I just watched the graduation video that Gautham and I (SJIPB MediaComm!) made for the batch and it brought back fond memories.

Sigh.

But hey, I'm going back tomorrow!

Together with some of my ex-classmates, I went back to my primary school yesterday. Haha, I felt like a giant there.

I don't really feel like typing, so here are some photos that we took.

Haha they used to have much much much more Hardy Boys books. I finished the entire series!

Them fooling around with calligraphy.

With our form tutor.

Justin was having his second childhood.

Under the playground at J8's atrium. The sun was horrid.

Seeya!

THE.COMMON.TESTS.ARE.OVER!

No school for the next 3 days! Woots!

Posted this on the class blog too.

I'm supposed to be studying Dickens and Owen, but I got distracted by the computer, and subsequently this series of videos someone sent to me.

If you haven't already heard this person, try listening now. He has this amazing ability to sing in both male and female voices. Unbelievable. James Blunt sounds very macho compared to him.

Disney's Aladdin - A Whole New World. He sings both parts of the duet. If you want to skip to the female vocals part, it's around 1:00. I would recommend listening to the whole thing though. This has about 5 million views.



Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love:



*Shivers*

Have fun mugging!

In about 9 hours or so, JCs all over Singapore will be turned into slaughter fields. I have this ominous feeling that we are all mugging, marching towards a massacre.

I hope I come out of the next three days alive and intact.

Storm the fronnnttttttttttt!

I know babies are cute. But they can be a little sinister too.



Scary? Or cute? Or both?

This is probably politically incorrect and against all modern pedagogical thinking.

Spoon-feeding is good. After a slightly productive afternoon of geography, I realised that being spoon-fed is a very good thing.

I want a textbook or a pile of notes that can act as a pseudo geography bible. One that you can just eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper, puke it out during the exam and arrange it neatly. Screw independent learning, screw TLLM.

The notes from other schools are all compiled nicely. Powerpoint slides or notes in the econs style. You can read it from the beginning to the end like you would to a novel.

Those that we paid for are detailed, and rather suitable for college work - but they are all over the place! This set from this textbook, that set from that reference book. Your eyes have to go from set A to set D to set C to set B in order to form a proper logical flow in your head. Oh, and to form that flow, you have to refer to set Z which is the damn syllabus.

Aye, we probably learn stuff in greater depth and detail because of the wealth of information. It's nice reading it for fun. But it's a total pain in the ass trying to mug it for the examinations.

And doing your own notes isn't an option either. Alright, perhaps you can. But I can't. I can't distill 6 inches worth of notes.

I know whatever the teachers in school are trying to do is for our own good in the future. You know, all that independent learning, critical learning stuff that's apparently important in university.

But this subject is a rote-learning subject. In the end, it's the grades that matter.

The eugeosynclinal sediments, with no such support, are more severely warped and deformed and may undergo thermal metamorphism and change. Greywacke - a sediment, is easily metamorphosed at relatively low temperatures and forms intruded granitic batholiths of plutons...

I was randomly playing CDs on the stereo when I heard this song. It's really nice! Oh, and it won 2 Grammy Awards for "Best Rock Song" and "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)".

Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) by Train:



There's another version of the MV here.

Lyrics here.

Back to blasting! And mugging ):


PS: Get ready for Firefox 3!

I think KFC's Fish Ole burger is absolutely horrendous. I spent an hour trying to eat it and I couldn't finish because it totally sucked.

A few days back some of my classmates came over to do the Maths VA and (as usual with all projects) we got distracted by the computer. Blame WQ. He showed us these videos of Japanese pranks - it made us ROFL, LOL, LMAO.









Hahahaha. You definitely can't do that in Singapore!

The following probably sounds very tired, incoherent and boring because my eyelids are drooping.

I half-dragged myself to RJ today for the Singapore Junior College Photography Symposium. It’s more of a networking exercise where members from JCs meet and discuss problems faced by their own societies.

Anyway, I started the day by having a tour around the RJ campus. Amelina and her friend (Li Ting?) were bringing me around, and in retrospect, RJ doesn’t look as huge as it seems. Haha. But it’s definitely less humid than NJ. NJ's a gigantic sauna.

I was trying to look out for Mr Phang’s room and I finally found it next to LT3. He was my physics tuition teacher in Sec 3 and Sec 4. There’s a small plaque next to the classroom door that reads:

I had this weird impression that he ‘donated’ by building a room and then fitting it in. Haha. But in reality it’s just a big cheque that puts your name up there.

We began the symposium proper by forming small groups and playing all those icebreaking games that you had probably played a few million times. It was more fun talking about own schools and I found quite a few interesting tidbits.

Next up was the presentations by the various schools and it was quite interesting. Some of their activities sounded really implement-able. Hmmm.

Lunch was after the presentations. The chicken drumsticks were humongous. They were titanic - I’ve never seen such big drumsticks before. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.

Group discussions again after that – we all have similar problems but somehow there are no solutions to those problems. ): Haha, and we spent the last 30 minutes of the session talking about random stuff like stereotypes and O Level students, since all of us in the group took the O’s.

Intra-club sharing was next. We all thought some of the ideas were really workable, especially the darkroom collaboration with MJ. But it really depends on whether we can push such a thing through from planning to execution. The symposium ended at 4 with a presentation by Damien, who’s a youth photographer for the Lianhe Zaobao.

The whole event was quite good in the sense that we managed to get new contacts and find opportunities for inter-school collaborations. It wasn’t so good because some of the JCs there haven’t ended their term in office, so it was a little hard to find out who’s the go-to guy for collaborations and such.

Oh well, I’ll go take a nap before dinner. See you!

Haha I used this throughout the entire camp, together with Ilford Pan 400 Black and White film:

I know film's an anachronism now, but hey, it was fun developing the pictures and seeing them in actual authentic black and white, not fake photoshop mono colour.

Anyway, I don't want to blog about SNAP because I'm too lazy to list everything that we did.

So see you next time!

If you’re looking for a military commander, don’t look for me. I’m probably the worst person that you can ever find.

WQ lent me his copy of Rome: Total War and I played it last week. Yes, I know I should be mugging, but hey, I need a break too!

Anyway, I arrived at my above-stated conclusion because I conquered the whole of Europe without fighting a war. I only fought 2 battles and laid siege to a couple of capitals. As for the rather cities, I bribed them. Even rival generals and family members weren’t spared. I just sent a diplomat and paid whatever price they quoted.

Money makes the world go round eh? If they weren’t cooperative, I simply hired an assassin to kill them. Haha.

Why send an entire army when you can just send one guy? Or rather, a mountain of gold coins?