After a very very long time, I am back!

My blog is revived!

It has been a crazy year here so far!

Junior year (11th grade)

It's difficult for me to say, but in terms of homework and academics,

this year in Deerfield is a hell lot tougher than Singapore.

Yes, there's more work, but I get slightly more sleep than in Singapore

(because of band)

Let's start by wrapping up my visit in TK.

This is probably the last time (in at least a year) that I'll see these guys.

Visiting TK was pretty awesome on the last day.

Well, that was a long time ago.

Back to Massachusetts..

This time, I came to Deerfield alone, all alone.

I had to unpack everything in 2 days before school begins.

It was STRESSFUL!

Here's when I first started unpacking:

(PS: I just renovated my room today, scroll down if you can't take the suspense)

And this year, my hallway is full of Asians!

It's incredible!

But I love this group

There's 10 people and half are asians.

The school year started off with the DeNunzio Dance.

It's where we have to dress up with ridiculous costumes..

But the fun wasn't the main ingredient in life here.

There's a hell lot of homework everyday.

But finally, after a month of intense studying,

this weekend is parents' weekend!

On friday, it was parents' day

I'll say 90% of parents came over and join classes with students.

Mine didn't, for obvious reasons.

I don't mind actually,

because I get to chill in my dorm for the weekend.

And Monday is a holiday.

Finally, I have a short break from the hectic life.

Phew...

That's why I'm only blogging now, after more than a month.

The weather's getting colder...

Some nights, it got below freezing.

Over the summer,

Deerfield spent over 10 million bucks on renovating

the Greer Store (a student cafeteria)

and

the Fitness Center

I've been dying to show off the facilities here and I finally have the time to do so:

Yay!

Greer Store

2nd Floor of the fitness center

(You can watch TV while cycling and running)

High quality TV

There are some bicycles where it makes you seem like you're actually riding a bike!

It's like XBOX 720

The weights room (1st floor)

Lol

Compare this to the so called "fitness center" in TK

RENOVATED ROOM TODAY!

My room this year is much better than last year's

Cos 11th graders get better rooms =D

Room comes with shelf and tables.

Comfy bed & Thai Flag and World Map

Long Table

Organizer board

Clothes

Lots of pictures!

=D

Time to sleep.

Being in the airport could only mean one thing:
I'm on my own.
Gosh, I hate that feeling.
Everytime when I'm on my own, my level of awareness and adrenline increased a hell lot.
Can't afford to lose anything cos I'm on my own.
Can't afford to miss anything cos I'm on my own.

It felt pretty weird leaving now.
Because summer had been so long and I felt so used to living together with my family.
And that makes leaving hard.
Before this when there's a 2-week long spring break, etc...
it was easier, cos the "I'm-on-my-own" instinct was still alive in my body.

But now, I'm so used to seeing my parents everyday
and eating my mom's great food.
That I can't imagine living in Deerfield Academy again.

I CAN'T IMAGINE:
- eating pasta all day
- eating mashed potatoes instead of rice
- eating salad everyday
- waking myself up to go to school
- making sure that i eat enough without my mom complaining how skinny i am.
- wearing 3 layers of clothing before I walk out of my room to prevent freezing
- my hair turning to ice after a shower and walking outside
- AND FINALLY, BEING SURROUNDED BY ANG MOHS!

I'm love Thailand and Singapore cos I feel a great sense of belonging.
Majority = dark hair and asian
No one really stares at me weirdly.
But in America, when people look at me, they'll be thinking:

"Oh look! Another Asian! I wonder how good his math is..."

I don't know whether to look forward to school...
I miss going to school and stuffs...
But this year, the classes that I'm taking are UBER CHALLENGING!

Here in Deerfield, we more or less choose our classes.
Some people may be in the same grade level but they take different classes or different difficulty.
Some slackers choose easy classes to enjoy life.
But I choose crazy classes.
Last year, I took AP Biology and I almost died in the beginning of the year.
I remember staying up at night everyday for 2 extra hours to read the 1300-page-thick biology textbook for the first 2 weeks at Deerfield.

This year,
I know almost absolutely nothing about U.S. History
But yet, I signed up to go to HONORS U.S. HISTORY course!
I must be out of my mind!
NOT YET!
I am also taking AP CHEMISTRY
NOT YET!
I spent the last few months SELF STUDYING math so that this year, i can skip a math level and hopefully, go to:
B.C. CALCULUS for math.

I'm going to die.
Yup,
this is maybe worse than O'level in terms of stress.
Thank god I have a great next-door neighbor this year!
He's the top in school!
Asian, obviously!
From Hong Kong!
Last year, he took AP Chemistry and B.C. Calculus too!
And he got 99 and 97 respectively if I'm not wrong!
I'm gonna go to his room every night for tutoring!
HAHA!
In return, I'll probably supply him some of my precious noodles!

Oh oh oh!
And I'm bringing food to Deerfield!
This year:

- 132 servings of miso soups
- 70 packets of thai instant noodles

Oh wow,
long post!

I still have 1 more hour here!
And I'm in the airport lounge!
YAY!
Gotta enjoy the frills!

Will update pics next post =D

June:

- Diving at Kao Tao with family

July:

- 1 month internship at brokerage firm

August:

- Staying home mostly

August has been pretty boring for me.

At first, I wanted to come to Singapore because I don't exactly have friends in Thailand.

I mean, I moved to Singapore when I was 8!

But of course, I can't ask much from sec 4s cos of O' levels.

I just stayed home 90% of the time.

Yes, I know it's hard to believe...

You must be thinking, "So what exactly do you do at home all day!?"

Well,

1. Study math

- I'm planning to skip this math course (precalculus honors) to BC Calculus this coming school year because I'm ASIAN and it's only right for an ASIAN to be in Calculus! It's actually a pretty lame motivation but I just feel stupid carrying a precalculus book. In American standard, precalculus for 11th grader is 1 year ahead of normal. BUT CALCULUS is WAY cooler! Well, I don't even know if I'll pass the placement test...

2. Relax

- Yup! Just relax! Going out with friends for a game of soccer, etc... is fun! But staying home and just enjoying the peace and tranquility is nice in another way. It clears my mind so much! It's almost like meditating! After 1 month at home, I feel so calm and mentally sane.

3. EAT

- I'm trying to gain weight like crazy! In Singapore, I'm pretty light, but in USA, I'm a skinny ass.

4. FITNESS

- 30 minutes of weights daily to gain weight and 30 minutes of running to prepare for cross country this fall.

Today, I went to TK for teacher's day thing.

It's packed with alumni!

Today's probably the last time I'm ever gonna see my ex-classmates until years later.

I wanna take some photos but I don't know how to initiate.

Those alumni came in groups, so taking photos came pretty naturally.

But I can't just go venturing on my own taking photos.

Sigh.

Anyway

Darrel(s), Philip, Alston and me went out together.

Ate at parkway and these guys aren't exactly the most thoughtful people,

taking me to MACDONALDS to have lunch.

Spending my last few days in macdonalds is disaster.

For those who love macdonalds: Try STAYING in USA for a year.

After that,

we went back to school to play hours of soccer.

My skin turned red.

There's one thing that I've been dying to comment about going out with people in Singapore:

Ever notice that in Singapore, groups of friends always crawled at speed of under 1m/s

I live in a boarding school and I'm so comfortable with the fast pace.

Walking fast, eating fast, etc...

Somehow, walking at under 1m/s feels pretty pathetic.

At least it's the last time I'm walking this slow.

I SERIOUSLY think that I need to get some photos.

Everything I typed seems so dead.

Maybe I'll go to school one more time to specially take pictures.

But lots of cool things happened!!

Here I am at Bangkok, Thailand for a good 2 weeks now.

And I'm working as an intern for a month.

Working as a broker in this brokerage office.

And guess what?

My work hours are from 7.30am to 8pm ++

It's so crazy.

But at least this is pretty professional compared to working in macdonald's.

I spent most time in the FX spot desk.

That's where they deal with US dollar/Thai Baht rates all day.

So I'm an expert in USD/THB exchange rate. =)

Almost everything here is confidential though.

So can't say anything more...

Sigh, and this summer, I gotta study one whole year worth of precalculus and calculus

cos I wanna skip a math level next year.

And at the rate that I'm going

and the little time I have,

it's gonna be tough.

I gotta wake up at 5.30am everyday

And I only get home after 9pm

This is worse than life in TK Band.

Anyway,

yesterday, I ran 10km!!

I think it's my 5th time running in a 10km event in Thailand.

After 2 weeks of working in an office, sitting down idle all day,

I got so weak!!

My timing was 1 hour 1 minute for 10km.

Argh! OVER AN HOUR!!

The event started at 6am in the morning and my dad and I came at 5.55am

So we were at the end of the starting line

and after the whistle was blown,

we only cross the starting line after a good 1 minute

so that makes my time 1 hour exactly!!

That's a pace of 1.67km/10 minutes

I was faster when I ran 10.55km last year.

Dang, office work really drain the fitness out of me.

I just arrived Bangkok yesterday and the thing I have to say about my 2-week trip to Singapore is:

It's highly below expectation.

It's almost a failure!

I knew that Sec 4s have a lot to study for this one damned exam

called the O' levels

So I didn't expect much anyway

But I arrived on the last friday of their June holidays

It turned out that probably everyone procrastinated on their holiday homework.

So everyone was busy during the weekend.

And when school reopened for sec 4s,

it was pretty much "THE-END"

I went to school on the starting day at around 4.30pm

The time that sec 4s are released from their long day in "hell".

Said hi to lots of people and everything seems fine at first

But 5 minutes later,

everyone gotta go home

to study for their geography test the following day!

Just imagine the look on my face 0_0#

Thank god a few people from 4B stayed behind for a while

so I had someone to chat with until 6pm

Can't be bothered with 4A,

all nerds...

Lol

I mean studying is a good thing

so there's nothing wrong...

haha

The second time I visit school was on thursday

I was all prepared to play some soccer

I even brought a pair of cleats just in case.

Everything was fine at first

I spotted a few people in the council room

and joined them to chat

The council room has no windows so about 10 minutes later,

I left the room

AND

it was raining heavily!!

Just imagine the look on my face 0_0#

So eventually, with the help of my awesome friend, Nicholas Lua, who shared an umbrella with me,

I walked to the bus-stop and went home.

what a DISASTER!

After that day,

I never return to TK again.

--THE END OF MY TRAGIC TRIP--

Almost forgot that I even have a blog

A month after my last days in Deerfield,

Here's some pics on my last days...

Packing up is not easy man

Packing loads of stuffs into loads of bags

Packing up close

(took this pic near the start of the year: there's supposed to be much more decorations and posters...)

What an achievement!!

*clap please*

I have to move all my stuffs to this place called the Dewey attic...

It's a 4 minute walk from my dorm and I have to scale 3 floors to reach the attic

It's the only storage space in school

There's this moving company called Boomerang which some of my spoilt rich friends used but it cost about $200...

So I saved $200 but I wasted 10000 calories...

Maybe in my case, it's not that worth it.

Calories are precious to me, 100 kcal = $2

So last week, I just returned from a 1 week trip to Koh Tao, Thailand

Koh means island.

It's in the gulf of Thailand, in the southern part

My sis and I took a 5 day course to get our diving license.

But the visibility was so bad, it's like 2 or 3 meters visibility.

In fact, on the first dive, visibility was so bad (maybe 10cm)

So my dive instructor was separated from my sis and I - 10m underwater.

My sis and I held onto each other firmly, looking around for half a minute

But all we could see was tons of suspended particles and bubbles from the strong current and bad weather.

We ascend to the surface a little too quickly though.

When we reached the surface, we were almost in the middle of nowhere

The boat was really far away and the current was really strong.

We were near this rocky little island and my first instinct was to get to that island cos I was exhausted and I'm about to puke for the 5th time (seasick)

My sis was against that idea.

After 10 minutes, I spotted our dive instructor on the surface

The water was choppy, so I saw a glimpse of him and a second later, he's gone.

We communicate through shouting.

He asked us to swim to him but the current was unbelievably strong.

It took us a good 10 minutes just to get to him.

We were exhausted.

We showed the distress signal to our boat

But the boat couldn't get to us get because there are still other divers - it couldn't leave the spot.

We tried to swim towards the boat but according to our dive instructor:

"It's the strongest current I've ever encounter in the past 5 years of diving"

For a good 40 minutes, we were stuck in the same place

despite swimming with all our might against the crazy current

What's worse is that I was very very seasick.

I probably puked 5 times in the sea.

And I could smell my lunch.

Eventually, the boat was able to get to the 3 of us

We were dragged up.

We were saved but I wasn't saved from seasickness yet.

I continued puking when I was on board.

The water was incredibly choppy that day.

We weren't the only one who were lost that day.

Even experienced divers had trouble

After our terrible first day, I almost wanted to give up diving.

I felt like that experience could have been aired on discovery channel's "I shouldn't be alive" show.

But I mustered enough courage to continue diving

Our deepest dive was 18 meters..

Diving's more complicated that I first thought.

We need to note the pressure levels, equalizing ears, etc...

Picture time!

Love this picture (look at the coconut tree)

I like how half of the body is lit, very artistic

Welcome to THAILAND english

Our home for a week.

It's pretty nice but maybe not after encountering lizards, geckos and frogs

On the very first day, I found a large frog on the toilet bowl.

Training in confined pool (Day 1).

Training went by quick.

On our second day, we were already in the open sea!!

My sis and I are experts when it comes to jump shots.

All my facebook profile pics so far are jump shots... =)

So here I am in Singapore for 2 weeks.

So far, it's not really that interesting.

Everyone is studying for this one damned examination...

Pretty ridiculous but understandable

Tomorrow, my family's gonna drive south for 5 hours

until we reach this island called Koh Tao.

It's in the gulf of Thailand but has about the same latitude as Phuket..

SO EXCITED!!

Meanwhile, my peers in Singapore are "mugging" for exams.

Oh well...

Diving's gonna be fun!

HEY PEOPLE!

Before you watch the video below,

note that I quit piano when I was barely 10 years old.

I was grade 2 at that time but 2 years ago,

I decided to teach myself piano

I downloaded the Flight of the bumblebee score

and learn it myself without a teacher.

So after lots of hard work, here's the video:

Yup, I screwed up towards the end.

My arms were saturated with lactic acid,

they hurt so much,

there was no way I could play the running notes

so I quickly improvised my own version...

Haha!

Yes, I did not play it perfectly but the message I wanna convey is:

piano grade doesn't really matter that much & having a piano teacher doesn't matter...

I recorded this today cos it's the last day of school

and my piano at home sucks so if I wanna record my work,

I have to do it today...

My school has several Steinway grand pianos...

Hehehe....

There's a different version of bumblebee which sounds better...

I might try that next time.

Grade 2 player playing Grade 8 piece...

Lol

Today was the last day of exams

And tomorrow morning,

I'll be leaving for the airport!!

I just finished packing!!

Oh well, that's all for now,

I'll uploads some pictures on my last day at Deerfield some time later...

So here's the full story:

Deep into the night on Thursday,

Deerfield fell victim to a huge storm

Suddenly, at 11.30pm...

BLACKOUT!

I took lots of videos but here's one of them

Firstly, Deerfield almost never experienced a thunderstorm.

We are in Massachusetts and base on our geographic locaiton,

we aren't suppose to get anything close to a thunderstorm.

There's lightning all the time!

Winds were hurricane-like

My entire dormitory went crazy!

We waited for the power to return but it never did.

After an hour, I went to sleep

I woke up without an alarm clock (no power)

and witness the damage!!

Tree broke into half

Tree flew out from the ground literally

Ground littered with branches

There's supposed to be much more "debris" but it was cleared by some workers

For the entire day, the school's physical plant workers were busy clearing up

At noon, the power was still not back!

The temperature was rising and people here were getting impatient

No electricity means no fans or lights

For a moment, I felt like I was in a camp.

For the first time, I felt like I wasn't at home,

I felt like I was away, in a forest with no power

I had an essays due the following day

and no electricity means no power for computers

Luckily, there's a generator in the main school building.

It was pretty crowded but I found a nice small spot in the corner:

I felt like I was in a refugee camp...

Deerfield had always been prestigious...

Deerfield has never been in such a pathetic state before

The worst is yet to come...

As the Sun began to set,

I TOTALLY FELT LIKE I WAS IN A CAMP

My dorm room felt like a chalet without power

Many students packed their stuffs

and head to the main school building and the dining hall

(ones of the only places with power)

At about 9.05pm, the lights in the dining hall flickered.

We looked outside and the lights in nearby dorms came back!

Everyone celebrated!

Deerfield students have never appreciate electricity so much until now!

Yesterday should have been Earth Day

May day

May day!!

The entire Deerfield Academy campus is deprived of energy

There was a huge storm last night!!

Multiples trees are down

The weather is now calm but the extent of the damage is still visible

Internet is cut off in almost every place.

I found this building where there's internet

Debris is everywhere!!

There's no power!!