Sense of achievement

Finished up more work in the college study corner. Found it more productive - there's a lot more indirect motivation from the other people around the college study because everyone's practically studying and doing nothing else. Except for a few oddballs like me, blogging in the college study, haha!

The biggest obstacle, I think, is the idea of studying at home. At home, you can sleep as long as you want, and I'd grab the best possible opportunity to sleep rather than do something productive like studying for Biology and Chemistry, and the like. Oh, and there's PW too, so I shall keep this post short. 

Simplified - I finished a bit more Chemistry than I thought I'd be able to finish. Biology is boring once you already know what's going on in the lecture notes, and there's like hardly any more extra practice questions. As for Mathematics, I'm not gonna do anything about it today. Maybe tomorrow?

Studying like there's no tomorrow

I'm getting used to this lifestyle, I hope.

Get up in the wee hours of the morning, and you find an Eiffel Tower of Notes & Homework standing on your table. The next thing you know it, coffee stains appear on your homework that you did last night with much effort. Sometimes Soyjoy's advertising serves as comic relief, in times of such high-stress levels from studying for the Mid Year Exams, that likely will put Mas Selamat's meticulous but futile efforts to escape from re-capture to immediate shame.

Along with a disappearing donation card that is likely to cost me $200, you feel the pain in your wallet. No more eating at Good News Cafe - I'm broke, "Pok Gai*"! Sometimes even I feel a bit ashamed about this, but why is it that I look for the Lord only when I'm down and out on every side of life? Sharing the painful moments with Him, but keeping only the joy of the good ones to myself instead? What is this, a relationship with the true God of the universe that goes only one-sided?

Perhaps it's really high time I've spent time reflecting on this.

*Pok Gai = bankrupt.

Taking a day off from school due to sickening virus

The title explains it - I've got an official MC. This means terrible news for me. 

Missing lectures in JC ain't a good thing, especially when it's your worst subject ever. And when you take your medicine and feel groggy and drugged, it's worse news - you can't do your homework at all! All I did was sleep, sleep and sleep even when I'm fully mentally awake. And check this out - tomorrow's going to be a super-long day, so taking medicine in school means waking up early in the morning when your body's still barely recovering from the side-effects of flu medicine. Trust me, you wouldn't even want to eat anything because of the stupid cough that just won't go away.

As perfectly put as Kenny's catchphrase, "Whalau, madness!" These few weeks were definitely madness. I mean, look at the workload that we have here - stringent PI grilling and editing, grilling and editing. Last week was worse - I stayed back both on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday until as late as 9pm in school, just to make sure that my PI is done properly. You know the stuff - original ideas, strategies on how to solve similar situations happening in Singapore... you get the drill. 

As for some friendship matters - it's better left unsaid. If you guys insist on knowing what happened, let's just say that misunderstandings can be fatal, unless resolved early. And of course, it just goes to show that some people can't be trusted to keep secrets...?

My father and I - quite an uncomfortable topic, but...

Just began to recall a conversation with Wan Teng, Kenny and I on our way out of the school gate. I forgot what we were talking about, but it somehow strayed into me talking about my father. Definitely not a person I'm comfortable talking about...

As we talked, maybe I seemed a lot like a materialistic jerk or something, but the fact that my father doesn't bring money home from work should be able to tell us something - he isn't putting any effort into the family at all. Surely any taxi driver should be able to contribute something to the family, but no. I haven't been receiving pocket money from him since like a couple of months ago. Surviving on just $10 a week is almost impossible nowadays - and apparently he doesn't realise that. Any more money off from him is like asking for a miracle to happen.

Living in an area next to the marketplace isn't simple either. And my neighbour's father is also a taxi driver. However, his son still gets enough to get by - around $20-30 a week, the last time I heard. Life sure is unfair sometimes, so you've gotta grit your teeth through whatever you do...

My own pocket money aside, the last time I heard, my mom only gets $20 a day off from him, and that's just for family expenses. Without my mom having to work, I think we'll starve.

Assuming that he only gets enough from his rounds to pay off the taxi rent due to some "rubbish-ed" reason, he should be changing jobs already, but every once in a while I see him with a new handphone or some other weird gadget, so he should be quite well off. In fact, I did see what he'd pull out - a stack of cash, and he says it's for the taxi rent so we cannot touch it. Nice excuse, torn down hard when I saw him take out money out of the same stack for Mom's allowance.

In fact, I once contemplated taking some out of that stack that appears every now and then just to supplement my allowance, but then that'd be stealing from my own family. I don't want this kind of money. I want legitimate cash. I just want enough to get by in school. Fortunately, my grandparents decided quite some time ago to offer to give me pocket money every now and then, so I can get by, with some extra money for emergencies.

Money aside, I don't even see him much of the time. Only when I go home on Sundays after church service do I see him, and even then it's just for a few hours and he's back to running his rounds. I hardly have time to talk to him. Making matters worse, because my entire family is non-Christian and he being strongly anti-Christian, we hardly ever talk anymore ever since I first attended church.

Not too long ago, he chased out our long-time tenant whose rental made life easier for family expenses while he was still with us. Add all of this on to the fact that my father has a history of owing my grandparents, uncles and aunts a large sum of money used to clear his gambling debts. He's real lucky my mom still stuck to him after all these years. Needless to say I don't like my own father, but what can I do? He's still my father.

I used to hear one of my uncles who's very close to my father say this about him: "This piece of cow dung, you can do without, seriously. The real victim is the rose stuck to it. That's why you're here - to support your mom when you have the ability to."

And so, that's what I'm doing. Or at least, that's what I think I'm going to do.

Mid Year Exam Blues

"Ah, never a dull moment..." Ms Koh was saying during Econs lecture last Tuesday...

Yeah, right.

How the hell do you stop studying for a while to take a breather before going on for more? Cramming isn't working. Neither is there enough time for a full concentrated revision period before the Mid Year Exams come. Add in Logistics work, a PI report fully annotated with red ink, and a good D in the last Chemistry test ruining a straight A record, and you get low morale. Thus the irony.

...Great. Another piece of homework undone yet. I shall update soon.

Get a life, Aaron!

It isn't pleasant at all. I wish there was ample time for everything. But things, being things, have to get done anyways, so no point complaining. Or, maybe you can complain as much as you like, provided things get done.

It's all coming at one fell swoop again: Biology Test on Monday, Economics Essay test right on the day after, and on Wednesday I have to go for Logistics training for this coming Friday's Performing Arts Nite, in which Mustaqim and I are going to play Radical Dreamers: Unstolen Jewel for pre-programme entertainment. In other words, care-lair-fare playing that isn't part of the whole item after all...

Ah well... This coming week IS going to be super-stressful, so don't be surprised when you guys see me cursing and swearing in school! Add the cough that just doesn't go away despite heavy doses of medicine, and you get an irate student who wants to already give up hope on this semester's overall academic performance. Of course, couple that with a few personal problems and feelings of confusion over who's what and who's who in my heart, and grr. You'd think it'd be a miracle if just about anyone could've just survived that.

The College Migraine, mixed feelings and tough nuts

Needless to say, losing hours of sleep to Project Work, homework and tests means that most of us in college are starting to feel its detrimental effects. People in my left, right and centre are all getting ill. First, Juan previously recovered from the flu, then Reymond lost his voice and had frequent nose bleeds due to overblowing his nose. Dominic had a sore throat. Julia had a splitting headache. Add all these together, add in a bit of honey drink and you get a complete cough with flu combo, plus additional phlegm that shouldn't be there in the first place. Add in another 4km run, with 1.6km interval training. If these don't kill me then nothing else will. I guess.

In short, I fell sick.

"Give me homework and I'll do it." Yeah, right. Who am I gonna lie to with this statement? Look at the amount of homework on my plate, and you'd wonder why people call Mount Everest the tallest mountain in the world.

I ain't Superman. I ain't a homework-completing machine. I need a good week's rest. I don't want medicine - I want to stay healthy and alert. I don't want to produce sarcasm without knowing it. I want to joke - I want to entertain my friends. I don't want this amount of stress all at one go. I want to be myself again.

These days I don't really have common topics to share with my classmates - I reckon the stress has hit me too much that I think I don't even know how to relax by relaxing. Somebody help!

Angsts of Agony

Shit, it's just plain crazy.

The lack of sleep has just been spilled over from last week, and fatigue rears its ugly head. In fact, I'm struggling to just finish this entry, just to maintain it.

For one, Mustaqim, Derek and I were stuck in SRJC-GE Camp '09, which was supposed to be a bonding camp for all of us Guitar members. It did its job well, yes, and we've exchanged our contacts with many others.

No time for juicy details because of school work, so here I have it: yet another sum-up of what has been going on.

1. I was sabotaged - I got put into the Cool Chikus group(the name sounds goofy) and I was the only boy, again, in the group.
2. I was used as the guinea pig for the cross-dressing station game - people might think I am a transvestite from Thailand after looking at the photos which were taken and uncalled for.
3. Mr Koh told us of the LT5 ghost and the mysterious lights in the 4th floor, A-block of the college. Now that's what I call nice juicy details.
4. Went to bed at 3-plus am. The "bed" wasn't a bed after all - I slept on the tables, then the chair and on the floor, due to extreme discomfort and lack of space leading me to shift around the classroom "bunk"
5. Planned for entertainment item in the afternoon.

How nice of them, buying us January to April birthday people one big cookies'n'creme cake to celebrate for us, despite us barely joining the ensemble for more than 2 months.

And if that wasn't enough, there was Project Work: Preliminary Idea to hand in as the first draft by this coming Friday. Mistaking the deadline as Monday, I slept at 2am on Sunday to finish up the remnants of my homework and crap. By the next morning, I couldn't get up on time, so I had to take a taxi to avoid smearing a good school record by being marked as late for assembly yesterday.

With all the homework done in advance, it bought me ample time to study for today's Mathematics lecture test, and I'm good to go. Yawn. At least the agony is gone for a while...

Homework heartburn

Sometimes, we are forced to bite off more than we can chew, and this leads to indigestion, both literally and metaphorically...

March holidays wasn't holiday at all - we had to go back for two days to attend make-up lectures! As if that wasn't enough, the General Paper homework was enough to make anyone stand on the pile of homework and notebook file stacked together, and curse and swear for the next 24 hours without realising that noise doesn't get you anywhere near finishing what is expected of us in a 4H2 class. After all, in Serangoon JC almost everyone takes 3H2 combinations and we're considered the elite of the school simply because we chose this arduous path that sometimes makes me regret in complaint.

I question myself - Why the hell am I doing this? There's like, no time to leave to myself and doing leisure stuff? Where have all my lame jokes gone? What is becoming of me - turning back into nerd-school style? Why am I even here in a JC?

The answer is obvious - to get that stupid piece of weighted and laminated paper that declares that you are eligible for studying medicine at university level. But enough of this - academic stuff makes a life blog boring to the core, so I'll just skip to the juicy stuff of what has been going on in school lately.

Firstly, Rong Kai has left us, leaving us with 19 people in class 09-1S02, in order to pursue what he thinks he clearly wants, and taking up a Business Management course of some sort. Being a broker ain't really that bad a career choice either, so all the best to his future endeavours!

...and damn, I lost a good buddy just like that.

And there's a few of our classmates who went ahead and presented their speeches to win votes for positions in the Student Council Exco(Executive Committee), of which Julia's is certainly one that I, for one, really take my hat off too. After hearing her speech, I was expecting her to end with cliched expressions when here she shot off "I wish the other Exco elects good luck and all the best in winning votes..." Magnamity - maybe that's what most of us would forget after learning it. Still, it's one thing to learn off a classmate...

The Project Work question paper just got released today, and like the rest of the college, we were completely clueless as to what question to choose, mainly because they are so generic that we have trouble deciding what to put as the project focus! Hopefully we get over this momentary shock fast, so that we might be able to move closer to our As in PW.

And kudos to Reymond, for passing me my lost file, which his friend Alfred(apologies for spelling error) had stumbled upon during Podium CCA time, and helping me retrieve all the important documents inside it. Thanks again!

Who would you prefer to sit with during a daylong bus ride? A talkative person with a irritating voice, or a quiet person who keeps staring at you?

The irritating talker, of course!

One more friend(or enemy-though I'd prefer the former) beats having silent and possibly dangerous suspense all the time.

At least, there's someone to talk to. Given my nosy nature it's easy for me to find out the latest gossip off the irritating talker, and have a good laugh at his idiocy of talking nonsense all the time and not realising that nobody is actually paying any attention to him. Who knows, though the voice can be irritating, but at least I get to know a new acquaintance, and maybe be friends along the way. After all, it's better to have one more friend than having a extra enemy, right?

As for getting someone who keeps staring at me and is very quiet, sometimes it gives me the spooks. If that quiet fella turns out to be a homosexual, I'm in trouble.

Self-discovery

Just thought I'd take a little quiz out of boredom, so I went to this website.
http://www.quizbox.com/personality/test82.aspx
How accurate this is, to me! Here are the results, for curious folks out there:

Your view on yourself:
You are down-to-earth and people like you because you are so straightforward. You are an efficient problem solver because you will listen to both sides of an argument before making a decision that usually appeals to both parties.
The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for:
You like serious, smart and determined people. You don't judge a book by its cover, so good-looking people aren't necessarily your style. This makes you an attractive person in many people's eyes.
Your readiness to commit to a relationship:
You are ready to commit as soon as you meet the right person. And you believe you will pretty much know as soon as you might that person.
The seriousness of your love:
You are very serious about relationships and aren't interested in wasting time with people you don't really like. If you meet the right person, you will fall deeply and beautifully in love.
Your views on education
Education is less important than the real world out there, away from the classroom. Deep inside you want to start working, earning money and living on your own.
The right job for you:
You're a practical person and will choose a secure job with a steady income. Knowing what you like to do is important. Find a regular job doing just that and you'll be set for life.
How do you view success:
You are afraid of failure and scared to have a go at the career you would like to have in case you don't succeed. Don't give up when you haven't yet even started! Be courageous.
What are you most afraid of:
You are concerned about your image and the way others see you. This means that you try very hard to be accepted by other people. It's time for you to believe in who you are, not what you wear.
Who is your true self:
You are full of energy and confidence. You are unpredictable, with moods changing as quickly as an ocean. You might occasionally be calm and still, but never for long.

Pricey Items and Economics Galore

Just a sum-up of what's been going on recently in school. Firstly there was just too many things to do at one go, mainly because you don't get much sleep at all during the weekdays. Lectures and tutorials went on as per normal, only that there has been quite a few events happening around me during the past 2 weeks.

1. We witnessed Tricia throwing Dominic's wallet down 3(or maybe 4) whole storeys
2. Reymond was called "laughing gas" by Huijuan - I totally agree without reservations, because his laughter is REALLY contagious.
3. I drove Reymond and Huijuan crazy laughing at me whilst trying to drive a point of Chemistry concept into their minds in a truly Singlish way.
4. Some goondu 'makeshift couple' disrupted the entire Chemistry lecture because the lecturer had to tell them off in front of the whole hall just because of removing one of the victims' shoe and playing a fool. Tough luck, suckers!
5. I'm feeling the weird vibes of studying a super thick Biology textbook that cost me $64 and is gonna last me 2 whole years. Talk about investment in studies...
6. Derek wore the wrong colour uniform pants - he mixed Anglican High's up with Serangoon JC's and ended up being the only oddball wearing white pants and college polo to school! Talk about loyalty to one's secondary school... Haha!
7. Managed to get on Isobel's nerves for once with lame jokes ^^, during CCA time.

That being said, this week is going to be really fast AND draggy, mainly because there's going to be an Economics test coming right up this Thursday, and school is so boring now that the stress is hitting everybody hard. Someone come and brighten my day, please!

Rice, veg and good home cooked food

Just one month in SRJC and I'm already feeling the pinch both wallet-wise and physically. My brain's still working well, thanks to many late night overdrives during the 'O' level period, so in a sense I'm quite used to sleeping late and waking up early and still mentally fit, apart from my usual dose of caffeine and utter lameness in the classroom.

In fact, I'm actually blogging from school, in the middle of a heavy downpour. The food here is really expensive at the cafes, so like I mentioned earlier, my wallet is being hit hard. Apart from that, you could say I had tough luck. After studying at the study just now, the rain came and because I forgot to pack my umbrella and windbreaker, I'm stuck here, until the rain stops.

Well, I guess it's another day gone, spent in SRJC in its completeness. Shit happens all the time, so I've learned to take things easy... That said, I don't blame ya for not turning up at the study anyway. :)

Lord have mercy

It's tough, and it's hitting hard on all of us JC students.

First of all, they changed the timetable so that we could go home at 4.30pm every Monday. That's a good thing, because we need our much-needed rest. Now if you would just imagine yourself sleeping at one-plus every night, and waking up at 5am every morning to prepare going to school, and only just reaching the house door at around 8 at night, and doing homework until one-plus. The cycle is going on and on and on, and this week's gonna be the most stressful week ever.

Thank God I have people like Hui Juan, Tricia and Daniel to bring in some comic relief during this stressful "period"(no pun intended, it's an inside joke) where I had to stay up real late at night just to practice for SYF 2009. Severe lack of sleep, of course, is detrimental to homework as well, because today I can't really find enough reason to do homework when in fact, I have piles of homework waiting for me to do. Adding on to this is the Meet-the-Parents session with the CT tutors and a dialogue session with the school principal which ended at around 8 to 9 pm, and to make things worse, we SYF candidates were to report to school at 8am for ensemble playing and a trial to complete, one that would have us play all 3 pieces of SYF songs by today, and the score was given only like, 2 to 3 days ago...?

Needless to say, I flunked this trial, so I'll not be going for SYF. At least I know that I'm spared from all these last-minute training after failing this test, haha. More free time to devote to homework, I guess...

First week of formal lesson

JC life has taken quite a toll on my overall energy use.

Simply put, I'm just tired due to lack of sleep and after 3 months of non-study time... Still, JC is fun during all the free periods and travelling to different venues for classes. For once, I'm really feeling the weird vibes of studying that I've never had before. For once I'm being psycho-ed into studying and am beginning to enjoy it.


Take for instance, the Economics teacher was the centre of the joke, but it has got nothing to do with her profession, by the way. "Kari-parfsssssssss" is how she pronounces "curry puffs" when talking fast, and apparently it stirred up an laughing uproar among ourselves in 1S02. Ticklish to Hui Juan, I guess, from the way she was both laughing whenever someone said it, and begging us not to mention about it...

Still... that was only the first day. The subsequent days are becoming more crazy as we got to know each other better day by day - we have Tricia putting the lecture notes and study materials at the bench for orderly distribution and collecting the costs for the rest of the class, which earned her the right to being the class treasurer and the reputation of being "Bookshop Auntie Tricia." In short, everyone had something funny to say about each other and I, unfortunately, got my own reputation as being the lamest fella in 09-1S02.

Things are getting more fun in JC, but the responsibilities are getting heavier, definitely. With more freedom comes more responsibility, so I'll just have to strike a balance between having fun and doing what the important stuff requires of me then...

Geek lifestyle

Right... this is what I've been up to these few days. After the games orientation ended, we started all proper lectures and study times as stated on the timetable that we were allocated today. We should've expected this long before we came into a JC anyway - school hours in JC are lasting as long as forever, and today the day ended at 5.30pm, and this was just one of the earliest days listed on the timetable.

In any case we started the ball rolling today with Bio lesson in the lab, in which I was feeling quite tense due to the sheer small size of our class - only 7 of us taking Biology in 1S02. Perfect, now I stand a higher chance of getting sabo-ed to do stuff for the teacher during Bio lessons. For some reason or another, Yong Cheng sabo-ed himself by picking a random card, and whoever the card belongs to will be the Bio rep, and it just happened to be his. Tough luck buddy!

Right after an early release by kind Mr Chen from Bio lesson, Reymond and I got changed and went to the canteen to meet up with the rest of the Bio girls, when Hui Juan handed me a dud phone, asking me for my number. "Eh, didn't you send that Valentine's Day well-wish message to me just last Saturday?" I was getting suspicious already until she lied that she got a new phone, and I fell for it. "Eh! No screen!" and she started laughing already.

Right... So I learnt that I am gullible to stuff like that, huh.

Anyways to sum things up due to lack of blogging time, we had PE, and was made to run 3 rounds around the stadium before taking height and weight. Chem lecture was heaven because there was air-con right after resting our hot and sweaty bodies. After that was lunchtime and we made fun of Tricia as the bookshop auntie because she took charge of the money and materials collection. After that was GP and Economics. During Economics tutorial I couldn't understand the part of macroeconomics and microeconomics that differentiated each other, and the teacher was blabbering away crap about curry-puff and Old Chang Kee. I just hope I can survive her tutorials, I guess...

And oh, Derek lost his Maths notes and homework, so I guess he's in for some tough shit tomorrow during Maths, both tutorial and lecture. Still, I'll lend a hand somehow, yea?

Many days of coffee from now on...

SRJC is great, despite its high cut-off point. For one, the people are friendly and warm, especially my civics group. And I mean WARM, literally. After only one week of gathering as a class, we have Linus giving flowers for all the 6 girls for Valentine's Day, Mustaqim cracking jokes that shook the floor, Raymond being misinterpreted as a gay, and the forming of a ''bisexual club'', which only served as comic relief and never really bisexual, and many other stuff going on.

Interesting shit's always going on in JC life, that's what I learned during my first two weeks down here, and the cheering during the games orientation was powerful, literally causing me to make another trip to the clinic today, due to sore throat and dry cough. No more cheering competitions for me!

Again, the people down here are really nice - I received 2 Valentine's Day SMSes yesterday from my new classmates already!

Still, JC is going to be difficult and arduous, I know it. For one, just look at the timetable they gave us. Days end at around 6-plus in the evening, and that excludes extra CCA time. Coffee everyday again to get more hours without falling asleep, I guess.

SRJC Days 6 and 7

To sum it up - tiring.

For one, on Monday I got up at 5am to get ready to school, and the activities of the Amazing Race item the OGLs put up for us were energy-sapping for people who don't really travel on foot much. It was high time for us to burn up some Chinese New Year fat, eh?

To start it off, we found out which classes we were to report in, based on our subject combinations that we were posted into. There, we quickly started getting to know each other's names, and to be honest, I'm still having some trouble getting to know some of their names for now. But, with a class of 19 people, it shouldn't be too hard - half the size of my secondary school, for crying out loud!

Bonding was fast and furious - we got to know each other, our secondary school backgrounds, activities, and the thing that made mingling with each other much easier was through the activities that we did together as a class during these two days, no doubt. In short, there was a common topic that all of us could talk about, make fun out of, and bond as a class.

Of course there'd be more college stuff and mumbo-jumbo coming soon, but I can't predict the future, that's for sure...

SRJC Day 5

To sum it up, there wasn't anything eventful after Thursday, except for the 7am bus ride to school on bus 81. Usually I would wake up at 5am, get out of the house at 5.30, and get onboard the bus by 6, and from there it would take like 45 minutes to reach school. But there was a hard lesson learnt - never take the 7am bus. You'd find yourself struggling to get to school along with the others squeezing each other in the tightly packed bus in the peak hours of morning.

When school started, everyone went around to attend the intro lectures, and because I was taking neither Physics nor Geography, I had one hour to spare before the Chemistry lecture. Hung around at the library, trying to login to the Tampines JC Online Appeal website to check for results, then I headed to LT5, and it was also there that I met Min San and his friends who were also chilling out at the cafe outside LT5. Friendly fellas are always nice to be around with, and these guys definitely fall into that category, no doubt.

Disaster struck at the Chemistry lecture. The lecturer was talking for half an hour, while the rest of us either struggled to keep up, or are completely lost, ie 'catch no ball'.

"Eh what is the lecturer saying ah?"
"Why need to find out the order of the rate law ah?"
"Don't understand this leh - why lai dat?"

That was how bad the lecture went for most of us, but at least the lecturer could have some consolation over the "enthusiasm" that we had over the subject from the questioning that was going on about the topic on the rate equations.

Other than that, school consisted of pretty much nothing else except for the showcasing of the Performing Arts groups in anticipation of the CCA recruitment that would be going on next Thursday. After school I received news that my appeal for TPJC failed and since I had long given up hope of going into Meridian JC, it was high time for buying uniform sets. Shame really, I brought only enough money to buy one set of uniform and PE attire for now, so I gotta get more during the next uniform sale day.

Then it was the moment everything expected. The release of the subject combination results. I got into the 4H2 course - Biology, Chemistry, Economics and Mathematics. If I had gone to TPJC they wouldn't have allowed me to take such an ambitious course - with an L1R5 of 15, TPJC would've shunned me away from this chance because their prerequisite was a minimum score of 12, so in a way I thank God for putting me in SRJC.

That being said though, the news that I was now to stick to SRJC came as a "duh!" thing to me way beforehand already - I just felt the peace of God in my heart where I was supposed to be naturally disappointed over not being able to go into a well-recognised JC.

Yes indeed, that inner peace was what I still cannot understand yet, and probably never will.

SRJC Orientation - Day 3 and 4

Missed out one day of blogging, so here goes.

Day 3: Orientation today consisted of handing in the verification slips for the subject combinations, as well as an early release for breaktime, so there were we, OG D6 being the first group to be released to break at 8.30am, whereas everyone else went out at 9am. After breaktime, everyone was to go back to the hall for the college dance. Before that, we received a tip-off that we were to dance with a partner of the opposite gender, and I got quite a rude shock as well as rumbling guts - I never danced with girls before! What if I did the wrong step and made the other fella fall? What if I didn't dance as well as my partner? What if...

Hell, everyone was dancing, so after the dance I found that my fears were uncalled for - everyone was at least making minor mistakes during the dance, and everyone was freshmen. Freshmen who didn't know shit about dance as well as professional-looking dancer freshmen, still freshmen. Heck, I had a hard time getting over myself before I could set myself dancing at ease. Still, Jane was quite a sport and we danced for the first round before switching partners with other people. Danced with Renee, and halfway through the dance with her I actually stepped over her bag without knowing it, which explained her sudden change in expression during the dance. Nasty feeling came all over - I felt helpless and embarrassed. But then again there wasn't enough bag room for everyone at the side of the hall, so her bag just happened to be put near the dancing area, and in doing so this thing happened, so...

Well, I'm just glad it's over and done with - no more embarrassment for me today.

Day 4 - today. Introductory lectures throughout the day, starting from the morning till afternoon. Had General Paper(GP) lecture, and we were all made to write an argumentative essay as a diagnostic test on our grammatical abilities. After GP was Economics, which the lecturer, Mr Tan, spoke really loud over the mike. The only relief for the Economics lecture was that his lectures contained a bit of jokes here and there to spice it up, unlike the Maths lecture we had, during which everyone was already doing the fundamentals of some short-cut methods of solving partial fractions in the first introductory lecture. Looks like college life's gonna be full of tough shit from now on - but then again, whoever said that life would be a bed of roses?

After being dismissed, we were told to stay back for an OG lunch but what the heck, everyone went about their own businesses so I decided to leave too, because later on we were told that our OG Leaders couldn't make it for the lunch. Having a tough day at college meant that everyone was sapped dry of their energy use and thus naturally, everyone called the OG lunch off and postponed it to tomorrow. Yawn...