Election activity started long before I woke up this morning. Lorries carrying party flags and posters and loud speakers were making its way round the neighbourhood, trying to attract people's attention. Those lorries remind me of the propaganda truck that I have to destroy in Red Alert 2. Except the one in the game used loudspeakers, while the real-life ones used loud hailers.

Late morning a bunch of people were seen gathering at a particular shop opposite my house, and I thought they were from the opposition because all of them were dressed in white tops and black bottoms, until I finally saw the main character, dressed in white from top to bottom, shaking people's hands as they walked by. The propaganda lorry slowed down and waved at each other when i drove past.

Finally in late afternoon I saw (and heard) the lorry from the opposition. Surprisingly the opposition had better loud hailers and I could hear their voice messages better. The one from the ruling party was very muffled.

Elections aside, yesterday I stayed back after school to watch the Drama Nite. The show wasn't too bad, the quality was still there, but the second play was rather profound and I could figure what the story was about. The actors, I guess being young and relatively inexperienced, were rather soft in their voices. The first play was splendid.

Backtracking to Wednesday it ws Feeling Fab where we could sign up for a variety of activities. I signed up for yoga the first time round, so this time I signed up for muay thai lol.

Actually it wasn't too bad; learnt some basic punches and kicks. But the session was too short to be deemed useful.

Next week will be an exciting week. Monday is a public holiday, Tuesday will be the Students' Council Investiture which will result in my chem test being postponed to the following week, and NAFPA test on friday. My class will be especially stressful thanks to our especially sporty civics tutor.

Or should I call him my discipline tutor instead?

From him:
To improve performance, you have to start by fortifying the mind:

1. Start each day with a declaration of intent: "I am going to enjoy this day".

2. You can run; many cannot and will not run. Some have never known what it is like to run. Make the most of it while you can.

3. You can train every day for at least one hour. There is no excuse not to.

4. Train with a goal in mind.

5. The method of achieving this goal must involve rehearsing the activity and aids to that activity.

6. Competition must not only include the specific event but other events which will test endurance and speed.

7. Exercise your will specifically by devoting time daily to the task you dislike most in training - or to a known weakness. Start small and progress.

A competition is a competition; if you have trained diligently and intelligently and done your best, you have succeeded. You are only a failure if you have not done these things.

- Frank Horwill

They love to say that their opponents have no experience in serving, do not have the capability to carry out what they promise, write blank cheques make empty promises. But I wonder how one can expect the opponents to gain experience or carry out what they have promised if they are not given a chance to do so in the first place?

Elections is here!

Before I begin, I know that I'm not supposed to blog anything that indicates my support of any party or candidate, so I shall not name names ya?

Not that I support any political party though. For now.

On the other hand, if I have broken any rules, please let me off on account that I am only 18 years old ok? Haha.

I'm looking forward to the Elections, not because I want to know who will win (argh, I'm not saying I'm politically apathetic. Why should I know who will win since I can't vote now? Don't worry I will vote carefully when the time comes), but because it adds excitement to my otherwise boring monotonous life. Haha.

I would have looked forward to it even more if they have assigned my college to be one of the Nomination Centres, instead of the primary school a few roads down. It could have been a holiday for me!

The only memories I had for GE 2001 were the lorries that went round my house carpark screaming dialects at us to vote for...I forgot who, then accompanying my mother to the school behind my house and looking at I-forgot-what noticeboard while my mother voted, and lastly watching the news and seeing the ruling party with all smiles and happiness at the stadium.

I was only in Sec1 then.

Now having fully grown into a "young adult", I am slightly more aware of what's happening around me, and so, finally making sense about the importance of elections.

What a politically correct answer =X

This time round the opposition party is definitely more prepared, with more united fronts, clearer goals, and better presentation. The ruling party isn't slacking either, sticking faces of new candidates on my newspapers almost everyday and seeing the same three letters over and over again.

ME. A so-called new generation citizen. Personally, just like fellow other new generation citizens, I think that it will be better if more opposition get elected into Parliament, so Parliament sittings will be more exciting and we may even see them pulling each other's hair and throwing punches and kicks all over!

Lol. Just kidding.

I guess opposition parties can be a watchdog in the government to ensure that they are indeed corruption-free and more goodies will come our way. After all, we have been taught that competition will bring out the best in us isn't it so? Therefore if there is more competition in Parliament, our wishes of having more holidays and less homework may come true earlier!

Yet, I can't help but agree that there is still some way before our opposition can reach the first-class status. There seems to be a lack in eagerness and enthusiasm in helping us the citizens. Perhaps they are highly controlled by the government, they cannot make their voices and opinions known. I can see that they have really made alot of efforts in trying to form good teams and fight for the welfare of the citizens, but they seem to be more engrossed in trying to topple the ruling party rather than serving the people.

"If you truly want to serve the people, you don't have to be in Parliament to do so." -- me

What a sucky quote.

Of course, I can't accept people who hurl abuses at their competitors. I do admire their courage (Not many people dare to scold the government in their face leh!) , but admiration =/= support.

Still, the ruling party should be careful not to get too complacent. They can't really win people's votes if they shake our hands and offer to build some mechanical blocks that stop every 10m upwards only when Elections is coming.

Then again, I (and my parents I guess) find the Lift Upgrading Programme which was recently offered to us too attractive to resist. Got lift stop outside my floor leh. It sounds so good lol.

Opinions aside, this time round all the parties and candidates are very fast leh. Immediately after the Nomination thingy they are already trooping all over town hanging up banners and killing poor little grass as they plunged sharp-ended flags into the ground. There are already some on the grass patch in front of my house, and a few more across the road.

Good luck to the candidates; may the best men win.

A very neutral entry huh? Haha.

If you have inferred from the tone of my entry that I am someone who treats the Elections like a game, please take note I'm not. I do visit websites belonging to the various parties and read their manifestos, understanding what they are doing at the very least.

Email me at brotherhoodofnod24@hotmail.com if I have typed something that I shouldn't have typed. I will answer to it asap. (I'm socially responsible ok!)

I am very, very sorry. It was all my fault. It was my mistake.

It was your initative; I should have consulted you first before I carried out my action.

Go ahead and scold me..don't keep quiet..for I will feel even more guilty.

But, everything can be reserved to the original state. Just tell me, and I will see to it.

Again, I'm very sorry. Forgive me.

Blogging is an implusive action. Now I'm wondering why i blogged the previous entry. Haha.

Finally another week has come to an end. This week has been quite peaceful, except for a chain of emails that doesn't sound too friendly.

Initially I was thinking of staying back in school to watch the Dance concert. Not to say I'm interested in dance, but there's nothing to do at home. Then in the end I still came home, because I don't want to go home late at night in uniform with a bag and file. Haha.

Had a ride in the back of the lorry to Tampines, thanks to a friend. This ride was not too enjoyable, because the dark clouds were looming overhead and it seemed like rain was going to fall anytime soon. Then I couldn't help but relate those dark clouds to lightnings striking me on my head or tonardos blowing me away. Haha.

Luckily I reached home well before it rained, just in time to catch the rare event of the setting sun casting bright red light onto every single thing.

Finally today, I'm sitting on the cupboard with my back resting against the window.

Last year around this time, i was a quiet individual sitting on the chair at a corner, watching my peers giving speeches why we should choose them to be in the exco.

Now, I'm one of the seniors in the room, listening to juniors giving their speeches on why they should be in the exco.

The reason why I did not apply for any post in the exco is simply because I cannot lead a bunch of people. That fateful day back in Sec 3 when my seniors arrowed me to be the President, I quietly accepted the role. Thinking back, I should have rejected it. For I may just be the reason causing the downfall of the computer club.

Finally, after 2 struggling years, I had stepped down. When I got into VJC and eventually picked iCOMP as my CCA, I had decided that I will not take up any exco post again. I have already caused enough trouble.

Thankfully, in my peers there existed someone capable enough to lead a cca, and iCOMP is still going strong today. The exco was a perfect combo. Technical skills, communications skills, Leadership skills, organisational skills, you name it, they have it.

However, this new batch of juniors leaves much to be desired. While its a bumper batch this year, with record number of people joining iCOMP (all thanks to the principal), their technical skills are far from standard. In their speeches, and the interviews made in the past 2 days, most were commenting how they have no technical skills, but instead having the passion to lead the club blah blah etc.

Ok, its true technical skills are not the most important skills one needs to be in the exco. But one cannot know nothing about computers and want to be the exco of a computing club! How can a president lead a nation if he cannot speak the people's language?

I personally believe that one must have the technical skills. It is very very very important. Sigh.

On the other hand, there are some with the skills, but they lack all the other skills needed to be an exco member. At least they didn't protray that during their speeches and interviews.

I see myself in them.

Of course, I'm not going to overturn the entire ship. There are people with qualities required to lead a computing club.

I usually don't believe in interviews and speeches, because I believe that one should not be judged by first impression. I just can't help but feel a little worried how they are going to take over when the seniors have retired. Seriously, i dunwan to see yet another cca collapse.

Hopefully, things will change as they start to know the seriousness of leading a cca like iCOMP, and not follow in my footsteps.

I know I should be studying, but i still took out some time to try out the Fedora Core 5 i downloaded not too long ago.


Don't you think its beautiful? Haha. Actually the login screen is even more beautiful, but I couldn't get a screenshot of it.

The setup process is much more user-friendly and easier to apprehend than the Core 3 setup. Everything is laid out neatly and complicated details are removed. But then, perhaps they have removed too many things.

The new layout is a pleasant surprise. The new design and logo are cool looking. However, the functions are still pretty much the same as in Core 3.


Above: The loading screen after logging in.

Since Core 5 is optimised for Pentium 4 computers and I installed it on a Pentium 3, it can't help but was abit slow. But the speed is still acceptable overall, even slightly faster, in my opinion, when compared to Core 3.

I spent abit of time today trying to mount my Windows hard disk onto it, so I can access the Windows hard disk from Core.

Haha.

Of course its not without its problems. After mounting the Windows hard disk on Core, the login screen and a mstask error keeps appearing when i use Windows, and apparently there's no Flash player that supports Firefox 1.5/ Fedora Core 5 combo. Website text was a problem until I imported fonts in from Windows. Even then, there's still a problem with the formatting.

Whatever it is, Fedora Core 5 will be here to stay, in my computer. Haha.

I shall end this entry with an image. Have you ever seen text-based Internet browsing?

The release of Project Work results last Thursday leaves me rather doubtful about the way it was marked.

While the problem is not so serious in my college, I have heard and read of other junior colleges with ridiculously low grades. Students of particular jcs are complaining that the number of band 1s and 2s are exceptionally low, when compared to other jcs.

Even in my school, I have at least two friends who got lower grades than I thought they should get. They are supposedly good speakers, hardworking people who have put in alot of effort in their projects.

Yet there are jcs that registers unusually high "good" grades, with only a mere less-than-one-percent scoring less than "good" grades.

[There are claims that some students who slacked through their projects got good grades while students who have sloughed their guts out got low bands instead. This I shall not comment, since "amount of work put in" differs from person to person.]

This seriously makes me question the creditability with regards of the marking of our projects.

According to stuff I read on the Net, our projects are marked by our college teachers and thereafter, moderated by Cambridge markers. However we students have absolutely no idea how our projects were being marked. Were the grades given by a single teacher who marked our projects by his moods? Was there any fixed marking scheme that the markers adhered to?

Perhaps there is no ground for questioning if the grades were sort of standardised across the entire Singapore, or at least the entire college. But it doesn't make sense when a supposedly fantastic project was marked down and the students were not duly rewarded for the work they put in. Also, the percentage of the different bands across the different jcs differs by significant amounts.

In short, there are too many analomous points.

I personally think that the marking scheme, our exact grades, our exact marks, how they marked our projects, where we have gone right, where we have gone wrong, and comments, should be released to us students instead of throwing us a grade and not telling us how we have gotten the grade.

Its like dropping dead after being hit by something and not knowing what hit you!

I think that will be seriously unfair to us students, given the fact that we have all put in alot of time and effort into our projects, doing surveys, conducting interviews, running around Singapore doing case studies, carrying out experiments, combing throught books and the Internet and whatever, and spending hours and hours compiling our information together into a file.

Not forgetting all the time spent in doing nice Powerpoint presentations, and rehearsing and rehearsing over and over again to ensure we can do the best presentation ever.

Complaints aside, our project work is already over and there is no use trying to change the way it came out. Hopefully the next batch of students will be treated with more fairness and there will be more transparancy with their marking.

Isn't that what the government is supposed to do?

So it was our Sports Day yesterday.

Sports Day is one of the very few events where we can don our house tees and throw VJC into a bright sea of colours. At least 1 out of 365 days where one won't see the same beige colour everywhere he goes.
[seriously I think we should make our house tees an official attire to wear in school]

But then, wtf our juniors get house tees made of better material.

Early in the morning during maths tutorial my classmate asked the probability that it will rain yesterday.The moment he said that, it started raining. Luckily it stopped soon.

Heard a pretty surprising piece of information from my maths teacher. It turned out that the college was prepared to cancel lessons and pushed Sports Day up to the morning if the cross country team had won the previous day.
But they didn't, so we still gotta go through half a day of lessons.

Then again, I wasn't in the mood of lessons yesterday, partially because of Sports Day, partially because of the release of Project Work results.

While the whole world ended lessons at 1210, the 5 of us made our way to the computer lab for our coursework. After one hour of non-stop typing, then panicking that I have only 3 1/2 hours left with so much else to do, we made our way to the field to meet our civics tutor.

I got a Band 1! =D

With no time to celebrate, I made my way to the grandstand, and soon after, the Sports Day started off with the mascot race.

Sports Day is generally the same as all sports day in the world, nothing special.

There were some extraordinary events. There was a 200m caterpillar run where each house sent out a team of people, form a queue, hands on the shoulders infront like a train, with all their left legs tied by a string, and led by their mascots to the finishing line.

As the name suggested, it was at catepillar speed, whether the actual race itself or the preparations before that. It was amusing though.

There was also a teachers-vs-students tug-of-war. That was interesting. 12 students fought it out with 12 teachers at the field, one race per gender.

The female tug-of-war was more interesting. The teachers won one, the students won one. But students lost out in the deciding match.

The male teachers[plus the guest of honour] thrashed the male students in 2 matches. No fight at all -.-''

As usual there was cheer-leading competition. I find that the performances were all about the same. Shake pom pom, run here run there, jump here jump there, throw here throw there. I'm not biased, but Aquila's performance was slightly more refreshing. Haha.

As for the races, not of much surprise. The winners were mostly, if not all, sports players.

Aquila was champion house for Sports Day!

To conclude, I like Sports Day. Its a tad boring sitting in the grandstand for a few good hours, but its fun just to be part of the event, to feel the atmosphere, to look at people having fun.

Hello World.

Absence of an entry lately is due to a lack of time and motivation to bring myself to this page. Haha.

Last week was relatively peaceful..except that it marked the end of all my Science SPAs. After 1year 4 months and 14 gruelling SPAs later, its all over. [Actually I have already lost count of the number of SPAs I have done.]

Last week also received the confirmation slip of my A levels exams...by accepting that I am going to pay 493 bucks for 5 subjects, there is no turning back now. I can't drop anything, but have to continue till the end. Haix.

*******
"Are there any financial assistance available?"

"Oh yes there is, but you should note that the more subjects you take, the more you have to pay. So if you are unable to get financial assistance because your family income is over the cap limit, you can always go and see *."

(* => my 20th Jan 2006 entry)

******

Although Science SPAs are over, we the computing students are in the midst of Coursework 2. The task is to create a website, and I only have 4 and a half hours left with nothing much to show. Haix. Its getting on my nerves. Haha.

Just completed my NS registration last night..after receiving an reminder sms from them over the weekend. There was a hell lot of things to fill in. Have to spend so much time on it. And the earliest free date for medical appointment is in mid-June. Sianx.

Tomorrow is Sports Day! No I'm not running haha, I'm just happy that something is happening in the otherwise uneventful week. Haha.

But then, tomorrow is also the release of PW results. The entire year of hard work is still rather unforgettable. I just hope I can get a not-too-bad grade.

Yet we the computing students have to wait later than the rest. For our coursework, originally on Friday, is pushed up to tomorrow. While the rest of the school is released at 1210, we have to face the monitor screen for another hour.

On the other hand, some of my classmates are guessing that our CT will only give back our results after Sports Day. Its not the first time my class is the last in the entire level to receive something. =X

Mugging season has already started for many year2s...many people are hogging the library tables during free time to study. Even my normally-slack- : p -classmates are burying their heads in books now...which includes me. Haha.

Fairly normal entry, fairly boring entry, fairly boring me.

Its very frustrating when I stare at a string of letters and numbers and symbols and I don't understand why is the formula written this way, how it is derived, and the concept behind.

I used to be complacent, accepting whatever formulas and equations the textbook gave me. Now? I am stumped by the simplest concepts, and I can't answer my own question when I ask "why is it this way?"

I can just sit down and read through every single piece of notes all over again, but I don't have the time.

Good News:

My handphone is repaired and back in my hands! The battery and some internal part is spoilt. The hp was back home today, and after charging it for 6 hours, I'm using it again. =)

Bad News:

Everything inside is erased. That will include all my smses, some pictures that I took with the camera, some pictures my friends had sent me, and each and every single of my contacts.
Perhaps its a good thing to start anew. People I have already lost contact with shall be erased, and in my phone remains only people that I'm still in contact with.

Meanwhile, my apologies if anyone smses me and I reply asking who you are.

Another Good News:

I have transferred all my data from the spoilt computer to a working computer!
Turned out its a easy job. I just plugged the hard disk into the computer as a slave and it worked fine as a secondary drive. Initially I thought the computer will get confused with two Windows.

Yet Another Good News:

Well, my mother says if its spoilt, then buy a new one.(haha so generous)
Haven't told my father that the computer is spoilt. Because if I told him, most probably he will try to fix the computer rather than agreeing to buy a new one. I am still considering my options.
But then at this weird time, it doesn't make much sense if I buy a new computer. I will (most probably) be mugging, and after that I have to enter NS for two bloody years. And there's also the laptops becoming more and more powerful these days.

Yet Again Another Good News:

I've finally downloaded Fedora Core 5! Total of 6 iso images, each taking 30-50mins to download (I picked a Singapore mirror ftp haha) Now they are eating up 3gb of my disk space (my this hard disk only got 7gb of space =( )
Shall find one fine day to burn them all into cds, then delete FC3 before installing FC5.

I signed up for a trip to Silicon Valley. Was informed that I only need to write an essay and whether I get selected will be based on my essay.

Then came the news that there were too many people signing up for it and thus, an interview has to be conducted to select the final students.

Well, I didn't get through it, so I have to stay put in Singapore.

No reason was given, though I guess its because of my late submission of my essay, my sucky performance during interview. And sheer bad luck.