes (the level of maturity has no limit), it takes even longer to achieve a even higher level of maturity. Just like in Maple Story or even other role-playing games, the higher your level, the longer it takes to level up.

Take note that the level of arrogance has no relationship with the level of maturity. Some may argue that arrogance will directly influence the level of maturity because if you are arrogant, you do not know the right from wrong and hence your level of maturity decreases. The fact is that there is no direct way of measuring maturity. My definition is that maturity is how open-minded a person is and it does not decrease under normal circumstances (except in accidents or illnesses). But the level of arrogance can float at any point in time. Once you become mature, you show off to the world, only to be neglected and rejected by the world. You start to realise it, and your maturity increases while your arrogance decreases, both being good news of course. Then the cycle repeats and your arrogance level looks like a sin curve. Some people may determine from this post (or in fact, from me) that I am arrogant. I take it as a compliment because it shows that I am more matured than before. For those who are really serious that I am arrogant, ok I am sorry, but I will try to change.

This is the result of the education I am receiving now. I can describe it in one short sentence: it is driving me up the wall! It causes some mild head damage which leads one to blog in such a manner. And if you had lasted all the way here honestly (and correctly, by reading through all the bullshits and not just scrolling down in under two seconds), I congratulate you, and I hereby propose you a job which you may have some future in: marker of geography examination papers. I have no time now, I need to go sleep already.

"Time is not just a magazine."

Guess the teachers!

Teacher A:
"There will be SPA at (this date), so don't be ed-some."
"For skill D, you need to ana-nalyse..."

Teacher B:
"Okays nows, those who fails NAPFA stay behinds. The rest of yous, go and runs four rounds."

Teacher C:
"I'll be giving you a comprehension paper to do... come on! Say yes! Enthusiasm!"

Teacher D:
"Recurrrrrrrrrrrence relations..."

Teacher E:
"pH is equals to FOUR-teen (*voice crack*)... ahem, sorry."
"The pK_a is equals to the pK_b. Wow, isn't it amazing? What a coincidence!!"
"A buffer is a solution containing a weak acid and... its... salt of a strong conjugate base, or a weak base and... its... salt of a strong conjugate acid."

The more we get together
Together, together
The more we get together
The happier we'll be

Cuz your friends are my friends
And my friends are your friends

The more we get together
The happier we'll be!


That's the song used for the McDonalds advertisement. And it's very irritating because they keep advertising it over and over again especially now when it's the Olympics season. I never knew that a nursery rhyme can be so irritating! It's now stuck in my head ya know. Until I know all the dynamics they use already!

I have a feeling that someone is envious.

Or maybe there are even more.

But I'm sorry, it's too bad.

Today was Feeling Fab! Like totally feeling fab...

I signed up for fencing in the morning and archery in the afternoon. Sounds like very fun activities. In fact I think so too, they are very fun indeed, if everything could turn out right.

Fencing was the only activity to be held outside VJC compound in the morning. So there were supposed to be two buses at the bus bay waiting for us at 8am. There were no buses, until 8.15am, when I saw two buses packed full of VJC students leaving the college from the PT area, bypassing the bus bay without stopping. So I missed my fencing activity and went for magic instead. It got delayed by one and a half hours, and the venue was even changed. In the end they could only teach/perform for an hour.

I crashed rockclimbing. It was quite fun just that I realised that I am not as fit as before already. I felt my arm muscles ache after climbing just once. The first time I ever climbed was when I was in primary 6, and during that time I felt that rock climbing was rather easy and did not require much effort. I think I have grown fatter and have not been utilising my muscles these few years.

Archery was quite boring because there were like 80 over people and only 4 lanes. I only managed to shoot 3 arrows in 30 minutes. And the instructor was very luo suo. Her theory lasted for 45 minutes haha. So I left halfway.

Feeling MAD, not Feeling Fab. Haha