I went to Kinokuniya for my monthly book-shopping day, only to find them closed for their annual stock-taking. Determined not to be foiled, I walked over to Borders (yay, the mental map cultivated from 4 years of RGS life has not failed me) to look through their Philosophy section. It was sadly rather disappointing, with things like fengshui shoved in as well.

And then I saw this:

D:

Appalled, I posted this picture on FB, and it garnered a fair number of responses, mainly of the "OMFGWTFBBQSAUCE NUUUU THERE IS NO GOD" variety. (I rather liked my response: "Perhaps this book is a crash course in atheism" but it doesn't seem like anyone got it, bleh) But by far the most amusing would be this:

--

That being said, Crystal and I have an evil plot. Snee hee hee. >:) Stay tuned, duckies.

Yu Hui and I went to the photocopy shop to help the HP KI people photocopy the stack of notes that Mr Liu gave our class. We were just about to leave when the auntie called us and asked us how we wanted them stapled. (we were using Celline's copy, which were all unstapled and thus loose sheets) She was apparently going to staple them all together- all 53 sheets of paper ._.

So obviously we were like, "Eh, no no staple each reading separately," because there were about 10 readings. Then the auntie returned the readings, gave us a stapler, and indicated to us that we should get cracking. Which was obviously not a task either of us was looking forward to. And then, we realised that there was actually a very elegant solution to this problem: Mr Booth's method!

Mr Booth prints all our KI readings by himself, so everytime we get readings from him he just shoves this fresh-from-the-printer stack and says "-x-", where x is the number of pages that we should take. So everyone takes x pieces of paper from the top, and then passes it on to the next person, who takes x pieces and passes it on and on and on.

Thus, we decided that we would just hand the HP people the huge stack, say "53", and then run off in mirthful glee. Somehow we found that very amusing and couldn't stop laughing for very very long.

--

My Jie is going to buy me Gong Cha, because I bet with him that I would be able to take notes during Chem on a broken table in the LT. And I managed it for a whole lecture, so yay. :)

--

On a random end to the post, I am absolutely addicted to the Nyan Cat song!

It is accursedly hot, and I have given up my free sleep-at-home day (woke up especially early in fact) to come to archery interschools to shoot- not arrows, but photos.

O.o

My altruism surprises me at times. :P

Since I'm the only supporter here, there isn't anyone to talk to, which makes me super lonely. I sometimes talk to the competitors, but I can't do that all the time because they've got to shoot, and I've got to traverse the competition grounds to take photos. So I have been smsing friends, but ugh most of them are taking GP or not replying. Oh how sad my life is.

Actually I brought Being and Time; not sure if
I should start on it or if the heat will put me to sleep.

Crystal and I were hanging around the Biodiversity Pond when we saw a very familiar figure trotting towards us- it was Wei Tai! He came up to us, and then held out his hand which was clenched in a fist. He opened it to reveal a single grape seed sitting in the palm of his hand, and said it a rather worried tone:

"Do you think it's okay for me to throw this seed here? Do you think if I throw it here it'll germinate into some grape vine which will disrupt the delicate balance of the ecosystem?"

I started on a snarky comment about how it might choke the Evil Giant Fish- no loss there- but then I realised that he was really serious, and worried about it. So I stopped myself- yes, in the middle of a niao! Aren't you proud of me- and assured him that he could throw his grape seed here without worrying that it would twine up around some plant signboard and rob the variegated screw pine of nutrients.

I think that if we had not assured him otherwise, he would have continued carrying that little grape seed around for the whole day.

Crystal and I suddenly remembered it during lunch much later, and we both burst into laughter at how very sweet that was. Sigh, the world needs more people like Wei Tai!

A conversation with yuhui:

Yuhui: "Chai Hao was very amused that I was stalking his blog."
Me: "Um. I suppose he would be."
Yuhui: "Incidentally, do you know how to retrieve deleted blogposts?"
Me: "Okay that is pretty creepy. Just saying." -takes out phone to blog it- "how do you spell 'Chai Hao'?"
Yuhui: "Are you stalking him? Cos I'm not telling you unless you're stalking him."

NERDMANCE, AHHHH.

I think the comnerdgeek guy is perfectly adorable.

Sometimes I wonder, is it even worth trying that hard since I will most probably never attain their standard even after years of practise?

But then we did a poem in CLL today, and I think that even though I really suck at Chinese, I can still appreciate it. Lit in Chinese is a whole different ball game from Lit in English though. It is hard to formulate thoughts in one language about pieces in another. But,

轻轻的我走了，正如我轻的来／我轻轻的招收，作别西天的云彩。♥

I suppose I can still try.

--

Today during Bio:

Mdm Cross: "Class, there was an article on telomeres in Sunday's newspaper. Did any of you read it? ...Do any of you all even read the newspaper?"

Yuhui: "NO. But I read the Chinese ones. There was something about an Australian discovery. Did you read that?"

Mdm Cross: "Um, no...?"

Yuhui: "Not in wanbao. It's in zaobao."

Mdm Cross: -_-

For the uninitiated, Mdm Cross is Indian. :D

(Wanbao has damn funny news stories though; Crystal and I had grand plans to do our weekly newspaper report things on stories from wanbao- like which prostitute was found dead in which condo's swimming pool or something)

--

On a separate note, OMG my PEP paper last year seems to have completely replicated Julian Baggini's essay as given in our KI notes! O.o

Mr Booth: -looks up from pile of essays he's marking with confused look-

Me: "Um, my KI essay? The ones you're marking?"

Mr Booth: "Oh. Um. Actually, well, I was hoping that I wouldn't have to admit this, but... these are actually Lit essays. I left all your essays at home and was hoping that you guys wouldn't find out. Oops."

I am very much tickled!

Does no one else think that when the councillors lined up during the Blazer Ceremony during Council Investiture today, they looked extremely like tubulin dimers arranging themselves to form microtubules?

...no?

):

--

Another adorable quote from Wendy shall follow!

Wendy: "Did the judges rip out your heart and throw it across the floor for everyone to step on? I got that quote from Princess Diaries. -pumps air- YESSSSS."

Oh well, I maintain that it takes a really manly man comfortable with his own sexuality to even crack open Princess Diaries, let alone read- and quote- from it. We placed our trust in Wendy's manliness, and by extension his map reading skills, and followed him and Shi Jie on an exciting jaunt around Ngee Ann Poly, but instead of leading us to the presentation venue they led us right to the guys' toilet. o.O That was a mildly facepalm moment.

Thanks to council invest I am still in school at this ungodly hour; I realize that since I came to rj I have been staying in school much later and with much greater frequency.

Interestingly enough, I don't really mind that much. Perhaps it's cos the school-home distance isn't that great, even though travelling time usually isn't much reduced due to the jam in all the small roads.

But perhaps we are innately aware of our proximity to home? Hmm~

Oh my goodness a car just pulled up with a puppy sticking its head out of the window! How adorable. And lol, I just saw shaw shiuan and Rachel o.O

Someone is playing marriage de amour on the boarding piano. Either the piano is pretty loud or I have imba hearing. Sigh I cant wait for my mutilated finger to heal so I can practise moonlight.

Eh darn this was supposed to be a 2 line post, basically about how I found it extremely amusing that everyone calls our school wireless "RI wa-lan". Ooh hokkien lol. But hey it's late and I'm bored and no one is entertaining me.

I will not blog about college play because I am mortified by Xinyuan and my friends, hmph. But I have an adorable conversation between two cute exclassmates:

Yiwye: "Wendy, you must come for our next class reunion! Otherwise I will tell everyone about Celline!"
Wendy: "Too bad you did already. OOPS."

It doesn't come out in words, but if blogger could play sounds I would record his words and play them over and over again because the way he said it was SO CUTE HAHAHA.

Okay don't say already wait Celline come slash me with parang.

Haha okay although I quit red cross about 4 years ago, I am still glad to see that I am somewhat useful as a first aider!

Some girl had fainted because of a hyperventilation attack, and she was lying outside the LT crying with teachers clustered around her. So since Yuhui was a VI and all, Celline and I made him go over and attempt to help, but he was damn lame la "is it girl problems? Cos she's crying. You need a psychologist for that. And I'm not one, yet."

The teachers were telling her to breathe deeply and hello when someone is hyperventilating that is just asking for trouble. And she was panicking cos her hands were cramping up- normal when one hyperventilates- and then again we had to appeal to the resident first aider who, uh, asked the requisite first aider questions. And did some first aider stuff I'm sure, except that I am probably too noob to identify them properly lol.

We wheeled her back to boarding in a wheelchair, and some kind passing teacher gave us a nice fan so that we could fan her and ensure proper air circulation or whatever. She seemed very stressed out sigh I hope she's better now :/ I know how much hyperventilating sucks; I can't express how thankful I am that I grew out of that eventually. However I did pass on the good advice that the doctor gave me then, so yay I shall conclude that I did something useful today. ^^

And Crystal and Yuhui are not allowed to suan because unlike them I don't get to save lives often >(

Our class has resolved to start a book of quotes, not unlike what leevoon did for our class last year. I think yuhui will end up spamming though, he says all sorts of odd stuff o_O I will later substantiate this point with an example:

We were in the HP canteen during lunch and Celline decided to teach me how to play Contact(?) which is some cool word game not unlike ghost. Anyway one person thinks of a word, and has to reveal letters of the word one by one, if the other players manage to "contact"- if they can think of a word that starts with the same letters as have been revealed by the person. Something like that.

And Wendy was alternating between showing off his English skillz (he has retained quite a fair bit; it was highly reminiscent of the days where we used to compete in doing English compres for PSLE haha) and his dialect skills. We were at "L-A-" for the word, and Wendy raised his hand and said he had two hokkien words that started with these two letters too. But he refused to say what they were until I asked him later, and I will only leave a teaser: HAHAHAHA DAMN FUNNY LOL.

Then it was Yuhui's turn to think of a word, and we had the clues "T-A-". After that everyone just kind of stoned for awhile, and in a bid to give us hints, he said: "it's a very simple word! There are many words that start with "ta" that you can guess! For example, 'Yu Hui has no...'"

Everyone just stared at him and Wendy said, "I can think of many, um, things that you don't have." obviously that caused everyone to start laughing like mad, because we all thought he'd misspelled a certain word that SOUNDS like it starts with "ta", but doesn't really. And when Yuhui finally realized he started shouting his protests really loudly, "I HAVE NO TACT!!! TACT!!! Not ta- NEVERMIND."

Yeah epic quotes :P

(btw the answer was tacit lol I guessed it see how awesome I am?)

Psh psh Importance of Being Earnest tomorrow! I am hoping for an awesome production yay. Jiayou Deenie, if you even read my blog lol

The rest are just claims for food, so evidently the Liuqin D strings were very much out of place.

I was so stunned I just sat there staring at it and scratching my head like early man, before I remembered that Google was invented for a reason and typed it into the search bar. Google threw up wiki links to some CO instrument, and that just left me even more mystified- because why would CSC need CO stuff??

Then thankfully my senior came online, and he explained to me the D strings thing with, "Oh they were for farewell present last year. I couldn't find C strings haha."

That didn't clear things up much; I sat there wondering about the likelihood of the entire batch also being the Liuqin section from CO (eh not impossible ok AV had a whole batch in 1 class before xD) before I suddenly had an epiphany:

C STRINGS, LIKE STRINGS IN C!!!!!!!!!!!

Most adorable farewell present ever.

And they even named it C++ strings, since D is one increment from C! (Although of course D is a programming language in its own right; it's a subset of C :D)

So we spent Civics watching Big Bang Theory on Ryan's laptop. It was awesome haha I haven't gotten round to watching Season 4 (considering I haven't even finished Season 3 from last year this is not that surprising) and oh dear I love the chemistry between Sheldon and Amy Farrah Fowler. It also gave me my quote of the day.

Leonard: "Sheldon, let me explain your situation in terms of Physics. What would you be if you were an object, attached to an inclined plane wrapped around an axis?"

Sheldon: "...screwed!"

Leonard: "Exactly."

After Chem Lab the KI people were whining about missing KI again, and Mr Lee was totally cute la haha he came over with this gossipy face and said, "Eh, tell me which subject leh! :D"

The only thing remotely KI related that I did today was to check Yu Hui's IS proposal for coherency. It has disabused me of all my lofty dreams of becoming a Philo teacher. I may be scarred for life. LOL okay la in fairness- and because I am nice- it wasn't THAT bad haha.

Honestly I am quite wowed by the standards of our classmates' mini IS proposals. I look forward to reading everyones' and gaining new knowledge about knowledge haha. And again, I need to think of new ideas for the actual IS, if my favourite AI idea can't be reused ):

That still didn't stop the angst about IS proposal- I spent so long under the influence of drowsy medicine writing that out, and nothing even came out of that. I should just have not done my homework -_-

But whatever, we KI kids went to the classroom anyway and talked nonsense for about 1 hour, with some KI reading mixed in, so I feel loads better. And Yu Hui was epic dumb la I was annoyed at him for something or another, and hence I raised up my rather sharp 0.28s and told him that even though I didn't have my arrows today I could still stab him. I quote: "Do you want a knife instead?" -proffers Swiss Army knife-

o.O, someone's feeling suicidal haha.

Anyway now it's like some trend to have a parang, thanks to Wendy whose solution to everything is "slash you with a parang". This eventually evolved someday into a way of expressing possible jealousy; eg if Celline is being super nice to Yiwye then Yiwye will say something like "Eh, don't so nice, wait Wendy come after me with parang/slash me with parang." It has probably gone viral within our class already la haha. Everyone's going to be slashing everyone else with parangs sooner or later.

But Yiwye was also angsting about Band EXCO, so I told her not to worry because if she didn't get in, I would go home and slash my bro (who is in band EXCO) with a parang. At first she was like "Eh no lar, don't say already, wait people say I get in cos of connections." but after that it became "No!! He'll slash me with a parang."

And then Wendy came and did his imba dialect mix again, by saying: "Wah sad la slash friend then go home tio slash by sister."

Honestly the way Wendy talks is just...

But haha, so amusing.

Tag replies:

Yu Hui: YAY V V V GOOD now buy me koi and all will be forgiven >:D

Crystal: Shuttup minningjiejie just cos I don't go to LKCRL to bum around all the time -_- Fine you try walking there without seeing la and when you get run over by a car I shall just say "I told you so".

Kinnari: HAHA YOUR LIFE SUCKS

I HAVE A COLD DAMMIT WHY DO I HAVE A COLD I WAS FINE THIS MORNING-

Angst angst angst!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway colds are the worst thing to have, and when they mysteriously appear they suck even more D: I have been pissed off- okay, no, just "mildly annoyed"- the whole day and this just tops it. Great.

Yeah and my classmates are damn mean la after I changed for archery and walked back to our table they just gaped and gaped and were like "WTF Vic, first time seeing you wear PE leh."

THEY EXAGGERATE. I have definitely worn PE stuff in front of them before. Like at Take 5. Or, um... WHATEVER LA AT TAKE 5.

And Yiwye went to say in this totally amused voice: "I once saw Vic gymming!!" and this led to even more gaping.

Whatever man, thanks for the vote of confidence guys -_-

I was making plans to live in LKCRL as a hobo: I'd hide my sleeping bag behind some books in the day and pretend to be some super mugger, and then bath in the water cooler after they'd closed up. And then read my way through all the shelves during the night.

Anyway I had grossly underestimated the travelling time and ended up being half an hour early; met Celline at JCO and then we had Soup Spoon for lunch! (I saw Ms Fernandez in the toilet LOL. Okay no la the drawing of the lady at the ladies' toilet looked like her haha)

After that I led Celline and Yu Hui to the National Library- a feat that I am very proud of because my sense of direction is only marginally better than Crystal, who gets lost all the time- and the guard at the LKCRL was really really nice! I quote: "You don't tell me these are notes, cos notes cannot bring in. You tell me these are rough paper!" Yu Hui was dumb and was stunned when the guard correctly identified us as "Raffles Girls" (teehee yes girls- 三人成虎 ah remember) before he realised he was holding the Math notes with our school crest and name emblazoned across the front.

The Philo shelves are really really awesome. :D :D :D Cannot express how much I am in love with them.

Sigh I am worried for my IS, because it seems that my topic overlaps substantially with Yu Hui's- mine KIND OF requires cognitive psych, and his is just cognitive psych I think, so FML. It was really nerve-wracking ahhh I'd be reading something and typing it on my com and he'd be all "Hey. I just read that." And whenever I went to kaypoh his notes (not very often, his handwriting is a Very Effective Deterrent) I would see stuff that I just read o.O

However, he assures me that we are not doing the same topic and I guess I shall just have to take his word for it, because I don't really understand his topic lol. Although when he suddenly looked up from his book and asked, "how do computers think about an infinite series of numbers?" I nearly threw my book at him for koping my topic.

Ugh ugh ugh have to go work on IS proposal.

We need more LKCRL outings, KI kids!!

Apparently my grandpa, who passed away about 16 years ago, used to be a hardcore opposition supporter until he got much older, when he mellowed and turned to the PAP. But before then he used to show his support for the opposition by spoiling his vote, since I presume his constituency was never ever contested.

So after my grandma married him, they both started spoiling votes together.

Perhaps I am a hopeless romantic, but I think it is so sweet that she still spoils votes like she used to do with my grandpa. Not like she actually follows politics anyway, so I guess this is her way of abstaining like they do in MUNs, and also remembering grandpa.

It is also beyond sweet watching my mum and dad bicker over politics and lay bets over who will take which constituency and by what margin. Mummy's a die-hard PAP supporter and Pa -pretends- to support the opposition just to annoy my mum but secretly he supports the PAP anyway.

On a rather o.O note though, I'm now flanked on both sides by opposition constituencies. I was born in Hougang, which later got pushed into Aljunied, and when I moved, the new part of Aljunied that I was in turned into Ang Mo Kio. Sigh, looks like I am never destined to live in the heart of the action. Just as well- I would really really repent if I actually were in Aljunied and either party lost. :/

LOL GUYS, kiss income inequality goodbye because Singapore is officially a Communist state!

Because never mind that Singapore has the 2nd highest Gini coefficient, or that it has been branded one of the most unashamedly capitalist states in the world- its vote isn't secret and therefore it is a Communist state!

Awesome, I am going up to that guy and asking him for all his pocket money and then giving him a small bowl of rice in exchange for his efforts. And then pat him on the cheek in a patronizing fashion and tell him to keep working hard, all hail Yao zu xi!

--

An addendum: no matter how much these people provide me with fodder for mockery, it gets rather annoying and frustrating when they conveniently ignore the huge mound of evidence in a certain logical direction and stick stubbornly to their own fallacious points of view.

Dammit, sheeple, YOUR VOTE IS SECRET. It can be traced- but only if the government obtains a court order and decides to spend hundreds of man hours on hunting you down and sending a sniper in after you. Because your vote- 1 out of 2.3 million: 0.00004%- is THAT important.

And the government actually secretly keeps dossiers on you all too, in a little dark room buried deep under Parliament House; and it knows everything there is to know about you. It knows that you voted for NSP, because you nurse a secret crush on Nicole Seah, and that you ate bak chor mee for lunch yesterday, and that you live in a 5-room HDB flat in Ulu Pandan.

They know your weaknesses. They know where you live. They will spike your bak chor mee with untraceable poisons, and tomorrow, mysteriously, you will be wheeled, screaming in agony, into TTSH in an ambulance that took just a little too long to arrive-- although they said it was because of the congestion, really-- and the last words you hear before you wink out of existence are "...but we've always suspected he was brain dead anyway."

And the doctor will pronounce you dead on arrival due to natural causes, and he will walk out of the room, slinging his stethoscope around his neck calmly like he didn't just face a dead guy- but at the door, he will pause ever so slightly, and he will turn his head around by just the teensiest fraction, and the corner of his mouth will turn up just a little bit. People will swear they didn't see it, and he will continue on his way.

Somewhere, in that dark room beneath Parliament House, a cloaked figure in a black fedora stretches out a gloved hand, pulls out your dossier, and teases out a slip of paper- your ballot, with that serial number winking traitorously at the bottom of it. Calmly, passionlessly, he will reach inside his cloak, extract a stamp, and stamp a lightning bolt across that unflattering picture of you crossing the road to buy bak chor mee. "Eliminated."

And the camera will zoom in, dramatic music will play, and the credits will roll.

Ehhh dammit I had too much fun writing that. Election periods are never good times for me.

No matter how many times I've seen it and jumped- nearly dropping the 8kg+ deadweight on my poor toes- I still can't shake the feeling that Little Anne, and its many counterparts in bags on the floor, is watching me ._.

And especially how they're all hating on Tin Pei Ling and accusing her of violating Cooling-off day regulations by just posting a comment on FB. For those lazy to check, it reads- in all its campaign-y and biased glory-:

"OooOoooOooh so that's what REALLY happened? Wow. I think tears in Parliament is worse than ANYTHING ELSE!"

Yeah, because that is so totally going to influence my vote?

I wish- harder than ever during elections- that people would actually bother to take the time to use their brains to evaluate things before mindlessly hating. It's honestly quite disgusting and I really start to see MM Lee's point.

--

Anyway, on a lighter note, Deenie and Yiwye and I have decided to form a political party since we are all Politically Involved Youths: we are going to become the Bimbo Party of Shingzzapore! I have been preparing my election speeches and 5 year plan for the country, and I think Wendy is also going to join us in our quest to infuse Parliament with bimboz and connect with, like, the female electorate? Like my sweethearts yeah?

My 5 year plan for Singapore is to build giant shopping malls like Nex in every single constituency and organizing Great Singapore Sales every weekend. This totally follows the current trend of opposition promises- nice stuff that Singaporeans want to hear (darling, everyone loves discounts) but can't really work out anyway.

But who cares; we've got more important things on our minds- we've gotta think of pretty party colours and do our nails in them!!

Enough with the maudlin thoughts; Notes from Underground is honestly messing with my mind ahhhhh what am I doing with my life when it's so very, urgh- futile?

Sigh I am worried about my mini-IS topic. It seemed like such a good idea but apparently knowledge and artificial intelligence is a very very common topic and has been hotly debated since... uh, 1988???? o.O

Ahh but this will make such a good paper for applications to do Sym Sys! ):

Perhaps if I decide that it's too common I will do something existentialist. Can we know if there is a grand narrative to life? Ugh but that will just leave me broken and in despair and I will throw myself off the 7th floor halfway through my IS.

However I might just be an asshole in KI tomorrow for the hell of it anyway haha.

But Xinyuan I miss you very very much! I miss the casually intellectual discussions we used to have, lol. Somehow in RJ it just isn't the same, and I have yet to find your equal here; although I doubt I ever will :/

Sigh things have changed.

Despite the general fun-ness of Philo Circle today, I find myself cloaked in a fog of melancholy, and cannot figure out why. Perhaps it is in part due to Notes from Underground, which I started on this morning. It is a rather mindeffing book, considering how the first few pages go something like "I am a wicked man- no JK I'M NOT I just scammed you cos I'm wicked."

Therefore, I will take out my frustrations by arguing illogically against everyone in KI tomorrow; behold how wicked I am!

I guess it probably didn't help that yesterday she caught me examining books on Marxian philosophy at Kino, but hey- we're doing Pol Phil now and it's necessary to examine everything that could possibly be related...

I am quite thankful that she didn't look too closely at my CLL notes, because a good part of them consist of background on the Red Guards LOL.