pill factory

well… for a teachers’ day that came after the prelims (or rather in-between since i still have papers after the holidays.), this year’s has been quite nice.

 

for one, i managed to write messages for ALL my teachers (thanks to all the responsible subject reps who prepared the cards…).

And, i managed to make gifts for my art teachers. I did this of course when i was doing my coursework. (i made extra CLAY pills while making them for one of my coursework characters)

 

And… the best part was their reactions to them. Mr Lee’s reaction made me wonder whether i was really giving him a gift or was it him who was giving me a present.

i was afterall very happy to know that he appreciated and loved the pills. I guess this feeling does not just apply to the teachers’ gifts but also any gift which you specially picked out for a person. it is the fact that the present you picked is tailor-made to suit your friend that gives you that feeling of happiness. For me the term ‘tailor-made’ comes in a very different way as i really prefer to hand-make my presents (if i have the time…). Just like the mirrors Buloh gave our seniors, just like the ‘studybud’ i gave ailin for her birthday and now, just like the pills i made for my teachers. I guess that’s the joy of giving as cliche as it might sound.

 

anyway, another pleasant surprise this teacher’s day s that despite not going back to visit my teachers in nygh, i already did or will see them. i am of course talking about Ms Lily Chua which i met a few weeks back just outside school and Mr Lim who will be coming to NJ for aep workshop. 🙂 i feel so lucky.

 

 

 

 

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rain has left this building.

Rain is adopted!

which also means he left. i am not particularly upset knowing that he will move to somewhere with a much bigger playing space! he will have so much fun.

But still… i will miss the times i chase after him around the whole house (it happened in BOTH houses). oh, how he made me run. And he is constantly amazing me with his tricks, Mr. Escape Artist. And how his little paws and head would emerge from dining table as if to say "hmm… what are you eating? I WANT!".

what a playful and energetic bunny.

He came to us in the rain. And now he leaves in the rain, the escape artist-Rain.

 

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just when you though things couldn’t get worse…

Chem paper 3 prelims:

choosing the wrong question to do (i did not know how to do it so i left more then half blank. SMART move.)

going into the examination with soaked feet (due to the rain.)

It is bad enough to have wet feet on a normal day, let alone wet feet on a examination day in the HALL. the hall by the way has air-conditioning at the temperatures of 16 degree (or lower) and having the HONOUR to sit right where the air-con vent is directing at is not a wise choice for someone with wet feet. not that i had a choice.

Have no one learnt from the common test experience about the air-conditioning? No. apparently not.

(back to common test, i would have been able to knock off my fingers due to frostbite. but the furious scribbling due to lack of time help to cure that. )

And if it isn’t already enough that my brain is trying to both do the paper AND perform homeostasis to keep warm, throw in a ringing phone.

no wait. make that TWO ringing phones. The teachers confiscated one (not much point if you asked me since 1)the exam was going to be over and 2) it has already disturbed our concentration by ringing non-stop for an hour or so.). Then again, it may have been the other ringing phone that went on for a hour since both phones had equally PERSISTANT callers.

And if you are lost, the second phone was not discovered. so when we laughed when the second phone rang, it was during the lecture by the teacher(on good exam ethics as she was referring to the first phone.). we got scolded. sigh.

well. i do suppose that when things are this bad, things can only get better. it is a relative thing.

and charlie brown (on huihuan’s bottle.) would say: Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse. They get WORSE.

not when it is this bad.

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break.

everytime i browse the net (which i really shouldn’t be doing now… oh wells.), i find something that reminds me of coursework and that i should be doing coursework for my study breaks instead of serving the web (tmr is gp paper: is the use of WEB a metaphor??? just as a web is something that is interconnected, so the world is interconnected electronically through the internet.).

anyway for those people who are not in tune with the olympics (really a virtually impossible feat since ALL the newspapers of the world, the whole internet, the broadcast news on television, the radio stations updates…are covering it.), Singapore has finally gotten a olympics medal courtesy of our women’s table tennis team. Woots~ it is times like these that i realise that everyone in Singapore are really patriotic.

AND… Michael Phelps has reached his goal of getting 8 gold olympics medals in a single game.

and… just yesterday, favourite Liu Xiang pulled out of the games due to injury

(i am still quite disappointed in the Chinese’s reactions to this. they should really think about whether their mentality of silver is never good enough is the right motivation pressure behind all their athletes. Many Chinese are blaming him now and calling him a coward and many feel that the whole injury is just an ‘act’. it makes me wonder what will be their reactions if he ran, lost, and ended his whole possible sporting career due to futher injury during the run. something tells me that they may still blame him.)

just a personal view of course.

to end this post, the picture which reminded me of my coursework… i shall get back to that.

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progression

i am progressing on coursework! yays. i feel more positive about my coursework now.

BUT…

prelims on the other hand is not something i feel very positive about. and everyone is talking about that it is constant reminder that i am one week away from it. in exactally one weeks time, i would have completed my first paper. it is that near. Mr tan gave his ‘pop-quiz’ on the maths exam format today, armed with his clapper (leftover cheer from national day celebration) he directed his questions about the format, the question type, the content to study to everybody seated in the front two rows. haha. it was more relaxing then a maths lesson i suppose and he gave us A LOT of encouragement and not just for maths too. yes. i will aim to do well for maths (and all the other papers).

many of my friends have been giving me nothing but encouragement too! 😀

 

meanwhile, i am amazed that so many of my friends are like me watching television and being very in tuned to the olympics despite the coming exams. everyone watch swimming. and of course Michael Phelps (who has gotten his fifth gold by now…). i am also very impressed with the asian countries’ atheletes doing well in the pool. South Korean Park TaeHwan, Japanese Kitajima Kosuke, and Singapore’s Tao Li! woah.

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Jane blogged…

Was finishing up my SGC.

 

And i just read a supposingly depressing post by Janey. But it is in the way she writes that makes it sound more sing-song, more sarcastic then depressing. she writes well. It made me realised that i am not alone thinking that i am alone (what an ironic statement) being all stressed up over not studying (despite the coming prelims) and yet all those around me think i can magically produce wonderful marks without working hard because i am smart. She apparently feels the same too. and so wish i had the time to meet up with her just the two of us, sit down and rant. a ranting session would make both of us feel so much better and convince ourselves that everyone is feeling the heat too.

 

Anyway… i remember watching a documentary in Rome (on BBC since the rest of the channels was in Italian which i couldn’t understand) which talked about intelligence. Yes, it does come from genes, BUT good genes only give you the maximum intelligence which you can achieve. What helps you or pushes you to reach that possible maximum is working hard and education. So don’t tell me that i don’t have to study to do well. Diligence is the way to doing well.

 

on a side note, i have been working hard on my coursework characters. and i am happy that it is porgessing well. now i just hope i can complete them on time! 🙂

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ndp

I forgot to say this in my earlier post: Happy 43rd Birthday Singapore! 🙂

and i have the oh-so-patriotic songs playing in my head again.

i want to start sewing a collection of ‘Bluow’ (pronounced ‘Blow’) soft-toys. shall start after a-levels.

in the midst of studying chemistry and biology… look what i found!

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Bejing Olympics 2008

I was a couch potato last night watching the Bejing Olympics 2008 opening ceremony. It was in one word- Spectacular! (with an exclamation mark.)

 

the opening performance of the drums was so good with the coordinated druming and part dance sequence. plus… when you think it could not get an better than that, their drumsticks get lighted up and the lights in the ‘Birdnest’ goes off. the result? a sea of red lights in perfect coordination to the drum beat. wow.

 

then the giant scroll painting was equally amazing with the dancers doing gymnastics like movements to create the inkstrokes with their arms of paint. and the children (in all their pretty ethnic costumes) added to the colouring of the work. and of course the ‘march in’ of the athletes from the 200+ countries contributed to the colouring too with their footprints (they had a giant multicoloured inkpad like those for rubber stamping at the start of the parchment and so as they walked after stepping on the inkpad, their soles left behind their colour footsteps.).

 

This is when it starts to get a little boring by the time they reached 80+ countries. And Singapore was among the last 20 countries! so yes, it took a lot of watching of people in various jerseys, some holding video cameras, some talking on the phone ("oh! can you see me? i am on television now." and the person the the other end would probably go all excitedly "yes!!!! i see you. wow! wait… you look a bit dumb speaking on the phone while on television!") most waving their hands and flags (if their flags are in their hands). And i got to see so many countries i did not even know existed! i think many around the globe must probably be thinking the same when they see team Singapore?

 

Anyway, then at the end of the march, after China of course, came the olympic torch! and so it gets passed from one athlete to another and finally to Li Ning, the Chinese gymnast, who gets all high when he gets hoisted up! and… he continues to run like the many torch bearers before him, and he runs around the whole circumference of the birdnest while in the air. The amazing part? He really looked like he was running despite being on air. And when he finally stops, he goes on the light a much bigger replica of the torch situated at the top of the stadium. And so the Olympics 2008 starts. 🙂

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National Day high~

as always, i feel excited about tomorrow’s national day.

We had a mass bubble-blowing, national day song singing (in english and chinese simultaneously. shan and zhiying was singing in mandrin while pris, ekping, abby and i were singing in english. i switched to madrin when i could remember the lyrics. haha. we were on a national day high! ) session in the parade square to entertain ourselves during the national day celebrations as being in aerius, we were far from the stage and the sound system was not working as well.

oh, the uniform group formal ceremony thing was quite good actually. especially the parade commander. i was surprised to realise that the parade commander was someone i knew. and abby and shan thought he was an outsider! i was also surprised that there was no national day structure by OAC this time round. quite disappointing actually.

I feel truly excited for tomorrow. more national day songs! national day parade. probably pizza. and new television programmes like calefare and first class!

 

anyway… i felt that i should post a blog post today as… it is the date 08/08/08. a date that will only come in hundred years.

and this year’s 080808 marks the opening ceremony of the Bejing olympics!

in the Singapore spirit, good luck Team Singapore!

 

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“I’m fine”

I met ms lily chua today when leaving the nj gate. She asked me how i was and the first thing that came to mind: “I’m fine.”

That is not special in any way I suppose but when seen in the context that just a minute ago I was talking to my friends about how prelims was round the corner (and I have no time to study) and coursework due date is on the 30^th of august and alevels would soon follow, it makes what I told ms chau seem very ironic.

It is such a typical answer that I start to wonder whether it is too convenient that we use it so often without meaning to. I am obviously still really trying to keep up (and panting!) and yet I said I was doing fine. Maybe it is just the easiest way for one to avoid the question and going into all that detail of work which will bore your audience. Then again, maybe it is because I just didn’t want to worry my teacher.

Anyway, she is preparing to go to India for cip trip as in previous years and meeting her just made me think back on the Chiangmai trip in sec 3 and of course when she asked about prelims, it made me think of sec 4. I remember I could really say and that “I’m fine” and mean it then.

 

On to sova today… we learnt about the richest living artist, Damien Hirst. I still cannot decide whether I like his works or not. While I find most of his works disturbing especially “A Thousand Years” which shows literally the life cycle of flies, it is somewhat interesting how he manages to explore such themes (death, religion, playing god, drugs, life) in his works. My group happened to get the article of a exhibition review of the white cube exhibition that we went to last June in London. We felt like we were walking through the gallery once more. And seeing the skull once more. But learning more about what the works were meant to represent. (:

 

And I was really amused when i saw the works he did of pills, and how by framing pills in medicine cabinets it was meant to question whether we are trying to play god by having a intervention (of medication which is so common today) which prolongs life. And the ‘scary’ part of the work was that the pills looked so real and they were colourful like ‘candies’ to show how inviting they were. Yes I know it is not in any way amusing, BUT. I happen to be making pills (out of CLAY, so don’t scream.) for my coursework. And they are colourful. AND… my tutor just told me yesterday that they looked so edible and like sweets. See the scary resemblance? But my work is not meant to be scary. It just shows that the same thing can be interpreted and represented in different ways by different people and it won’t be wrong.

 

in case anyone wants to see his works: http://www.tate.org.uk/pharmacy/

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