Music fest was a little depressing.
But Chamber camp was quite fun :)

BW got last for music fest, and I think its because we didn't have any "interesting" things to complement with the performance. Like MT had the lights shut-out, MR had the random cartoon characters dancing in front, HH had the skit, and BB had a dumb storyline -.- Just music wise I think we should be quite good, but sadly “Music” fest isn’t just looking at music.

Congrats to MR though, third place, that’s pretty decent. I know like 90% of the people in the MR team (: Well done Jon Shin

--- ---
Okay on to Chamber camp, which was held right after Music fest.
There was rehearsal from 8:30pm to 10:30pm, followed by station games until 11:45pm.

Games were fun! My group consisted of Aera, Enqi, Shihui and the one and only Yong Zhiyi >.<

Our first was Kenya, where we were supposed to do a NAPFA test, namely running, pull-ups and jumps. For running, everyone in our group were supposed to run 1 round around the track in the shortest time possible, and amazingly our group completed it within the time limit of 2 minutes. Yes that includes Zhiyi, you can close your agape mouth now.

Then we were supposed to do 60 incline pull-ups among the group, and I did around 35+ I think. Haha pro Shihui completed the remaining :D Jumps were quite easy; just jump 8m across the whole group.

I can’t rmbr what’s the second station, but 3rd station was at Las Vegas. There we were supposed to built a house of cards >< But we failed quite miserably haha.

Our 4th station was in Venice, and it was totally hilarious.
Task: Play one of the 2 SYF pieces from memory.
And we had no first violins!! So there wasn’t a melody, which means that Shostakovich would sound weird with just the random chords.
Solution: Zhiyi sings the first violin part. xD

It started quite well, but obviously nothing goes right when Zhiyi’s involved. Soon, Zhiyi started “improvising” the melody and was just bleating not-so-random notes at the top of his lungs. Hey, cellos here (Enqi and I) were still trying to keep things proper leh. But in life, when you can’t beat them, you join them =D The whole room was filled with laughter (and Zhiyi was still singing away), and I honestly had never laughed so heartily for a very long time. Aiyah, its quite hard to describe, once the ExCO uploads the video I’ll post the link and you all MUST watch.

After games, we went back to our rooms, washed up, and played cards. Then, Ruiheng suggested that we go run our 2.4km run, and BenWee and I decided to tag along. I paced BenWee, and completed my run in around 10min15sec :D Haha 45 seconds improvement from my usual 11min. BenWee is really pro okay!!

We joined everyone else and continued playing cards until 3+am, then we went to sleep. Breakfast at 7am in the morning, followed by games again.

Captain’s ball was quite fun. Haha Shihui is a pro captain! So tall! O.o She probably caught the ball at least 10 times, that’s like 5 times of what I got when I played as captain.

One-touch-soccer didn’t go exactly very well, but my team still won the game because Jinghui-the-imba who randomly crashed our Chamber camp scored the only goal of the game :) At the same time, his presence totally spurred someone else to perform way beyond her usual form =P

Finale was quite heartwarming, and the video captured many of the things that happened within this short period 15 hours. Yay I really love Chamber now :D our batch seems like a very fun and hip batch. Yes, Zhiyi is still irritating, but if you stay positive and you join in with the right mindset, actually everything doesn’t seem as bad as it is. Must learn how to appreciate what people have and not their have-nots. Haha for one, Zhiyi can give nice mystery scenarios and its quite fun questioning and guessing them.


Yay Chamber! =D

I’ve got a screwed up haircut.

The Malay barber cannot tell the difference between thickness and length ><

My fringe was super thick and dark as compared to the side and back of my head, and thus I told him to make it less thick.

So, the scissor went “snip”, and the whole fringe was gone -.-

Basically, I look quite weird now I guess, because without the fringe the forehead looks super bare like our Chem teacher.

But its okay, I shall remain |positive| !

Lets try to find positive stuff from this “unique” haircut I’ve got now:
1. I don’t have to bother combing and arranging my hair because its just so short.
2. Pro musical imbas like Thomas Ang and Matthew Chua have the same hairstyles too =D Woah, I can feel the aura already.
3. It will probably be May when I’m going to go for a haircut again, so that saves me some money.
4. I no longer have a fringe to trap my sweat and sprout acnes and pimples on my forehead! So my forehead pimples should diminish and disappear soon. Haha Jon Shin, good luck wearing your hairband, mine’s so much more convenient! (:
5. I look into the mirror and I have a sneak preview of how I look like 2 years later in NS.
6. My “unique” haircut now serves as a self-esteem test for me, because I have to learn how to face my classmates, OG mates, CCA mates, BW music fest ppl, etc. with the current state of my hair.

Anyway, people who are naturally handsome still look decent no matter how absurd the hairstyle is =D

Always stay positive (:

I'm so glad everything's sorted out =D

---
From Monday onwards, I'm no longer going to be the shy dove, but I shall work hard to be a talkative peacock and dominating eagle.

Like Dove-40pts, Owl-18pts, Peacock-3pts, Eagle-2pts.
Wtheck man.

But its okay, somehow I find that I can actually start speaking more freely now.
And I can actually achieve things if I want to.
---

Its going to be a new start.
Just friends (:

International Chess IHC today! =D
7 rounds, I won 5, drew 1, loss 1
>< Gah, I'm super pissed, because I could have won in those 2 games. Stupid blunders
But my team still won all 7 rounds (:

So BW got first in International Chess
And Chinese Chess too.
I think the result is the same for Gomoku =DDD
2nd in Bridge
And last in Weiqi.. aww. Patrick Cho too pro liao, Hullett came in first.

But its okay, we'll still win the Aesthetics IHC even though BW's music fest is going to be quite bad (I think ><)

BWalentine House Party on Friday!
Piano Ensemble Camp on Saturday!
Chamber Ensemble Camp next Friday and Saturday! =D
I'm looking forward to all of them (: Chamber isn't that boring actually if you view it with the right mindset.

Oh one more random point, which should be good news for most of you >< I've shrunked by 2cm, so I'm like 178cm tall now T.T

Okay, […] I’m officially puzzled too.
It isn’t “X”, it isn’t Shihui, and it isn’t “Z”.
I give up, I’m really stumped.
“U”, who are you anyway..

---
And anyway, hi Shihui! =D
Haha I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.
Gosh, what an appropriate time to visit >< I guess your impression of me should be pretty bad now =P
But I'm still glad you visited.
Anyway, I'm just slightly better in Scrabble. I'm sure you'll trash me in Text Twirl, Word Challenge, Scramble and all the other wordy games =P
Haha see you at Chamber lunch if you’re going, I’m probably not going for chamber practice tmrw because I’m going for IHC Competition from 2 to 6. If it ends early, then I’ll join you guys :)

Tag replies

[Josh]
I already said in primary school I was super screwed up what >< aiyah, as the official branded "convict", you'll still be the sneakiest =D

[Wil]
Haha, you were in 6-02 right? GEP classes are super fun.. and screwed in the process too.

[Jinghui]
I am so not a flirt >< I don't go up to girls and flaunt them, and in fact now I usually do the reverse and avoid them. I don't change my targets as often as the moon changes phases, and when I actually find one, I stick to it wholeheartedly for a long time. I only had 2 serious crushes in my life so far, and in between them there was a gap of 4 years -.-

And if you were talking about my lower primary experiences, I was just a seriously screwed-up person who didn't care about what's going to happen the next minute and just thought of enjoying myself at the current moment. In any case, that still doesn't attribute me to being a flirt ><

But whatever it is, I've changed quite a lot since then. And as Willette mentioned, "we were all such small idiots" =D

[Gwen]
Sorry! For falsely accusing you of being a sneaky person =P

[...]
This tag is the hardest to reply to >< And she's obviously the sneakiest person on this blog xP

Lets look at her 3 tags, and then deduce who she is.
And obviously, by classifying “…” as a “she”, I already had some idea who it might be.

Tag #1:
“people would actually want to play if the wonderful set up of the board actually allowed them to play. (:”

I have only played Scrabble with 2 people over the last week, and both times I unfortunately trashed them. Lets just name the 2 people X and Y.
When I read this tag, I really thought “…” might be either one of them.

Tag #2:
“i know who your crush is. aha.”

But when I read this tag, I almost dispelled both X and Y totally. X would never post a tag like that for particular reasons, and I’m not very close to Y for her to write something like that on my blog.

So, there’s probably a sneaky reader “Z” out there, and the first tag about Scrabble was just a random comment about the blog post and not because I played her before. In addition, she also knows the person I had a crush on.

Tag #3:
“no im not gwen. (: as gwen seems to have mentioned!”

Haha so “Z” knows Gwen x) That’s enough clues already.
---

Okay but 1 thing all 3 of them have in common are the letters “S.H”
“S.H” is the first 2 letters of X’s surname.
“S.H” is the first 2 letters of Y’s name.
And “S.H” is Z’s initials.

“…” tell me I’m right =)
It can’t be that there’s another sneaky reader V or W who randomly stumbles by my blog.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Its just so sad that school will be hectic from the coming Monday onwards. Heck why the hell did they introduce this slack week anyway? Can't we have 2 weeks of Orientation like Hwa Chong too?

---
Anyway, on Valentine's day, I shall just talk about my "love" life since primary school. After all, scandalous topics are what all the sneaky readers want to read ><

First point to note is that I was a super screwed up kid in primary school.


P1: Seng Kang Primary School
Nah, I was too innocent at this time to even think about "love". But my best friend was a girl, and I remembered the 2 of us made a pact to stay in the same class and school all the way until Seng Kang Secondary. Well, I didn't know nuts about the world at that time, so I agreed.

P2
I started watching drama serials on TV, and so I was shallowly introduced to the concept of "love". My P1 friend went to a different class, but my best friend in the class was still a girl. Umm so what happened was that one day, I pretended to whisper to her a secret, and then pecked her on the cheek instead.

-.-'' See I was damn screwed up right?

P3: Nan Chiau Primary School
NCPS moved into its new campus in Seng Kang, and as it was a more renowned school, my mum transfered me over.

Well, I can safely say that I'm a pretty smart kid, who always gets top in class (except for P1 cos Foo Xiang Peng was in the same class as me), and P3 syllabus was no exception. So lessons were starting to get quite sian, and having nothing to do, I conjured a screwed up idea.

I wrote a love letter to a girl in the class, but since she was sitting quite far away, I had to ask my classmates to help pass the note down, and then she'll pass the note back, and so on so forth. The experience was quite funny actually, and it continued for quite a long time, until one fine day my Math teacher intercepted the note and both of us were made to stand in class. But the whole class already knew, so it wasn't a big deal anyway.

P4: Rosyth School
I got into GEP, and so I transferred again. I had my first major crush, but we were in separate classes, so I didn't exactly do anything.

P5:
GEP is a super demoralizing experience because from being top in class last time, I was now frequently among the bottom. Then in subjects that I have never been beaten before, you now have Math geniuses like Kenneth trashing everyone in class. My self-esteem took quite a drop since I entered GEP, so I wasn't that carefree and screwed up kid in lower primary anymore.

So even though I was now in the same class as my crush, I didn't do anything too, other than tell some of my closer friends that I actually liked "her".

P6:
Haha P6 is a whacky year.

People were playing "Truth or Dare" and exposing all their crushes, so I was no exception too. Like Jian Xiong liked J__, Kenneth liked M____, Chester liked K_____, and so on so forth =P One day, I approached "her", and asked her who her crushes were, and she told me to guess the top 3 names on her crush list.

I managed to do so quite easily, but I was actually stunned, because I was #1 out of the 3. It was supposed to be a secret, but I was so damn happy that I went to tell #2 and #3. As a result, #2, #3 and "her" all hated me.

A few weeks later, we had a class gathering at #2's house, and there, a whole group of people went upstairs into a room to play "Truth or Dare" again. I was busy playing 9-men-morris with Jonathan Tan at that time, so I said I'll go up and join them once I'm done.

But when I went up again, "she" opened the door, gave me a glance, and slammed it in my face.


That night, it rained super heavily, I still remember quite vividly because I was quite heartbrokened. But, one good thing came out from it, from then on, I learnt how to keep secrets.

Sec 1 to 4: Raffles Institution
In sec 1, I failed Maths for the first time in my life and it was devastating.
In sec 2, I got a "C" grade for my Oral Communications lessons
In sec 3, I got owned by Aloysious, and developed Glossophobia.
In sec 4, my self esteem was an all-time low.


In lower primary, I did things out of fun. In p4 to p6, I had my first major crush. In sec 1 to 4, I did come in touch with quite a number of girls, but even the super pretty ones could only just give me a "good impression", and nothing more.


J1: RIJC
Well, I've got a crush again, quite a serious one in fact, but since the start of the week, I've already sorted out my thoughts and decided to let it go. I'm just going to be a good friend and nothing more than that.

Lets just keep Feb 7th post as a nice memory hidden in my drafts :)

Today, during Valentine's day, I'm just going to spend the day with the 2 best companions of my life. My cello and piano.
From Tomorrow onwards, I'm just going to concentrate on my studies and CCA. This should be pretty easy because I'm immune to all the other girls in the school already.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! <3

Gosh Hongrui!

You need to control yourself! If you see a bingo, don't play it down. If you see a nice "Triple-letter score" and you can play your Q, Z, J, X 2 ways across it, control yourself and play somewhere else!!

Trashing someone 300 points to 100 by mid-game, do you think the person still wants to continue playing? Do you actually think you look impressive? Is that going to encourage people to join your Scrabble SIG?

Control!


Lets move on.. Anw, Haiwei is setting up a Scrabble SIG so if you're interested, please join okay!! I'm going to set up a facebook group sometime later at night. Go check it out okay =D

---

I realised that the number of people that read my blog is actually more than I expected..
Why are there so many sneaky people around who never ever tags? >.<''

Yay!!!!!
=D

I got into Piano Ensemble!! <3

After hearing the briefing today, I think I'm in love with the CCA. Haha lets see if my enthu-ness can try match up to that in RISE. 100% attendance rate ftw! =D


Lets try to envision a fully packed timetable:
Monday: Scrabble SIG
Tuesday: Piano Ensemble
Wednesday: Chamber Ensemble
Thursday: SNYO (Haha I wish. I submitted the form today after filling in the Class:____ part)
Friday: Chess Club
Saturday: SNYO
Sunday: CSCO (Lol probably don't have. Unless they call me back again)

Lol cannot lah, that way will die one >< I'll probably just stick with Piano Ensem, Chamber Ensem, SNYO, and pon Scrabble SIG half the time. Aiyah why am I talking so much cock at this time of the year, I'm not even in YO yet.

But I'm still damn happy I got into Piano Ensemble! =DDDD

Tag replies:

Jon Shin: Yes, hopefully I get in. =D Life sucks without you around man. How's the audition like for piano ensemble like? Do you need to do any funny improvisation stuff?
Annie: Haha I didn't know Yiyang goes blog-surfing. He never ever tags does he? =P Marietta Ku will probably choose you over me what, but I like competition =D
Dennis: I loved my OG! I'm sure you did for yours too. Yes PCMM ftw! Hopefully we continue to be in the same class for 6 years =D

Gosh.
I played the piano for like 3 hours today already, and it was FUN.
I still have the night to go. =D

Ok I've sorted out my thoughts.

Basically if you're wondering about the random tags on the right, approximately 12 hours ago I posted a 1865-word post about Orientation, particularly myself having a particular crush on a girl and my experience over the 5 days.

Reason why I placed it up here was because I did want to hear some of your comments, and actually I was slightly hoping that "she" might actually see the post too. But I've sorted out my thoughts already, and I've decided to call it an end.

Just friends =D

I blame myself for not seizing every chance I'm blessed with and immerse myself more in orientation. But I've sorted my thoughts, and I've decided to let this go. Lets not dwell in it anymore. I'm just going to cherish while I can, and spend this 2 years with no regrets.

Moving on..
I got a spanking cool new cool idea!
I'm going to audition for Piano Ensemble =D

I've actually longed for a change in environment and I'm already finding Chamber a little boring =P Especially after I spent 2 more rehearsals with the absence of JonShin, Jinghui and co, and instead with Yong Zhiyi and company, I find that I'm not that enthu towards Chamber anymore. But initially I thought that Wednesday is CCA day, but I've just heard from YunXi yesterday that Piano ensemble rehearsals are actually on Tuesday.

So I'm going to audition for it =D I missed the first round, so now I'm going in with the JAE students, and hopefully I can make it. I'm really looking forward to join Piano Ensemble, and I think I might even actually quit Chamber if I get in. (Ideally I try to balance both first and see if I can cope)

Annie, don't tell Yiyang okay! =P I'm still a very committed person in whatever I choose to stay with. 400% attendance record in RI string ensem leh, hur hur I'm damn proud of that.

I'm just somebody who really values friendships and relationships, and I can honestly admit that I have more than once considered joining Chorale, Chinese Orchestra, or Piano ensemble instead of Chamber in RIJC. But I can't sing for nuts, and the Chamber guys will hate me if I become a second Matthew Chua. My cello teacher will kill me too if he finds out that I've quitted Strings.

But now I really hope I can make it into Piano Ensem! (: I think I'm willing to forgo an almost-confirmed section leader post (unless Annie joins in, then things will be fun) and a promising chance to get into the Exco, just to get into a more fun CCA and spend my time enjoyably with friends whom I know are compatible with me.

I just want to spend these 2 years with no regrets. But ideally I hope I can be in both CCAs too.

Piano ensemble <3! I already have so many friends in there! Jon Shin, YunXi, YongYi, Willette and a few more others. Since YunXi got in playing a grade 8 piece, I HOPE I can make it through too.

Wish me luck! =D Practising piano suddenly feels so much more fun.