I believe insomnia is the worst feeling in the world. Heartbreak and betrayal probably fall in a pretty close 2nd place.

I had a perfect plan: sleep at 9, wake up at 2, watch world cup at 2.30, mug from 4.30 to 6 then early breakfast. But then i just. couldn’t. SLEEP. I tossed and turned and for some reason could fall asleep. This is the most frustrating feeling ever. The last time i couldn’t sleep was before the SS O levels (haha i still rmb), so i got up and mugged till sch time.

So here i am, mugging quantum and i realised my foundation is really weak. And to think i felt really impressed with myself for finishing a third of the physics syllabus today. Common tests are just next week but for some reason i don’t feel a sense of panic. No… it feels more like… resignation? Like i can try to finish the entire syllabus, but i know i won’t, at least not within a week. So no worries, i’m just gonna try to mug as much as i can and leave the rest to God. It’s like seeing a horde of zombies coming at you in L4D when you have 10 health and 3 dead teammates. You just whack blindly and wait to respawn.

Or is the feeling that everyone else is just as screwed as you? In that case, no worries too, we’ll all go down together? I’m actually okay with that. I’m just unsure whether this relaxed mindset is unfounded and i’m the only one headed towards a disaster without knowing it.

Okay i feel mildly sleepy! Shall nap for an hour then wake up for a double world cup match.

I got a new com! I think it’s a really good deal. Actually i’ll find any com a good deal and super fast compared to my old one so i’m just grateful for it. I’m trying to catch up on the lost days of internet now. It sure evolves fast. Gonna catch up on my blog reading right now.

The past few days were all spent in church, for the Radical Conference! It was really inspiring. God’s been such a blessing and support this whole time and i’ve no idea what i would do without Him. It’s this tangible assurance He provides when my world crashed on me, when people disappointed me, when friends fail. Recently, i’ve also seen bouts of hypocrisy in the church, which really shook me. Someone once asked me about it, and i said that no church is perfect, but i guess that was really useless advice. If someone told me that right now, it wouldn’t help a bit. But God helped me through these doubts, and i do feel peace about following Him and influencing my world for Him.

Of course the flipside of spending 3 days at church is that my studies are screwed. I’m supposed to finish mugging math by this week, but only managed to accomplish half of that, partly due to my own fault cos i mugged the wrong topics -.- Next week’s chem week and i really gotta buck up. Organic chem will be my first topic. Dowwwn you go.

Oh i may be staying at a hotel for a couple days the next week cos one of my dad’s business clients canceled their trip so he’s left with a hotel reservation. But i gotta study during that hotel stay argh.

Just a quick break from mugging (in front of the com)

Let’s see what i have done today. Watched survivor finale for the 2nd time, watched american idol top 3 for the 1st time. Played this fun shooting game lol. That’s 5 hrs spent on the tv and 1hr spent on games oh no. This is not going well.

I’m betting all i have on unemployment and GDP coming out, especially unemployment, in an attempt to cut down on mugging time so i’ll at least have tmr to mug GP. Argh singapore policies are complicated.

Okay anyway on a side note, i was listening to random music on youtube (that’s why i’m mugging in front of the com) and i believe music can be very powerful. The chord progression can directly influence your mood, and when coupled with the right visual stimulus can be a way powerful tool. Music can drastically alter our moods, but most of the time i find myself specifically choosing music that will amplify my current mood. It’s almost as if the artiste understands your current feelings and stuff. That’s why i wanna categorize my music by mood some day, after common tests of course.

I can profess my love for rock music all day long but truthfully i can’t stand listening to purely rock every single day. I mean the foo fighters and ac/dc are awesome and all but sometimes i just want some pop or at least pop rock. Like those feel good tunes that play in rom-coms at the end and just make you happy. Plus i think pop music is sophisticating, especially with lady gaga. Her lyrics reflect the current generation’s attitudes and stuff and i do believe that her songs will go down as the voice of this current society. I didn’t really like the fame, but the fame monster is pure genius. That’s sophistication.

Anyway that’s not the kind of pop that i’m listening to now. On my playlist now is classic kelly clarkson, avril lavigne, mika and the fray. I can’t say i’m a fan of any of these artists but it’s refreshing to hear something lighter than my usual fare. Especially when i’m MUGGING.

K back to aggregate supply management policies.

Something really terrifying happened today.

It was during assembly, while the national anthem was blaring, i’m had this really painful stomachache, like a really sharp pain, followed by patches of white appearing in random spots in my vision. And it’s not the small streaks of bright light that cloud your vision after 2.4 or eng peng’s pe lesson, it’s like a few white supernovas that expand to cover your whole field of vision. It’s seriously like going blind, IT WAS FREAKING SCARY.

I tapped weijian on the shoulder and told him i was going toliet but at that point i couldn’t see him at all. I stumbled over to mr yew’s distinctive outline (so glad he’s short for once) to inform him i was going toliet and heard zhongxi saying i look pale, but i really couldn’t see him either. I could hear him clearly though. Then i climbed up the slope (imagine if i really blacked out on the slope, then i would roll all the way down man) and made my way to the toliet. I prayed and my vision cleared up while making my way there, thankfully. Then i settled the stomachache the traditional way and made my way back to class, slowly of course. All this time my face felt like the blood was draining out and i felt really sick.

Wikipedia says, “Surprisingly, even during a heavy grey-out, where the visual system is severely impaired, pilots can still hear, feel, and speak. In other words, complete grey-out and loss of consciousness are separate events.” They’re not kidding, i can personally vouch for this. I could hear every single note of the national anthem, but every single thing appearing WHITE to me. Omg it was terrifying. I’m soo glad i can see again. Seriously thank God for helping me get through this ordeal. :)

Phy spa was quite easy cos the question leaked as usual lol, but my graph was opposite from almost everyone else’s, except nadiah’s. I think i measured from mmin resistance instead crap. Anyway what’s over is over so yeah. Life goes on.

Today’s PE was crazyyy. The girls had their 2.4 napfa test today while the guys had to do 4 rounds, 3 sets of 30 push-ups + 30 crunches, max pull-ups and finally 100 pull-ups as a group of around 10 people.

Okay for the pull-ups, nigel and bryan baited me with a carrot and stick in terms of 10 superbrie, if i could do 10 pull-ups LOL. I found it hilarious HAHAH. But for all that motivation, i could only manage 9. Haha. Exactly 24 days to napfa. Gotta buck up my SBJ, but no idea how. D:

In other news, my braces came out AGAIN yesterday. And get this, weijian and i were having lunch at astons at 6th ave, and he was talking about how hard it is to eat food with braces. The next moment there was a ‘crunch’ and a bracket came off my tooth. I whipped out my hp to check my reflection in the screen and it was the exact same bracket that came out the last time -.- The previous time i bit on ice i think, but time it was fish. FISH. Ah nvm i made an appointment to fit it back again next tue on my birthday. Might as well take the opportunity to pon sch to celebrate my birthday wooo.

Oh and crap, rozz just quit her show after ris low joined it? Shan and rozz are the prefect radio DJs! Oh man i really hope she comes back on. No offence, but ris pronounces stuff r.e.a.l.l.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. No wonder rozz got pissed. Actually i kinda pity ris, must be kinda hard for her, but not everyone’s suited for the life of a radio host you know.

Btw I just finished typing this post. I know it’s super lag but i just forgot about it.

Was down with a flu today so couldn’t go church. I’ll be missing church next week too (going to Sentosa woooo!) so that makes 2 weeks in a row. Argh. At least i’m feeling better now. Slept through the day.

Earth hour was… a farce. Okay i did turn off my room lights, but being the only one in my family to observe such stuff, the whole house was alit and it was as bright as any ordinary evening. -.- To be fair, i did use my handphone and ipod, but at least i kept the lights off. Oh well. I think i’m the Avaaz-supporting, PETA-promoting, Interact Club-joining, Earth Hour-participating kind of person who’ll end up as some sort of activist or protestor in the future. Or humanitarian. Let’s not forget that. I could win some peace prize for that.

I have seriously gotta do my hw. Just printed out the chem and phy hol hw (with answers of course), so that’s one thing i gotta settle for good tmr. I’ve been wasting time on the internet randomly surfing my life away. Oh btw i think rozz’s blog is cool, rozz being rozz of shan and rozz on 987, which is the only radio show i ever listen to. They’re way underrated.

And check out Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Awesome movie, awesome trailer, no?

The holidays went by too fast. Way too fast. But it was fun, i managed to get some sort of a life back. Watched a couple of movies, up in the air and alice in wonderland in cinemas and frost/nixon, juno and the cove on dvd, all of which were awesome. I finally got my own video rental membership card! Or tag, rather.

Let’s see, monday. Interact orientation. Totally awesome, but personally i thought last year’s one was better, not just cos i was a participant then or cos it was an actual camp, but cos of the dynamics and everything. But still it was fun, the cludo mystery was really quite good and i enjoyed it. And all the flour. It’s still stuck in my ear i think. Oh and singing ‘Bad Romance’ was hilarious, but no one really knew the lyrics. I think singing is funner when everybody’s just mumbling something random.

Tuesday. Stayed at home, a well-needed break. Okay there was cca but i wiggled out of it.

There was a weird but hard psychometric test on wednesday for the PSC scholarship. I ran out of time for the first test. It was impossible to finish, really, they gave us 20mins to do 32 questions or something? Sure they were all mcq, but it’s like, is quantity A bigger than quantity B, or vice versa or equal or is there insufficient info to tell? It was horrifying. I saw that i had 3 minutes left and hastily put down insufficient info for the remaining 10 questions i had left. The other 3 or so tests were alright, it was quite interesting i thought. They asked what you would do if you were in the position of a banking assistant in these specific situations, etc. More of the kind of questions a scholarship should be asking. The last one was a personality test. Um, there were many oddly specific questions that i’ve thought to myself in secret. Like ‘have you ever felt that you fail at more things that you would expect?’ and stuff like that. Haunting, but i’m looking forward to my results for that test.

Thursday was another stay-at-home day. Okay there was cca but wiggled out of it again. OH I CAUGHT MY ACOLYTE TODAY.

Friday was army museum trip with the kids. It was quite fun. They were more interested in the playground than the actual tour. Hmm that’s kids for you i guess. Their simplicity and naivety never fails to inspire and cheer me up though. :) New batch of interactors coming next week yay.

Alright that was pretty much my holiday for you. Now, on to slay the beast they call homework, or at least poke it a little. Heck, i’m gonna be glad if i can just survive and get out alive.

EDIT: I know it sounds bimbo-ish. Nevermind that. Read.

Chinese new year is finally here! Can’t wait to sleep in for the next 4 days. I am SO sleep-deprived right now. This week went by in a flash, i dunno how i managed to skim through it but i just did. Got a pile of work to do, homework being the least of them all, but that will have to step aside for the time being while i rest.

School ended at 10 today. The concert was okay i guess. Oh i was supposed to have dv duty but my teacher wanted to film so i gladly let him take over. Anyway after sch, half the class (mainly the boys) went for seoul garden buffet at taka which was pretty fun hahaha. I cooked a LOT of eggs, sunny side up, hard-boiled, omelette (?) I realised i suck at cooking eggs. But it was fun nonetheless.

Then there was survivor: heroes vs villains! Omg omg omg. This will be the best season yet! Can’t wait to see how it all plays out. It’s too early to make predictions yet, there are so many contenders, so much potential. Go watch survivor if you aren’t already!

I still haven’t gotten my new years clothes. D: Went to tangs ytd to look at the shirts, but ended up getting a pair of converse sneakers. It was around 37% off! Big discount. Oh and i saw ACDC high tops. Would’ve gotten them if they weren’t high tops. Ah anyway you can’t really see nothing of the design under long pants or jeans so nvm, i’m still happy i didn’t spend the extra money on the licenscing costs. ACDC’s image is pretty ex.

I think i’ll get my clothes tmr after church, which is ridiculously early in the morning. But it’s cny so it’s okay. I’ll just go sleep earlier, like now.

We had to do this career analysis thing in class today where you answer a load of questions and they generate a list of careers that match your profile. This was what i got for one of the tests.

Postman, warehouse operator, ironer, fisherman (ok this one quite cool) and janitor?! D: My future feels so uncertain now.

On a side note H3 physics is turning unbearable. Special relativity is so… irrelevant to life. I dunno it’s just seems so confusing and pointless. And there’s a test coming up oh man. I’m not even keeping up with H2 physics hw currently.

But on the other hand, chinese is turning fun! We spent today’s 1.5hr period watching The Treatment. It’s not bad. Pretty impressive haha. If chinese lessons go on like this, no way i’m gonna even think of ponning.

The bell rang. It was 1.30pm. Physics had just ended and people were on their way home.

Except for the Ten with chinese lessons who still had to suffer through 90 more mins of greek. (which followed a 30min break resulting in 2 more hours of sch). Naturally we didn’t want to go, but felt bad about ponning since the teacher was so nice this year.

I think she’s an awesomeee teacher man. She really understands students and can tune the classroom into a conducive study environment. We need more teachers like her, across all the subjects.

So anyway we decided to sms her to tell her we were ponning. On hindsight, who does that right? But we felt really bad about leaving her an empty classroom.

“Hey. B-) A few of us will not be going for class later as we have an excessive workload and other commitments. Sorry. :-(“

Within seconds, my phone vibrated.

“Inform all to come to class and we talk things out k”

Seeing no other way out, we dragged ourselves to class. On the way there i decided to update twitter via sms.

“I smsed my teacher ‘a few of us dont wanna come to class’ and she smsed back ‘lets talk things out k’ “

I happily typed the sms out, driven by an irrational burden to let the world know every little thing i’m doing. AND THEN I SENT THE SMS RIGHT TO THE VERY TEACHER I’M TALKING ABOUT. D: I totally freaked out. You can just imagine the horrified look on my face. I hurriedly smsed back:

“Sorry! Sent wrong sms.”

I’m seriously gonna lay off twitter for the time being, especially updating by sms-ing. Hahaha looking back it’s all so funny but at that time IT WAS SCARY. It’s a very good thing she shrugged it off and said that at least we had mutual understanding and respect. And it’s true, i do respect her more now, though i did spend half the lesson asleep -.- She ended the lesson with her partial life story, and i think she’s a really cool teacher. We need more of these understanding teachers. If i had this teacher in j1 i bet i would’ve found chinese much more bearable.

This teacher is mrs peter thia, and she rocks.

Today I experienced the driest, most boring econs lesson ever. That was not a good first impression my new form teacher cum econs teacher made on us.

1. I don’t think he handled the allocation of subject reps and positions very well. I dunno… i just felt he was so indecisive and unsure. Maybe he just hasn’t gotten to know us well so he couldn’t decide on the reps. But then he should’ve used the period to get to now us. Like just talk with us. Like mr chong.
2. Econs was just boring. I’m not kidding, i’ve never seen a deader class, it felt like chinese lesson all over again. How now for econs.
3. I think i need a lot more time to know this teacher better.

Speaking of chinese lessons, i’m forced to take up chinese lessons until the release of last year’s chinese results. Apparently i’m one of the bottom 20 chinese students (no surprise). Ah but i don’t think it’ll be all that bad since i know everyone else in the class. Most of them are from either sji or the same chinese class. It’s gonna be like a family gathering hahaha.

But seriously i better pass my chinese. I’m aiming for a D at least. I cannot stand taking it again. If i fail, it’s straight to chinese B for me. I’m not gonna even try for the may paper. Alright time to dig up my chinese tb!

Oh i’m filming the JH orientation station games tmr so i’m gonna miss GP (video screening?) and the first PE of the year. Hope hope hope pe teacher rocks, pleasee.

First day of school was okay. Timetable was okay. Teachers were okay. In fact everything was just okay.

Mr tan followed us up for math. Mdm chew followed us up for chem (thankfully!). Mrs low followed us up for physics too. Our new form tutor doubled as econs teacher. I dunno about him, it’s way too early to say anything. I remained in C2 for GP and i think the C2 GP tutor will turn out okay. I… dunno, i would prefer to ‘drop’ to C3 of course.

There is one last chance of trying to reband to C3, the diagnostic test, but i would have to score just the right amount. That’s pretty hard since i dunno what that amount is. Ah i’m just pretty contented with my GP teacher (she released us after just half an hour!), but maybe it’s too early to tell. Better than C1 and C5 at least haha. I feel sorry for them.

And why do we still have chinese lessons?! It’s screwing up our timetable bad. Ah but the timetable’s pretty balanced, except for the offensive PCME+GP lessons on monday. It’s all the subjects on one day. D: And i gotta start doing my homework more. I’m losing my touch with maths nooo.