I think Straits Times provides me with an endless source of amusement. It is a fantastic study in contrasts.

On the front page of Friday's paper, there was this huge article about this China girl who perservered in speaking only English to her teacher, and ended up mastering English and getting A* in English for PSLE. Cue hearty applause and admiration.

On the next page, the headlines screamed: "IT IS OKAY TO USE ENGLISH TO TEACH CHINESE!!!!!"

Yes, because people who stubbornly stick to trying to learn a language the "pure" way never succeed in life, or more importantly, PSLE.

The papers today were even more amusing. "People who play Facebook do badly in exams!!!111" (Interestingly, they said that Facebook users get lower GPAS, as compared to non-Facebook users, who get GPAs between 3.5-4.0. I use Facebook and my GPA is within that range. LOL.)

So after a long article on the dangers Facebook poses to one's life, the next page ran an advert: "PLAY XXXX GAME ON FACEBOOK NOW!!!"

On another note, I find it rather strange that there are actually people who dare to write in to the papers about being a failure, and are actually even -gasp- self-righteous about it. I'm pointing fingers at Mdm Pauline Tan, a stellar example of the sheer dogged determination we have managed to inculcate in today's generation.

"Oh, my, do you mean that if I want to improve my son's Chinese, he will actually have to work hard?! This is ridiculous! I am so migrating."

Because, yes, it is completely logical to uproot your entire family (not to mention shut down the family business) and move to Australia because your son didn't have the balls to work hard in Chinese.

Mdm Pauline Tan and her son are exemplary role models of the saying "When the going get tough, the tough get going... to Australia."

It is really sad that we are actually tutting in sympathy for her, and sharing tales of Chinese teachers whose methods seem to be bordering on child abuse, from what I've heard. But then again, the only time I ever saw my Chinese teacher scold someone was because they didn't do their homework, and of course, that's not the student's fault for being lazy, is it?

In P4, Ms Khoo threw Science files across the room because we didn't do filing properly. It's kind of funny how we don't see people exposing the other things that other subject teachers have done to them.

Sigh. I was just reading the ST forums and this person called commentator_sc or something like that is super annoying. You know, Mr commentator, maybe people would actually take you more seriously IF YOU DIDN'T WRITE A WHOLE POST IN CAPS BECAUSE IT GETS KIND OF HARD TO READ AFTER THE FIRST 1 BILLION SENTENCES. YES, REALLY. Plus he is anti-government for the sake of being anti-government, and that is REALLY annoying. I sincerely I hope never come off like that to others.

OMG THE XKCD STORE IS NOW SHIPPING FOR CHRISTMAS!!!

I really really really want one of those Tech Support Cheat Sheet shirts, and I'll wear that to every single place I go. When people ask me for tech support, I will then look up at them very slowly, point down at my shirt, and give them a totally condescending sneer.

And don't even get me started on xkcd Volume 0.

OOOOOH and the "I'm not slacking off, my code's compiling" shirt. I have always been a huge fan of that comic. You can tell by looking at the back of my file, which I carry around all the time as a mantra to myself that I really ought to practice coding.

Heh and I like that shirt which is supposed to be witty in order to seduce someone. :D If I got it, I would wear it and stand next to people with stupid slogans on their shirts. Just like xkcd suggests we do.

Haha looking back on comic #23, there are more interesting witty shirt slogans. I think I shall make one that says "Do I LOOK like a people person?" on the front, and when you turn around, it says "Oh god I'm so alone."

I do so love reading back xkcd comics. "Why do you love me?" "My heart never gave me the chance." "Aww." "... I wish it had."

Rachel, I shall spell this out as clearly as I can, with words of few syllables so hopefully you'll finally be able to understand it.

I. DO. NOT. LIKE. WEASELS.

The last word had to be two syllables, because I can't find a one-syllable synonym for weasel, BUT YOU GET THE IDEA.

It was perhaps mildly amusing at best the first few times you did it, but after the 4239682947823768972395781375th time,

IT. GOT. OLD.

OKAY?!

Rachel has been spreading disinformation about me via Social Interview, and sad to say I can't retaliate in kind because she already HAS a boyfriend whom half the world knows about (for the other sad half, it's Kester, and please get out from under that rock because if you don't know, you are really Sad.)

So anyway, I shall seek to quell the rumours that she has been spreading by coming clean.

NO, I do not like "weasels and that sort". I have a great boyfriend who I've been keeping a secret from all of you because of his sheer awesomeness, because as soon as I tell you who he is girls all around him will go weak-kneed and attempt to seduce him. But in light of disturbing circumstances, I have been forced to tell -sniff-

His skin is like marble, very pale, rather cold to the touch, and it sparkles in the sunlight. His facial features are perfect and angular-- high cheekbones, strong jawline, straight nose, full lips. His hair is a beautiful bronze shade in the sunlight (totally sets off his sparkly skin) and for some reason, always messy.

Also, he is extremely fit. He has near superhuman strength, speed, endurance and agility.

And that's not all. He is extremely musical and can play the piano like a virtuoso. And he likes all sorts of music, except country (o.O)

SO RACHEL. This is the end of my long and impassioned response to you, as I told you I would put up. I am clearly not crushing on Wesley, because I already have a near perfect sparkly boyfriend. (: SO STOP TRYING TO LUMP ME TOGETHER WITH HIM ALREADY!!

Now I kind of get why adults are always harping on about a generation gap, and just can't seem to figure out how to work things that we take for granted, like Facebook or blogger.

Because I was just looking through the whole stack of HC Mediatech resources that Joel sent me, and was mentally going, "WTF. WTF. WTF." I didn't UNDERSTAND half the questions, not to mention know the answers.

There was this one about feedback which embarrassed me a whole lot, because I've always thought that we were pretty good at getting rid of feedback after getting Mr Lee as a teacher IC (hahaha I still remember he taught us how to CREATE feedback.) but I read the question and it was like, "There is feedback everytime the speaker pronounces an 's' sound. What should you do? a) Boost 500Hz b) Cut 1kHz c) slit your throat d) smash the mixer"

Okay uh not really, but the getting-rid-of-feedback method which we have in RGS, which I always thought was pretty awesome, feels like banging two rocks together to try to create a spark in comparison to this. I mean, seriously, we twiddle all the knobs and hope for the best. Alternatively mute the person and call the technician over ><

And okay maybe it's just my generation (meaning Crystal and I, the original AV Batch 10) but our methods are very... untechnical, as compared to HC. Sure, Mr Lee's been trying to get us to call the mics B6es instead of countrymans, or -gasp- the small flesh-coloured ones! and the Sennheisers ME4s instead of "the black furry one" or the more classic "PCK mole one". He nearly had a coronary the last time we called it that :/

While the juniors seem to have no problem adapting to the world of Competency And Professionalism And More Importantly, Calling Stuff By The Right Name, Crystal and I are still stuck in the Stone Age of "you know, that thing you push up and down that makes the volume increase or decrease".

If you're reading this Joel, you guys totally have my respect.

--

4th place!! (:

There are times when I hate being the resident tech support of my family, because whatever technological knowledge I have is usually based on common sense. Like, I know the red cable goes into the red hole, because IT JUST DOES.

And of course, following xckd's tech support flowchart gives the people the impression that I actually know what I'm doing, when I'm about as clueless as them.

But then again, there are times I'm really glad I'm the resident tech support, because it means that the rest of my family is correspondingly tech-illiterate (my dad was amazed that my cousins saw my photos on Facebook. He thought it meant I was becoming a celebrity)

Because people do tend to snigger a little when they realise that AV people do bust their speakers too. And then they snigger even more when they realise that the busting of the speakers wasn't a cool move to prove that I COULD if I wanted to, but it was a complete accident and I didn't even realise until 12 hours later.

I was listening to The Emo Song (not even a particularly shouty song, so I really don't get how it happened) when there was this little click and there was suddenly no more sound. I didn't really give it much thought since I was getting sick of the song anyway, so I just turned off my speakers.

Now there's no sound at all, and I can't listen to Hannah Montana. ._.

I've heard of people feeling nostalgic and going, "ahhhh, the good old days. How innocent and cute we were back then awww." whenever they read their diaries. But personally I've never experienced that. I was reading my old diaries (those that I found, anyway) and all I could feel was thoroughly embarrassed. Like, "oh gosh, I was such a twat." I would have hated myself if I'd known me.

In P5, I was going through a Simple Plan phase and my diary entries all went something along the lines of: "Dear Diary. Mood: Apathetic. My life is spiralling downwards. My parents wouldn't let me go to the..." Well, no, not really, but Simple Plan lyrics featured prominently. And scarily, I actually MEANT them.

In P6, I was going through a I-want-a-boyfriend phase. My entries detailed all encounters with the crush of the moment. "27.8.06. XXX walked past me on the stairs!! Do you think he likes me?!?!?!" Never mind that my diary obviously wasn't any help as a love consultant. And I was like changing crushes practically every 3 days or something. Gosh I couldn't help sneering at how dumb my old self was. Not that I don't sneer at practically everything nowadays, but I sneered extra hard.

In Sec 1, I was an annoying chirpy little brat who filled my entries with distended smiley faces which ended up looking kind of like two dots on top of a rather fail-looking straight line (it was supposed to be a curved line, but it was so long it looked like a drunk person drawing a straight line) and I diaried only during lessons, which made my diary entries extremely fail.

"Dear Diary :))))
Today I am happy because

ENGLISH NARRATIVE WRITING:
Third person(name, she, he, etc), first person (I), second person (you)
Mostly third and first person are used for narratives.
Second person used to directly address reader (eg in recipes)

I have fun lessons today :)))))))) Like Japanese. :)))))) I like Japanese because

Questions:
Why do stories exist in the first place?
What are stories? What functions do they have?
What constitutes a story?

it is very fun :)))))) I know some words in Japanese now :))))))))"

Gosh I feel like slapping the Sec 1 me.

Not that these are real entries (I would hardly be likely to tell you what I ACTUALLY wrote, would I?) but Bryanlee is stressing me and pestering me to hurry up with this blogpost, so I shall end abruptly here. They're a good enough approximation, anyway. (:

I was just mulling over Ningxin's ramblings on Mr Lee's actual height (I quote: "he is tall, but he looks short, but his presence feels tall!") and it bothered me enough that I actually went to Huichen's FAM photo to measure.

Based on my finger measurements-- thumb at Mr Lee's feet, index finger at his head, and then transplanting that onto the stage where my feet are, HE IS TALLER THAN ME. BY LIKE HALF A HEAD.

I AM VERY DISTURBED. I NEVER REALISED HE WAS SO TALL. I always thought he was Crystal's height, which made me taller than him, if I stand up straight.

BUT HE IS TALLER THAN ME. BY LIKE HALF A HEAD.

But then again, if my fingers are to be trusted, Mr Nuh is a good half body taller than me ._. That would make him... 2.4m tall.

Now that can't be right. Or he'd be banging his head into everything. And he'd be playing basketball, not working as a technician and facing crazy people. So maybe I am taller than Mr Lee after all. :D

I can't believe I wasted my 1,000th post on Cynical Orange Mushrooms. I told myself it was going to be a witty, if a little sarcastic post reflective of the personality of my blog. I spent weeks planning it.

Instead I wrote about a community of adolescent mushrooms. My blog is so going down the toilet.

Well for my 1,001st post, I shall give you a quote!

Mr Lee: "I know I'm male. Biologically I am, mentally I'm not sure."

Ripped off the 311 quotes record; thanks Lee Voon! :D

But since practically everyone who reads my blog (whether they be from my class, my CCA, or my RS group) knows Mr Lee, I thought they'd like this.

Hmm although half the time I have this sneaky suspicion that Mr Lee drops quotes like this on purpose. Like he knows fully well what he's going to say, and the whiplash that will inevitably come with it, and has a defined end in mind. How crafty O:

But then again, maybe I'm getting paranoid. We're all turning into Mr Lees. As is Mr Nuh, who has begun making evil jokes about abandoning AV and leaving us to our own devices, knowing very well that we will crumble into savagery, tearing apart sensitive equipment to eat the wires or something like that.

I received a quest from Bruce in Henesys, and mentally went, "You are not effing serious."

It told me to hunt down 50 "Cynical Orange Mushrooms", and bring back anything suspicious that might fall, because he thought that the Cynical Orange Mushrooms might be influencing the other Orange Mushrooms.

What, and do they bleed black, and cry during classes as well?

It amused me to think of an Orange Mushroom (for those who don't play Maple, they are chubby little mushrooms with orange caps that hop around with a :3 expression) being bitter and sarcastic. And what are they going to do? Lead their happy counterparts into rebellion against Maple?

"THIS LIFE IS A LIE! YOU'RE BREEDING US JUST SO WE CAN GET KILLED BY YOUR MINDLESS CRONIES! WE'RE OUT OF HERE!"

I just HAD to see this little bitter and sarcastic Orange Mushroom. So my little Maple char and I went over to the Field East of Henesys where we met a whole lot of Cynical Orange Mushrooms, which look exactly just like normal Happy Orange Mushrooms except with a sneer and scars where they probably slit themselves.

But that was basically as cynical as they got.

I was half-hoping that I'd hit one, and it'd go something like, "Ow! Hey, stop! No, wait, what's the point? This world is all a lie, and even if I die now I'll just respawn like 5 seconds later only to get killed AGAIN. DAMMIT THERE IS NO WAY OUT OF MY MISERY. IS THIS WHAT THEY CALL LIVING?!" before taking out a razor and slitting its face (it doesn't have wrists) "I HURT MYSELF TO FEEEEEEL AAAALIIIIVEEEEEEEEEEEEE-urgh."

That, technically, would be considered a 1hko right? :)

Cherylchan is a genius la I tell you. Buy ticket for FAM then pon because she didn't have a dress. When I related this little piece of info to the juniors, they gave me various emoticon faces of disgust, like o_O, -__- and a splendid D: (it came with disdainful eyebrows too, but my keyboard doesn't have a symbol for that) from Mr Nuh.

So while we were all waiting outside the ballroom for the important-people-conference thing to end, Ningxin called Cheryl on Crystal's phone to niao her about it. Only near the end of the conversation did she bother to mention to Cheryl that she wasn't Crystal, much to the surprise of the former.

Ningxin: "I'm not Crystal, you know."
Cheryl: (I don't know what she said, but I guess it was something expressing absolute surprise.)
Ningxin: "Who do you think I am?"
Cheryl: (I don't know what she said, but I guess it was something expressing absolute ignorance.)
Ningxin: "I think I'm Victoria."
Victoria: "Ningxin, I don't think so."

Playing the tracks for FAM didn't go very well; it turned out that the speaker system at Hilton was a PA SYSTEM. Yeah, the kind in your classroom that people make inane announcements through and has a lot of static. So we brought over our own very heavy speakers, and set them up to the sides of the stage. Therefore the people at the back couldn't hear stuff properly, but there was nothing we could do because the teachers' tables were right in front and Ms Lim was glaring at us and trying to get us to turn down the volume. (We were playing some shouty song I think)

And then because of the bigwigs' conference that ran late, we didn't get to have a rehearsal with the music and all. So we were totally unaware of what music it was or what it sounded like. And some performers had such soft music that the feedback we were getting from the speakers (we got feedback throughout the whole thing; just a matter of how much) was louder than the song. Then obviously we couldn't push the volume up any higher right because HELLO if the feedback is already louder than the song, what can we do? Sigh sadly the teachers didn't get that, no matter how many times we told them that it was the LOUDEST ALREADY LA CANNOT GO ANY HIGHER. So I warned Mr Lee and Mr Nuh to expect complaints.

Hanis has horrible luck with mics okay! There were two mics that didn't work during Arts Fest, and we'd sealed them away in their little black packs, planning to bury them at a later date, when Mr Lee took them out and tested them in school. And OMFGWTFBBQ they worked perfectly okay. So we cheered, celebrated, and brought them to FAM where we used them to mic up Hanis.

They promptly died.

Even Mr Lee is of the opinion that she's jinxed when it comes to mics. He didn't even bother testing the mics after FAM and said, "If I bring them back to school and test, confirm they will work la."

After the pageant ended we were in charge of deejaying. So we alternately played songs that were requested, FAM-ish songs (SWEET! SUGAR! CANDYMAAAAAAN!) and ridiculous songs. We played I Am Cow, but no one heard it because they were too busy shouting. ): Then we played Hannah Montana, which automatically revealed how many RGS girls still watch Disney Channel. (The answer? A LOT.) Everyone was singing along and we were screaming along too :D

Then Mr Angullia came over and was a meanie and said that Hannah Montana was the last song of the night. We pleaded our case and threw in cliched soppy things about it being the Sec 4s' last night as an RGS girl, so pleasepleasepleaseplease ONE MORE SONGGGG D: In the end, he conceded and we had to choose our last song wisely.

We chose Womanizer :D :D :D

Our AV batch has decided that Womanizer will be our batch song, because we had awesome loads of fun jumping and dancing and yelling "WOMANIZER WOMANIZER OH WOMANIZER", and "LA LA LA LA LA" when we didn't know the lyrics, into a mic. (: I think I'm finally beginning to understand why people go clubbing; it's pretty fun.

But the teachers and the juniors evidently hadn't had enough orange juice or coke, because they just stood at the sides giving us this prudish disapproving look slightly reminiscent of Mr Jalleh during the beatboxers. On a sidenote though, the orange juice was sucky. I stuck to coke after trying a sip of orange juice, because it is just diabetes waiting to happen.

On a post FAM highness, we smsed Cheryl to tell her that we missed her loads. The juniors missed her because "we have no one left to entertain us now la! So boring!" and even Mr Lee conceded that he missed her lightsticks. ): Absolutely an "awwww" moment.

And then the ugly Singaporean in all of us reared and we went to kope leftover souvenirs. Everyone got a bear (Yan Han got 2, but that wasn't enough and she kept playing with Mr Nuh's, much to his annoyance. "Yan Han! Stop molesting my bear!") and a packet of oyster mushroom chips. Except for Mr Nuh, who got a packet of packets of oyster mushroom chips. I estimate about 20 of them. He craftily left them on the bus when we went back to school though, but Mr Lee swiftly called the bus company to let them know that Mr Nuh had left his chips on the bus. >)

Ah yes male teachers are like superawesome. I tried dragging this speaker from across the stage, and I had to throw my body weight on it and nearly burst a vein or something, but only managed to move it like 5cm. Then Mr Nuh walked over and swept it up easily. o.o

Loading stuff onto the bus was infinitely easier than getting it off in the first place, because there were a whole lot of male teachers on a post-FAM high who were more than eager to show off their strength. I quote: "The MANpower (ahaha) is here!" Mr Ben, Mr Yeo, Mr Tee, Mr Ng and some others whose names I don't know liberated the big black boxes from us and wheeled them off effortlessly to the bus.

Oh yeah this is unrelated, but while we were waiting for the bus to bring us to Hilton in the afternoon, there were some people setting up for CmPS finals (for some weird reason, there were only like 4 schools for both the secondary and primary category) and we saw Rosyth juniors :D Not that we'd have known them personally, but it's always easy to make new friends with people whom you share a common background with.

We bitched a bit about the new class naming system and the principal (you can tell a veteran Rosythian from pre-MGS-class-names day from the way they have to count on their fingers to decode the equivalent of their current class names in numbers. On the bright side, I have a class named after me. Kind of :D) and became instant friends. Then we talked about our mutual acquaintances, which was mainly just Mr Yang's favourite student, "Shlendon" (I couldn't remember what his name was at first, but luckily I remembered Crystal and I talking about how he was a typical Glendon no. 2, and their names, at least pronounced by Mr Yang, sounded alike) who is another typical genius with a diploma in piano and a degree in comscience. Nono I'm kidding about the last bit, but he skipped grades and is still top in GEP. O:

Mrs Lim seems a lot happier than she was when she taught us. Maybe it was because she was pregnant. Or maybe it was just us >< Sigh I can't wait to go back for this year's graduation ): WAIT ISN'T GRADUATION LIKE TODAY? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHUCKS I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED GRADUATION D: D:

Today's the day I finally realised that the internet has lost its charm.

Coming online is like a routine. I sign into MSN, and maybe exchange "hi"s with a couple of people, following which the conversation just sort of dies. So I go check my email. After rejecting a couple of wonderful business proposals which all involve transferring $500, 000 into an account in exchange for part of ZWD$60,000,000,000,000, I check my blog.

Sometimes I update. Sometimes I reply tags. Mostly I just look at the number of tags and feel sad that no one reads my blog. ): I check a couple of people's blogs, to see if they update. Usually they don't. So I read their tags. Crystal's has a very interesting tagboard saga going on. I follow that and make snipes at her in school.

If it's a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, I check xkcd.

Then I skip straight to Facebook, where I read the intimate details of everyone's lives. "My, my, according to this quiz, XXX is actually a closet supermugger! How shocking!" or "NO. WAY. Someone's feeling antiestablishment today!"

After heaping up on steaming fresh gossip that doesn't really matter anyway,I check inet, like the good student that I am, to make sure that I don't miss out on exciting things like, uh, the "Commonwealth Conversation Competition."

AND THEN THAT'S IT. There is nothing else I can do online, except play Neopets (which is only fun if done in the Magic Lab, and besides, is kind of juvenile) or pop virtual bubble wrap.

The number of genii I have to consort with on a regular basis never fail to leave me feeling thoroughly untalented. I ought to be kicked out of GEP. ):

EVERYONE HAS DIPLOMAS IN PIANO AND I'M ONLY GRADE 8 ):

EVERYONE HAS DEGREES IN COMSCIENCE (or are going to!) AND I CAN'T CODE UHH... damn, I can't even remember what it's called. OH RIGHT DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING. Something feels grammatically wrong with that sentence.

(Oh speaking of which, this isn't part of the rant but there are two slides in Mrs Hoo's FAM slideshow that could be better improved. One of them needs a comma to become truthful, the other needs a replacement of "I" with my name. xD)

Ehh I lost my train of rantthought.

Sigh I really need to find something that I'm good at D: Cough there are rumours that there are people in this school who are not female who are probably better at ballet than I am. Not to say that I'm good or anything la but it's disturbing ._.

Mmm, strawberry pudding is nice.

And if today's xkcd comic was on Facebook, I would "like" it. (:

Things I loved about Arts Fest and RGAVPA

1. Bitching to Mr Nuh about Our Best Friend
I think everyone doing Arts Fest was extremely surprised to find out that Mr Nuh is actually so receptive to bitching. He even had this "urghhh you are NOT SERIOUS" expression when we were bitching. And when I was starting my rant, Xinyuan was like "No! Mr Nuh, you have to cut her off before she gets serious!" But interestingly enough Mr Nuh said with this smirk, "It's okay. I'm asking. :D"

2. Cheryl's lightstick fetish
Heh. But lightsticks are cool, really :D And I like writing on them.
-name- -heart- RGAVPA
Arts Fest
12/13 November 2009
TOO AWESOME.

3. Professionalism, kind of
We were wondering if Boon Hwee came back, and if so, why she didn't come to look for us. And then someone threw up the idea that Boon Hwee MIGHT have come back, but thought that they hired some professional entertainment company (ahem FAM) to move the mics because we were rarely spotted, and micing in Boon Hwee's day (though through no fault of hers, we were just unprofessional then) consisted of: "HUH? NEED MIC?!" and then running up on stage, dropping the mic, and then fumbling with the micstand while everyone watched. OH and best of all, troubleshooting was: "MR NUH!!!!! HELP!!!"

On another note, Mr Lee was talking about how everyone had nothing but praises for our team, especially Cheryl, who was described as a "calm" (everyone looked suspiciously at Cheryl and relieved memories of being hit), "absolutely unfazed" (she panics, just not in front of the teachers. Like the time we spilled powder all over the hall? She was fretting about it all the way to Shaw) with a "photographic memory and never forgets anything after being told once!"

At that everyone was like "HUH NO WAY ARE YOU SURE THAT'S CHERYL?!"

4. Happy toilet!
Hanging around Cheryl gurantees healthy kidneys, because she goes to the toilet like every 20 minutes. When Ningxin was looking for Cheryl the first place she went to was the toilet. She ran in and shouted "CHERYL CHAN ARE YOU IN HERE!" before running out again. Cheryl WAS in there; just that she didn't reply.

And hanging onto one of the walkie talkies, Xinyuan and I were privy to some very dirty talk.
Ningxin: "Cheryl, where are you?"
Cheryl: -disturbing floooosh sounds in the background- "The toilet!"
Ningxin: -disturbing floooosh sounds in the backgroun- "ME TOO!!!"
Vic/Xinyuan: "SHUDDUP EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU!"

5. Walking to Subway
"Wait, so Xinyuan wants a veggie delite on Parmesan Oregano with everything except pickles olives green peppers and Mr Lee wants a Subway Melt on Wheat with everything and honey mustard and... no, wait, that's not right ARGHHH"

6. AWESOME DRESSING ROOM
Complete with pretty lights around the mirror. Not that we actually used it to dress in; the most we did was sleep in it with jackets on top of our faces. But the lights were pretty and we had loads of fun taking pictures in it in complete darkness and the mirror lights on and stuff like that. Heh.

7. SLR :D
SLRs take awesome sexy photos I tell you. They are SUPER CLEAR :D :D :D I had like 164 photos by the time Arts Fest was over.

7a. The -insert name here- series
Everyone loves my SLR so much, that once they get their paws on it they can't take them off and keep snapping random photos. In fact Cheryl contributed to a large part of the 164 photos. She snapped like 100 pictures of Mr Lee and Mr Nuh sitting in the pantry and 500 pictures of the choir dressing room and 423859286924 pictures of walkie talkies and 43296748678247582374823 pictures of her stupid security pass. And whined at me not to delete any of them. -_-

8. The choir dressing room
This wasn't exactly very lovable, but it was scaryyyy. The backstage crew (not us, we're AVPA -haughty bimbo look-) were supposed to do a mock of getting all the Rhapsodies performers out, so they made AVPA occupy a room each to simulate the performing arts groups. Ningxin was actually supposed to be in the choir room but she got scared so Cheryl and I swapped with her, and then WE got scared. Because there was this tap running even though neither of us had turned it on (I hear Xinyuan hiss "sacrilege!") and so we screamed and ran outside, only to have Mrs Mohammed scream at us to get back inside. But we got a Sec 1 usher to come over and turn off the tap for us because neither of us would go near it.

9. Legs
Ningxin and I took a very cool photo in the dark without flash, with a random torchlight illuminating our faces from beneath (that was before Mr Lee put the torchlight in his mouth. ._.) The effect was really cool, there were like light rays coming out of our faces (see Facebook, it's on there :D) And then Ningxin and Cheryl got scared because they somehow managed to convince themselves that the lightrays looked like legs. -__- Although what legs would be doing coming out of our faces, I don't know.

10. Little lost boyfriends
After Arts Fest was over we went out into the UCC foyer to find some sad looking guys walking around aimlessly, waiting for their girlfriends to be done. They looked so lost-sheepish that we couldn't help laughing at them.

10a. KESTERANDRACHEL!
We were getting together for an AV group photo, when I spotted this very familiar looking guy walking past the group of us. I was so lost for words that all I could do was point at him and gape like a fish. Xinyuan saw what I was looking at, and being in the know, she started laughing. But Kester wasn't a little lost boyfriend, he'd found Rachel and given her a bouquet of flowers already ^^ AWWWWWWW. Young love :D That bouquet was referenced by He Who Knows All in the dressing room the next day too :D

On a random note, Cheryl and some of the Sec1s are SO INNOCENT. Xinyuan and I were in hysterics over Rachel and her extra bouquet. Then being innocent, they asked us what we were laughing at. So we pointed at Kester and were like, "Who do you think that guy is to Rachel?" All of them said, "Her brother?" OMG damn funny.

11. Shoot, eat dinner with, marry
We HAD to change the game because of the many abovementioned innocent people who didn't know what "shag" was. And that isn't a word that you really want to explain. Although I think I heard Xinyuan saying something like "doing it vigorously with someone" to a Sec 1.

Sec 1s are so underexposed. They know no male teachers at all. Either that or all the male teachers teach upper sec. Sigh sadly for them, a good number of "shoot"s were CCA teachers. I can never understand the gripes people have against CCA teachers.

12. The band
The band was the only performing arts CCA that we weren't sick of by the end of all the rehearsals and whatnot. Plus it had few mic placements. 1, if I'm not wrong. But I really pity the people in band; I can't imagine how hard it is to play and march in a square at the same time.

13. Qianbian-ness
Cheryl and Ningxin were on the lookout for a very qianbian Strings person (not sure who though) who Ningxin'd apparently caught scratching her butt. But by the third consecutive day of rehearsal everyone was looking damn qianbian.
I quote: "Walau I see her face I want to punch her already la!"

14. Ruth! :D
RUTH IS AN AWESOME SOUND ENGINEER :D And her hair is super cool too. When we saw her picture in the RGS Nite booklet, we were all like, "EEYER". Because she looks nothing like she does in the picture. In the picture, she looks super shunu. But in real life she has Xinyuan-length hair, except it looks cool (haha) AND PINK HIGHLIGHTS. Omg how can anyone not think pink hair looks cool.

Oh I got a picture of her and Mr Nuh. They look very matching, especially as both of them have highly colourful hairdos :D

15. The Scenary Store
That's what it said on the backdoor. YES serious scenary.

16. Mr Nuh's Nintendo DS!
It is RED (and loud!) The four of them (Mr Lee Mr Yeo Mr Mizar Mr Nuh) were sitting outside our dressing room in a row and Mr Yeo was playing with Mr Nuh's Nintendo. At first some Sec 1 told us it was a "Gameboy" and we couldn't believe that people still played Gameboys (actually, we weren't sure they even existed still) so we all trooped out for a look. Mr Lee was playing with his Mac, Mr Nuh was looking emo, Mr Mizar was eating, and Mr Yeo was playing with Mr Nuh's Nintendo.

Someone went to spy what game was being played, and they came back to tell us that it was "a Japanese game. With girls in bikinis." Ahem.

17. TAP TAP :D
If we learnt anything from Arts Fest, it's that TAP TAP IS FUN, MAN. We kept borrowing Ningxin's iPhone to play taptap. But because there were so many of us taptap enthusiasts and only 1 iPhone, we played multiplayer mode. Like, really multiplayer. They wanted to play extreme and a huge amount of us were noobs, so we ended up playing 3 on 3 or something like that. Heh.

Mr Lee walked in to see 6 of us huddled around one iPhone, shouting stuff like "MOVE! I CAN'T SEE THE SCREEN!" and said in this absolutely mean tone, "Oh, gosh. Tap tap? -snort-" After awhile we figured out the hidden meaning behind his words: he knows what taptap is, which means that HE PROBABLY HAS IT ON HIS PHONE!!!!! But he refused to let us play with his iPhone. Sigh.

It is my opinion that all iPhone users should do community service by letting other people play taptap on their iPhones. :D

Pearls references Whitman! :D


It may be kind of sad, but I kind of agree with Rat in the last panel >< Especially after seeing Song of Myself and thinking that we had to read ALL of it.

Emerson should've been twittified too.

{EDIT} I realised that my blogskin cuts out the last panel. So if you see three panels up there, you're missing one. Click on it to see it in it's full glory. You know you don't want to miss Goat having an aneurysm.

I HATED MY SISTER'S KEEPER.

IT WAS WRONG, ALL WRONG, FROM THE STUPID ENDING TO THE CHEESY VOICEOVERS TO LOUSY CASTING OF THOMAS DEKKER AS A BALD GUY.

Especially the last one. Excuse me you can't just cast the leader of the Resistance as a BALD GUY. WITHOUT EYEBROWS. Sorry no offense to cancer patients. But he looked really scary D:

I like Thomas Dekker better in SarahConnorChronicles. Which I shall watch tonight :D

And one more thing: WHO DOES IT IN HOSPITAL BEDS PLEASE?

Joshyeo is talking about eating lamb cock. This is really disturbing. Apparently that's yang bao in Chinese, as in lamb's treasure.

I just realised that I don't know what the REAL Chinese word for ahem, "treasure", is. It's not the kind of word you get mentioned very often in kewens. No wonder laoshi always encourages us to read ke wai shu.

I realised that I haven't blogged about Farewell Assembly.

But then again there's nothing really much to blog about, except that I'm kind of worried that I might secretly be an emotionless robot because I didn't cry during Farewell Assembly, or feel remotely like crying.

I guess it all seems kind of unreal. And besides, no one's going to keep Cheryl away from AV functions. She expressly insisted that I keep her in the YG (not like I can kick her out anyway; she refused to relinquish ownership of the group to me) so that she can crash random functions.

And then Dr Sakhar gave us Bad News, and people were sobbing and everything and all I could think was "Man, that sucks" but without any waterworks or whatever.

And apparently back in class everyone was having this emo class moment and I felt totally out of it. I mean, I'm sorry to all those who cried, but gosh how many times do you have to cry a day? Not to belittle their feelings or whatever; I'm sure there were very emotional speeches made that fully warranted tears.

But it was just Odd. I think next year when I graduate I probably won't cry either, because c'mon it's like most of us are moving up to RJC anyway, and HEY IT'S RJC! As Heidi said, it's "awesome over [there]", which I feel totally sour about because she's there, Keyun's going there, and I'm still stuck here. Bah.

Oh yes Keyun we must train juniors!!

Probably the highlight of the day was the Sec 4 Head of Year going: "Girls, it's time to think about WHO you will do in future."

I think she meant to say "what", but little technicalities like that don't matter in the face of an extremely scandalous statement.

Xinyuan and I were cackling about it, and Mr Lee went in this very matter-of-fact tone: "Now, girls, that's a very reasonable question."

Ugh I can't imagine doing anyONE in the near future. Then again I can imagine people who might, and might even want to do each other in front of their friends while inviting them to watch and partake in the loveliness of the scene.

I shall now proceed to scratch at my eyeballs in an attempt to erase the memory of RachelandKester kissing passionately in front of me.

I don't watch porn; I get porn shown to me.

Crystal and I got dragged into some evil scheme of RachelandKester's. I'd suspected something was up when they invited us to go out with them, because seriously, who brings friends out on dates? It's not like they needed chaperones or hadn't been out on solo dates before.

But against our better judgment, we agreed to go out with them and be lampposty. Partly cos we'd been bribed with playing mahjong (ahem not gambling; we only played with chips and besides everyone excepting Kester is too nooby to gamble) but mainly out of the pure goodness of our heart.

We went to J8 and Crystal and I were forced to walk in front while RachelandKester gambolled along behind, doing who-knows-what. It was one of those horror movie moments where you really want to look but at the same time you really don't want to know what they're doing. The (not exactly soft) giggling that was coming from behind us all the time kept exacerbating the problem and so Crystal and I, feeling extremely awkward, struck up a loud and stupid conversation about how beautiful the sky was, all the while looking up and admiring the ceiling of J8. We looked really stupid.

Shared lunch with Rachel; she and Kester started pushing money at each other because Kester wanted to pay for Rach or something and I quickly excused myself to buy drinks (KESTER YOU STILL OWE ME $1.50) because I was sure I would hurl soon. Eeek but no offence to you guys.

And then this guy at the next table waved to Kester, who waved back, and we were like "Walau Kester your RI teacher issit?" because C'MON no matter how open you guys are it's just disturbing to have your teacher catch you in the middle of a date isn't it. Especially if that teacher is Mr Lee, who happens to be very adept at slipping in snide remarks all over the place. But then again he's omniscient, so I shall never go into a relationship for as long as he's my teacher. Brrr.

Turned out that the random guy was Kester's pastor, and since Rachel and Kester were being so obviously coupleish I was half scared that Kester's pastor would start flicking holy water all over them and going "REPENT, REPENT!" This sentiment was shared by Crystal, as she told me later on the bus ride where RachelandKester escaped upstairs to do things too horrible to imagine.

So at Kester's house, we played a few rounds of mahjong, Crystal clamoured for Ribena, and his dog attacked a red pillow. Then we adjourned to his grandma's bedroom (o.O, I don't know why either) to watch a movie. He was all for watching gory crap like Saw 5 but it was overruled by everyone else. We watched Disaster Movie, which was basically retarded jokes with random sexual references inserted. It was really bad in a funny kind of way, which is exactly the kind of stuff that we liked to watch.

I have never appreciated how hard it is to keep your eyes on the screen when you KNOW there's a couple hugging next to you. I kept wanting to peek over but at the same time, self-preservation and mild horror kept me watching Disaster Movie, where Alvin and the Chipmunks ripped out Juno's spine. ._.

Until Crystal went home, and RachelandKester went: "HEY VIC, WATCH!" and started kissing right in front of me. And not innocent little pecks on the cheek or whatever either, huge I-grab-your-face-you-grab-mine liplocked tongue-wrestling kisses.

Oh god, it was traumatic. I never want to kiss in my whole life.

And the worst part is they kept doing it, all throughout the movie. And they couldn't keep their kisses to themselves either, like other couples who engage in PDA do. They kept slapping me to "WATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I have such freaky friends.

Anyway, RachelandKester have requested me to post about this (o.O) so yeah, here you go. -_-

Staying home from school is fun. I got to sleep in until 11am :D Forced down a bit of breakfast, forced down a bit of lunch, and finished up Cheryl's farewell present. Still have to write her a letter though; although I don't know what to write.

Had a pretty freaky dream last night.

Yeah anyway I was feeling kind of down this morning so I decided to go search for twitty blogs to cheer myself up. I mean, it's like reading fml, failblog, and the Forum page all rolled into one. They complain about their shitty lives with funky punctuation, like:

"baby i love you, my heart aches;!xoxo>>>"

And sometimes they try to express their opinion on a certain topic and fail HARD. (Oh did I mention? That day I saw an article in the Forum which was a CLASSIC baozhangbaodao. I'm serious; it went all "I was deeply worried blah blah blah causes blah blah effects blah blah what can be done")

I was especially amused to read this statement: "Even NASA doesn't support this stupid claim." I find it rather interesting to see the amount of confidence that people have in NASA. "Even" NASA (ahem implied lowest-of-the-low).

Sigh life now is so boring I kind of wish we had lessons back. Can't wait for the Christmas season to kick in proper.

OMG Pauli Sexclusion O:

I wiki-ed it just to find out exactly what it was and I got all this nonsense about quantum physics.

Which just proves that xkcd is an extremely effective teacher, because I think I kind of got what it was talking about; although I didn't catch anything from wiki at all.

Hmm I'm not making much sense.

It gets a little annoying that everyone is fairly threatening to cart me off to the hospital at the smallest little peep I make (or in the case of Mr Lee and my mum, my mere existence is enough to set off a volley of threats) Every day when I wake up, my mum puts forth her case that I ought to go on antibiotics and that she'll put me in hospital if I don't recover soon.

While I can't exactly pinpoint what I have against going to hospital, I just don't feel like it. I mean, I liked KK. It was pretty and had kiddy pictures of sick (not sick-sick, sick-in-a-child-approved-kind-of-way) dinosaurs which made me feel like a kid again. And the food was good; except that they kept trying to feed me porridge.

But I just don't want to go to hospital.

Yesterday at Arts Fest Mr Lee kept threatening to haul me across to NUH, where he apparently knows everyone -_-

But on the bright side, my Maple is downloading fast :D 290kbps :D

Mmm. Rice with apple and cranberry. How very festive. Plus it has that characteristic milky taste of all other Nestle rice cereals as well. And best of all, if babies can eat it, SO CAN I.

It doesn't take teeth to eat rice cereal, nor does it take much tongue movement, so score one convenience point for the rice cereal. Plus it tastes good. Never mind that I'm getting through a box in, like, three days (I'm eating even less than the box tells me babies should)

Sigh my parents are completely nooby when it comes to cao yao. I got this weird pack of herbs from a doctor as recommended by my grandma, who vociferously insists on telling every single doctor she goes to about me and my "condition". When I started telling the doctor about my ulcers, his eyes suddenly gleamed and he was all, "Wait! I know you! You're the grandchild of that woman right!!"

Yes anyway so now I have to drink cao yao and it's shitty bitter D: But my parents, for some weird reason, are taking it worse than I am. I finished one cup yesterday, blearghed for abit, knocked down two cups of apple juice and continued reading my book. My dad, on the other hand, tasted the dregs, and went around spitting and gagging and telling my mum about how bad it sucked and how bitter it was.

And they're not even the ones drinking the medicine!!

Hmm Facebook has expressed concern that I have not spoken to my mum recently on Facebook. Don't know why but I seem to find this particularly amusing.