410

blah scholarship fair today got me thinking about what I'm going to do about my life.

realised that there are so many different opportunities / scholarships / career paths / universities and courses out there. as compared to the past where everything was simple enough and / or laid out in front for me already - like going to RI / RJ; subject combi (even though it seemed very tough then actually the choice now looks quite obvious) and even things like enrichment programmes and competitions and all the other random stuff that I do - there really wasn't much of a choice lol.

and now it seems like there are so many different options to pick from - and I have no idea what to do. (well definitely not engineering or law or architecture though). each of which has its own characteristics and sets of pros and cons and whatnot - and all of which hold massive ramifications for / and will definitely end up shaping and influencing the next 4 - 6 years. at least. I mean each option does seem as fulfilling as the next. and all are equally plausible right now. hmm maybe I should just apply to every single stat board and whatnot and see what I can get.

so really it's like my life is at some sort of crossroads right now (ok fine many many many crosses and intersections. yuck this reminds me of vectors) and every path that I can take well leads somewhere that I don't know yet. oh fine I haven't actually reached that point yet still have 2.5 more terms of school to clear. but you get the drift. and need to start making some decisions soon.

*resists the urge to quote robert frost here*. especially since ALL the roads are not very taken. hmm.

also the thing is I realised I'm totally unprepared for what lies ahead - I have no idea of what to do / what I want to do. and of course of how things will turn out. so there's not much of a path laid out before me or anything. which is a bit scary. or overwhelming.

blah ok shall deal with it when the time comes to it.

--
hmm realised I haven't posted in quite a bit so shall update now (although I doubt people still read this thing):

chemO selection was a disaster - messed up the easiest question as well as both the organic ones. but whatever what's done is done and anyway there are other things I ought to bother myself with (refer to the list in the previous post). plus considering what lies ahead in the next few years (see above if you haven't already).

after chemO it was well a strange period of calm whatever - in a sense this feeling of emptiness (but not at all in a bad sense) - that it's all over and you're done - perhaps relief? or satisfaction? (but I know I should have done better). or just plain exhaustion from the whole thing itself.

well I think I've had enough chem to last me until the end of the year. if not longer.

so well yeah that lasted until about friday when the realities of my dire H3 situation started kicking in. so the assignment that's 25% of the grade is due on the 11th (i.e. IN FIVE DAYS TIME) and although I was supposed to spend monday and tuesday doing it / or at least getting started on it I haven't at all.

bah.

and I still have no idea what geopolitics is.

yeah so really thursday and friday were like a blur. edit: well fine it wasn't that slack - immediately after chemO cheng wanted us to do the GP CT [bring home and write and submit on thursday] so spent the night doing the planning and wrote most of it during first block. then took the geog CT in the afternoon (spent most of thursday's lessons trying to mug for it lol). so my hand died quite badly. and after that I kinda just crashed.

and at least I woke up at noon on friday. just remembered that there was no school. oops.

then saturday was gc finals. and they won. (more convincingly this time around though). so there's this whole sense of deja vu all over again. lol. quite happy for them seeing how everything did pay off in the end. just slightly worried about next year's batch. but that's like what how many months away? (hopefully I won't be in NS by then though).

ah yes so after saturday (also when I ate way too much during lunch and the dinner reception and at ice cream with OWL and clement after that) when I got home damn late and everything (plus I left the house at 7am! oh and did I mention I got a free trip to the zoo lol) I was quite dead. so spent sunday recovering.

hmm spent sunday night rushing cheng's holiday homework. (ugh) so slept at 1am.
then the next day got back the human part of geog CT (8.5 + 10) - we suspect the 8.5 is cos as a matter of principle she refuses to give anyone full marks for an essay. and 10 was cos I couldn't be bothered to do LORMS so just spammed points. so didn't manage to hit L3. which was kinda sad. but then the essay wasn't so good either so whatever. at least it's still an A.

monday was NAPFA as well. BBCDDE lol. (and actually the E wasn't really an E but she took sympathy on me and rounded up the 1.8 pull ups to 2). well fine it'd be BBCDDfail if they take the age as of april 8 or something. but since the test was on april 4... and considering that we did 5 stations after 2.4 (and I managed to get a C for that one ?!) it's quite ok. especially for my standards. so all I need to do now is to treble the number of pull ups I can do and then I'm not going in early.

then rest of monday was uneventful. just that monday night was spent chionging that irritating presentation for civics from 1230am to 1am. ok fine that actually counts as tuesday. whatever.

tuesday was also rather boring. especially both chem lectures. ew.

and today was as bad (just that I was less sleep-deprived this time around considering how I slept at about 10pm on tuesday). just that there were too many free blocks. and physics tutorials are seriously just the slackest things around.

1 more hour!
wonder if I'll be able to stay up till then.

I feel old.

409 / not gonna make it

hmm saturday was mock geotrail. quite fun. just that went to ngee ann city / taka way too early to actually do anything. plus they were damn slow so I waited for VERY long outside the fountain. and helped quite a few tourists take photos ._.

meh.

then went down to sultan mosque - got lost on the way cos I forgot to look very closely at the map. but managed to deadhead there eventually lol. although it was damn bloody hot. but then the arab street area is quite nice. and food there was good lol.

sec3 geogRA kids seem pretty decent though.

then after that ended up panicking cos I was worried I couldn't get back down to school in time for PSC urgh. so cabbed down (total waste of money) and got there way too early.

zzz.

psc profiling was an utter waste of time. plus I was damn sleepy.
meh.

sunday didn't actually do anything.
so yeah I'm rather screwed now (if you haven't already inferred from the title of this post).

[decided to cut out the bit about chemO cos you've heard it way too many times and most probably wouldn't care either. meh. just know that I'm way screwed.]

just too tired (or lazy?) to do much at the moment.
and after chemO selection need to finish the GP CT at home to submit to cheng the next day ._. and also on thurs will be taking geog CT ._.

then friday is a grundy-warr marathon. urgh. and seriously the tutorials are a total waste of time. so like the only thing I've learnt is content (which is quite good but still...). and totally have no idea how I'm gonna do the final exam. meh.

then after friday need to do all the h3 assignments (40% bleh). and I think he doesn't like me. plus they require research and irritating things like papers so things are looking pretty bleak as well.

also got all of cheng's holiday homework due the following monday. and math CT on monday as well.

well after 23rd april at least I'm free of some of this bs.

if I can even get that far.

doubt I'll do very well this wednesday but whatever kinda expected it anyway.

---

THINGS TO DO AFTER GEOPOL / CHEM O ENDS [in order of the likelihood that I'll actually do them]
- watch return of the king
- rearrange urban package (to get rid of the useless readings)
- FILE all my notes (since my bag is asploding again. and I think I need a separate file for h3 and h2 chem)
- do something about my physical geog notes (which somehow got bound when OWL was zapping them)
- SLA spatial challenge!
- read atmo, weather and climate (good book but damn dry so I keep getting bored of it plus I don't even have any time)
- read urban geog book (ditto)
- play a lot more bridge
- start thinking about uni apps
- scholarship apps?
- read the (short) list of fiction that I've put on my phone to remind myself to borrow (eventually)
- write proper human geog notes

408

one more week.

and I keep falling asleep while trying to mug in the library ._.

so in the past 4 hours I've only finished 2 chapters of clayden.
(well fine I took about 45 min for breakfast and then about an hour facebooking / updating firefox.)

and RI-WLAN keeps disconnecting me.

meh.
this is very bad.

so like for 3 days already I've been getting to school at 7 and trying (key word here is trying) to keep myself in the SFL to mug chem.

which hasn't really been succeeding. as you might be able to tell.
and of course over the past month or so I've forgotten most if not all of my organic already.

and the org question is the one that's gonna kill me / differentiate. considering all the physical topics are just...

whatever at least I get to skip CTs. (especially GP). just that apparently chem was rather fun.

ok whatever back to clayden.
and then to bridge later on XD.

shall attempt to attempt a few spectro problems this afternoon.
hmm.

407

got a bad feeling about something / some things.
not sure what exactly though.


tired. spent the whole evening / night answering chem and geog questions over msn lol.
shall post / explain more eventually. or not.

406

hmm haven't reached home before 9pm any time this week.

and they call this the holidays lol.

also I was supposed to be doing my h3 assignments and / or prepping for chemO selection. and yet I did neither. bleh.

[non-rc people can skip the part below you most likely won't get it lol]
got dragged into something that burnt most of weds thurs and fri. a lost cause perhaps. so actually it was none of my business.

but then again maybe it was entirely my business considering that I didn't do anything about it the whole of this year up till now.

but question is: is this even my responsibility in the first place?

also next question: why do I even continue to come back when I don't have to?

maybe it's the sense of belonging / attachment / responsibility that I have for this current batch of sec4s. and for the unit at large. or maybe it's just cos it's payback for my not having done much in sec3 or sec4 then. or perhaps it's also because I have nothing better to do with my life and I'm just bored and need something to do so might as well go do something meaningful [well to me at least]. or all of the above.

but after these 2 years when I look back what will I see / what would have I done?

did I really make that much of a difference lol.

I have no idea.
[ok the rest of you can continue reading from below]

I am in a sense a relic; someone who's past his time.
someone still clinging on to things that have long gone / that should have been let go off a long time ago.

so in a sense I guess I've been feeling very out-of-place these few days - not really fitting in into the present, be it in RJ or RI: the former since I never really was part of it in the first place (and/or since it's really a very short phase and I haven't fully had the chance to get used to it yet. well actually I have in some/most regards but then for things like the culture and whatnot - not really) and for the latter since things have changed so much since I left. bah.

so I just go about my life lingering on in a place that I shouldn't even be in.
while the rest of the world moves on.


yeah I'm damn sleepy now so apologies if this doesn't make sense.

405

I think I'm losing you.

or that I'm being left behind as everyone moves on.

same difference really.

404 not found

hmm I have this feeling my com won't survive the month. lol.

and singtel really hates me. and vice versa.

but then again the internet is in a sense just a distraction and perhaps a means of escaping from the world at large. especially when all one does when one gets home is to just go on the com and stay there the whole night [as almost everyone does nowadays]. but then again it's also perhaps at the same time still a means of interaction with the world at large - and perhaps also exposes us to new areas / perspectives that we wouldn't otherwise be able to see (or at least not that easily lol). so maybe it's just doing what books did for an earlier generation. and maybe that's why I spend most of my time on wiki and stuff like nytimes.com. but yeah at the same time it's still perhaps an avenue away from the real world for most people. I think.

hmm but fiction does the same thing. so I'm not too sure.
but then the internet / the computer does tend to make us more distracted and less able to focus. yeah so those criticisms do hold. and perhaps what's more worrying is not the amount of time we spend online but rather this whole internet culture - to quote an NYT opinion piece I read not too long ago "[the internet can] bring out the worst in people. You’re straining after eyeballs, not big thoughts. So you go for the shallow, funny, contrarian or cynical."

also consider this:
"Why would I engage with people digitally whom I would never engage with actually? Why does the technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?"

stomp is damn irritating.

--
ugh this is turning into a GP essay. just that I'm too lazy to string the arguments together so I'm just throwing stuff here and letting you connect the dots.

was at bridge camp today. was rather fun. but at the same time also kinda regret that I missed so much of bridge last year. so like it felt that this camp was also in a sense my camp ._.

I kinda messed up my CCAs last year lol. thanks to spending too much time at RI side. hmm. worth it? I dunno.

and of course it doesn't help that I haven't played bridge in about a month thanks to chemO and H3. and that some j1s are quite possibly already better than me.
lalala.

and this is weird I keep getting this sense of regret about not having done enough in j1. and I never got this feeling before / about any other year. maybe cos jc life seems particularly short. and maybe cos I wasted too much of it. or maybe cos it's my last year now so like inevitably I'm looking back and reflecting and all that. or maybe cos I really did mess up.

hmm who knows?

holidays are going to be quite horrible. need to mug for chemO selection (and odds that I do get in are less than 50-50 I think). plus complete the h3 coursework. and even after 7 out of 13 lectures I am still in no position to sit for the final exam - the questions are still rather incomprehensible. and I don't think I've learnt anything yet. argh. and still got all sorts of miscellany like reading geog books and rc stuff and mugging for CTs. blah.

but first I need to catch up on my sleep.
and stop procrastinating.


yay for conflicting objectives.

403

hmm must not let the blog die.

lol.

although I liked the previous post. especially the title. and I can't seem to come up with a decent title for this post.

argh it's already the wednesday of week 10.

so stuff to do over the hols
bridge camp fri/sat
chemO training at NIE mon/tues
h3 class response
h3 project [ugh]
mug for chemO selection

at least no CTs for me. yay.
but then again it's not like there's a lot to mug this time around - physics is just the usual round of definitions / formulae; chem is chem; math just need to revise the older pure math topics (summation - ugh); geog - human go grab points and examples while physical it's just everything that's been done this year. no irritating trivia on water management and conflicts and whatnot [which is in a sense good since I missed that set of lectures last year. plus it most likely won't appear this year for As anyway].

argh have an irritating headache now. which is probably why I'm not being very coherent at the moment.

neil gaiman is surprisingly good.

[yes I've managed to find time to read stuff like that when I still have clayden / shriver and atkins / keeler and wothers lying unread all over the house. plus an atmo book and some urban geog book]

tired.
shall sleep early for once.

402 / fin de siécle

hmm seems like I'm the only one in class who still blogs.

spent the whole of today doing nothing. as usual.
even though there's so much that I should be doing / so many books just waiting to be read. and most of them need to be read. like for chem and H3 and all that. argh.

just re-skinned the blog. when I should have been doing work.
argh whatever.

---

A level results came out yesterday.

a reminder, in a sense, of how much [or rather how little] time we have left before it's our turn; of what's just around the corner this november.

yep we're next in line. and march 2011 doesn't seem very far away now.

also we seem to do better every year.
so of course the next question is - can we deliver?

and that one I'm not too sure. I just don't feel good enough - get this feeling that I'll mess up something (be it GP or PW). and of course I doubt I'll get 8 distinctions let alone 7 (thanks to chinese + h3. seriously a research project with kamal or even graph theory looks like a better choice now).

but then again does it matter if I mess up - 1. there's always others to take my place and 2. well there's always backups right. I still haven't really decided what I want to do with my life. and I guess well yeah I'd be slightly disappointed at first [ok who am I kidding] but then I'll settle into something else and be content there. as is what usually happens. and seriously wouldn't mind teaching [in RI / RJ of course] if it comes to that. lol.

if I mess up As / the rest of this year / scholarship and uni apps and all that - which is after all rather [highly] possible, especially for the last one - would it be a case of wasted talent? or does it not matter - if you happen to screw up then so be it. I'm inclined towards the latter right now.

I seem to have this total lack of ambition / be too easily contented and accept things as they are / not really bother or care about these things. but then again is all that a bad thing?

I dunno. maybe things are just meant to be this way.

whatever. we'll see when we get there [which isn't very far away actually. oops].

---

bah really felt like doing something today. like had quite a bit of excess energy in the system. but then all the reading seemed too dry and boring. and couldn't think of anything else to distract myself with [usually would have a project of some sort to work on - be it creating something for RC or coming up with stuff for the GC kids - but strangely nothing today].

and of course this portends badly for tomorrow afternoon.
maybe I'll start on chem. or that irritating h3 project.

but somehow I doubt it.

---

was wondering again - what kind of person am I?
or rather: how do people see me / what am I to others?

have I managed to make a difference / some semblance of an impact on others or am I just known for say chem and igeo and all that and that's it?

as this part of my life draws to a close and I look back - what do I see?
I've left quite a bit of myself behind [or so I think] but I don't know how much of that has been felt. hmm.

did I matter?

---

blah as you can see I've been very introspective / emo (?) these days. and a lot more tired and whatnot.

I'm so getting old.
urgh.

or maybe it's just this realisation that time's running out and my time's almost over now - there's not much left to do except mug for As. and move on. and I'm not yet ready to / I don't want to move on? urgh this sense inertia is irritating.

nailed it?

nah there's also something else. that I can't seem to lay a finger on.
nevermind maybe it'll appear in another post.

nb. and reading fantasy and whatnot (i.e. LOTR) isn't helping one bit. as in a sense it's a means of escape from the real world [which I so don't want to face up to at this time]. and not to mention a very powerful distraction. oops.

401 / blah

WARNING: largely incoherent post follows.

hmm it just struck me today that it's been 5 years already.

which actually is a very long time. and quite a large part of my life actually.
but doesn't seem that long though. seems like all these 5 years just flew past.

and now it's march already - looking back jan and feb are just a blur and now time is running by faster than ever [why?!] and before I know it I'll be out of school.


so the feeling that I'm getting now is like when you're at the last chapter of a very long novel and there's only a few pages left and you know it's almost the end and you're trying to read as slowly as possible to make the novel / plot last just a little bit longer. but then as always it's never long enough.

or you're in a movie and most of the action is past and you know it's going to end but you don't want it to - but then it does.

blah. only 8 more months. can't quite believe it now - it feels kinda surreal that I've spent 5 years in RI already; that it's almost over and most of it's already behind me and there's so little time left.

and I'm almost 18 already.

plus I'm feeling more tired / worn-out [read: old] than I ever did - that I no longer have as much energy [?] as I used to a few years back, that now I can't do as much as I did back then. so it's like I'm having less drive / interest / willpower? to do things now. and also I'm not doing as much as I used to do. but at the same time feeling more exhausted than I ever did / used to be.

basically just weary.
and perhaps apathetic. but then apathetic doesn't quite capture the whole idea of things. bah. tired I guess. and worn-out.

and also perhaps this feeling that well the best times / years are already past and what's left is just [can't get the word here] - well you know what I mean. just the remnants / shreds of the past. or whatever.

and no rest for me until t2w3 earliest [i.e. after chemO selection test]. or after gc on 2nd april. or maybe in may after geopol's done [yeah that one's causing me undue stress as well cos really I doubt I'll get a distinction or whatever]. or maybe after prelims. or after my uni apps are done.

you get the idea.

feel kinda stretched; stretched thin.
and yet at the same time I'm not as overcommitted as I was in '09 or '10.
but not exactly burnt out.
yet.


and somehow I found 3 hours today to watch the two towers in the SFL.
and almost done reading return of the king [for the 3rd time already].
oops.

yeah so maybe I've brought the stress upon myself thanks to my wonderful prioritising / time management skills.


but yeah at the same time things are going by way too quickly - to use a very clichéd metaphor it feels like what's left of this year is like sand slipping out of your hands.

meh.

[oh and LOTR makes me rather emo and introspective so that kinda accounts for some of the writing in this post. lol.]

400!

today was a very good day.

shall leave it at that.

=D

399

oh man I'm falling sick during CHINESE new year.

blah.

3 days of the 5 day break gone. and I'm so getting used to waking up at 11am every day. damn.

and haven't gotten any work done as usual. nevermind at least I can blame that on my falling sick. [but then I've managed to finish fellowship in a day again ._.]

oops.

and once sunday's gone it's back to the monotony again. meh.

just more crowded though.

j1s year5s are irritating.

WARNING: largely incoherent paragraph after this - you're best advised to skip it ty.

blah 've been quite depressed these few days thinking about life after death school - can't believe that this'll be my last year in RI/RJ [and like I so miss RI life]. plus there's this huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over me - NS [argh] and uni / scholarship applications [meh] - no idea what to do about them / what I'm gonna do in uni / where to go to / what to do after uni. so these questions make things kinda stressful. plus you have things like CT1 / prelims which I'm quite certain of messing up [especially thanks to GP]. and why did I even take H3 geo in the first place. blah. and of course there's this general feeling of inadequacy / that I'm not good enough and that I'll screw things up [my essay-writing skills are crap really. as can be seen from this blog lol. and my transcripts/records aren't all that spectacular either]. and that I won't get into (insert university name here) and/or I'll mess things up after I get in / won't be able to compete and all that. so in a sense there's this fear that well I'm not as good as I used to be / as I'm supposed to be / as I thought I'd be / as what everyone else sees of me. well this is the real world I guess. time to get out of the system [and move on into another one ._.] so as always things will come to pass and we'll see how things go when we get there. but still that doesn't help the worrying for now.

meh.

398

yes I'm posting again. why exactly I'm not sure - guess I'm just bored lol.

anyway I managed 17 posts last year - hopefully I'll do better this time around ._. and the post count has been inching towards 400 the whole of last year. asymptotically.

school's the usual - things are going on as if we've never left lol. but thankfully none of that urgency about As as yet. but I'm kinda worried about CT1 [read: GP]. meh.

speaking of things that never change - just when we thought we could start slacking for chem [heck astee's pace for lecture is considered relaxing ok] - we get more spam. yay. and my organic is still as horrible as ever. meh.

but surprisingly enough I'm putting in more work this year - i.e. I actually do some tutorials [chem / math but not physics of course]. and I'm back to reading non-fiction - i.e. chem and geog [but they're awfully boring though]. but again that leaves me with no time to read the fiction I want to. [I have a whole list on my phone]. and I must finish watching the LOTR films argh.

yay for distractions.

h3s are another horrible thing. geopol is totally iffy and fluffy and not very geographical yet. but at least the content knowledge / subject matter is fun. but I don't have a very good feeling about the grade I'm gonna get ._. well at least I get to pon GP [or rather part of it]. but then it's causing me to miss bridge. and I wanted to play more bridge this year [and actually get it up to scratch for once]. oh well.

but anyway school life is getting boring. and repetitive. and it's gonna get crowded once the year5s get orientated and start flooding the canteen again. year5s are annoying. and noisy. and dumb. and take up too much space. ugh.

and I should have spent the past 2 hours doing work.
whatever.

old habits die hard.
XD

edit: oh and I realised I'm the only one in the class who still blogs.
meh.