426 / and if I never see you again

so it ended yesterday lol.

chem paper 1 didn't go very well. blah.
maybe cos I wasn't thinking much. or not reading questions properly. as usual.

but who cares everything's done!
doesn't quite feel like it though. maybe cos I've started slacking once GP / physical geog were over. lol.

yeah seriously spreading out papers over 4 weeks is quite irritating.

went for class dinner after chem. spent close to like 3hrs sitting in LJ and talking lol.

pity it was with the wrong class.

ahem.


anyway just realised when leaving school after chem / going home from dinner that well after yesterday and apart from one day in march next year it's very likely that there're going to be people whom I may never meet again for the rest of my life. what with NS and people heading off all over the world for uni - and since I really doubt there'll be a 2Q reunion (or for that matter a complete 4H reunion) to speak of in the future anyway. also there's no such thing as a S06 RA get-together right. lol. so odds are that well apart from the occasional fb status update here and there I won't really see some people anymore.

which is quite a scary thought.

but inevitable I guess.
but then one never really knows who you might bump into many many years down the road.

hopefully people still remember me though XD.


ok well now that As are over nothing much left to do I guess.
but wait.


seems like I keep spending my life waiting for things - application results, A level results, enlistment, ORD, uni - that just underwhelm when they actually do happen.

maybe I'm doing something wrong here. I don't know.

all this anticipation is really overrated.
and if you go read a few posts down about me talking about prelim results... well.

ahem.


ok I guess this is long enough and I'm running out of things to say anyway. blah.

so really all of you whom I've met in these 6 years in RI/RJ and who happen to chance upon this - well it's been nice knowing you. even if we don't see each other ever again (apart from march next year and then you never know since there are what 1200-odd people in the hall anyway so we might not even bump into each other then) hopefully you'll still remember me. lol.

but then again I think something we all fear is irrelevance - of being forgotten and cast aside / left behind - as the rest of the world goes on without us.
and the world's a pretty large place anyway. so how do we matter eh. thus I don't know if that kinda diminishes whatever I've said above. but I guess it's true I hope I've been able to at least leave people with something.

I don't know.

425

42 more hours.

really really really bored today. and yesterday. and the day before that.

so maybe that's why I'm blogging again.

spent the past few days reading very many articles off longform.org. which is actually a rather fun site. it's like a tumblr for feature articles and stuff. but rather US-centric though.

just that my eyes get tired after reading for very long. and it's rather irritating to scroll back 30-odd pages to get to the page where I last stopped.

no idea what to do now.
can really taste the freedom just waiting for me but then again I don't even know what I'm going to do with the next 3 months free.

really need to find something to do with my life.
lawrence suggests learning / taking up something. but knowing me I'll give up less than halfway in.

I'm too lazy already.

maybe I should get back to playing emerald on vba. but thing is the previous game that I started got wiped when my com died in october so don't really feel like starting all over again lol.

listening to dire straits on youtube again.
can't decide if that or journey's better lol.

speaking of being lazy I know I should stop using it as an excuse to not do things. and really put myself to doing actual work for once. but. I'm too lazy. XD

and I have this feeling being lazy is nature's way of levelling the playing field lor.

...
who am I kidding really.

oh just realised I haven't checked cracked.com today.


and I realised in like 2 days time I can't really tag all my posts as school anymore. XD

424

and it's over!

well almost. no more writing at least. lol.

and I can so taste the freedom ahead.
well fine actually I was so slacking ever since last week. oops.

like only started mugging for human geog at like what 5pm last night. lol. but whatever it's over! and hopefully I did myself justice on the paper.

wasn't quite satisfied with my answers though. but then again I hardly ever am. so whatever.

can't believe that like 11 papers are gone and there're just 2 left. wonder how I even made it through these 3 weeks lol.

and seriously the papers are way too spread out. but whatever.

no idea what I'm gonna do post-As though.
hm.

I feel sleepy.

423

no more math for the next 2 years!
8 more papers left.

math was kinda fun actually.
and somehow my paper 1 went a lot better than paper 2.
maybe cos I was kinda falling asleep while trying to do p2. and the questions were rather irritating so somehow felt like giving up halfway. which was weird.

so I ended up sketching the same graph 4 times cos I kept messing up the sketch. and then did integration 4 times as well since my algebra kept failing and I kept losing track of my - signs. so yeah took about 1h30 for pure math in paper 2 ._.
(well at least in the end I think I did get everything correct there. I hope.)

but messed up q12 due to misreading and not really thinking properly. maybe cos I so wanted the paper to end.

slacked the whole of yesterday. oops.
and I'm going for camp tomorrow. like before physics. oh dear.


ok time to memorise stupid definitions. and hope the paper's as easy as our prelims lol.

422

two more gone, ten left.

GP was a complete disaster.

didn't know what I was writing for my essay.

hopefully the bell curve saves me - but then seeing how AQ and summary were very straightforward I wonder what'll happen.

and interestingly the more math I do the worse I get.

blah. back to vectors.

421/the beginning of the end

one down; twelve more to go.

and I only started mugging yesterday!

but I realised my exam timetable is very nice I don't have any days with double papers (except GP of course).

maybe that's why I've been slacking so much.

but then again chem today wasn't half bad - and was actually rather fun.
like the tough / irritating questions were more than balanced out by the very very easy ones. lol.

so yeah maybe I shouldn't have worried so much.

now for GP tomorrow. and I think I'm falling sick. bleh. and I realised I haven't done any GP since august.

hopefully the questions are nice to me tomorrow.

everyone's telling me not to worry for GP, that I'll do fine etc. - maybe I will. and everyone was telling me to not worry for chem either XD
and I don't really feel like cramming trivia now. blah. and you can't really mug for GP I guess. just go in calm enough and things should work out fine.

yeah but the problem is going in with a calm mind / clear head. lol. especially since I think I'm falling sick. blah why does this keep happening with every major exam this year lol.

sigh most probably gonna sleep in 30 min or something.


but hmm chem marks really the beginning of the end of JC / school life in general. part of me still can't quite fathom that I've already gotten to this stage - that now everything's over and all that's left is this final final final stretch - that our education system's supposed to have led us to. (well of course it isn't the be all and end all of everything but it's still important ENOUGH. although less important than prelims imo lol). and even kevin sim has taken to scaring me about my A level grades since I've been slacking so much ._.

but really quite surprised that after all these 6 years in RI/RJ I'm finally here - at the end. and so not quite ready for what comes next.

oh dear.

but well one down 12 more to go.

420

hmm haven't posted in very long.
and I realise I've got nothing to do tonight / tomorrow / sunday / monday / tuesday / wednesday.

so maybe that's why I'm writing blogging now.

hmm so what happened - "farewell" assembly was exactly a week ago. real lessons ended what a week before that.

and before we know it we're hurtling towards As and NS and the other 3/4ths of our lives already. as astee pointed out in the last chem lecture.

and I'm still feeling totally unprepared / not ready to face up to these things.
and still can't quite believe that like my time in our education system is almost over.

time passes too quickly - can still remember my first day in RI. and in RJ. (can't quite remember most of the lessons in sec1 / j1 though). and really I still haven't wrapped my mind around the fact that it's been 6 years already.

doesn't quite seem/feel like it. and it still hasn't really sunk in yet.


oh well. enough of boring stuff already. and I suspect I'm becoming rather incoherent. which is why I'm so not a writer just a mere blogger.

and speaking of writing my admissions essays are proving to be rather disastrous.
somehow I can't seem to write those deep / insightful / multi-layered (?) essays that everyone else has been churning out. but then again it's not like I particularly enjoy reading them. especially since after the 10th one or so they all seem all too similar already. and I usually end up giving up after the 2nd paragraph or so when reading them. or I need to re-read the things twice or thrice since they all get pretty boring and very dense as things move along. but then again I'm not a very good writer and as ks puts it I have no literary skill whatsoever.

and I so agree since I only read plot-driven novels and nothing much else.
oops.

but yeah somehow I find myself rather unable to write anything vaguely resembling these things - perhaps I'm too obtuse / direct / whatever. I'm guessing the problem with me is that I tend to see things as they are and nothing much more (maybe that's why I could never get lit) - which is proving to be very irritating right now when I'm supposed to write essays with personal voice and whathaveyou. and I have no idea how to get this bloody thing across. thus I really wonder if I can get anything out by the 1st. of january next year.

or I might as well go NUS. or somewhere in the UK where they don't really care so much about your essays. blah. I'm too lazy already.

anyway apart from that nothing much else - school's incredibly boring nowadays. and my timetable has been extremely empty as well. mainly cos I can't be bothered to start on revision. and I've been skipping all the mock papers I've signed up for. oops.

but on the brighter side of things I've been eating a lot / going all over the place for lunch and sometimes dinner these few weeks. lol. and I've all but given up on clearing NAPFA anyway. and speaking of NS they still haven't given me a PES status yet even though my PES D only lasts until 4/10. and I went for the medical checkup on the 11th (and did you know MINDEF pays 300 bucks for every single scan they have us undergo thanks to the wonky ECG machine in CMPB) and wasted 3 hours or so. and they didn't find anything wrong (as expected). but thanks to government efficiency I'm guessing CMPB still doesn't know anything so if this keeps up I get to go in in march. and if I feel like clearing NAPFA next year I can enter in may. lol.

but also on the 11th I think I went to yishun for the first time in my life. didn't quite like the place though. but the weather was nice.

anyway I should really start mugging soon. but then again there's always the power of the bell curve plus there are no numbers on your result slip for As anyway. or notice board outside the SAC.

lol.

ok I think this post is of a sufficient enough length.
and I'm getting bored of writing typing as well. hm.

419

I'm dying of boredom here.

maybe that's why I'm posting. lol.

tuesday - woke up at 11am. then went to NUS for a boring talk. blah.

wednesday - went to school! for what I also dunno. so slacked in the library for quite a bit. then got summoned by KS ._. but was quite interesting listening to him interrogate gxz again.

thursday - woke up at 11am yet again. stayed home and did nothing the whole day.

friday - went to school again for no reason. so loitered around and got laughed at by mr lu who insinuated that I messed up geog or something. blah. then went to plan november camp so at least thankfully most of the acts are up by now.

today - woke up at 11am again ._.

ate breakfast and then had lunch 2 hours later. and now I'm wondering what to do again (maybe that's why I'm blogging now).


and given what happened on friday I so don't want to go to school on monday / don't want next week to start. blah.
hence it's quite ironic that I'm dying of boredom right now.

oh yay it looks like it's going to rain.


hmm what else - now I wonder what I should be doing right now.

I guess I could continue with emerald. hmm. but played it once through already last year so now things are getting a bit boring.

ah yes there's always cracked.com

418

lessons learnt from chem p1 today:

1. read question carefully.
2. don't be lazy and eyepower the options
3. read question very carefully.
4. never ever underestimate my stupidity.
5. if you spot a trick and tell yourself to watch out for it most likely you'll still get tricked anyway ._.

basically somehow I managed to misread q38 (which of the following reaction schemes will give the following ester) as which of these reactions will give AN ester. and somehow I didn't even see the desired ester below and only managed to see the options. hmm.

then another question arranging from most to least basic (i.e. they asked for decreasing Kb) I ordered them by least to most basic and then forgot to reverse the order. blah.

also screwed an electrochem question by just assuming stuff and being lazy to do calculations and check the other options.

and got tricked by NaBH4 and ketones again (that question I have no idea what I was doing. oh dear.)

but whatever prelims are finally over. so like one month of freedom for now. yay.

just that I have the whole week off school and I have no idea what I'm going to do. so I'm just lying around at home reading stuff now. and I'm bored already even though chem ended at 915 and I got home at 12-ish.

sigh.

and papers coming back next monday. oh dear.
got a bad feeling for phys geog GP again.

zzz.

ok we'll see how things go.

now what to do for the next 8 hours before I sleep ._.

417

hmm I'm posting again!

although I don't quite know what I'm going to write about. just bored and with nothing to do I guess.

and it's a bit too early to be sleeping.
and I so don't feel like mugging for physics MCQ.

anyway I messed up papers 2 and 3 so no point aiming for dean's anyway so who cares. should be a safe enough A either way.

hmm chem p2 was rather fun. just that I messed up my alpha helix again. blah.
pharm chem was ow. ran out of time cos I wasted too much time reading / picking questions. so missed one mechanism and 1 NMR elucidation. but the paper was kinda fun (especially wty's question which just looked scary but was actually quite doable. unlike some others which looked horrible and were also icky). so I skipped the bio / essay question on drugs which was actually the one that would take the least time (ironically enough) so didn't manage to finish at the end.

and I had a lot of fun sorting through my scripts since they were all in a mess and I didn't number the questions very properly so I held everyone up and eventually astee just gave up and skipped me. oops.


anyways have been spending the past 2 days in the library reading! so finished the first 4 books of the h2g2 trilogy. and spent a lot of time loitering around school as well. it's so funny to see all the j2s being replaced by yr5s mugging. and they're so much more hardworking than us ._. like the library was damn crowded today even though promos for them are like still relatively far away.

ok whatever.

bored.

sec3s are damn irritating still and keep ignoring me / whatever I tell them.
meh.

but whatever I'll be gone very very very soon. it's been a long 2 years already.
tired.

416

yeah I'm finally updating.

don't know why though. maybe cos I'm really bored.
also since all the major papers are over already.

can't believe I actually got through the last 2 weeks heh.
mugging / cramming 2 years' worth of work (I can't believe how much math I forgot already ._.) + random visits to kevin sim during the hols (it's fun listening to people talk lol) + POC prep and everything.

and then this week's papers were also rather crappy - physics dropped 12 marks (in a 72 mark paper) due to stupidity and stuff. then chem -7 for forgetting that H2/Ni and NaBH4 can whack carbonyls. and -3 for stupidity. and -2 for unit conversion errors again. blah.

then human geog picked both essays wrongly so kinda ran out of things to write again.
math I was ok (thankfully). just that I didn't bother with the shangyi question.

then friday - 6 hours in ISH. math II was fun! and geog I don't think I did myself justice on the DRQs since I forgot most of my key words. but then I realised I'm very bad at memorising things so whatever. and my essays weren't very long either. so I had 10 min left at the end of the paper (and for geog every minute counts). So I asked for a world map! yay. cheng was so shocked / confused when I did. hmm.

also my pencilbox is too messy already. should clear some things out of it.

blah so not expecting much from prelims. last year's results were anomalous really. so yeah everything should be easy As but percentile-wise - not expecting much. and there's always GP. blah.


anyway then after everything on friday it was POC.
2nd one that I actually attended (I skipped most of my own ceremony in '09 since it clashed with german prelims).

can't believe that 2 years have passed so quickly already.
and I don't know I'm not one who says much or says things very well so I don't think I'll be able to encapsulate everything I'm feeling right now / yesterday in words.
yeah but essentially thanks guys for everything you've done and I'm glad everything went well.

(as in everything these 2 years; the ceremony yesterday was fail. blah. should have stepped in sooner / more)


so I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that another batch has gone / taken over and that 2 years have passed already. also that in a sense not only is 59 leaving but I am as well - so really it was also somewhat my own POC all over again. so like all these hours I've put in over these 2 years - all the late nights, the meetings on weekends, the wasted opportunities elsewhere, all the emailing when I should have been doing work / mugging - it's all over now.

and I don't know what to say about it. (to paraphrase TPL)

not sure whether I'm relieved / content / happy / sad / just tired / all of these and some more. don't know if all this was worth it in the end. or whether it even meant anything at all. or maybe I still haven't gotten past the realisation that everything's over / ending already. including my life in RI / RJ.

maybe that's why I didn't say much yesterday.

ah well it'll hit eventually.
but right now I'm just in some sort of limbo - tying up loose ends / getting things ready for next year - when I won't even be there since I'll most likely be stuck in tekong from december on - and just going through life not knowing what will happen after As.

so ultimately what does everything this 6 years add up to - I don't know.

415

yay new comp!

and I realised I haven't posted in a while.
damn lazy argh.

maybe also cos I've been very distracted by the elections and whatnot. lol.
I shall not post political commentary here. cos seriously there's no point and I'm way too tired.

neither shall I attempt to pick up from where I left off in the previous post cos really I can't remember. oops. and it's been so long anyway.

plus it's also so bloody hot now that I don't feel like doing anything at all.
must be the weather telling us to REPENT.

grah.
ok so basically in that post-chemO period mainly just went about my normal life - getting home early and slacking. managed to finish quite a few books along the way. bill bryson is good. but I realised I can't do lit lit and instead go for more of things with an interesting plot.

yeah I'm shallow.

however just as I thought I'd be able to slack I get called for IChO interview - which was seriously a waste of time - they were asking questions like why do you like chemistry / how did you come to like chemistry and stuff ._. - but at least it allowed me to miss cheng! and now I find out I'm going to turkey.

which means no more slacking. and mr lee seems all out to kill me with all the work he's giving to us.

crap.


so yeah I was supposed to be reading a few chapters of keeler and wothers tonight but yeah it was too hot and I spent about half an hour playing with the lights on my comp (yeah it has a lot of LEDs) so I just gave up.

this is a very very bad start to things. argh.

I need some form of motivation lol.

and I realised a whole bunch of my commitments will end up clashing in the end part of term 2 / early june.

oh no. and it's too late to pull out of most of them.
ok nevermind something will work out somehow. lol.

ok time to go sleep.

414

blah must not let this blog die.

and I should stop procrastinating whenever I feel like posting something. so there.
k let's see what's been going on - wednesday was an extremely boring day. but at least we're done with vectors I. problem is vectors II doesn't look like it'll be going any faster.

so weds was a very empty and rather boring day. I finally went for oneearth for the second time in the year though. they were electing! so bessie and I helped ask very fun questions. then we crashed the vote counting and there was quite a bit of drama. how fun.

oh and dell finally released the m11x r3. like one day after my previous post. now to get my mum to buy it for me XD.

ok that aside hmm wednesday was boring. thursday became friday. but cheng and ms poh both weren't in school so it wasn't that bad lol. plus there was no H3 so I ended at 220. yay.

but on thursday itself - mock spa was irritating. cos my NaOH bottle was leaking. so every time I tried to add some into the test-tubes it kept spilling over my hands and the test-tube rack and the table and all that. and the thing with NaOH is that it refuses to wash off your hands. and you can't quite wipe it off stuff either cos it just remains soapy and all that. plus if you have NaOH all over the place it ends up messing with your red litmus. so things got very irritating. thus ended up adding dil HNO3 / HCl (cos I was running out of HNO3) all over the place to get stuff off instead. which actually worked much better. and actually the dilute acids in the lab when you touch them they don't feel like anything. unlike the bases.

so by then it wasted quite a bit of time. then with the nitrogen compounds part of the experiment - basically you have a mess of solutions containing NH4+ / NO2- and NO3- and you have to identify which ones have which - everything involved heating the solutions. so the first solution I heated had NH4+ in it. so there was a LOT of NH3 evolved. which ended up turning all my red litmus papers (that I'd prepared and left on the bench as per wty's advice) blue ._. zzz.

by then I was so irritated that I couldn't bother driving off all the NH4+ in that tube so that I could test for nitrate so I just threw in Al foil inside and smelled it again.

lol.

for the next two test-tubes I heated both too much. so the NaOH + random solution mixture ended up spurting all over my hands. twice. so first one I put the test-tube down and went to wash my hands and whatnot. but after the second time I just couldn't be bothered and let it linger. cos really 100°C isn't all THAT hot. plus it was less than 1cm³ of solution anyway. and I had a pract to complete (by then I was really behind schedule - even kewei was ahead of me already). and really the more irritating bit is just the NaOH making everything feel soapy again. and thus messing with my red litmus papers. I think I used at least 25 pieces of those things during the mock SPA. so eventually I just gave up on testing for NH3 and used my nose instead.

it seems that I have some affinity for NaOH. or vice versa. but hey NaOH was still better than that NaBH4 disaster during the chemO pract. cos got quite a bit of anhydrous NaBH4 onto my skin during the pract without realising it. then after a while it started eating into the skin and whatnot. like it was actually stuck on my hands. ow.

also for this SPA they labelled the solutions FA0 1 2 and 3. so my FA1 test-tube was the one that spurted out and lost most of its contents thus I had to redo the test. but I was thinking of it as the SECOND test-tube thus I went to do everything with FA2 instead. which again messed me up quite abit. and resulted in me redoing everything and realising my mistake. oops.

then the organic QA since I was really rushing I just did what wty told us to do and identified by smell. then just a few confirmatory tests for the fun of it - Mg powder to the acid and 2,4-DNPH to the alcohol (in case my nose was failing me and it was actually a ketone - which it wasn't). then of course had to do iodoform test for the ketone / aldehyde / alcohol to get the structures (and I HOPE I didn't write triiodoform during the pract - which I have a strange feeling I did). so to expedite the iodoform test for the alcohol I stuck the test-tube in the flame for a bit (couldn't be bothered with the boiling water bath). which did expedite things a lot.

inorganic QA was rather fun and doable. just that sometimes you have to imagine a white ppt with Ca(OH)2. thus at the end of the whole thing since I rushed too much I discovered I had 10 minutes to spare. which basically entailed checking that everything I'd written was (largely) legible.

so after mock spa and all the washing up wty wanted to debrief us straightaway (i.e. scold people like pig who tried to cool a very hot test tube (after heating it and all that) by placing it in hot water. obviously it cracked ._.) thus when he finished his debrief the bell rang and we all hadn't cleaned up yet. so everyone was late for math and thus shangyi got rather irritated.

hmm so after friday ended I had nothing to do. so at about 230 went to the library and spent an hour and a half talking to random people inside (jem / yatyg / linsen / chew / wilbert / yap / chentian / stacey / guo). then at about 4 met the j1 mathRAs and decided to crash mathsoc interviews. lol. so ended up running errands (in mengshi's words) for them. which basically involved looking after the mathsoc j1s who were waiting outside for their interview. and of course "looking after" = playing cards. which we did until about 6+. then stayed back to talk to people and say hi to those who were going for the piano concert. then stalked shangyi with kang for a bit. then went home at 730. thus I wasted about 5 hours in school on thursday.

(not like I'd anything to do but still.)

yeah and my H3 finals are this monday! so I probably ought to start mugging.

hmm on friday I woke up at 1pm. then spent the day on the com reading random websites as usual. so didn't do much.
today I woke up at 1130. which was an improvement over yesterday. but spent most of today up to now watching stuff on youtube. and eating lunch.

now I'd probably go mug. bleh. but I'm pretty screwed for geopol anyway.
argh whatever.