night hike-one in a lifetime.

it was an interesting experience but like OBS, maybe not something i would actually want to do often. haha.
it started at macritchie, i met jamie at the busstop and we walked in together with the seniors, we were the earliest! 🙂
got broken up into three groups, i was in grp two with my fellow fuji mates, grace, norman and benjamin, and with other oac members, rachel, shu wei and dawn! 🙂 fun! i knew all of them before the hike itself already. Zhi wei was the senior who had to tag along to ask ever so often "is everyone alright". we had to trek through the forested area in macritchie and then down rifile range road where we met mr low and then into bukit timah nature reserve for yet more jungle fun! haha. the road was very wet and flooded and muddy most of teh way due to the rain in the afternoon. we kept warning each other at the start at every little mud stop but as we went along we stopped only to warn about huge swamp-like areas. (i m very happy with my shoes.. no wet feet! unlike some ppl *e.g norman. my sympathies. ) as you can see, we gave up. i led for the first part of the journey before benjamin took over to try and then he gave up. i carried on. then my torch light started to weaken. norma took over. and he was so worried about leading us the wrong way. you din. well done! haha. we all talked about all sorts of things at the start and aimed to overtake the grp 1. which we eventually did as they were slow that we kept meeting at stations, e.g. the jelutong tower and the ping pong station. and at the tunnel. well, we just kept meeting them. but we were not the only ones, due to waiting at the stations to give grp 1 a head start so we wont clash, the grp 3 started clashing with us instead! haha. and when we took a wrong turn at a tiny junction which the snrs who recee the place din even see…grp 3 overtook us. we followed behind them. ended up quiet and silent, only following the exact footsteps of the person in front. we were very happy to finally come out of the jungle. oh but we acutally countdown to midnight. haha. "happy 31st march." haha. rachel even read us a joke from reader’s digest to bring some laughter to our silent walk. we did a solo walk too, with our torches confiscated by our snr, we walked alone in the dark till the end where a box of mealworms awaited us. grace and i din feel it though coz the first thing we touched in the box was the stones we were meant to pick up. but still…eww. we stopped here and there to take photos. haha. at the telecomms and at the flyover. when we were finally done with the trek in the forested areas, we were so happy. headed for bukit batok nature park. (with a very sleepy grace and benjamin, who would be hugging/ leaning against the trafiic light to sleep while waiting for the light to turn green, benjamin i mean.) we climbed up to the top and dumbed our tired bodies on the lower steps before realising that there were ants colonies there. moved further up. met with group three once again. oh and we ate our watermelons! nice! apparently the ants thought so too. ate it fast before they could reach it. we took our long deserved rest (a pattern that was gonna repeat over and over in the last 2 hours of the journey.)we just sat down at every possible place to rest! (the busstops, near salvation army, at the playground pavillion, at the petrol station, at the bukit panjang lrt, etc.)took forever to find clues, etc, or figure out clues (like the gprs one.) as our tired brains just produced the letter ‘Z’. we finished the bukit panjang loop faster then before as we were motivated to finally finish. and i realise one thing. i take forever to read a map when my brain is tired, and norman is now also known as ‘map.’ he is good at that. thankfully. 🙂 the minute we reached the end we leaned against the wall and just stoned there before the milos were handed out. we managed to look happy though. we were. we achieved a 9 hr 30 min or a 30+km hike in the midst of the night.

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Material Message Metaphor

this was a really great exhibition of local potter, Iskandar Jalil’s, works for the past 1 and a half years. He, asa always, had his characteristic matt glazes of blue (a new thing i have learnt: he loves using the colour Barium Blue!) on the rough surface of the clay, leaving it to look nice and rustic. i love matt colours! However, his style has evolved to include highly decorative and intricate patterns and textures. It makes the clay works come to life and makes it very nice to touch (except i did not dare to touch any of his works in fear of breaking them, i notice however that the other viewers actually lift the different works to feel it… *shudders*). maybe i never notice this at his other exhibition but the way he names his works is very quirky and cute! the main focus of this exhibition was of the many fishes and tongkangs. the works of the fishes have a variety of names all to do with dishes, e.g. tuna sashimi, fish head curry, fish head goreng, fish head lemak, etc. quite funny really. The works of boats were also very interesting to see…all sorts of shapes and sizes. plus many of these boats came with parts made of a material other than clay… such as beautiful looking wood pieces, metal and even concrete. another work of his was "corporate ladder" which showed a series of works which was a series of steps leading upwards. very funny name! oh and the last but not least… his chairs!!! (100 chairs) the very cute miniatures. i loved it! a stool just looked like a lump of clay. and there was a cushion! haha. now i have something to think about for my coursework next year! so fun!

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silly computer games

what do you get with free periods, a group of old7s13-ners and a laptop? a pikachu volleyball tornament! lol. it was really funny.
in the morning, while i was doing my maths revision homework, honghu and sze were playing the game, and then ailin came along and they started playing maggiemarket (to little success.) and later played daphne’s favourite bubble trouble. it was like back to primary school (neopets.)/ secondary school (after exams of coz.) days where we all played silly computer games which required little thinking. i still remember peggy introducing maggiemarket to us (201-ners) and maoyu and yuwei playing ‘orisinal’. it was really funny. peggy would be shouting and making a lot of noise when she is in a frenzy cooking (maggiemarket.) then there was sec 3 where yokteng and the rest of teh 414-ners playing popcap. typer shark, insaniaqurium, bejeweled. little did i know that after secondary school, the craze for silly computer games would carry on. haha. after our maths lecture and a good filling lunch (with the testing of andrew for his music test. expressionism!) , i showed jean and lynette my coursework. they are all impressed. haapppy! haha. after that was done, sze came over with grace and we started playing pikachu volleyball (the game on hong hu’s laptop’s desktop.) that’s when it ran out of battery. we needed a power outlet. so due to the urge to continue playing the silly but very addictive game, we shifted everyone to the grand stand (imagine jean, lynette, jeffrey, andrew, sze, grace and i lugging all the bags and laptops down from canteen to grandstand. what a sight. and all for the game. lol.) finally got the laptop up and running and we continued again. (while the rest of the class were playing a friendly captain’s ball match with the old 07s07.) jean and lynette played one game before going home. then we (sze, grace and i) were short of a player (because we were playing doubles.) so andrew joined in (he apparently decided that he had already studied enough for his music test.). grace and i paired and were defeated by sze and andrew. argh. then played one on one. andrew won grace to become the champ between four of us. sigh. went back home with grace. was lazing around a home when sze smsed me to say that art club was changed to one hour earlier. panic! i rushed my bath and packed my bag and at least got there in time. (thanks to my father for driving me! :)) met long hao when i reached. he was super happy about having a nj pe shirt, his first ever nj tshirt. it is xxxL. oh my. we did batik for art club. quite fun once you get the hang of it. there was an external instructor teaching us. we took a long time to settle down due to the lack of wooden frames and later a lack of stapler bullets. it took me sometime to understand what she meant by ‘hold it at an angle.’ but i got it in the end. 🙂 we went out to help the seniors with their banner. it is for the art fest! the theme is ‘harlequin’ a word that i m yet to understand.
then met shen chen, vania, cheng jia(!!), yaoliang, andrew in the canteen. we had to wait for ailin to finish shooting so we (you guessed it.) started playing pikuchu volleyball again. since grace was not here, played with honghu. we beat sze and andrew. but playing with honghu is not fun! (he has been playing it for 6 yrs!!!) switched partners. andrew and i played against sze and honghu. we lost. expected. so played one on one against andrew. he won. but the gap is very small now. andrew played against yaoliang. yaoliang won. well well, we concluded it is the side you play on. we did a rematch. andrew and i won sze and honghu!!! (due to sze being the one who controls..) hoho. we were so happy. very very tense. four of us were sweating by the end of the game. (and honghu’s face was very red) it was a really close fight! haha. they were not happy. asked for a rematch. we won again!!! yeah! our coordination rocks! (his controls and my slams and slides.) very tense. haha. we were so hooked to the game that we din let anyone else to play. (i.e. shen chen.) opps. met ailin and fishball before heading for holland v. met qinrui on the bus. at the busstop (had to change bus…) we were talking about different things, basically catching up. talking about the new girl group. H.I.M (aka daphne, ailin and jean) when the bus came. no one flagged it. we were like is that our bus followed by a ‘ahhh’ and a dash to stop the bus. the bus stopped. thankfully. haha. made a lot of noise (in the form of ‘ahh.s’) on the bus due to the driver’s bad driving. ( could not balance well.)
ate at a vietnamese restuarant. took a long time to decide on that. shen chen kept going…"come to holland v to eat ______" fill int he different food. after our meal (which was vege less for some ppl who requested for no beansprouts, no parsley, etc. *points to sze.) we talked a bit and ailin and a few others got ice cream. we played a game of pikachu volley ball AGAIN. andrew and i won sze and honghu again. yay! haha. i think honghu has lost his lead of six years’ experience. haha.
then half of us went home first. was the only one who went to the opposite busstop. suddenly someone tapped me ont he shoulder. saw my nygh schoolmates. said hi. but it wasnt them who tapped me. it was fishball! ( he wanted to trick me into looking back on the wrong side but i saw my ex-schmates there instead!!!) haha. he realised that he could take 165 from this side. i realised that since i have changed my class, he is now my senior (as in from my senior class.).
i hope old7s13 meet up for dinners like that again! 🙂

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in memory of peanut.

borned in the shape of a peanut, grew up to become a huge shangdong peanut.
passed away on march 23
lived a ripe old age! 😀
for all the times peanut attempted to nibble our fingers and toes….:D
may you rest in peace. 😀

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second day of school.

Today was half day of school. Ended at 11.40 am. But for those of us not taking geog or history we ended effectively at 10.50. I had no lecture during the first period so was at the round tables with old7s13. shen chen got the scores for our 07s13 song so we got Andrew to play it on the piano (now I know why he is taking music and the rest of us are not!) and the rest of us (jean, ailin, marui, honghu, yaoliang, long hao and I ) attempted to sing to it. not bad. We got better. Jean managed to video it down. We had quite a blast. We started pointing to the person when we sang their names (since the rest who weren’t singing were sitting at the canteen tables.) haha.
Then headed together for chemistry lecture and maths lecture. Mr teo was fierce today, kept stopping to scold people for sleeping, “my lecture is very boring issit?” and was very naggy about writing word for word for our inductions. The moral, if you choose to sleep, do not do it during his maths lecture. Seriously.
Then we trooped down to the canteen for lunch. Waited for the rest (those having geog lecture) to end before heading for ailin’s place! Oh and almost everyone went, with the exception of dhini, qinrui and aidan.
Haha. It was very fun. Saw her whole ark (think noah.) of animals. She had 6 rabbits! Grace (who has a rabbit at home), Lauren and I went crazy over her rabbits. Very very cute. But sadly, they are mistreated. They were so active and dying to get out of their too-small cages. I feel sad for them. And they are so sweet unlike my temperamental brownie. She doesn’t know how lucky she is.
Ailin also has hamsters, kois, a lot of other fishes, a turtle, a terrapin and a dog (tabby!!!). cute dog. Follows anyone who has food or has accidentally dropped food (*points to Andrew. Haha. She was following him around everywhere and kept walking over to face him with those pleading eyes whenever he tried to look away. So cute!) she was licking everyone too. I lazed around ailin’s house, taking photos (till my camera ran out of batt.), putting my hand into the koi pond to let the kois suck (something that Lauren kept doing…), watching them play car-racing and soccer. (woohoo! Portugal rocks. And seeing a lot of goals being scored like nobody’s business. A game could easily have 10 goals! Haha.), petting tabby, using my finger as an insect…(jean, lynette and ailin are obsessed with THAT water squirting fish.), snacking, watching them do dares (in truth or dare.), etc. oh and went to see ailin’s room. So basketball-y. if there’s such a word. I think that everything ever manufactured to do with basketball can probably be found in her room! We started trying to shoot bballs (she has loads!) into her hoop. Hey I actually managed to shoot in some okay! 😀 then after all that fun as s13 we had to leave for home. Awww…

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after pae. start of the real thing.

First day of school. Again. No longer in s13. We call it OLD7S13 now. Lol. We even changed the sign for our class. Haha
In the morning was unable to find s13 ppl in our usual place. Instead saw Claire striding in from her long holiday overseas. Heh. Then met ailin, birthday girl! ☺ met yaoliang and aidan and long hao at the round tables. We were wondering if the rest abandoned us. Very sad. So ailin and I went to look at the stairs. Two waving ppl. Hong hu and daphne.:) yays.
Ailin received her present from the class.
During assembly, stood at the back of 07s07. New class. It is sad.
Then left for aep with my favourite ppl. Haha. Did drawing of very weird perspective with china markers. Fun really. Then bio lecture, sat with ailin and Claire. Then chemistry lecture. Sat with ailin, jean, lynette, Andrew, hong hu , daphne and long hao. I love old7s13. Oh and everyone is in nj uniform already (with the exception of long hao due to his height.) Andrew looks different. He actually looks taller with pants! Oh, hong hu too.
Then we met in the canteen to eat the cake. And celebrate ailin’s birthday. Took some time to gather everyone, in the meantime, everyone was amused by the huge size of long hao’s shirt. Sze, shen chen, hong hu, aiman and Lauren tried it on. One word: BIG. Oh and long too! But when long hao himself tried it on, it looked so tiny and short suddenly. Too short for him, looks like he needs to custom make his shirts too! Haha.
Finally we gathered all the old7s13-ners and poked in the candle. We took forever to light the candle. Everyone was like ‘I want to light, I want to light.’ But no one managed to get it lighted. I broke a match. Finally long hao (dragon!) lighted it and we sang birthday song super loudly. 😛 and then cutting the cake, eating it…. and eating lunch before heading for maths lecture. A repeat from e-lecture, Kind of anyway. I was bored. Ailin too.
Then civics with my new classmates. The old 07s07 din tell the rest of us that there was no civics! So we waited outside our civics venue for nothing. Got to know the new 07s07-ners. Many of them were 2-intakers. Yay. We finally realized that there was no civics so went to the canteen to talk and have a half-class bonding session. Exchanged hp numbers. Very interesting new ppl who din like their 2nd orientation. Too bad I guess.
We waited for the rain to end before heading home. Was waiting for the bus with Priscilla and Sheryl when I met sharlene, Rachel and calean. My dear juniors! I miss nygg. They are all obsessed with getting profi badges. Rachel is planning to get the athlete and dancing one. Amazing. But to throw a dist of 15m?! it is not gonna be easy.
Met val on the bus. She is sad that her class has a lot of changes. Wondering whether she should have stayed on in nj since all her friends are elsewhere. But at least she has 14 of her previous classmates still in 07a02. Better then s13 I thought.

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a last day as 07s13.

the day started fine, had to wake up early to travel from queenstown to choa chu kang for cip (organised by the nj canoeists.)
met up with my dearest classmates of 07s13, from pae, before being told that the time to meet was changed to 8.45am when we were told to come at 8! so anyway we took the time to talk about the recent shocking discovery of the change in classes at macs. everyone was just very depressed by the news. and apparently everyone is shocked as me about my sudden change in class to 07s07. at least i m still in aerius. ailin and daphne are now in lignum house. big change. we talked about how our timetables will change and how it would still be the same (eating together, free periods, outings, etc.) all except for our civics periods. it doesn’t sound so bad anymore does it? but as daphne rightly pointed out, the civics class period is when all the funny stuff erupts. haha. i miss those gc periods. still as sze said, we have ‘our’ canteen table still. lol.
then sat outside waiting for all the nj canoeist people, while listening to ailin’s 07s13 song . now i listen to it i feel sad yet warm i guess.
then got split into our groups to do different blocks of flats, collecting old items. i went with jean, vania, shen chen and a lot canoeists to get the items. was paired up with jean and by the end of the session we were so tired le. i cant imagine how the canoeists left are going to carry on till 6pm. esp with less people. anyway, a lot of people did not answer the door, i like to think that they are not at home and not that they refuse to answer the door. i got pawed by a dog too. very very cute.
then after the cip went for lunch. met the other group and val on the bus to lot 1. headed for food junction for lunch. jean din join us so left with only the 8 of us.
was awed by the minimelts machine
headed to ice lemon tee. we bought cute earrings. daphne, ailin and I, i mean. i bought purple fishbone earrings. i love aerius. lol.
then neoprints. the girls (shen chen, daphne, vania and ailin.) excluding me were busy decorating the photos. hong hu and yaoliang were bored but watched on. aidan was busy fiddling with his cap. i was bored. so decided to take photos of them decorating the neoprints. hong hu copied me. yaoliang and aidan went into another neoprint machine in hope for free photos. haha. then vania suggested we take our own photos againstt he back drop int he neoprint machines since it was empty. free neoprints. haha. shen chen and i were taking photos of each other taking photos. funny really. our neopritns finally came out. daphne, hong hu and aidan left for hc hostel to get there in time to help long hao move his things in. (yes, he is moving there to cut short the travelling time from paya lebar.)
then went home with ailin, shen chen and vania.
nice day.
at night went for my cousin’s wedding dinner. nice place on the 33rd floor. very nice view!! took some more photos. the night scene looked even better. looked through the binoculars to see people dining along the riverside. we amused ourselves with that. saw esplanade. unfortunately unable to see the shows inside. talking about shows… i wannna watch the phantom of the opera! hoho. but need to see my new timetable first. oh and back to the wedding dinner, we ended the day with a family photograph. nice. just in time too, as yiling’s camera ran out of battery then. yay! 🙂 oh and i loved the way the tables are labeled, in chen yus. and for most of the chen yus, the first character sound like the table no.! so fun. haha. but eight immortals crossing the sea?! that is just funny. anyway, i ended up very full, despite being unable to eat a few of the dishes due to my allergy to shellfish. more good food today with yew chen’s birthday celebration. 😀
oh and sadly due to my prior commitments I was unable to meet nai and her sis at east coast. Sorry! I hope that both of you had fun in Singapore! 😀

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reshuffling.

why why why. that’s the question to ask. why is njc admin changing our classes now? why, despite us not changing our combinations, are they changing all our civics classes? *feels like a lost sheep.* why the mass reshuffling? I m now hoping for a miracle, close to the lines of us being in at least the same tutorial classes?! please. let it happen. *cross fingers* i m now so glad for aep. at least i will always have sze, jean, lynette, hong hu, long hao in my aep class. that’s 7hrs a week. i will survive. i hate reshufflings. first it was wk 1 og10, now pae-07s13. what would come next? i hope that even if we are no longer int eh same class we would still lunch together, have free periods together, etc. it wont ever be the same, would it? i will miss you all.

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tree top walk

went for a LOOOOOOONG walk from macritchie to tree top then to venus drive. 5km: from macritchie to tree top, from tree top to upper thomson road however i dunno how long. but it makes me feel good! hoho.
left very early for the walk, started at 7.30am till 10.30am. nice! on the way out from tree top, at the ranger station met with a huge group of students from anderson pri, guanyuan, cat high and another group of students of which sch i dunno. anyway… the walk from macritchie till tree top felt good, walking in the forested area. very quiet in the morning and since it is the weekday, it is just us and the nature. Sniff fresh air. the tree top walk was okay but it felt strange that you had to walk downwards to reach the bridge, isnt it supposed to be TREE-TOP?! the sign along the way told us that it was a one way thing, you couldnt walk out the same way you walked in. ‘point of no return.’ lol. anyway, it was pleasant. a lot monkeys! very very close up. shaking their butts in your face as they walk along the bridge. haha. very cute monkeys. then the way out was a series of steps. NOT FUN AT ALL. it was like walk up a whole 3 flight of steps and meeting you after that is a sight of never ending downward steps. i was very careful not to miss any steps. especially not the top step. hahaha.
since there was no more goal of the tree top, it became tiring and boring. *mind wanders to think of prata at upper thomson.* haha. and so there goes all the walking… into two pieces (or rather 1 and 1/3 ) of crispy prata from the prata house. sighs. totally spoilt my lunch. and i declare that i dont like crispy prata. i like the traditional plain prata. the chewy-ness is nice.plus i dont see as much oil on the traditional kind as i see on this ones. A LOT of oil! eww. it is apparently very popular though. 😛

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VSA cip

i guess the whole experience at VSA (very special arts) was very interesting, not a bad thing to do for cip! but the journey there (from nj to bedok) is just too long! more than 1 hr just to get from one end of the island to the other. it is terribly long. thankfully for a straight bus. 🙂

slept in the bus there and woke up in an area in singapore which was very foreign to me. the east.

i finally learnt silkscreen! we just assisted the people there in the cutting of their designs, the pasting and basically geting everything ready for them to do it themselves. we printed t-shirts which will be eventually sold. very interesting designs came up by them, i love this mafia looking design, the flowers, etc. all very creative people!

 

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