27th March 2008Current progress update:Time's really flitting past too fast now. Schoolworks, CCAs and many man yother commitments are overwhelming me like the second strike of the disastrous Tsunami few years before. Perhpas it's because of the expedition that I'm losing out so much time, to be falling behind so much in terms of school's progress. Ya, that's should be a major factor I guess. Then my own commitments? My girlfriend? I haven't been seeing her for so long. Other school stuffs which I could have easily avoided being implicated, but yet somehow my name still appeared in the forms. One for example: the house's cheerleading. Of course, this is definitely not voluntary. People write my name without my consent. The consequence? I'm stuck in a mudpool! I mean I can't possibly withdraw now, since I'm an OAC-ian, and that's definitely not the attitude is it? (Hope the seniors see this, I'm responsible de ok!) =) So I'm stuck, almost no room fo0r negotiation. Speaking of OAC, yesterday I had another OAC training, or rather I should phrase it this way- yesterday I had another OAC training, SUPPOSEDLY. Meaning, thetraining was a scheduled one, but somehow I missed it? This was what happened: I had my second last make-up lessons yesterday before my progress can match up to that of the people who had taken similar combinations to what I've now during the PAE period. Lesson ends at 1820h (the most intensive one ever since I've enrolled in the college). Hence, I missed the entire first part of the training, which supposedly started at 1530h. Of course, I did inform not one, but a few of my teammates, but they still did call when I was having my lecture. I didn't pick up though. By the time I'd end, it was already 1820+h, and I rushed over immediately. Sense of Urgency (SOU), remember? at the sports complex, I saw teckwando, soccer, cricket but not OAC. Thus, I begun my search for my teammates. There was once when I even went up to the OAC room to knock at the door, but to no avil. That further assured me of what I thought, "They were having training outside school." Then memories of external trainings came flashing past. Vertical challenge at block **, orienteering, etc. Hence, I thought staying in school to conduct some self-training was the minimum I could do, while waiting for them to come back. Therefore, off I went, to start off my personal training. I did some invisible chair, struggled with 30 or so standard push-ups, abdomen muscle training (the one where you lift your leg and lower it while in a lying position), some light stretchings etc, before Bao Hui accompanied Sinyee to the dance studio to provide a certificate to excuse her from training due to ankle injury, yaet again. Thus, I chatted with them a little. It was only a light chat of course, as I was afraid the seniors might come back and see me slacking=P. After that, I went for a run, partially to kill time, and partially to train up for the approaching dualthalon, which is on this saturday. I ran 6 rounds around the track. It was pretty tiring, but satisfying because I think I managed to keep a constant speed throughout the entire run. Phew*Eventually, the last bell went off to remind us to leave school before getting locked up by the guards, but the other OAC-ians were nowhere to be found. It was only until approaching 2000h when I receive a call from WeiCheng to tell me that they had their training at East Coast Park to prepare for the dualthalon and stuffs like that, and the most devastating part of the news which he relayed to me was that they are not coming back. I could have met my girlfriend if that's the case, if I hadn't waited for them! So, like a damaged tap, whine and nag I went.
Alright, so this was my first overseas expedition. Details as follow:Duration: 21st March 2008- 23rd March 2008Venue: KelantanPlace of visitation: Stong Mountain, Dark cave, dagger cave, friend's rock cave, adn a waterfallOn the afternoon of 21st March, the oac-ians, together with the teachers-in-charged set off to the train station immediately after school. First time board train with friends. Kind of fun. Chatted and walked around and played an all. So nice. Train started off at 1800h, and was kind of packed, especially with the huge back-pack. So I had no space for my foot, and squatted for almost 30 minutes on my seat, like the character in death-note.13hours of train ride, only managed to slept a little, because the door was spoilt and kept opening in the middle of the night. So it was super noisy. In addition, the overly-low temperature didn't help too. Hence, I woke up occasionally at night. By the time we reached, it's already the next day's morning 06ooh+. Had a little breakfast and reported back, took some photos at the railway track when there was this train coming. So we had to run=P and of course, got scolded again.First activity of the day was caving, very fun activity. Explored the dark cave, dagger cave, and the friend's rock cave. This is really some caving as we had to go through holes and tunnels and claw through low holes etc. And from what the guide said, the some of the caves are as old as 150 million years old. I'm so fortunate to be able to witness it. Later in the day, we set off on the journey to conquer mount stong. 350m up to the base camp. Was kind of fun. Then we visited the drop off at the waterfall area. It provided a wonderful view of the entire town. At night we had campfire, but it rained, so we stayed in our tent to play cards. But the rain halted, and the seniors said the campfire would be as usual, but without the fire. Campfire without fire... So we proceeded on, our skit and some charades. Seniors were exceptionally nice this night and this was the first proper interaction I've with the seniors. Slept at 11+.5.15 in the morning, we had to wake up, a long day. Then we set off to the drop-off again, and saw the beautiful sun rise and it felt like above the clouds in the mountain. So cool! After that, we conquered the mountain- mt stong, in 3 hours. Had lunch up there and trekked down. Slid many times and fell and fell. Got so many scratches. We were way before what the guide has anticipated of us before we completed the entire trek. So he decided to give us a bonus trip to a higher point of the waterfall. I stood behind the curtain and let the water pour on me, and when I lean back, I'm behind the curtain. So cool! Also, there was this whole i nthe centre, which we at first thought was some tunnel, but ended up a long depression in the river, where we can go in, and touch the bottom if we submerge a little. then trekked down mt stong again, and had many more falls. Took the midnight train 1030 one, but came at 1130. I lied on the floor of the train station and slept a while before the train came, and it's home sweet home after that. Photos up some days later.
Today was comparatively a much slacker day. Firstly, because I had no school. Secondly, I did not have any program until late afternoon. So I slept in later. Lazed around in bed until around 1200. My friends invited me to some soccer game in the morning, but somehow it clashes with my date in the afternoon. I tried to persuade them to play it earlier, but some of them couldn't make it. So there went my game. I wonder when would the next one be=(
Afternoon 1400h, I went back to my workplace at Changi terminal 3. My colleagues were missing me, so I went over to visit my sister, as well as them. I bought the kinder surprise for her=). Then we had lunch together at the club at terminal 2. Had curry fish tail O.o Yup, all of us had the same dish. Smelled so nice, but tasted not up to expectation. I've had before nicer ones. One such example is my mom's one. =)Took some pictures there:
Yum yum, curry fish tail: before
After that, I went back to terminal 3 with them to visit my supervisor, and shun bian asked her about my salary. She owed me two day's salary which is around 90 bucks. And I got it back=P Yay! Then, I waited outside the shop for my sister to be dismissed, which was approximately an hour. I'm a good brother=P While waiting, I played with my handphone and hugged cyclops. I like it's head. It's just like a pillow=PAt home, had curry again, but this time curry chicken. Yum yum, it's still as nice as ever. But too much, so we couldn't finish. Maybe I will be heating up the remaining tomorrow after my mom and sister leave for Hong Kong. I'm stranded in Singapore=( But someone's still with me=)Meal:Breakfast: light curry riceLunch: Curry fish tailDinner: Curry chickenAw.. I'm having so many many butterflies in my tummy now. 1... 2... 3.. Good luck to my sister then, you can have the toilet for the entire 4-hour flight tomorrow=)Bon voyage=)The sun is out again after the rain=)Rainbow*
Looks like Joel's the more regular blogger now. He's blogging everyday, while me? I'm coming on and off. Yesterday was a day without entries, partially because I was too tired, partially because of some personal stuffs. Hence, today shall try to make it up.Yesterday was my last day of make-up lesson, and it was the longest amongst the three days also. I was feeling rather gloomy in the morning. I mean who would like to be disturbed of their sleep, and crawl out of the comfortable den to go to work? The weather didn't help, but aggravated the situation. Singapore's climate had been rather out-of-norm recently. It's only the 12th day of the month, and the total rainfall was already more than half of last year's march, according to Miss J whom said it was according to the newspaper. Whoever it was according to, rainfall was really an issue. Especially when it's disrupting so much of my life. Curse*I had geography in the morning. It was more bombardments of plate tectonics and some clashing of this plate and that plate. Overwhelmed*. It didn't help when I was seated between two guys, one of whom was frequently calling out to the other and talking to him about non-related stuffs. "Excuse me, I cannot hear the teacher?!"Lesson ended at around noon, and the rain then was heavy. Initially I thought I might want go without lunch like I always did, since I'm pretty much alone and the rain was impeding me. But gastric struck at the right time, so I ended up going out of the school in the rain to have a meal alone at the food-court opposite. Lonely me.After that, I went back to school to have my physics make-up. I said it was a long day! Thus, another two hours spent in lab. We did a little bit bit of some simple experiments. New knowledge acquired: 1. Physics, like Biology, uses microscope too. It's called traveling microscope. 2. There's this instrument (I forgot the name) which is used to insulate stuffs.2 hours later, school ended and it's home sweet home=)Came online, and slacked a lot. Conscience was working on me, but then I'm not working myself. Been wanting to do work, but just couldn't get myself going. Played football manager and chatted with friend.Basically that's all for yesterday, I suppose.
Today's Wednesday. I had my second makeup lecture of the holiday, Physics. Physics makeup was scheduled on an earlier slot- 0840h to 1000h, exactly 2 hours earlier than yesterday's geography. Nevertheless, I was still early. I left my house an hour and a half before the lecture starts. Call me kiasu if you like, but being early is always a good habit isn't it? Moreover, bus service number twelve only comes at 20 minutes interval. Who knows when the trustworthy driver is gonna betray my trust for the bus's routine time table, like how it did numerous time before?
Chatted with her on the phone again. I wonder why we always have so much things to converse about. It's a good thing though. By the way, she too woke up early today because of a morning dental appointment arranged to tighten her braces. Hence, I didn't wake her up. I'm a good person=P While waiting for the lecture to start, I did my chemistry. A thin worksheet, yet took up so much of my time partially because I was never able to concentrate. But who cares?Had this lecture in the theater, which progressed in a crazy pace. He covered the entire chapter within this block period, which ended ten minutes before time, meaning approximately 5 percent of the entire two years' worth information in 2 hours(rounded up). Assume that the rate of teaching and the amount of information in each chapter is constant, we would be able to finish the entire thing in 40 hours. If we go into intense study for a particular subject, say 6 hours each day, we would be able to complete our A' levels within 2 weeks, with a great deal of excess. And taking into consideration that A' levels students take 6 subjects max on the norm, we would be able to complete the entire of the 2 year program within 12 weeks, ie. a quarter of the year. Wouldn't that be much more efficient, to be able to use 1/8 of the original time to complete the same amount of work? =PAfter that, I dialed her up again, and coincidentally, her revisit had also just ended. So, we chatted for a while, before I reached home and waited for her. I finally met up with her again today. Her turn to come over, instead of me going over. Had a little run because I was late. Then we had our little brunch at block 201. She had fried carrot cake (super oily), while I had this hokkien red date chicken mee sua (wine-y taste). Conclusion: the one we had at block 85 was much tastier=PAfter that, we walked around at the pasat malam (temporary night market), but was quite disappointed when she discovered that there wasn't this stretch of food stalls which pasat malams usually have.
Then, we took the same trail she, me and Joel took on the day we had the neo-prints. I only had vague memory of what happened then, but she was recollecting every piece of details almost to perfection. I was amazed. She was able to tell me that on that day, she had the mango desert thing, while Joel had char siew rice. Wow! Wow! Wow! How had she managed that?Then, we took the MRT to Tanah Merah, and walked her home. Foul weather was playing a prank on us. Rain and stop, rain and stop. I was kind of drenched, but still, walked her up the slope. Shared this umbrella with her. *sweet*=P
Today I had to go back to school because I changed my subject combination during the JAE admission. It's geography make-up lecture. Talked about plate tectonics and shifting of the crust on the mantle, constituting to the movement of the lithosphere on the asthenosphere etc. Chimalogy yea? But it's super interesting=) Then, I went home. Wanted to meet up with friend, but then the weather didn't help. Heavy rain, strong wind. Bad bad bad=( So, I went home to slack. But conscience was creeping up in me, so I got started with my work. Started off with chemistry, but wasn't exactly productive. Got stuck in numerous questions. One of such goes like this:0.00243g of a Group II element carbonate reacts with hydrochloric acid to form 0.024cm^3 of carbon dioxide at rtp. Find the Mr of the element and hence identify the element. A BeB MgC CaD Sr
Any idea how to do? Someone please enlighten me, because I got stuck in that particular question all the way until even now. I mean which element has Mr which is above 2000? =P
Other than the above, today I also broke a record with her. 4hours plus talking on phone. First 1 hour was when I took the bus to school this morning. Second hour was when I took bus back from school. Third hour when I took a break in the afternoon from work. 4th at night when I'm online. Our new record=)
Today's Sunday. After so long, so long that Joel's pressing me to blog, I'm finally back again. Today's supposedly a Church day also, but when I woke up in the morning, I was feeling kind of unwell already. Hence, I messaged Faith and Joel that I won't be going for service. I guessed I missed out a lot. With that, I slept in a little longer and woke up at around 10. Was feeling slightly better by then, so I crawled out of bed and watched a little bit of the Sunday's programs, until my sister woke up. Dialed up my older sister and family, and they came at around noon time. They helped me fix my 2 year-old Samsung digital camera and somehow managed to revive it. I thought it's going to the cemetery soon because it hasn't been working well for me since like a year ago, but miracles just do occur, don't they?Then something happened today, something really funny. My younger nephew's afraid of the cyclops bag clone got me for my birthday. Then, I find it really interesting, so I begun teasing him with it, until a point when he cried. I am bad.Then after that we went to see my younger elder sister to work. On the way, we passed by this beautiful part of the beach, where for the first time in my life, I saw some real waves in Singapore. Some really choppy water. Thus, we can't kayak there. It's not quite possible without a proper license. Then, I played with some swing. Not too bad. Hasn't lose much touch of it since then=)At evening time, I finally met with my beloved=) Distance does make the heart grow fonder. Met her at the bus stop. She looked paler than last time le. Do take care yea? Waited for the bus for like more than 30 minutes but yet it still didn't come. Something was definitely not right with service 14 today. Was kind of disappointed when she said she didn't want to go eat already. My mind was os-ing then, "then why did I come here for?" So, was kind of moody and the spirit was dampen too. But eventually, we still went to that market to eat fried oyster. Yum yum, quite nice=) But the place was kind of smoky and hot. But nothing could have felt worse than being broke. I mean as a guy, it's always nicer to be able to like at least foot the bill. But this month, I was really broke. So didn't intend to spend much. But still, I spent 3 bucks my last 10, and I have to pull through the remaining of the month with that 7. Poor me=(. But no, I won't resort to atm card anymore. Shall pull through this=). Then had this really slow and enjoyable walk iin the breeze with her back. Wow. So relaxing and nice=)
Not much things of remarkable mentions happened for the past one week, the exact length of time since I last posted here.1. I taught a Kaizen (my classmate from Indonesia) some basic Chinese. I am exempted from Chinese because I took higher mother tongue, he's exempted from it because he took higher Malay. We were the only two non-Chinese class Chinese students during the lesson, and we were given special privileges like talking in class while others kept quiet, because I was like the translator cum teacher to Kaizen=)2. I vomited during one of the trainings last week. Initially, I thought it was because my body couldn't take the amount of workload anymore. However, after the training when I gave it a second thought, I think there's some other reason to that, some much more minor reason- motion sickness. That day we were supposed to do paired PT (physical training), so we partnered our teammates to carry out the task to go through the obstacles course. I was exempted from shoulder-related exercise because of my injury. For the first round, I was paired with Joanne. She's kind of light, so we managed to complete the task pretty quickly, though we still failed to meet the quota. For the second round, I was paired with Thong Kiat, the supposedly strongest guy in my team. But because I was exempted from the monkey-bar, so I thought I should help out more with the non-shoulder parts. So I carried him on my back for some distance, helped out with some other stuffs also. Left the monkey bar to him and let him carry me back to the starting line. That was when I vomited. Hm... I have some minor motion sickness when traveling on ground, hence, that's my inference.3. That week was one which I had seen the least of her ever since we started. Perhaps because of the busy schedule of us both, or perhaps because of the physical condition. Either way, let's hope that distance does make the heart grow fonder<3
Well, looks like a week had passed since I last posted. Life's been really busy for me, as well as for the people around me. Recently, I had a transfer of Personal Development Program (PDP) to Outdoor Activities Club (OAC). If I were to say, it was just the beginning of a nightmare, but yet I chose to stay, reason being, I love my teammates. Hence, if they were to abandon me anytime, I might just collapse and crash, though I know it won't happen. That's the spirit of OAC. Orhs well, the past one week's been really revolving around OAC. Monday was the first time I joined them for their punishment, and I thought it was tough. Then came Wednesday's official training which was million times tougher. For instance, we had to climb the 24 storeys-flat opposite school. It wasn't as simple as that of course. Here's how it goes- 5 storeys up, 5 storeys down, 10 storeys up, 10 storeys down, 15 storeys up, 15 storeys down, 20 storeys up, 20 storeys down, 24 storeys up, 24 storeys down. How's it? Cool er?Then for the subsequent days, I was spending more time with my OAC-ians mates rather than my classmates because we had to go for personal training aside from the official ones to keep ourselves fit, or to become fitter for some. Then, we bought this super expensive and big haversack, 65+10 litres one. Cost me 120bucks, but I think the price should be reasonable for a professional Deuter hiking bag, and considering the original price was 219 bucks, it's still somehow worth it. The next item I bought for OAC was a pair of New Balance track shoes as from what I heard from Matthew, we are going to do a lot of running. However, the pair was first worn not for that purpose. Instead, it was worn on a trek in Bukit Timah Hill. Many may think how easy that would be to conquer the Bukit Timah hill, considering its small altitude. However, that's totally not the case when you are weighed down by a haversack filled with 9 1.5litres of water filled to the brim, and when you have to go into each cul de sacs three times, and each step was like half a metre high. A humongous stride to take with a massive load on your back equate to a struggling man on the verge of collapse. Well, toast to the very supportive teammates of mine! Yesterday was the first time I actually collapse, literally. Shall train harder to make myself fitter now.Today had service. Saw my two most important persons in my life. Kind of comforting to see them. Today was not as eventful as the previous ones, but it was the most fruitful one.-->OAC-matesThanks for the support you guys had given me. I'm staying in OAC not because of the PDP itself, but for you guys.->Joel and familyThanks for the bible and everything. If I ever become a Christian, you people really played a great part. I appreciate it a lot, for all that you people have done for me, to make me feel so welcome, and for forgiving me for all the misdeeds I've committed. -->FaithThanks for coming into my life and making it into such a wonderful one. I've so many things to confess to you, but yet they are all beyond words. I'm sure you do understand all these though. Loves and all*
=Love
