A very belated update *WARNING: VERY LONG POST*

OH MY GOSH! I'm in! After much agonizing waits, my internet connection has finally prevailed and I'm blogging! Now I wonder if after typing this, I can publish this on my blog.

I sincerely apologize for the long hiatus; I've been rather busy on countless occasions and I was too lazy to blog after the camp, opting to play games and do other stuff instead of blog. Next on my agenda is to post pictures!

I think the number of visitors have dwindled over the past week or so. Frankly, I get quite sick of seeing that "We call you bla bla bla" sentence of the latest blog post. Anyway, this makes me realise that you don't need to declare that you won't be blogging because it all the more makes you want to. Blogging is sort of a spontaneous thing, you need the feeling and inspiration to write. Well, lately, I haven't been getting that with me devoting time to other things and events. Busy busy me. But anyway, it's nice to talk to myself once again, to this sterile white screen that actually doesn't quite make me eyes hurt but I'm sure it will after a while. I think my eyesight has diminished recently but thats just random.

I'll try my utmost to recollect the recent events like my church camp. Bloody hell, my hands are cold already!

Church camp was, well, unexpected. Then again, I wasn't expecting much. In fact, I didn't quite know what to expect except the likes of bad sleeping conditions, bad food, bad hygiene and sanitation as compared to what I usually get. In fact, I wasn't disappointed with those gripes I listed. Overall, the good and the bad pretty much balanced out but I think it was still good (: Thank God I went for the camp in the end.

Let's start with the bad first :) I love starting with the bad things first because it puts the good things in a better light. Like if you're hungry, even lousy food is good :)

Sleeping conditions weren't so bad. We actually had proper beds but Cherie, who has been there a couple of times, commented that the bed sheets were itchy even though we were give "new" ones. I constantly thought about it the first night so I guess I was A BIT itchy at first. Consequent nights, I was too tired to even notice the itch so it ultimately didn't matter to me.

Food was sub par although I can't complain. It's catered food and it's edible. I presume it's pretty good for a camp's standard. At least we had a buffet spread for our last dinner; too bad the cold dish, turkey and cream puffs were snapped up before I could get it. Anyway, food didn't quite matter much to me. I was trying not to eat too much, rice especially, and I chose not to eat much during that outdoor cooking thing. Poor Lydia, my group leader, and everyone else in fact, were trying to make me eat more.

The overall sanitation of the camp was, well, acceptable but it still left more to be desired for me. And there were so many bugs probably because of the wet weather. The last few days, there were plenty of flying ants that clung onto the staircase walls and they didn't move at all. I dared not wander too close for I find them repulsive. Eventually, I just grew to ignore them and not look at them.

And on one night, we had to CRAWL through mud and get ourselves all muddy and dirty. We later had to "butt walk" our way through mud and I bet everybody got mud up their asses. Particularly vulnerable were the girls wearing shorts and FBTs. Gosh, that was sick. I cannot understand how anyone would enjoy getting muddy. The human psyche never ceases to baffle and amaze.

Toilets were, again, acceptable but it certainly could have been better. I didn't have a proper place to put my toiletries bag and the whole toilet was just wet most of the time. In case you didn't know, bacteria and germs THRIVE in water. No water, generally, no bacteria; so I'm usually averse of wet toilets.

Well then, not many other complaints besides the trivial 4 storey journey from the toilet to our bunks. Oh and my bunk was quiet most of the time. Mine was the last bunk which accomodated me, Nicholas, Albert, the BB people, and later Keith Oh. I'm pretty sure it wasn't as lively as the other bunks. When I went back to my bunk, it was mostly for sleeping and lights were out.

Well, onto the good parts :) Alas, isn't it?

God first and foremost. Each day, we were ministered to and inspired by the pastor. There certainly was much to relate to and think about. P&W was very enjoyable and uplifting. On a whole, I was really touched by God and I pray that I'll continue and maintain that kind of passion and spirit I had during the camp. Hopefully, I'll make changes for the better.

The fellowship was also really good. I think I had the most fun playing games with people and just doing stuff with my group and friends. There was also this Barnabas Board thingy where we had to send letters of encouragement to others and many times, everyday in fact, it was just so difficult to write anything at all at the end of the day because we were just so tired. Every waking moment was occupied and "free time" was mainly left to group activities and other random stuff. So I apologize if I didn't reply to anyone who wrote me a letter or if I didn't write you one at all. I'm pretty sure you would understand :) Thanks to everyone who put stuff in my empty little box though!

The activities were pretty okay. On the first day, it rained so we had to go to Northpoint and do silly stuff like take pictures of your whole group lying in a circle IN Northpoint or taking a picture of a car liscence plate that added up to 18. It was embarassing to say the least. It didn't quite rain on the second day and we went to the Sembawang Park and ran around finding stations to do stuff. One of the worst one was to bite a sponge with your mouth that was in a bucket of soapy water to fill your own smaller bucket. Rhoda commented that soap had never felt so dirty before and I agree. On the third day, we played Captain's Ball with water balloons and we pretty much got owned by the teams which had a physical advantage. I remember Linette getting the ball and being so elated and excited that she laughed so much and got caught for travelling. On the last day, we had a game show sort of thing and one of the games we played was Taboo but minus the word restrictions. I got a Chinese word which was one of those "WTF!?" moments. I would've definitely fared better if I got an English word.

So that pretty much sums up the activities we had. On the last night, we had this Christmas East Meets West Bash thingy where all groups had to present an item, a dance or a skit commercial. Pure entertainment really.

It's unequivocal that I knew more people better and made some new friends. I think I'm a bit closer to the seniors especially Mark since he was in my group and Rhoda too who's in my cell. So yay to that :D In every camp, there's always an undenial social bonding aspect which would be good :)

That's, in a very big nutshell, the good and bad about the camp.

Over the course of the camp, I was constantly nervous and anxious for ACJC to call but of course they didn't. Even though I thought my appeal would be successful with some people getting higher points getting in, it did not and I'm truly resigned to my fate. It must be God's plan that I'm going to CJC. At least I now know it's not because of my actions that I didn't get in but rather, because of the foibles of the system and how the world is. For all I am, I have to trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding as the Bible says. At least God has shown me that he has chosen for me to go to CJC and well, there pretty much isn't anything else more I can ask for can I?

Ok, it seems that my language has been quite incoherent at certain points in this post. It's a REALLY LONG POST so congratulations if you've made it thus far. It's like 1.10am now... I still have a bit more to go!!!

Christmas and my birthday seemed a bit un-eventful this year. It seems that each year, I grow more jaded and cynical, I lose all that Christmas joy and birthday hype that I used to have when I was younger. Presents didn't matter much to me anyway. I have all I really need and then some more of which God has blessed me with, everything else is superficial really. Even then, I have SO MANY unread books that I ought to finish. Let me try to name a few: Warcraft Archive which is actually 4 Warcraft novels in one omnibus collection; Starcraft Ghost: Nova, another fan fiction book (yes, shoot me); Stephen King's Cell (I saw this at the Brisbane airport in hard cover and I just thought a Stephen King novel would be nice); Eldest, the 2nd book in the Eragon trilogy; Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson, the book that Ms Fong gave me; Brimstone which I bought a LONG LONG time ago but never had the time to read; and maybe a few more books I've unintentionally omitted. Wow, what an exhaustive list (almost quite literally!).

On Christmas day, I was confirmed as a church member. Then later on, we went to my aunt's house for celebrations and I left halfway to attend Justin's gathering where I just mainly played WoW and stuff. Didn't really mix with the crowd and stuff but it was still nice being with my church friends.

The following day, my birthday, I pretty much spent my day by myself except in the evening. I woke up late, went to marinate food for the barbecque later on, went back to sleep again and just slacked and relaxed. I think I had enough with people for a while now. Anyway, I had a BBQ with the other side of the family but it rained so we had to do it indoors. And my cake, which my aunt bought, was REALLY expensive but I won't say. Here's a hint: it's durian cake. Oh and for the first time ever, I got prank-called although I knew it was a prank-call like 5 seconds later. Wow, thanks to EVERYONE who remembered it was my birthday. I honestly wasn't expecting so many people to SMS or call or even remember. Personally, my enthusiasm for my own birthday cannot match some of yours. How practical-minded I've become.

I've also realised what an unlucky day my birthday is. 2 years ago, the S.E.A. tsunami occured; this year, it's that blasted Taiwan earthquake that's been causing SO MUCH problems to the internet and the incessant lag on WoW.

Speaking of which, it's the reason why I've been having trouble logging into Blogger. Strangely, WoW is playable but annoyingly laggy. I get intermittent lag spikes but its nothing too severe; I haven't died because of a lag spike yet.

Some note-worthy presents include SOCOM Fire Team Bravo 2 for my PSP which I have been trying in vain to get online and play; the ONLY t-shirt I got this year; lotsa "ang paos" because of my birthday; and the rest are all chocolates and candy.

Also worth adding is that this year is the first year I actually chose to write Christmas cards and give a little somethnig to people in church. I hope I haven't been too verbose with my greetings when a simple "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" would have sufficed but hey, it's the thought that counts right! Not as if anybody remembers what I wrote *insert smiley face which I cannot describe* I think I almost turned my Christmas cards into a full-fledged "Barnabas Board" letter thingy! The shortest I wrote was about 2 or 3 paragraphs while the longest I wrote was to the end of the page. Congrats if you got my "longest greeting" card :D No prizes for guessing who (:

On a personal level, Christmas Day also marks another milestone in my life but I shan't say except that it should've been better than that.

It's a been very busy past-week and I thank God for all my friends and everything that has happened. Ultimately, it is this season when we are, especially, reminded of God's love for us and we should all spread His love around :)

The year is fast drawing to a close and school is starting once again. Once again, I need to mentally prepare myself for new challenges and remind myself it's time to grow up. Right now, I'm not prepared but thrust me into the situation and I think I should be fine. That seemed the case for Youth Camp anyway.

Time to start thinking about New Year Resolutions already! I've got a few now actually: 1) To be thrifty, no one ever got rich without saving so I should practise that. 2) Clean and pack my room, it's been long delayed for months already and I've been procrastinating. This leads me to number 3) Be more organised so I can study more efficiently, which leads me to number 4) STUDY HARD! For real now! I remember in the past, each and every year, parents and relatives would nag at me to "study hard" and how often I would let it fall on deaf years but this year, O levels have shown me my inadequacies because it was actually the first time I truly studied like that! Next year, I do intend to be a new person and break the tradition of unfulfilled resolutions. But like all New Year Resolutions, no one ever really fulfills them. Hahahaha.

It's been a bloody long post and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I had typing it. Hopefully, the font hasn't already killed your eyes :) Man, I spent 1 and half hours doing this... Time to sleep already!!!

Alas, the inevitable -EDIT-

I think I should do a quick rundown review of Initial D which I finally watched just now at Jeremy Ho's gathering.

Initial D seems to me like China's take of the Fast and Furious franchies, Tokyo Drift especially. The place which they raced on, Mt Akina, was just like the boss battle of Tokyo Drift and reminded me of Need For Speed: Carbon.

The plot was very mediocre. Nothing surprising or unusual. We just saw the protagonist, Jay Chou, winning every race so much so that I felt it got boring. There hardly seemed any sense of challenge, there was no creative solution in overcoming a nigh impossible adversary or obstacle which showed the lack of creative direction. They even threw in a typical love story sub plot for fans of Jay Chou to go "awww". There were so many drifting scenes, it started to grow old on me soon enough. What made things worse was that they raced on the SAME track over and over which was just quite boring.

The lacklustre cinematography compounded the lack of thrill and excitement which Tokyo Drift had. Tokyo Drift was very fast-paced and had this immense sense of speed whereas Initial D seemed more mundane. In Tokyo Drift, scenes were changing rapidly, you could see the tension and excitement on the actors' faces which added to the excitement; whereas in Initial D, I was quite disappointed with the slow moving camera descents which made things feel more sluggish and less exciting.

The Fast and Furious franchise is prized for showcasing awesome and pimped out cars but in Initial D, it just lacks all of that grandiose. Sure, skill and passion is much more emphasised here but in the Fast and Furious series, there surely isn't a lack of that either.

Jay Chou's performance was actually quite bad. Karen commented that his hair moves much more than his face. He pulled off his role as a delinquent "tofuman" but many times, I had to guess what he was truly feeling. He had a straight face most of the time, even when he was crying, he didn't particular convince me that he was sad. There came a point where I didn't know whether he truly liked the girl in the love story subplot or not. His stoic and emotionless "etched-in-stone" face just spells failure for him as an actor.

There really isn't anything spectacular about Initial D. The main reason it kinda sold here in Singapore must've been because of Jay Chou's fan base. Like all directors trying to cash in on a famous star, there was a scene at the beach where Jay Chou took of his shirt. Initial D is nothing but a typical Chinese movie that's inspired by the Fast and Furious series but doesn't do anything spectacular with it.

5/10!

The phone scares me...

We'll call you, don't call us.

That's what ACJC said. They'll call by this friday, if not, it means my appeal didn't go through. And right now, it's scaring the shit out of me because everytime my phone rings, I get all jumpy hoping its good news.

The anticipation, the pressure, its agonizing!!!! I think I'm putting myself in denial here. I really have to trust in God now.

People tell me not to worry and that everything will be fine. I wonder, we wish our friends good luck and all the best before the exams, we tell them not to worry and that everything will be fine. But even still, some people don't do well. All the encouragement in the world will not help you if you don't know your stuff. Similarly, encouragement cannot change one's fate unless its a psychological battle or the like.

Even though I tell myself that I have little chance of going to ACJC for 1st 3 months, there's no doubt that I am hoping for it, wanting it.

Ugh, stupid phone...

EDIT - I've had enough of this. I'm going to play WoW!!!!!!!! And whoa, this is the 666th post of my blog. Bad omen man...

All good things come to an end

I realise I've been psychologically unprepared for two things: 1) XS Camp tomorrow 2) CJC. I'll first address the camp.

I've never ever ever ever ever ever (I could go on forever) liked camps. I don't like the outdoors, I'm a stickler for hygiene which camps seem to be awfully lacking in, away from civilization and technology; in short, I wouldn't be able to survive in a place like Pulau Ubin for too long. And camps are just like that.

Well, some people do appreciate the kind of things they do like traversing a high rope or doing that flying fox thingy but I'm an indoor person... Daylight burns and I don't want to sweat. I never get the point of doing those activities they do at camp anyway.

I honestly don't know the outcome of my ACJC appeal so I might as well just start preparing for the worst and that's CJC. What really scares me is the Catholicism. I've always thought the difference between Catholic and Methodist was minimal. I mean, if Bryan Yam, a Catholic, can survive in a Methodist school, the other way works too right? But after finding out that the principal is a "BROTHER" something Rogers, images of nuns and monks just ran through my head. Everything's so traditional while I'm so modern, I doubt it'll go down well with me especially with the former reigning.

Oh well, nothing I can do now but accept my fate as it comes.

ACJC minus the A

Eragon, the movie, was very disappointing. Having already read the book, I had high expectations for the movie. The book was stellar and of gargantuan proportions and it unnerved me to see that the runtime for the movie was at only 104 minutes. In the cinema, I couldn't wait for the movie to end as soon as possible. It was torturous, being disappointed again and again to see so many important events messed up in the translation from book to movie. The movie is based extremely loosely on the novel and even then, some scenes I was hoping for never made it to the movie.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Eragon was never just picked up by Brom to travel to the Varden. Eragon had to face loneliness and despair and after that, he ventured on a quest for vengeance!!! In the book, Brom taught Eragon more magic spell words and Eragon used the brsingr spell at only two Urgals and not in the port city and there was no mention of Solembum or Brom's shipping friend and Eragon was supposed to go to two towns first and Eragon was supposed to steal leather to make a saddle for Saphira because riding Saphira shredded his legs and I COULD JUST GOT ON FOREVER! SO MANY INCONSISTENCIES!!!! AND THE WORST ONE: Saphira transforming from a small dragon into a big dragon just by flying through the clouds. AND SAPHIRA DOESN'T BREATHE FIRE UNTIL ERAGON GETS WHACKED BY DURZA AND THAT SCENE WASN'T EVEN THERE!!!!!

Besides the very disappointing inconsistencies, the movie itself was just mediocre. The characters themselves weren't properly introduced and there didn't seem to be enough time to flesh out the characters besides Eragon. The special effects are nothing to write home about, music was nothing memorable and the actors' performances could've been better.

It's impossible not to criticize from a reader's perspective. There were many things which I was hoping to see like the majestic splendour of Tronjheim and the testing of Eragon and the Twins. What happened to all that man?

Don't even bother watching Eragon. Wait, don't THINK about watching Eragon because you should just go pick up the book right now. Just don't watch the movie, it truly sucks.

And today in a flash: Bloody Sean Koh woke me up at 8.45AM and made me go check my PAE. I got posted to CJC which was upsetting. Went to Clifford's house to discuss plans for BBQ but we just slacked and played and made strawberry jam and donuts, and I found out about appealing and I'm going to appeal later.

Showcasing American Idiocy

Dumbest Customer Service EVER. Click here. Really funny. Get earphones. Then visit the blog featured in the side comments.

For the Forsaken!

New Blood Elf Banner! Mouse over for effect :D Updated side profile :)

Also tried out the Zen V Plus at the Creative store. Joystick is so damn small but it works. Feels very plastic-y and like a toy. Keep out of reach from young children! Choking hazard!

Flyboys!

Flyboys is a really wonderful movie. It has it's fair share of action sequences which are extremely awesome and exciting to watch but not at the expense of a lousy storyline. It's really worth watching!

And Cherie saw a couple come out from the toilet for the handicap at The Cathay. LMAO.

Flags of our Fathers is NC16! ARGH! DAMMIT!

I think some footballers are gay... Have you ever seen what happens when one scores a goal? They all go jump onto that guy and huddle and who knows what they do 0.o

And my birthday sucks :( Well, only for this year...

Creative vs Apple

Let me get this out of my way first: Eragon. I just finished reading Eragon and I think it's a wonderful story. It's a little bit of LotR and a little bit of Harry Potter but very original and intriguing in its own right. Go read this book now, you won't go wrong.

That said, I have hopes and expectations for the movie and after finishing the book, I'm left wondering how the movie will turn out with so many important events and fights. Even better is that it casts fresh new faces like Ed Steeler (omigawsh so hawt, for all you girls out there) and Sienna Guillory (omigawsh so hawt, for all you guys out there). No Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes here suckas!

Anyway, onto the main subject of this post: Creative Zen V Plus VS Apple iPod Nano 2nd Gen. Since WoW servers are down and I've been searching for nice MP3 players I might invest in in the, hopefully, near future, I decided to compare these two companies side by side, with my own personal opinion (not that it matters much to anyone around, haw haw, but I'm completely schizo and I like reading to myself and strengthening my position!).

Firstly, the Creative Zen V Plus:

-Design: Curvaceous body; cute and tiny (like your little brother); black or white with blue/orange/green accents; simplistic and clutter-free design
-Features: Audio recording; Radio; Photo viewer; Video playback; Miscellaneous extras like alarm clock, calender, contacts and nonsense that you don't use but they just include them anyway!
-Display: 1.5" OLED 128x128; viewable at any angle.
-Misc: 5-way Joystick; Customizable backgrounds; Drag and drop interface; pretty much the same UI as iPod (in essence)
-Connectors: Line-in audio jack, USB jack, headphones jack.
-Battery life: Cnet.com says its over 20 hours
-Package contents: earphones, pouch, lanyard, neckstrap, USB cable, line-in audio cable, installation CD, manual
-Price: $319 for 4gb, $399 for 8gb

Ipod Nano 2nd Gen:

-Design: Slim and long; available in silver, green, blue, pink, black; status symbol; click wheel; clean simplistic design
-Features: Very little extras, no voice recording or radio or video playback; picture viewer; extras like games and screen lock and other stuff you don't use.
-Display: 1.5" LCD screen; 176x132; supposedly brighter than 1st gen.
-Misc: Click wheel; Adonized aluminium; requires iTunes sync
-Connectors: Proprietary iPod connector; headphones jack
-Battery life: Rated at 24 hours, cnet.com affirms it.
-Package contents: iPod nano; Earphones; USB 2.0 cable; Dock adapter; Quick Start guide
-Price: $348 for 4gb, $438 for 8gb

At first glance, you can tell that the Zen V Plus beats the Nano hands down but let me address some issues the Steve Job (Apple's CEO, FYI) fanboys might have against the Creative.

Joystick vs Click Wheel

A friend (cough cough) complained that the joystick will hurt his thumb. Frankly, I don't see myself, or anyone, using the joystick for extended periods of time that would lead to a broken thumb or thumb cramps. It's no different from SMSing or using a console controller (excluding Wiimote) which involves more strenous thumb movement anyway. You're just going to find that song of yours and hit play. How much thumb movement is that going to take? It's not going to hurt or lead to any severe discomfort!

I find that the joystick is also more precise than the click wheel after using an iPod for so long.

Volume Control

The Zen has a dedicated volume rocker while you have to use the Click Wheel to adjust the volume. Imagine this: You have your iPod nano in your pocket and you want to adjust the volume when the next song plays. What do you? Take out your nano from your pocket, take out the cover (cos its so easily scratched you need one), unhold then swirl the click wheel. Well, I had to do that anyway. But for the Zen V Plus, you just need to reach into your pocket and press the volume controls which is also the hold button.

Design and Status Symbol

If you choose to buy an iPod just because its a status symbol and flaunts your parents' wealth, it just proves how one is superficial and shallow. I bought my iPod due to lack of foresight; remember, my Nano was a spontaneous decision and at that moment, I chose to go with the crowd, a very regrettable and foolish decision indeed.

Design is subjective although not very important to me. I'm not going to flaunt my mp3 player or let others judge me based on a mere mp3 player, if they do, they're just superficial and shallow-minded. My MP3 player is going to be in my pocket most of the time.

I don't see any thing wrong with the design of the Zen anyway. Blame my inherent lack of taste or class, say whatever you want, but I don't think the design of the Nano gives it an edge over the Zen and is worth the 30 bucks more.

"Redundant" Video Playback

Why bother watching videos on that tiny screen? The screen is so small, you're going to end up killing your eyes anyway! How many of you actually use the calender/notes/stopwatch/calculator functions on your iPod? I certainly don't and those features are redundant to me but at least the Zen V Plus includes a better extra than a calender function which only syncs with Outlook. It's like having that extra button that comes with your shirt. Sure you don't need it, it's redundant if you keep your shirt in pristine condition but at least it's an option should you need the button.

It's not a matter of whether you'll use it in the end or not. It's a matter of feature set here. At least its better to have than not at all. And you don't have to pay for third party add-ons for radio and voice recording for a Nano that already costs 30 bucks more than a Zen V Plus when it can do all those in the first place.

Conlusion

It's evident that with such features and value for money that the Zen V Plus is clearly better than the Nano. What makes people choose Apple over Creative is the stereotype and stigma. According to QX, and anon, who both remarkably share the same view (not insinuating anything here) that being an ACS boy, you're expected to have an iPod because its "classy" and everyone says so and that Creative is for cheapo people. Who the hell came up with that!? It shows how "smart" some people are, paying more for less. If you think it's worth it so you can flaunt your stuff, don't complain about expensive food and that you can get more for less at the hawker center or whatever.

SOME might mistake me as supporting a local brand but I am neither biased towards or against Creative or Apple here. I'm typing this from a completely neutral and unbiased standpoint with no personal feelings or opinions that would sway my better judgement. I am just comparing two products, that's all.

EDIT -
Earlier on, I mentioned that I did include my own personal opinion in the comparison of the MP3 players. A bit of a contradiction here. What I meant is that I do not support either company or think that because Creative is a local brand means I don't support it or not. I support the Zen V Plus, the Mp3 player, not the company. I have no preference over the two companies.

I'm rather interested in how Creative detractors would react. I have probably forgotten a few points here or there.

Boogie wonderland!

Quick paragraph review about Happy Feet:

Happy Feet's appeal lies in the cute dancing and singing penguins. The plot was going on fine until one major turning point was omitted rendering it incoherent. It was rather unimaginative and bland with very little unexpected twists. In short: nothing to blow you over but if you're bowled over by computer generated dancing penguins, you'll like it.

I'm too lazy to blog

Blah... I've no mood to blog lately. It's ironic really: during Os, I blog a lot - well, not as much as I should be anyway; after Os, when I'm free and all that, I just don't want to blog! Oh well! I've got better things to do anyway... Bwahaha... Bye bye! I'll blog when I feel like it :) Same goes for uploading pics on my picture blog.

Rest In Pieces

Beloved family and friends, today, we are gathered to...

Oh what the heck, screw the eulogy, my iPod nano DIED! Time to get those spanking new Nanos :D

Yawn...

Hello I'm back! I'm too lazy to blog so here a few things I can recall about Aus on the spot:

1) Their public toilets are clean
2) You have to enter 2 doors to get to the toilet
3) They don't have CCTV cameras trained on the toilets like they do in SG
4) The people I saw there were hot/gorgeous/sexy/crazy; bimbo/himbo haven
5) Food there is bloody expensive!!!
6) I think Burger King got renamed Hungry Jack there 0.o
7) The weather is wonderful

I've been very busy playing WoW the past few days! I was rushed through SFK FIVE FRICKIN' TIMES before the Belts of Arugal dropped for me... Blah whatever... I'll go post more pics when I feel like it but don't count on it, won't be anytime soon.

Bye bye

I'll be away in Aus from the 22nd of Nov to the 28th of Nov. Grad Nite pics will be uploaded when I get back because the bloody blogger doesn't seem to work and it's awfully time consuming to upload everything one by one so bye bye!

Grad Night 06

Ok fine, so I found out how to upload pics on my picture blog without Hello! I managed to upload the Last Day of School pics and I'm trying to upload Grad Nite pics now but Blogger isn't helping because of some bad server connection. So, I'll upload Grad Nite pics tomorrow! Bye bye, good night!

Hello! doesn't work

It seems there's a slight malfunction with Hello!, the photo publishing program I ues to publish photos to my blog. It can't seem to work because I've moved my account to the new blogger and Hello! seems to only work with the old blogger account which is gone! I've tried uploading some photos on photobucket but the uploading times are unbearable (I've got betters things to do!) so I decided to just heck it all together and wait for blogger to do something about Hello! While they're at it, I've posted a FEW pictures on my photobucket and maybe I'll post a bit more in future but I'm gonna play WoW now so cya!

http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/adrielch/

Evil evil Sony...

Right, here's a quick update:

1) I watched Step Up on Sat
2) I watched Casino Royale on Sunday
3) I've got a new camera: Sony Cybershot DSC T10
4) I'm back to WoW
5) WoW's an endless time sink but I can detach myself from it
6) I hope my battery doesn't die on me during Grad Night
7) I like my camera

Is it over?

Right now, I'm feeling rather introspective and contemplative. It really feels like I'm one of the Israelites which Moses led out of Egypt only to face more hardship in the desert. Now that Os are over, it's like a major burden has been lifted and I'm very much relieved but by how much? My future is filled with utmost uncertainty and the aim to get into my preferred education seems so difficult to achieve now.

Moments (moment is the turning point from the line of force of action to the pivot) before history, I was filled with excitement that this would all be over. You know when you're so excited, your heart skips a few beats and you can't think of anything else but it? Yeah, that feeling. But this vibe just hasn't consumed me yet. It's crazy! The only time I jumped for joy and shouted was when I find out that a certain MCQ is correct while debating with friends. Today, I felt very much subdued. It's this whole exam thing I tell you, made me all pimply and wonky.

Nothing much happened after exams, nothing major, just anarchy. Oh that isn't anything special, as if you'd expect less of barker boys. In short, tables were thrown out, people screamed and cheered, lockers were cleared in the most unimaginable fashions (I've got pics on that), people stomped on their textbooks and Bryan Yam proudly proclaimed he was going to whack his SS textbook with a bamboo pole; dustbins were toppled, pyromaniacs showed their handiwork (I'm not kidding! I've got pics too!) and I took a lot of photos of which I will post later because I'm too darn tired to do it now (Have you any idea how tedious the process is!) and I need to make this post a long one.

Well, I've got this much to say about BR, Good Riddance! But really, the unsettling reality will set it sooner or later and I'll probably find myself missing my friends and teachers.

I'm being rather contemplative now aren't I? It's because this major focus, the Os, has gone. What do I do now? What I face now is so much uncertainty but knowing that God has it all in His hands isn't very tangible even though you know it. Yeah Cherie, when you tell me about showing you "that" more often, this is what it's like isn't it?

Relax you say! Just play! I sure as heaven (just as how sure we are about hell) know how to do that. Right now, I just need to think. It's been so long since I've actually thought about stuff and it's been on my mind ever since History ended. I just can't help it, blah.

About History, I think it was fine. Once again, I forgot to PEEL and I think it's detrimental effects will prove itself soon enough when I get my results. And I had to redo one SBQ because I did realise the source was indeed useful but I didn't mention its limitations unfortunately, I did actually but it was a weak one, with 7 minutes left on the clock. And I had to urgently go to the toilet after the paper but they took their time counting papers then the principal had to brief us about PAE and then all that admin. I rushed out to the toilet when the monitors had to go to the back to collect stuff.

Digression:
Joshua Tan:
so are you happy playing WoW now?
Me:
im not playing WoW
Me:
i dont intend to until after Os
Me:
omigosh, i didnt just say that did i
Me:
i meant when i get back from aus
JT:
really
JT:
that's shocking

My gosh.... It's so ingrained in me, I said it by reflex. As you can see, I'm still not over it. I'm probably just not ready to completely forget about studying right now. It just feels so strange and so foreign to be this free. I'm like a bird that's been caged for so long, it's not sure if it wants to be free when the doors are open. Or whatever animal you like; you get the point. Suddenly, I forget all those things that I thought of doing last week when Os are over. It's like I adapt so fast to my situation, I forget what I was complaining about just last week. Good or bad, I don't know. If that's the case, I guess I'll be adapting to my newfound freedom very soon and hopefully, not forgetting the lessons I've learnt this year.

For one, the Os have taught me one very important lesson: to study properly and be organized. Sure, it might mean I'll turn into a nerd but it sure beats feeling unprepared during the exams and trying to lie to yourself thinking that you are or the rest of the level also isn't going to do very well. And it sure helps being organised so you can find all your notes and whatnot when you need them. I resolve to do that when I go to JC. Somehow, studying has grown on me. I find that it gives me purpose, a short term focus. Wouldn't you miss it when you finish your education and start working? Things will really change a lot, for me anyway.

What do I plan to do? For one, I think I need to read the multitude of unread books I have. Sometimes, it's like I buy them just because they look interesting and because it has "Warcraft" on the cover or some cool picture but later on, I have to read them out of obligation. Play WoW? Play some computer games? I don't know. In the end, I'll find all these things meaningless and that I can do without. And I can start sleeping really late and waking up just as late and start screwing my body clock. Oh what fun it would be to reminiscent this same time last year, sleeping in the "morning" and waking up in the afternoon.

I guess I'll just live each day one at a time, taking things slow. But the question still lingers: What now?

T minus 5 hours

Today's paper is History! Pun intended!!!

And these people just suck, robbing people of not only their material possessions but their festive joy, PS3 festivity that is.

EDIT -
www.gsthike.com

If you didn't know, the GST is being increased from 5% to 7% so as to support and finance "government spending for the poor" and to strengthen the "social security net". Sign that petition now! And buy whatever you want to buy now before the GST increases. It's been announced, it's set in stone, it's a matter of when now.

My signature/comment is on Page 20 by the way.

One more day

Hurrah! One more day! One big problem over, I forsee another problem coming soon but I shall not say.

We've overcomed our major papers so far and I feel so relieved. But still, history poses a challenge having to study all that nonsense. I'm very close to just ignoring History but I need an A for that so yeah....

Short recap of my papers today:

Amaths 2 was fine. Surprised I could do the bulk of the questions. All that dy/dx and bla bla bla. Pretty okay I guess. Oh, I was gleefully surprised when I managed to do the relative velocity question, which was mostly trigo, but it's most probably wrong.

Chemistry was... Fine. It wasn't that difficult, I could do the bulk of it. The MCQs were quite difficult and there were a handful of questions I really didn't know how to do. P2 was ok as well. I managed to correct a mistake at the last moment and that saved me 4 marks. Other than that, Chem was just really unexpected, at times, difficult but I still managed.

The past few days have left me really tired and drained to say the least with Physics and Geog P1 on the same day, Chem and Amaths P2 today. But really, what are these trivial and minor challenges as we face future obstacles to come.

Right now, I'm near hysteria as I've only one paper left. I'm this close to just hecking it. Urgh, so close! It'll be over, very very soon. Just... Relax...

P.S. Eragon is opening soon but I shall not watch it. Mervin recommended the book and I think that I should read the book instad of watching Eragon because if I watch the movie first, I wouldn't have any interest in the book even though certain details and plot lines might have been omitted.

And how will I spend my time after the exams? Hmmm... I'll say tomorrow.

Define critical angle. [2]

I sure haven't been blogging much lately. Right now, this feels rather foreign to me. When was the last time I actually did a full length post. Ages.

OK, lessee... Right now, the only thing I wish for is for Os to be over. I envision myself playing for hours on end and spending lotsa money but right now, I have to go through this mandatory period and it really sucks. At the end of the day, I'm just so mentally tired, I don't know how I can study anymore. Thank God because I know He is with me, each and every day, especially during the paper. What was really cool thought was that I think I felt God guiding me through Amaths.

Amaths was quite a surprise. I managed to do most of the questions with only the cubic polynomial question stumping me. What the hell, I don't care much about Amath.

Today's physics was kinda ok. I felt quite scared for the MCQs. The first question was awfully confusing and it was sorta demoralising. I could do the bulk of the questions of course but I lost 2 marks. Paper 2 was much better. Compared to my peers (Bryan Yam in particular), I think I did pretty well but I don't want to hope for too much. I quoted a lot of laws and other stuff (like principle of moments) and remember that moments question about why it remained at rest? I used up all the lines X.X Now I understand why Cambridge gives us so many lines - for bloody kiaus and long-winded "aunties" like me.

Most of the paper was explanation and hopefully, my explanations are strong enough. Even the DC circuits question wasn't that difficult. Whoopie! But really, I was acting smart when I starting quoting Faraday's Law and Principle of Moments in my answers; I hope they don't mind. Then again, I remember Eric Loh circling one of my answers for prelims and commenting it was "Good!" when I quoted Faraday's Law. I dunno! I leave it all to God!

Geog paper 1 was rather ok but a lot of the human questions were really ambiguous so it was quite difficult to compare answers because the facts were really loose and every answer had a different reasoning behind it. In the end, what might've been the most likely situation should be the correct answer but such questions are subjective. I just hope I can do well for my papers >.< I wanna go to ACJC!

****! This can't be happening...

What the!

“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the more ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human”.
Try texting that in under 45 seconds... That's what contestants have to text in an SMSing contest. It's a bloody mouthful and the capital letters at the start of the species' names are awfully annoying. Didn't time myself so I don't know how long I took. Probably a minute.

PS3 spotted!

These guys don't have to wait in line for 9 days for a PS3! They don't know about: THE INTERNET!!!! Bah, so what if it's 1.3k SGD, that guy won't be buying his girlfriend an engagement ring anytime soon! (Shipping, handling and tax excluded)

P.S. And my first attempt at fried rice left me feeling rather thirsty and strange.

Don't diss that old woman charging into the train...

These people are just way more kiasu than us Singaporeans. Hoho, and you thought Singaporeans were bad...

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114295

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6161374.html

Read: People queueing outside Best Buy 9 days (NINE FRICKIN' DAYS!!!!) before the launch of the PS3. Then again, some people queued for a month for the Star Wars movie. By the way, I spotted the PS3 at Parkway Parade today going for 1880... I guess the owners thought that selling it at such an auspicious number would bring better business. But really, after selling just ONE PS3 at such an exorbitant price, business would have already improved! And don't go to those two game shops at the basement level of Parkway, they sell stuff waaaaaay overpriced.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade's normal price is $45, they're selling it at $50; Heroes of Might and Magic Dark Messiah's normal price is $60 but they're selling it at $70. Xbox games are $60 but they're selling them for $69... Bloody cheaters... Then again, the whole buncha them are ah bengs who know nuts about what they're selling.

Anyway, back to the main story. The moral of the story is that kiasu people are EVERYWHERE and it's bad to stereotype Singaporeans being the kiasu-est of the lot. But I still think that old people are very kiasu...

And people who are taking Amaths P2 this thursday need not wake up so early because the paper is being delayed by an hour. The reason being that George Bush is coming to Singapore and because of the disruption in traffic, MOE has decided to delay the paper by an hour so candidates can make it for the paper. The whole situation is just so retarded and amusing but what the hell, I get to wake up an hour later :D

It's just asinine. When a stray alarm goes off for no bloody apparent reason we can fathom, MOE doesn't give us 5 minutes more; no concession at all. But when the POTUS comes to wee little Singapore for who knows what, MOE delays the paper but an HOUR! Wonderful isn't it? :D Monkey backsides...

A sincere plea

"Dear everybody, There will be an upcoming worship night at my school concert hall and for those who don't know where that is, it's at 60 barker road and there would be signs indicating the general direction of the concert hall. The admission for this Worship Night is FREE and its starts at 6.30p.m and ends at 10.00p.m on the 30th of NOVEMBER 2006. I pray that all of you will attend, please kindly invite as many friends as possible to come and experience his unconditional Love for all. There would also be special drama play done by mainly acs(br) sec 4 boys and some of the female actresses from outside churches, If anyone is interested to help out in anyway or {especially ACS (BR) Sec 4 boys} pls do drop me an e-mail me at jothamlim@hotmail.com, we welcome you with OPEN arms. God bless and thank you so much for your time!!!

Yours sincerely:
Jotham Tobiah Lim Jin Han

This is the website for Agape worship night 06 official webste done by a very close friend of AGAPE Pls click below! http://www.agapeworshipnight06.blogspot.com/

Thanks be to God!!! Many Sec 4s already and friends have offered to help out at this event as this is our last year in the school together, so i would like to implore all of you to pls help out on behalf of the AGAPE Commitee.
God bless and thanks a trillion!!!"

There ya go! No need for me to say anything else. Oh wait I do: GO OR DIE!!!! Not you die, Jotham will... Or he'll just be very emo and cry about it...

P.S. You should've seen how colourful the email is...

Effed!

Emaths 2 was bad.I missed the last 2 probability questions. I didn't see them. I finished with less than 10 minutes to spare. ****, my A is most probably gone. Sigh... Didn't have time to check save for a few select questions. Only checked for sf and dp. I'm so screwed... I should start mentally preparing myself for poly or ITE.

Does not involve mathematical functions; words.

1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
13112221
1113213211
31131211131221

What's the next line?

No rivers :'(

Geog was okay... No rivers which was very upsetting. I did vegetation, then population, then coasts, then development. I spent 30 minutes on the first 3 parts of the vegetation question and still had more to go. As a result, I had to constantly race against the clock in every question. I only had 15 minutes to do 16 marks worth. I hurried through my last part of the question which I don't think I'll score very well. Boohoo... And there was a disturbance (in the Force) halfway through the exam when the fire alarm went off for no bloody reason although I suspect it was due to the thunderstorm. It lasted for 3 minutes. Stopped. Rang again. Stopped. Rang again. This went on for 2 more minutes. Teacher called SEAB to report the incident. They didn't allow extension of time. Monkey backsides....

Blah for "pervasiveness"

I'm not very sure about how my English will turn out. I don't want to be complacent and proclaim I can get an A1 for English. Just entrusting everything into God's hands and hoping for the best...

For Paper One, I wrote Question 5, "Do you feel that you need the long school vacation? How do you spend your December vacation, when school is closed?" It was quite a strange question: half argumentative, half expository it seems. The other argumentative was something about nature reserves which was like lame... I mainly answered to the question with the first part being argumentative and the second part being expository. I just hope my language would be sufficiently impressive and garner a high mark: at least my prelim marks or better.

Situational writing was a report and overall, I think I did it better than my essay. I was able to inject some nice words here and there and it was better planned overall. I made some pretty good points with my decision as well. What really struck me is why they can't do everything and must only pick one! I mean, ACJC did all that. Writing the essay really made me draw a lot of comparisons and parallels to the ACJC open house and I picked a lot of ideas from that. Thank goodness I went for it! God works in amazing ways!

Oh and Sean commented that he knew I would do that question because it seemed so much like a blog topic. I have to agree with him. For the most part, I was trying to keep it as informal as possible and less personal even though the question asked for personal opinions. That's the danger of blogging too frequently.

Before the exam, people had to surrender their calculators, for whatever strange reason, to the front. So at the end of the exam, there was an exodus to the front to collect their calculators and in the process, someone had taken someone else's calculator by accident and that lead to a lot of delays. Our next paper was due to start at 10:15 but we only started at 10:40+.

Paper 2 was pretty okay. I could answer all the questions of course but after the exam, we compared the vocab questions:
1) Harvesting
2) Pervasiveness
3) Harnessing
4) Bid
5) Intently

My answers were:
1) Gaining resorces
2) Presence
3) Mustering
4) Attempt
5) Attentively.

1) and 2) are wrong. It should've been gathering and widespread respectively. When I told my friends they commented that I played too many games already, which is untrue. I only figured out pervasiveness when I left the hall. Shit. Ms Fong said that "attentively" for "intently" is wrong but I beg to differ. When I checked the thesaurus for "intently", "attentively" came up.

Then again, I was focusing on summary.

After P1, there was this private candidate who was called to the front for something. He was some Malay-looking man in his 30s and everyone was staring and sniggering at him. Obviously, these people were looking down on him. I shan't comment more about them but I have to say that I personally respect such people very much. I really respect people who do the right thing in the face of adversity like old people learning new skills like IT. Even though it may be stereotypically unconventional, these people do not care what others say and I really admire their courage and determination.

And #%&#%*&$%^(**!(#%&(!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I spelt "recuperate" wrongly; I spelt it as "recouperate". My Nokia phone spells it as "recouperate" but almost every other source I've checked says "recuperate". Shit..... No one said I was infallible... I was even afraid to use that word in my essay because I was afraid I got the meaning mixed up... Sigh... Really wasn't at my best form for the exam...

Short one

This is gonna be short because I need to revise Geog and blogging isn't very high on my list of priorities.

Emaths was pretty fine. The only mistake that I made and found out about was that 0 is an integer. Whoops, 1 mark gone... There were other confusing "difficult" questions like that proportion one where y is proportionate to x^n and they ask you what n would be if y is the area of a circle and x is the radius. Anyway, my "n"s were 2 and 1 and my F is 4.

The loci question was also really interesting. Very unusual having never seen it before. It was really fun to do but its a pity it came up in P1 and not in P2. I probably lost a few marks here and there due to some relatively unsure questions or careless mistakes but I think I could get an A :)

We went to Jason's house, which is just across the road, opposite of school, to study SS. He ordered in Pizza Hut but it came late because the driver skidded on the road. Poor guy but I'm sceptical. Revised a bit more and we panicked a bit as it was getting late and it was going to rain so he called his driver. We left our bags there and just brought our ziplock bags of stationary but it turned out we weren't late in the end.

SS SBQ was a bit on the difficult side. Not that I couldn't do it or what but that last question was different and it caught me off guard. I think I wrote too much for the first question as well... I didn't look at the SEQ at first for fear of my morale suffering when I find out I don't know how to do the SEQs. When I was done with my SBQs and turned over the page, I started smiling because I studied for all those topics! Whoopie! In the end, I did Merger and Sep.

I'm not sure about my first question about Merger because I could only remember 2 concrete factors and when I remembered another one later on, it was quite weak. I just realised I forgot to PEEL! Shit! At least I did rank my factors. For the question on seperate whether I agree with the statement that Seperation was wrong for Singapore or something to that effect, I completely disagreed with it and was like praising the government 90% of the time for seperating. Shhh....

Anyway, I can only leave everything into God's hands now. No point worrying! Looking on the bright side of things, it means 2 papers down and never ever having to study for SS! Whooopie!

The hour approaches!

Suppressed trepidation rages in me as my very first written paper (excluding Chinese) draws closer by the second... But even so, I know that I can do it and I can draw from God's strength and peace to still my heart and give me confidence. It certainly feels different from Chinese Os this time. For Chinese Os, I was rather calm and flippant; I just wanted to pass and wasn't expecting much. This time, it's the real thing...

Wow. 4 years on and it all culminates in these final two weeks. Find me someone who isn't the least bit nervous about this...

On to pencil case issues. Because the CPE dictated that our pencil cases have to be transparent if not they will be checked, I've decided to be nice, and spare myself from unnecessary attention, by putting all my stuff in a ziplock bag. Of course, several things have to be left at home: my stapler, breath mist, invisible ink pen, paper cutter, hybrid post-it notes pen and the thumbdrive.

From what I can see, I have around 5 G2 pens, 3 blue Uniball Signo pens, blue highlighter, pink highlighter, 2 set squares, 2 protractors, 2 rulers, eraser, 2 mechanical pencils, lead, one random pen, 2 compasses, correction tape, 1 black pen and maybe more stuff I can't see right now but I sure have tons of G2s :)

Ok well, I've to go to bed now and get ready for Emaths P1 tomorrow. So... Best of luck and best wishes to everyone and may God be with you (: 2 more weeks and all this will be over (:

Ummm... Ok...

Earlier this afternoon, I had a really strange encounter with a stranger. I was at Dhoby Ghaut on the way to Plaza Sing to meet Cherie who was studying at Macs with a friend. So I took the obscure side escalator that was closer to Macs and on the escalator, I was accosted by this Indian man, a Sikh I presume (they're the ones who wear turbans right?), and halfway on the ride up, he said greeted me Happy New Year (which is like 2 months early) and wished me good luck in my studies and said he'd pray for me. Rather surprised, I merely thanked him and went on my way when I reached the top of the escalator. Damn that was queer... I really didn't know what to say and it'd be really rude to repay a stranger's kind gesture by calling him a freak so I guess the best thing to do then was just to thank him. I really am not making this up! It's heartening to know that such friendly Singaporeans do exist. I think he's probably some religious leader or something. The first thing that I thought of when he greeted me Happy New Year was that it's really too early 0.o Well, I just hope he doesn't pray to his deities (or whatever Sikhs do) about me specifically because it'd be really freaky.

Cell was really different today. Instead of the usual combined cell, we played some games that the seniors thought up. Since there were only 4 people present from our cell, namely Karen, Rhoda, Natalie and ME, we joined up with Cherie's cell which added 4 more to our numbers namely Cherie, Barnabas, Vincent and Christelle.

Our first station was about quiz and riddles and we had to answer some really silly riddles like "What is the name of the chemical compound HIJKLMNO?" It's a real chemical compound but a trick question. Give up? I'll tell the answer later :) If I remember!

Our next station was to be guided through this "maze", which was actually a web of rope and a stool, blindfolded and instructed by Barnabas. Then we had to draw out a picture which we had earlier memorised. The maze itself was hardly a challenge and the picture drawing while blindfolded and being instructed by Karen was really silly. The trees I drew turned out fine except the last tree...

Next stop, we had to have all team members minus one to eat a grape that was dangling from the ceiling. For that to be possible we needed two guys to support the others (which was mainly the girls except Barnabas) so that they could reach the grapes with their mouths. I strained a shoulder muscle in the process but I don't think it's because the girls were that heavy... Just didn't do exercise proper care. I, of course, was the one who didn't have to go up and eat a grape.

The next station was some charade and pictionary thingy where we were split into 3 groups. One group had to act out a scene while the other had to interpret it with the last group excluded from it all. After the first group has acted, the group who witnessed it had to then draw it out and the last group had to guess what the actual scene is. The groups then rotated roles so all managed to act out, draw and guess. Wonderful!

The last station was quite bad in all honesty. We had to be split into two groups and we had to make both groups laugh by doing things. The irony of it all was that we didn't know how to do anything funny or spontaneous, it became quite a serious matter. My group just didnt do anything to make the other group laugh at all while at least the other group tried doing something funny, we didn't laugh at all... In the all, we all had to forfeit but the point of it was that even if one group won and the other lost, both groups had to lose and forfeit. The forfeit was simple: we just had to spell out the name of the XS camp with our butts.

After that, we went down and completed the rest of the game, had a sharing by Wendy and then some of the usual combined cell stuff before it ended at around 7.30 pm or so.

Oh well, time to study SS now!

Answer: H to O! H2O!

"Everlasting! Your love will shine when all else fails!"

And I think to myself... What a wonderful woorrrllddd!

No really, I thought about how my posts seem to be less and less serious nowadays. Rarely do I blog about something serious and I think that even if I tried to blog about current affairs, it'd be brought across very light-heartedly so forget it!

My time will come next Wednesday... Damn, geog is too near!!!!

What more can you expect from free TV...

I decided to watch some prime time TV on this thursday evening and catch the local productions Coffee Talk and Hawker Woks and Yang Sisters. I realise one thing: local productions still suck as before and I've lost hope in local TV. The word floccinaucinihilipilification comes to my mind but I'm sure there's a shorter word somewhere...

Coffee Talk and Hawker Woks is supposed to be about food but on many occasions, the attention went to the weekly celebrity guest instead of focusing much on the food. And soon, the host, Fiona Xie, digressed to celebrity gossip. Little was detailed about the food itself but it seems that there was more info about the guest celebrity than the real celebrity of the show - the food.

The Yang Sisters was equally bad. Not only were there fake accents, the overall production was abysmal!!! The visual quality just screamed CHEAP and for a while, the audio was out of sync. Similar programmes that share the same crappy production values include My Sassy Neighbour and whatever other local "sitcom" you can find that plagues our TV sets these days. It also gets boring when you see the same actors being recycled every now and then which is why I've finally given up on local TV. My precociousness has granted me a greater discernment of a broader range of subjects.

The standard of local TV really sucks especially when compared to the likes of American TV. To me, it's been fast deteriorating over the past few years but perhaps its just me understanding these things better, the consumerism and marketting and media. The only reason I watch Channel 5 is the American programmes like Charmed and Smallville that they buy and the occasional movie. Then again, I shouldn't complain too much, I'm too poor to afford cable.

Here are more comments about "Without Warning". Running in the same vein as the terrorist video thingy shown at MRTs except on TV!
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1445903

Oh and about this condescending RJC girl if you haven't heard already:
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1435572&

Better that I not post it... Just go look for yourself (:

Health food ftw!

Ooooh gosh, my passion and tastebuds for salads has reignited once again. I was feeling rather peckish this afternoon so I decided to make a salad. My mum usually keeps the fridge stocked with the usually salad ingredients anyway. So I took out some lettuce (how nice, it was already leafed), dumped the whole box of cherry tomatoes (gosh I love tomatoes), cut up a few chunks of cucumber and sprinkled the rest of my dried fruit and nut mix into the salad and drizzled a little bit of thousand island. It's a wonderful melody of crunchiness, sweet and savoury... Mmmmm (:

Exams are trivial compared to the later things in life

JOTHAM!!!!! I can't open the file you sent!!!!! So everyone can't see the wonderful poster for Agape. Awww :(

Right, Agape (pronounced as UH GAH PAY not A GAPE!!!) is a "Worship Nite" organised by our very own Jotham Lim, whose organization skills leave a bit more to be desired (sorry Jotham, have to maintain the integrity of my blog!), and I don't know what incentive there is to go besides the attractive poster which really is quite well done. I got the hard copy in my bag!

Jotham says that in a mass email:

"Hi all, there would be a Concert on the 30th of November 2006 called "Agape" worship night. The venue is at ACS (BR) concert hall, time: 6.30p.m to 10.00p.m. All are welcome and the admission is free!!! This is a worship night especially for the sec 4s, however it is also open to public of all AGES!!! In addition, if you are interested to act, do make-up, ashering (SIC), sound crew or even help out in doing the Decorations/creative people. Please do e-mail me at jothamlim@hotmail.com by the 30th of October, do not be shy!!!

Thank you so much and God bless!!! Do also remember to bring as many friends as possible!!!"

He later clarifies:

"It is not a concert. Its a worship nite. Could u pls help me post it up and pls follow the details on the poster itself. Thanks and God bless!!! Pls. Yr the best!"

Ooookaaaayyy. One word: contradictory. And by the way, Jotham ends his SMSes, wait, emails and anything he says, with God BLESS!!!!! Yeah... So, if you wanna go for the concert thingy, please do come... I'm asking everyone of you to go!!! It's a Christian concert with some other stuff lined up and I think there's free supper... FREE FOOD!!! YAAAY!

And it wouldn't hurt to go right.... Save a kitty if you go!

Onto more personal matters and less lousy advertising... Recently, my HP Director couldn't start up. HP Director is my Printer/Scanner/Copier software for scanning stuff and whatnot. Ever since I installed IE7, the blasted software just couldnt start up. A while ago, I had suspected that the program was based on IE so I suspected that because I upgraded to IE7, it caused the program to screw up.

I emailed HP and this is what they had to say:

"Hello Adriel, Thank you for contacting HP Customer Care.

I have read your e-mail and I gathered that you are having issues opening the HP Director. I know how inconvenient this may have been for you.

However, please be advised that there is a conflict between the HP Director Software and IE 7.0. Although the HP Photo and Imaging program will be working just fine.

As a temporary workaround, you will need to have Internet Explorer 5.1 SP2 or later version but lower than the version 7.0. Please follow the steps below to remove IE 7.0 from your computer:

bla bla bla"

Well, they sure sound caring! :) Too bad the solution is completely absurd. I'm not going to rollback to IE6 just because of that -.-' Pfft!

"I would like to inform you that we already working for a fix on this issue. I appreciate your understanding on this matter.

This should resolve the issue. If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

You may receive an e-mail survey regarding your e-mail support experience. We would appreciate your feedback.

Sincerely, Jenny
HP Customer Care"

Wow, they really are very kind aren't they! Good customer service but I always think that if a product is really good, there wouldn't be much need for technical support like that. Right now, I'm just gonna wait for the patch. Still, I must praise the customer service... Then again, this isn't the first time I'm contacting them so it must say something about HP products...

Yum, mac and cheese...

Chem prac was way loads better than physics prac, guaranteed. Thank God we didn't have some queer titration where you had to measure P and Q in different proportions and mix them together and measure them, those were a real waste of precious invaluable time. I still kinda quivered a bit though, but after a while, my confidence was boosted so I guess I worried for no reason.

At the beginning, things were bad. I was grateful it was a normal titration so I got to work. But before that, whilst checking my apparatus, I found that my pipette squishy thingy (I have no idea what you call it) had liquid inside so I decided to swap it out for another one. When the titration began, I realised that the replaced squishy thingy couldn't work! Blimey! What luck! I squeezed the thingy to suck the liquid in but not much liquid went in so I called for another one and started to fill my burette with P. Or was it Q? Nevermind. Dammit. Potassium Manganate. Thankfully, I didn't get any potassium manganate on me. Until the end that is, more on that later.

So I pipetted the thingy into the conical flask and was done with that. I filled the burette with potassium manganate and I was going to get rid of the excess but I didn't realise the bloody burette was so sensitive, a little squeeze and a lot of purple liquid came out, and I ended up spilling a lot onto the table and some got onto my calculator. After much fuss, I got everything back under control and got accustomed to the stupid burette. I thought my burette was faulty at first but I didn't realise that in my panic, I was still ever so slighty squeezing the clip thingy.

Anyway, I was getting worried because I could hear others doing their titration while I was still struggling behind but in a bid to comfort myself, I told myself that I was being more accurate and careful and bla bla bla and the others weren't. Yeah right. Things worked out fine. My first titration suggested it was in the range of 20-21. So I did it 3 more times and on the first try, I got 20.3, next two were 20.4 and deciding to be extra careful, I did it one more time and got around 20.5 so what the hell. 20.4 is good enough and I went on to my calculations. I remember vaguely a 0.051 so there. And for the mass of BaO2, I got 89.5 or something like that, cant exactly remember.

Next was the extension question but I decided to skip it and start on the QA. The QA was rather tedious, lotsa experiments to do but it's all good. It's like doing 10 1-mark questions compared to doing 1 10-mark question. The first few parts were pretty easy but the last experiment was a bit strange. We had to dilute T with 2 parts water and then add some to a portion of silver nitrate and WITHOUT DELAY (emphasis in original), move on to part B which was to add the diluted T in excess. Now I wasn't quite sure what it was all about but I decided to be insolent (I had 25 more minutes anyway) and just do it slowly. I did the experiment like 5 times on 3 different test tubes and each time, I got a slightly different result. When I did it slowly, I got some kinda orange-y solution with weird black (I think) stuff floating around. Ew. I did it faster this time and it became some dark orange solution. I did it again, really without any delay, and I got a clear orange solution. Hmmmmm.... I did it a few more times to see what happens when I first put the diluted T in so I can write down my observations and the effect was really neat. All the swirly ppt and I don't know what... The expierment before that even yielded some fluffy black stuff which settled to the bottom and left a clear solution at the top. That was pretty cool :)

The last answer was I- in S. I think that was the most obvious because of the Pb(NO3)2 turning yellow.

The extension question made me think a while. It's about the decomposition of H2O2 and the different metal catalysts. I thought for a while whether to compare the volume of O2 or H2O liberated but I didn't know the set up for collecting gas so I just compared the volume of H2O left. Whatever! It's probably wrong but hey, the idea's there :D Made me think for a while there... I'm pretty confident the rest of my prac was good. Titration results were good (everyone got an average of 20.5), calculation was flawless (or so I think) and so was the QA. This certainly was a major contrast to physics prac.

EDIT - Oh yeah! After everything, I still had like 15 minutes or so left so I decided to do the tiration one last time. I got 20.4 again and I got potassium manganate on my shirt. It was just a few small splatters. Thankfully, there was H2O2 on hand so I used it to decolourise the dreaded purple spots and its gone! Whoooo!

And Life Swap by Jane Green is a wonderful book about materialism, social climbing, singlehood, parenthood, and everything about the grass being greener on the other side :)

"They're Coming!" - Gandalf, LotR: Fellowship of the Ring

EDIT: Denise got first dibs on the voucher! Too bad to anyone else who wanted it! Did I mention I like shopping? Oh my... hah!

Mmm, yes indeed. The end is near! Ominous but very real and palpable. The end of the O levels I mean!

That's not the point of this post. I'm giving out a free discount voucher for Toni&Guy hairdressing. Anybody go there? It's 10% off for ANY haircut OR colour service and 15% off for a combined service of haircut AND colour. I'm not using it because each haircut costs $60-$90 as listed on the website and I find it absurd to pay for anything more than $30 bucks for a haircut. Ok fine, that $60 bucks consists of consultation, shampoo, massage, and whatever not but still, 60 bucks is really too exorbitant for a bloody haircut. The voucher also expires on the 17th of November, the end of my Os, so if you do want it, tell me ASAP.

I actually got it when I went to Topshop/Topman to get my Grad Night outfit. I started trying out a buncha outfits and I didn't realise each shirt cost like 75 bucks+. The first one is a black buttoned long sleeved shirt with vertical dark blue stripes. The other one is also a black buttoned shirt with more prominent red stripes but with sleeves that are meant to be folded up. The pants are a plain black/dark blue colour, was $66 but after discount, was $50. I got a black tie with red stars at the bottom which cost $30! But it feels really nice... It those casual skinny ties not the business-style ones. My mum made me try some black shirt with small tiny polka dots and I thought it was terrible.

In all, we spent around $230 on clothes, in a single receipt X.X I've never spent that much on clothes before, lol... I felt like a bimbo (or himbo) after that since it's only girls who spend this much on clothes anyway. Damn... $70/80 for a shirt X.X Haha, thanks mom!

Anyway, we got the Topshop discount card and the staff tinkered around with this credit card kinda machine to process the application. I didn't think I'd be getting the card today but the machine spat it out within a few seconds. It looks like those MRT farecards actually. On it, there was this "Match 3 and WIN!" thingy and my card happened to have 3 matching smurf-looking icons and I got the voucher. Somehow, I think it's bogus and nothing but a gimmick. It's not as if I'm gonna use the voucher anyway. I've currently 226 points and you get 1 point for each dollar spent :D I needa spend 24 dollars more to get a $10 voucher Topshop voucher :D Wheee!

Ok, that was a very bimbotic post.... I need to study.... Blargh!

Snobbish pretentious twits!

I've been feeling ever so decadent and hedonistic lately. Don't worry, it's no skeleton in the closet to scream about.

Recently, I've been ever so wanting that Samsung E900. I've been doing a lot of research and studying it instead of studying Chem and whatnot. Furthermore, I've been checking out all the new game releases and reading reviews on all the game sites... Man... This calls for a huge change in priorities.

On the brighter side, I've been studying SS albeit minimalistic. I've been trying to do something more productive lately but I just can't find the mood to. I always tend to be distracted with such materialistic pursuits. Oh well... And I'm already thinking of WoW...

I find that after physics prac, my morale has been damaged and it's really quite difficult to gain the same momentum to study as I had before. I must stop spending my time relaxing and do something productive.... Hey, isn't resting productive? Hmmm :)

Well, I find that I know like 90% of my stuff for my sciences and math. I just have to make the effort to be more careful with Math actually. I still need to revise a bit for SS and History since I certainly am lacking in the content. Not by much but still, I'm pretty sure I've got some holes here and there to plug.

Anyway, have you seen the Samsung E900!!! It's sooooooo pretty! It has a touchpad thingy just like the Chocolate and it's really really gorgeous. 2 megapixel camera, 80 mb of internal memory, Mp3 player, Micro SD expandable memory, Bluetooth. Anyway, it's gonna take a while for me to get used to a new phone and stuff and it doesn't have a "Recently Used" list like my phone does! Oh well... Heck about it... There's a price to pay with fashion :P Oh, it also has a document viewer which lets you view MS Office and .pdf files. You can even connect it to a TV out! Bluetooth and pictbridge printing as well! Whooo! I feel so materialistic, hahaha... Oh well, after a while, I'll get over it. I don't even know when my plan ends or what...

And ooooh, so many games being released this period... WHYEEEE!!! They tease me so!!! I've to persevere and enforce some self control and discipline on myself. I can play them all after Os :D Whee wheee! Can't wait for Os to be over! But first, I have to bloody study well!!!

Oh, and My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade is a nice song. I'm thinking of getting their album. Oh crap, there I go again... I'm being materialistic Q.Q! I blame the stress and whatever, hahahaha.... Bye for now! Not much to blog...

Dubious textbooks

While studying the SS chapter on Merger and Separation, the textbook largely portrayed Malaysia as the aggressor and pretty much the antagonist of many issues like not granting pioneers certs and no common market. I shall quote the textbook,

"Malaya, on the other hand, was reluctant to establish the Common Market.... afraid that goods manufactured in Malaya would face competition from Singapore. Industries... would then be adversely affected."

Hmmm.... What would Malaysia's textbook say? That it was indeed true that Msia was afraid of losing trade to Singapore or maybe that Singapore wanted to STEAL trade for herself? Hmmm.... You be the judge (:

If you think my posts are long, see Zhiheng's blog

I intend to play WoW after Os since I'll have to much time on my hands anyway. Recently, I've been having the impulse to start WoW all over again as a new character. Horde of course. What shall I roll? Undead Warrior or Priest? Perhaps a Tauren Hunter or Shaman! I've been having this feeling to run Scarlet Monastery over and over and it'd be really cool to have my Undead Warrior decked in Scarlest Monastery gear. I still remember that really cool Herod's Shoulder which is a red single shoulder pad with spikes on it. Yeah... And thankfully, getting gear wouldn't be so difficult since all Warriors need is Sta and Str. Oh how bout Circq? She can run Scarlest Monastery too! Well, pretty soon anyway.... I shall go think about it some other time...

Effed up

Dyu know why people play computer games? Why people spend endless hours in an alternative virtual reality like World of Warcraft? Well, that's because real life sucks! And I feel like playing WoW and not returning back to reality right now.

Physics practical was really screwed up. Not just for myself, for other schools as well. The first thing everyone asked each other if their graph was a curve or a straight line. I got a curve when it was supposed to freakin be a straight line, Eric Loh said so himself. So yeah, egregious mistakes number 1. I was so freakin nervous, my hands were trembling as I put the marble on the ramp to find the velocity. And you know such bloody experiments are extremely inaccurate and have lotsa room for human error. MY HANDS WERE TREMBLING! **&#$%^(@#%^!!!!!!

The other experiment was also really really effed up. You had to attach this optical pin on a retort stand and put the lens and mirror underneath the optical pin and view the image from above. Then you were supposed to align the head of both the image and the object. My gosh, it took me a good 10 minutes to find the bloody image. The lens and mirror at first were on the base of the retort stand and I could see the head so in the end, I put the mirror and lens on the stool then could I see the bloody image. The next part was even more absurd. I had to move my eye back and forth so that the object and the image wouldn't deviate from each other, they had to be aligned as I rocked back and forth. That was seriously screwed up. People had so much trouble finding the correct focal length and we all looked like retards moving back and forth. My eye hurt because the mirror reflected the light into my eye. Such an effed up experiment... I almost screwed my extension question by omitting something vital. Fishstix la...

To make things worse, on the way home, I got caught in the rain. AGAIN. I walked in the rain yesterday on the way home and the same shit happens again today. I was like asking why on earth is God doing this to me but something in me told me to trust in the Lord and that he has planned good things ahead for us. Oh well.... *lets out a huge sigh* It's all over....

Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding. Darn, I forgot where that came from... Today is like a chapter from the Series of Unfortunate Events although it can't be matched in severity as the real story. Blah...

Egad! Physics Prac!

1) I've decided that I am only going to shave when I reach 16.

2) I've decided that I'm going back to WoW after Os.

3) I wonder what would happen if someone wished for WORLD PEACE and it came through. Those silly chain mails don't work :(

Reason for 1)

Because it's 16! You know! 16! It's the age of maturity! And I meant facial hair!

Reason(s) for 2)

a) I'm excited after reading all the previews about Burning Crusade
b) I'll have too much time anyway so WoW will prove to be a time sink
c) Although still not so much competition. Bloody KY, and bro, are so competitive. I play at my own damn pace and I proved my point when I took my time to reach 60, HAH!
d) Burning Crusade will add tons of new quests and areas to explore. My motivation to play WoW was really the quests and areas to explore.
e) Certainly much more stuff to do now. I've missed like 2 or 3 patches? Heard of the new PvP content and stuff...
f) Rolling a new (Horde) character and starting afresh would be so much fun no? :)
g) I just remembered all the other instances I've never explored like Dire Maul!

And did I mention Burning Crusade has been delayed to January next year. Bad move Blizzard! Never mind, still can play during first 3 months! Hahhaha...

Reasons for 3)

Hmm, just wondering only....

The Big Os (no sexual innuendo insinuated)

Os are just around the corner and I realised that soon enough, of all this studying would be over. In a matter of two weeks (shorter than mid years or prelims), it'll all be over! Just like that! All this intense studying will be over; how different our lives would be. I find that, admittedly, I'm rather enjoying this period of studying and still being able to meet my friends. It's like we're all united together with our common goal being the Os. Although sometimes, people get cranky under all the stress from studying. Still, it's wonderful to just study and not worry about anything else but exams. As we grow older and enter adulthood, our worries would be much worse and frustrating compared to what we face now: money, career, kids, etc.

Os are coming and yes, it's all going to culminate in this final obstacle before our unprecedented freedom and joy ensue. I hope I'm prepared for this and I think it'd be good to list down my aims:

English - A1; if not I'll cry
Emaths - A1; gotta make as little careless mistakes as possible and practise practise practise!
Physics - A1; think I'm doing well so far
Chemistry - A2; been putting lotsa effort into this but whether it's sufficient, I don't really know
Geog - A1; haven't quite started on it but I hope I manage to do well
SS/H - A2; probably not very realistic but I hope I don't screw up for SBQ and study my content well.

L1R5: 8! Sounds promising but that's the best case scenario if anything. I can't help worry that I'll screw up somewhere just like Emaths Prelims. I also can't be complacent with English now! Been focusing a lot on Sciences but I still feel that it isn't sufficient, sigh... So much to study, so little time.

I've also noticed a lot of people quitting blogging until exams are over. I don't think bloggers should stop because in this period, how often do you get any English practice. Blogging, like right now, would be my only outlet to churn out essays and practise good English skills albeit some colloquialism (note the abbreviations and short forms) but still largely accurate for the most part :D I hope...

Well, I've been concentrating a lot on chem lately and hopefully, it'll be sufficient by the time my chem paper starts. I also found out, much to my horror, that I haven't completed 50% of the physics FYS so better start doing it! I should be fine but still, a little practice helps :) I'm practising Emaths regularly so my brain doesn't grow stale and mouldy. Math is like brainxercise :D I haven't quite started on SS/H because I hate studying those subjects as they're nothing but memorisation work. I'll probably start revising next week since SS is my first paper and the later I revise SS, the fresher the content will be :) All that Good Governance and Sri Lanka conflicts, blah! I also gotta revise Geog! The mock exam didn't go too well, partly because I was half awake and my mood was very casual and not very focused =/

I've also learnt a lot so far about studying. I think it's good that I pick this up halfway through my education journey. For one, I think I should be more organised! My stuff is EVERYWHERE! Bloody hell! You know, I really can't wait for Os to be over then I'll go BURN (BURN BABY BURN!!!!), and satisfy the inner pyromaniac in me, all the silly papers and books I have! I have this THICK stack of papers, probably to be done, and more papers lying around, probably to be done as well, that I just want to get rid off. Even though I keep it just in case I might need it, how often do I really need it when it's all in one huge stack and some place I don't want to care about. Hmmm... Yup, being organised is very important.

Second thing, keeping a notebook/journal. It helps to organise my thoughts and agenda for the day, also what to blog. Upon entering BR, we never got a diary to write down homework. I pretty much resorted to remember the homework (there wasn't much anyway and the deadlines were far) and asking friends so yeah... Oh, I guess this comes under being organised as well!

One more thing: STUDY MORE!!!! Yeah, self-explanatory. No more gaming and playing but study study study when I get to JC. Blah, not that my computer can support all the latest games, stupid old Radeon 9200! I've got a long list of upgrades needed but what the hell...

Physics prac is tomorrow!!! Bleh :( I pray that I'll be able to remain calm and not freak out when I see electrical experiments but to learn from my prelims. *shudders* I hope I don't screw up like during Prelims, that was awful.... I can't draw bloody circuits for nuts :'(

All this stress and anxiety is making me fat. I find it somehow increases my appetite! Worse still, we've stocked up on A LOT of snacks from Candy Empire... Resist temptation I must! Hahahha...

I saw an Indian who speaks better Mandarin than me!

I was just thinking about the psychological differences between guys and girls. Guys are practical practical practical while girls are sensitive to emotions and needs and are sentimental. At this age, guys are also awfully immature and childish. Males make better authority because they're headstrong and pragmatic, they don't let emotions get in their way whereas girls do! It's also evident in the interests. In a car, girls go for pink cute types whereas guys go for raw power or petrol consumption. In short, girls tend to be more superficial (no offense >.<) in general and guys tend to be very practical about things. Like now! I'm displaying my insensitivty by telling the truth and being practical and direct about it.

I read this somewhere about how males and females react differently in this particular scenario. Guy walks into the kitchen, goes to the fridge, grabs a soda, goes to the pantry, grabs some chips and walks out. Female walks into the kitchen, notices the undone dishes, notices the overflowing bin, notices the unorganized fridge and whines about it. Guys do things with the end in mind without much thought about the process while girls go through a loooooooong thought process before deciding to do something. That's why shopping trips take hours ("Should I get the pink one or the orange one? Does the pink one make me look fat? But orange is so last season! How about this one? It's shiny! Or that one or this one or that one...."). In short, girls think a lot while guys just think about the end only. Thus proving that guys make better authority as well!

Anyway, did you know that oil blotting paper really absorbs cooking oil! I used to think of blotting out the oil in Mac's fries or whatever :D

I've nothing much to blog these few days... Been studying actually but I think I slack most of the time... I'm also reading this really nice book titled "Life Swap" by Jane Green. I picked it up at MPH because the cover was quite pretty :D It's about these two women, a 35 single woman who is the Features Director of Poise! magazine, and this really rich mother of two who's a social climber and does all that tai-tai stuff. The former yearns to settle down happily ever after but cannot find a good man while the latter wants to relieve singlehood. They get the opportunity to swap their lives and so on... The story is reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada really. Lotsa Chanel and Prada and Gucci in it and it's full of decadent, pretentious and superficial rich people. The main character even has "neighborhood shags" and affairs and stuff like that. Man, pastors should steer clear away from this book because it's about people who are full of sin. I wonder when I'll get tired of all the disgusting superficial rich people but I just got to the part where the social climber gets tired of all that bullshit and prefers the simple life. Oh it's a really interesting story and a really nice breath of fresh air from my previous fan fiction genres of sci fi and fantasy, it was quite crappy really.

Oh well, I should be reading textbooks like SS and History and Geog and Chem and Physics instead of novels but hey, counts as studyign for English right? :D

Meh, nothing else interesting goign on in my life... I'm cooking Beef Stroganoff with mushrooms linguine tomorrow. Oooh, how fun... I've got more than enough beef though, whom shall I invite over for lunch!

4!\!!) ! 4!\/! 50 9!-!3'/

Maple still sucks

For the first time ever, I've had the impetus to play WoW and PvP. And that's not good. It meant that I was so dreadfully bored, playing WoW would actually have been better at that moment! Such moments are very rare because the only time when I actually feel that whatever game I'm playing can be triumped by WoW is Maplestory.

See, I went for Jac's party at PC Bunk - that's the new "LAN" shop at Dhoby Ghaut - and they were all playing Maplestory. Cherie took over Jac for a while and I was very bored watching her play MS. It was the same blasted routine! Go near mobs and just spam a few buttons, watch everything die and pick up stuff. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. And repeat. Repeat repeat repeat until the coroners find out your cause of death is due to boredom. There's no variety whatsoever in the brainless slaughtering of mushrooms and snails. You just kill the same unimaginative 2D sprite over and over again and see numbers fly into the air and stuff. BORING! There's really no purpose to it; much like WoW but still not as bad as WoW considering there is much more variety and a larger purpose in WoW.

Though the English has improved, sentences are now much more coherent, the dialogue and general feel of the game seems very amateurish.

The other day, KJ or Bryan Yam was telling me about the Malaysians in Maple who go "Jie, Mei, Kor, Di" and speak a haphazard mix of broken English, Chinese, Malay and Hokkien (swear words especially). I think it can only be described as Maple speak, bearing much resemblence to Benglish. Comparing the WoW and Maplestory, it's unequivocal that those two games cater to very contrasting demographics. I'm being intentionally indirect so as not to hurt any Maplers.

Anyway, after a while, I decided to mess around with it and play Maplestory because there simply wasn't anything else better to do. The first 5 minutes entertained me as I messed around with the controls and watched the colourful and flamboyant spell animations. I couldn't help but make comparisons with WoW. Even though WoW is 3D, it's spell animations aren't as exaggerated or flashy as Maplestory - WoW's Heroic Strike is just a swiping move while MS' is like a huge giant sword emerging from behind. While the animations are pretty, it's not going to entertain me for hours on end. The entire motive behind the game is to grind. Grind grind grind. That's the main reason I quit WoW remember?

There aren't any quests even. What this I hear about jumping quests? See, jumping is a bloody standard in games. It's so trivial, it's really sad that Maple has to make quests centered around it. Oh don't say it's simple. Here's an example:

You see two cameras, Brand XYZ advertises that it can take pictures and is portable, while the other Brand, say Canon, advertises that it has a 11x optical zoom and 7 megapixels. What does it say? If they have to advertise that it can EVEN take a picture, it's quite sad isn't it? Next time when you go shopping for techie stuff, noticing what they adverties helps you to discern better. If they advertise really trivial stuff like a 2.5" SuperBrite LCD screen instead of better features like a MEGAOIS Anti-Shake or whatever, you know that the camera probably isn't as good as the other since it has to advertise the lousier stuff.

The point is that jumping is already so simple and trivial, yet they have to center quests around it, it does speak volumes doesn't it. Quests are for STORYLINE, you save damsels in distress from dragons not hop around aimlessly pretending to be a bunny -.-'

Well, at least the thing is free. That's why it caters to a lot of people... Hahahaha, I remember Mervin saying that WoW is a "high class game". /shrug :)

For the first time ever, I opened up my com today (saturday)! I was actually really annoyed at first because it wouldn't start up. For some bloody strange reason, my com chooses to malfunction randomly, refusing to start up. From previous experiences, it'd turn out fine after a while or two. Today, I tried turning it on the whole afternoon but it refused. I got realy pissed off, while doing Emaths, so I decided to open up the com and clean up all the dust because I suspected the malfunction was due to overheating. Opened up the blasted thing, was greeted by a shit load of dust and wasted a LOT of tissue wiping the fans and everything. Especially the fans. I only just found out today that I have 3 fans in my com! One for the CPU, one for the GPU and one for the PSU. Uh, that's Central Processing Unit, Graphic Processing Unit and Power Supply Unit for those who don't know. I think I found fungi growing on one but man, it was really really dusty. I also found out I had two more RAM slots... At least now it doesn't make that random churning sound. Man, I really need a new com...

Calm the storm in me...

I went for Damien's dad's funeral service and cremation today; it felt really awkward since we were friends of Damien and the deceased and all the adults were pretty much looking at us. It was really really awful and sad, can you imagine losing any one of your parents now? At this age? I could really feel the anguish and sorrow of Damien and his family that I even teared a few times. Some of us didn't really cry or seemed sad, perhaps they've been inured to all the death over the course of their lives.

In any case, that isn't the point of today's post. During the funeral service, the pastor shared with us something about asking God to calm the storms in us and I think it's really relevant to us students as well, as much as the deceased's family, as we face the imminent O levels. He shared with us the story about Jesus and his disciples in the sea and they were on the verge of sinking while Jesus was still asleep. Jesus then calmed the storm and their hearts. I can't remember where it was from, blah... Anyway, I thought that Psalms 23 would be a wonderful, uh, Psalm to complement that and for everybody who reads this blog and taking their O levels or As or whatever major exams..

"
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
"

I love that Psalm! Especially the "Yea" part, it sounds really quirky in such a historical context but oh well.

"Yea, though I walk through the valely of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;"

Let us remember that even as we approach our darkest hour (Os or whatever that applies), we shall not fear evil, or anything for that matter, because God with us.

Amen :)