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Duck
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Yesterday night I went out to eat dinner with a bunch of Reach Cambridge people- well, at least part of the Med Chem gang and Tomo and me from Downing. Before that I had directorate retreat with the NEA directorate people, and we ate lunch at Akashi (omg black pig tonkatsu is so goooood) before going clay pigeon shooting! Clay piggie shooting is very very different from target shooting haha but I think I didn't do -that- badly, hit 7/15. They shatter really awesomely when you hit them. After that everyone went to Hui Mun's house which is a FREAKING PALACE, but because I was going out with the Reach people I gave up exploring the palace to go meet them. Anyway I discovered that Botanic Gardens MRT is actually not near the bus stop called "Singapore Botanic Gardens". In fact it is an hour's walk away. So I had to cab to the MRT in order to go meet the rest at Haw Par Villa at a decent before-midnight time. The duck restaurant was really good; I thought I wouldn't be able to finish an entire bowl of rice but I did it! Boneless duck ftw man. I think all livestock should just be modified to have exoskeletons that we can just rip off and eat boneless meat. The sambal kangkong was realllyyyyyy good. In fact some of the guys ordered more rice (iirc james and jemteoh had 2.5 bowls of rice each) so we decided to order one more serving of duck, tofu, and kangkong. After a while talking to Yiwye I realized that the duck and tofu had come, but the kangkong hadn't. So I was quite confused and wanted to ask the uncle to bring the kangkong, but everyone suddenly looked a bit sheepish and said, "Uh, actually, the kangkong came about 5 mins ago but..." Sigh lesson learnt; never get distracted when eating communal food with guys :( I managed to sweep up the last leaf and a couple of stalks but ahhh kangkong!
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9:17 PM
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Monday, November 28, 2011
The Great Firewall of China really blocks Facebook and Blogger. I always thought it was a myth perpetuated by those xenophobic China haters but apparently it's for real! It blocks Google too; I thought the internet wasn't working when it refused to display my mum's homepage properly even after refreshing about a thousand times.
Anyway this post will be done in 5 minutes because I am beat, drained, exhausted, spent- choose your own favourite adjective. On Sunday, was woken up in Guangzhou by my mum at 9am, and then was made to pack and unpack and repack everything in a cardboard box, then out of the cardboard box again.
After that we lugged our luggage to Sheraton, crashed mum's new room for a while, and then brought all her colleagues to shangxiajiujie via MRT. This sounds relatively harmless until you factor in the fact that Guangzhou MRT at off peak is more crowded than the Circle Line during the morning rush, and that we were going to one of the prime shopping areas (like a cheap version of Orchard Road) on a fine Sunday afternoon. Also that our group consisted of one pregnant lady and a one year old baby in a stroller, amongst others. Also that amongst the 10 of us there, 1 was Indian, 3 were Indonesian, and 2 were British- therefore, do not speak Chinese.
We fought our way through the crowd- there are two ways of moving through a crowd in Guangzhou: you bash your way through, leading shoulder first (or follow behind some old person doing that- they are actually the most violent of all) or you stand still and let the pushing crowd move you. By a combination of both we spent an entire afternoon there, before finally taking MRT back to Sheraton for 1 hour of rest.
And then, Pa and I took a taxi off to the airport while mum went back to sleep. We weren't staying for her conference, and I also had to rush back to Singapore, because I had MFA internship the next day (i.e. today).
Touched down in Singapore, ate breakfast, and then changed into office wear and popped right into a bus and off to the internship. Ended up walking from SMU to National Library in new heels and fnsjgjsdahfajsdhfjka I do not think I will ever walk the same way again.
You'd think I'd get to rest after work but noooo- bus to Dhoby Ghaut, train to Hougang, and then demolishing a burger in 5 bites from KFC to the taxi stand before taking a taxi to a flat about 10 minutes walk away because if I walked anymore, my feet would just DIE- and then yayyy Meet the People Session.
Oh my god I have not slept in 38 hours and my feet hurt.
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11:05 PM
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Will be away for the next 5 days in Guangzhou, and hopefully I'll get an opportunity to go on FB/blog while there.
Sigh our restructured timetable makes me feel schizophrenic, for some reason. Morning Bio lectures move at the speed of slime molds in their slug form- Deenie said this morning that she walked in 20 minutes late but had no problem catching up at all. In fact in the 1 and a half hours we spent there we covered only 8 pages of notes, which puts us at a grand pace of 15min/pg.
On the other hand, H3 Chem lectures are set at a pace somewhere in between Bio RA lectures and Bio O lectures with the godly Tianchen. That is to say, unless you are totally focused on listening and scribbling down notes, you will get hopelessly lost. The pace of the course is super intense too: lecture one day, tutorial and a new lecture the next, rinse and repeat. But at least it is fun. I am actually learning something new- it's all very Physics-ey at the moment, but at least it is new.
I crashed the H3 Math session today as well, and they were doing mathematical proofs, which are just about the most beautiful thing in the world. Sadly my reputation does not seem to gel with this insight; when I mentioned this to a friend he sounded surprised and asked: "I thought you only think pink and shiny things are pretty!" I told him that's why I write all my proofs in pink sparkly pen, and I'm not sure he knew I was kidding. But still ahhh proofs are so pretty (even- or especially- in purple pen), even if they are useless to all but aspiring mathematicians, math teachers, or philosophers.
The rest of the afternoon was spent tackling the latest Chem tutorial with Yang Terng and Yuhui. Ahh it's pretty amazing how tranquil and fulfilling it can be to puzzle over IR spectroscopy and P&C problems, and then finally wasting the rest of the afternoon away by reading the gigantic Money poster on xkcd and wondering how world debts and stuff actually work.
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9:29 PM
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
Never thought I'd say this, but... -deep breath- I WAS INVOLVED IN RED CROSS STUFF TODAY!!
Well actually, Yuhui said he was going to do AV for some Red Cross event at RGS, and wanting to see my juniors again I shamelessly self-invited myself. Except that I forgot that holidays have started for everyone but RI, and no one was there but the technicians.
Anyway I spent the morning meeting my mentor (and also discovered that Starbucks has Christmas drinks in NON-COFFEE VERSIONS say goodbye to heart palpitations) and he let me steal a bit of his chocolate toffee brownie pie. He also told me about some awsum French restaurant in the Upper Thomson area, which I should really get to know better considering its proximity to my school.
After that, I went down to Orchard to meet Yuhui, but I was like a few hours early so I did what any logical person would do- shop. Got off a stop early at Somerset and then walked from 313@Somerset to ION, stopping off at H&M and making a round through Kino to pick up books for my flight to Guangzhou next week.
And hahahahaha something odd happened when I was walking around ION- some dude came up to me and tried to scout me as a freelance model HAHAHAHAHA DAMN FUNNY. Like whatever man, everyone knows I'm hardly the model type (in fact I think the word they used was "no life") so why bother! But teehee whatever the next time someone says I'm fugly I can wave this tidbit proudly in their faces, never mind that if you hang around Orchard enough you will probably get spotted eventually as well.
Hmm then had lunch with Yuhui, brought him around ION food hall trying to decide what to eat, and then stole free samples of dango from some shop. In the end I ate Deenie's favourite Korean chicken which was quite good! Yuhui got stuff from xiaobawang and took loads of pictures of it because he wanted to review it.
Before going to RGS we got Happy Lemon drinks! Tried to troll him into buying Rock Salt Cheese Green Tea, but unlike me he didn't fall for it ): Also we saw a travel shop named "JTB" which made him very excited (yeah yeah cue lame epistemology joke here)
After that we went to find his friend, whose first question to me after the obligatory introduction statements was: "Is Yuhui very scandalous?" Yuhui you have interesting friends HAHA. Then we walked to the bus stop, via Wheelock Place and Shaw, with Yuhui whining allllll the way about how tired his feet were. I just realised what good exercise shopping is!
Went to RGS, barged into the General Office and talked a lot of nonsense with Ms Christina! As always her first words were: "CRYSTAL OR VICTORIA!" She still can't tell us apart hahaha. But oh well I'm flattered that she managed to identify my face to an accuracy of, hmm, 2 in 450 or thereabouts. Told her I was Crystal.
After that, Mr Neo brought all of us to the control room which looks EXACTLY HOW I LEFT IT, except slightly more messy with a tangle of wires where our old cardboard boxes used to be. The technicians' letters are still up on the wall, along with my "Our control room, our home" card just above the mixer. I should feel nostalgic, but it's hard to feel nostalgic about something when it hasn't changed in the least.
We have acquired more paraphernalia- water guns from two Farewells ago were strewn all over the floor, and there were corkboards with "I LOVE AV" written on them in the drawers. Also someone left their yearbook in the control room, which was quite an unwise choice because Yuhui, being a stalker, immediately opened the yearbook to start stalking everyone he knows.
I didn't manage to see any of our AV teachers ): On my way out I bumped into Mr Xu, who I joyfully called "Mr Yang", and then nearly died of embarrassment when he said "Uh, that's not my surname, but that's ok!" In my defense I nowadays only see him on Facebook, where he is known as "Yang'en Xu", so yeah brain misfired and thought "Yang". Talked a bit about Angry Birds, and I had to introduce Yuhui to him because they share a common life goal: to pass all Angry Birds levels. Except Mr Xu accomplished that and moved on to greater things, like getting 3 stars on all levels. Mr Xu was mean and asked if he was "your friend, or your -pause- friend?" BAH HUMBUG.
After that, saw Mr Ho, who remembers me and asked if I still do programming! :,) Mr Ho always manages to touch me with how caring and kind he is, even though I was quite a lousy student and hardly did homework ):
Then went to ION and plodded around the Food Hall watching the Gindaco people make takoyaki for another half an hour or so. Yes thanks I have no life ):
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8:13 PM
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Today I was helping my Jie compose his appeal letters for H3. As they had been written at 2am and under the influence of K-pop, they were full of smoke and drama, and apparently my job was to remove some of the smoke to show his sincerity and passion and zeal and ardour blah blah blah, typical letter stuff.
Except when I saw the letter format, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "今日特书此函，目的是为了... ..." (Yuhui aren't you proud of me!) and I couldn't stop laughing.
It took us about an hour, but we slowly worked through the letter and eliminated most of the smoke and waffle.
Except for the concluding paragraph.
Oh, conclusions, how I hate you. I've never been a fan of the "In conclusion, here is a short recap of everything I have said above, which you could just have read instead of sitting through the whole thing" style of concluding. Plus it kind of works only in very limited contexts-- like GP essays, and not appeal letters.
The other option, of course, is pure smoke-- the kind of uplifting moral statements you make at the end of a baozhangbaodao about how this will be the next step to an open and inclusive Singapore, amidst mental soundtracks like an angel choir of something from Chariots of Fire. I've never actually watched that, but it sounds pretty dramatic and uplifting.
Obviously we opted for the latter.
I have this strange habit of sometimes reading things that I am writing out loud to myself to see how it sounds in speech, especially when I am unsure of what I should write. As I was smoking my way through the last concluding paragraph, which read something like "...hope you will grant me this opportunity to pursue my dreams. Thank you," I instinctively appended "Auspicium Melioris Aevi" behind.
In my defense, if you read that sentence about pursuing your dreams out loud and in a smokyvoice, AMA is the only logical thing that follows!!! Perhaps this is a relic of the days where we used to complete Mrs Hoo's speeches for her.
"Filiae...?" "...Melioris Aevi."
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9:13 PM
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Monday, November 14, 2011
I realised I didn't blog about Bio Olympiad itself!
Well it was pretty fun hanging around with fellow Bio O people outside the hall before going in. I met a lot of my old primary school classmates, and Wendy, Wei Jie, Joshng, Caleb, Kerry and I sort of had a pseudo reunion.
The highlight of the day was when our teacher came over to tell us to get ready to go in and give us a pep talk and Joshng and Caleb went barrelling past behind her hugging each other. Somehow there is something hilarious about trying to listen to an inspirational speech when there are two guys hugging each other in the background. Wendy and I kept giggling and had to turn away to calm ourselves down. When we turned back to face the Hwach team we saw Kerry sitting on Joshng's lap and that didn't help.
Everyone we asked about the format of the paper gave different responses-- 280 MCQ, 300 MCQ, 1000 MCQ, 150 MCQ... in the end we decided to just go in and whack. The paper ended up being divided into 4 sections, and there was this collective celebration outside during the break because "AT LEAST PLANTS IS OVER!!!!"
Evidently not many people like Plants hahaha.
But sigh Bio O is over, and as Yuhui put it, "life has no meaning after Bio O". Ahhh all that mugging for nothinggg, but at least it was fun and I can now shout "GIBBERELLINS!" at the TV whenever Channel NewsAsia reports about a species of rice which can grow its stem quickly to rise above the flood.
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11:24 AM
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Life
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Me: "Mummy, I need to talk to you about H3 next year. Should I apply for 13 units?" Mum: "13 units? Don't you want more time to do other things next year? Like, GETTING A BOYFRIEND?" My mum is not the subtlest of hinters, but dammit I really need to get a life.
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10:22 AM
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Thursday, November 10, 2011
Today after 3 hours of OPing, our class decided to go out for icecream and dinner! It was super simple to gather everyone since like 3/4 of our groups were presenting in the same room. So we trooped off to Salted Caramel, and talked a lot of nonsense on the way there.
And then about 16 or 18 of us invaded Salted Caramel and joined up all the tables in the back to make a megatable. Yiwye and I were cheapo and shared a double scoop because that way you save 50c, while Yuhui, who is usually a miser, splurged on a double scoop for himself WITH TOPPINGS.
So we sat around and talked nonsense and bitched about Bio O and told nerdy Bio jokes. Yuhui was being Captain Obvious and he said something so painfully obvious that I don't even remember what it was ._. Also he was bullying Wendy, who also says odd stuff at odd times which can be interpreted in Strange Ways.
We passed around our old EZ link card photos to see how we all looked like as kids. Grace looks exactly the same, Shi Jie looks like a smiling frog (Shaw Shiaun googled "smiling frog" for comparison purposes), Nikitha looks like an Indian goddess (OH I REMEMBER WHAT OBVIOUS THING YUHUI SAID ALREADY. "Nikitha! You look very Indian!"), and apparently my photo causes people to choke a little and then gasp out: "You look even more mugger than you do now." ):
Ryan and Hilary left... leaving Ryan's iPad behind. (y) We all found that pretty hilarious, especially since Ryan probably wouldn't be worried at all ("Oh, nevermind, I have another one at home.") But the guys grabbed it and immediately started fighting over who got to play Muffin Knight.
After that everyone suddenly pangsehed to go mug for Bio O or something, but Yuhui and I, being poor souls without dinner waiting at home, had to go find dinner by ourselves. So we decided to try Aston's!
Aston's is notbad actually, the chicken is really nice and it's only about $6+. You even get to choose 2 side dishes! Except that when I was ordering my brain kind of fizzed out and I ordered baked potato AND mashed potato, causing Yuhui to give me a "WTF is wrong with you?!" look. In the end I couldn't finish it (all the starch!! Tubers! Or modified roots. WHATEVER) and he and Celline had to help me haha.
Yup we tried mugging Bio O for a bit at the coffeeshop, but that failed because it was too noisy. So we decided to dapao our food and go back to school. Sigh I think being in Bio RA robbed me of whatever life I had.
We went to the tables outside HML, and saw a frigging cool tree which seems to be attached to another tree and is surviving on 2 roots. Then we decided to explore the newly opened minimart in boarding, which is AWESOME. It has rows and rows of snacks and sweets and chips and all sorts of strange stuff imported from China-- which made Yuhui squeal happily in nostalgia-- and CUP NOODLES. Also for some odd reason it has shampoo and toothpaste and hangers, which Yuhui says are for the boarders, but would also be really useful if you suddenly decided you want to bathe in school.
Then on the way back to our table at HML, we saw Celline, and we decided to further our exploration of Boarding by crashing the Dining Hall! Ok well amongst the three of us I'm the only one who has never actually lived in Boarding, so it was pretty exciting. And then we sat around, bitched more about Bio O, and started planning a KI road trip to Bali to snorkel after A levels.
Sigh what a good day! :D If only every day could be like today :,)
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8:17 PM
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Wednesday, November 09, 2011
 OHAI! I'm a one-month old Maltese puppy! 
I'm Vic's godpuppy! :D Godpuppy, like godsister or godmother, but since I'm a puppy, I am, uh, well, a godpuppy. Somewhen last year, Vic babysat her mum's friend's dog for a month or so, and that dog became her god-dog, and when I was born, I became the godpuppy. Hopefully I don't reproduce and have further generations, because there are only so many synonyms for a small dog (and also how small a dog-- pup-puppy, pup-pup-puppy, etc) that one can keep straight in one's mind.
And this is me asleep under the couch after a tiring day of getting carried around and cooed over! Vic is very very very protective of me. I'm tiny, haven't fully grown a dog face yet, and kind of look a bit like a rat. But whatever, all mammalian babies kind of look alike, and you probably looked ratlike when you were a baby too, and if you ever insinuate anything about my looking like a rat Vic will probably drag you into some deserted alley and rip you from limb to limb!
And this is me, transferred into my strawberry basket. I kind of look like a tiny sheep hehe. Plus I have the CUTEST TAIL EVER. It's a little tuft that is super neatly groomed even though the rest of my fur is forever mussed up. And I hop around like a little rabbit cos my paws haven't grown properly and are kinda slippery.
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Awww I never thought I'd say this, but I think I kind of understand the thoughts of those annoying new parents who think that everyone really wants to see about 500 photos of their newborn baby and hear about the time the baby pooped in his diapers. But everyone loves seeing photos of cute puppies, RIGHT?
And I kind of see how parents can coo lovingly over a baby that looks like its face has been squashed in (yeah yeah being hypocritical here, I looked like one of those squashed babies as well), and proclaim that he'll be a real ladykiller when he grows up. Because my godpuppy will definitely seduce loads of bitches when he does :,) HAHAHAHA.
And I didn't even recoil in fear when he started gnawing at my toes, and then my fingers, because he's teething ahhh how cuteeee.
Sigh I could look at pictures of the godpuppy all day, if not for other pressing things like Bio O and OP and stuff like that. (Ok note to self blog about OP prep, openlab, cats' tails, and lateness) And even when I'm horribly pissed off or annoyed or sad, I look at godpuppy yawning and I feel like all is right with the world.
Oh, gosh, I think I'd make an obnoxious parent in future.
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7:42 PM
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Sunday, November 06, 2011
Long overdue post about KI lesson on Thursday, but better late than never!
We were discussing the origin of names in relation to language, and Mr Booth wanted to know how Chinese surnames come about. In Western countries surnames which are supposed to represent your family's profession are pretty common, but you don't really see that sort of equivalence in Chinese surnames. Of course you get people like Wei Tai with special surnames given to them by the Imperial Court. But then again for those of us whose surnames are common enough to be found in baijiaxing, there doesn't seem to be any literal meaning behind our names-- they just ARE.
Anyway Yuhui had some idea about how his surname came about, which was better than the rest of us, so he told Mr Booth about his surname.
Yuhui: "Um, apparently my ancestors were 司马, but then they did something wrong and got banished or sent into exile." Mr Booth: "...Why am I not surprised?"
But anyway, I realised that I know next to nothing about the origins of my surname, and so I went back home and dug out my ancient primary school copy of baijiaxing to look it up. Interestingly enough, yao is ranked 101 in baijiaxing, and hence didn't appear in my book. o.O So I wikied it, and even after reading the page didn't know anything more about its origins.
Also during KI, Mr Booth showed us a few different readings of Jabberwocky, and Yuhui being a Chinaman went to google for the Chinese version of Jabberwocky. I fail as a Chinese la, can't even tell which words are made up and which words actually exist in the Chinese lexicon. It's bad enough trying to read a nonsense poem in English, much less in Chinese!
But the French version is quite pretty! "Garde-toi du Jaseroque, mon fils!" We got Mr Booth to read it to us, and although it sounded nothing like it looked like, it was still really amazing haha. I think I'd like to learn French, though it's one of those languages which you really need to get a teacher who'll teach you how to speak and all.
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1:40 PM
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Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Today's double free block was very wisely spent in the library-- watching A Cinderella Story with Deenie, Lingyue, Yuhui, and Nathanael Wong, who'd crashed to bitch about InR and then ended up getting distracted by the sweet love story playing out on screen. Anyway for the manlier readers (i.e. anyone who has never watched A Cinderella Story) of my blog, the story is basically a modern day version of Cinderella where a sad and unpopular girl who is bullied by her stepmother and stepsisters finds love in this mysterious sensitive guy who she SMSes daily. Sensitive guy turns out to be the school football team captain, hence the most popular guy in school. Cue sweet love story abruptly cut short by a tragic misunderstanding, which later brings them closer together and they end up going to Princeton together. Aww. But I suspect hanging around with 3 girls regularly has started to rub off a bit on Yuhui, who initially proclaimed that he was going to study Math, but ended up turning around to watch snippets of A Cinderella Story too. And he didn't scoff about how unrealistic it was, and actually said that Hilary Duff's dress was nice! Natwong also succumbed to the alllure of chick flicks! At first he was a bit dismissive and listed out the basic plot skeleton of a chick flick (love, misunderstanding, more love) in a rather sarcastic been-there-done-that voice, but after we decided to forsake the rest of the show in favour of food, Nat piped up and said that he didn't mind watching the rest. :D But attractive though chick flicks may be, they still leave you with a lingering emptiness inside because they remind you about how you are forever alone and will never get to have a romantic Cinderella love story because all the guys in your batch will only be going to Uni 2 years after you do. -_- Yeah, so. FOREVER ALONEEEE. We need chick flicks that don't end up with some romance! I think I shall rewatch Legally Blonde when I have more time, like after SAT and research and stuff, because at least that inspires one to aim for academic excellence -cough-
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8:02 PM
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Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Diva tantrum alert.
Damn you, Raffles Diploma, if you are only going to support one browser, at least support one which is commonly used by your target audience-- i.e. youths aged 17/18 and not those aged 70/80.
If you are only going to support the dinosaur of all browsers, at least support it properly so that it doesn't alternate between returning internal server errors or hang there for HALF AN HOUR. What could have been over and done with in a matter of minutes on Safari or Chrome turned into a highly productive half an hour spent staring at IE and hoping with every passing minute that maybe, just MAYBE, this time it'll load.
I am tired and cranky and I just threw a mega hissy fit to my mum because of this whole lousy implementation of the RD website. To her credit she nodded and mumbled kind sounding stuff throughout the entire tantrum without even looking up from the video she was watching on her iPad.
RD, EVEN MY MUM USES SAFARI.
Eh screw it la I'll just go to sleep, otherwise tomorrow I'll be snapping at everyone in school and trying to bite them.
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10:14 PM
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