Busy Once Again 11:16 PM

Two weeks. The busiest two weeks ever. I hate life.

Today I got scolded like crazy by Mr Goh Yan Yih, for a delayed Biotech Fair registration. Said I was utterly irresponsible. All because _______ promised me he would get it done, the night before. And didn't. I feel sad. Upset. Disappointed.

By the way Jeremy and Joseph prompted/reminded/forced me to write this post XD

I discovered I probably shredded a tendon/muscle in my right lower leg. I hope its not. The consequences of jumping around like crazy during PE. Oh yeah, and I think my NAPFA probably epic phail. 

Yeah, so I can't tilt my foot toes pointing upwards. And yeah, later I went and played a piano piece that required a legato pedal. It was... difficult.

I was forced to go for haircut after school, by my mum, to which I took great umbrage.

Anyway, I happen to be using hair gel, which is probably not very easy to cut. Normally, they would use a spray that dissolves the gel, and makes my hair easier to cut. Today they didn't. I was thinking like "okay, here comes an interesting experiment..." So I didn't say anything. So throughout the whole time, the electric hair cutter was making these wonderfully fascinating loud grinding noises.

The hair cutter jammed a few times, I think, and the hand scissors made lots of crunchy noises. Because of the gel, my hair clumped together when cut, and after a while, I became surrounded by a sea of these little black sea urchins.

Then they put hair mousse at the end. On top of my hair gel. I wondered briefly if an adverse chemical reaction might occur... . By the time I got home, the reagents seemed to have formed a mousse-gel complex that possess great tensile strength and hardness. It feels the equivalent of a bed of nails. 

I hope its water soluble.

Parliament House 2:06 PM

Today we visited Parliament House for our Moot Parliament project. Let's just say it wasn't what I expected it to be.

Three minutes before the sitting of Parliament at 1.30 pm, a bell rings continuously to inform MPs that they need to get to their seats. At 1.30 only two MPs had arrived. The rest walked in midway through the proceedings. Very few came in the end, there were a lot of empty seats. To be honest I had this impression that parliament is always fully seated when in seating... well, MPs must be very busy people...

Out of those who came I saw...

_____ talking on the phone

_____ sleeping/slouching

_____ leave right after he answered his question

Well I suppose it wasn't such a important/hotly debated bill being heard today, hence the observations XD

After that went for the CIP at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. It was okay. Ms Choy spotted this spider web with thousands of baby spiders. It was just amazing... :)

CD Knowledge 2:05 PM

Oh my goodness. You wouldn't believe how boring CD knowledge was. Its a revision of everything we learnt at NCDCC so far...

MEW, Miao, Miaowed 1:34 PM

Concurrent sessions were the first thing today. None of the ACS SLs went again. We kinda just sat on the porch and slacked around playing phone games. We also tried to solve this diabolical wooden puzzle which they gave as a door gift yesterday, which tends to fall apart when not fully solved and send pieces flying everywhere...

There was this funnily arranged bench next to the one where we were sitting until it started to rain...

Then we went for this awesome maths treasure hunt thingy at the Marina Barrage. Jeremy didn't come today because of NCC, Kylie didn't come because she said she wanted to sleep in. Lolz... I spent most of the time talking to Daryl about stuff, about life. Its nice to know people still understand you...

The Marina Barrage looks ultra-futuristic, like something straight out of AEON Flux...

The treasure hunt questions were really interesting, and my team was totally awesome :) Thanks a million you guys :) ...

The teams were of course not supposed to collaborate, but we did all the same, Daryl too XD

So at the end, RGS was giving a "discipline talk" (they organized this year's MEW). Except that they made a joke out of the whole thing XD . They said it was no laughing matter, then started laughing. They then started talking about the spirit of the mathematician , where they drew a picture of a ghost with a pi symbol for its nose...

Lolz :) MEW was quite fun I guess...

Jeremy Ong Pai Kia Wannabe 9:00 PM

Today was the first day of the Maths Enrichment Workshop, also known as MEW.

It is held at Dunman High School this year. Which is supposed to have a new campus, but in actual fact looks quite old fashioned. I arrived at the school to a rather shocking revelation. Today Jeremy Ong tried to be a pai kia, and epic phailed. See picture. (Sorry Jeremy... :) )

We went late for the briefing for student leaders, because I had no idea it existed, and the people who knew it existed didn't tell us. I don't think that the briefing contained anything important though, since all the details were printed out in paper already.

The first half of the day was spent playing a great number of absolutely cheesy "ice-breaker" games. They did it in the auditorium which had air-con, only they didn't switch it on, and they used fans instead. Which is quite annoying. I was paired with Kylie from Nanyang. We were talking about random things than actually doing our job as student leaders... XD

I think I disturbed Daryl Chen a bit much by saying I thought he was very emo. And giving him the reasons why. I said that his blog was black with lots of these gothic patterns. Sorry :)

Just before lunch the teacher in charge told us that all the student leaders could do what we want. We could attend concurrent sessions if we wanted or just go home. 

I tried going for a concurrent session of cryptography, but none of the other ACS student leaders went, and I was feeling tired. And the room looked boring. So I went home...

Lol :)

Fiona Ho on Marriage 9:56 AM

I think we have the quote of the year today. 

"Just pick who you want and see how long it lasts"

--Ms Fiona Ho on marriage

I guess it had some deeper meaning, but she made it sound so superficial that I think we all completely missed it and went howling with laughter :) The whole lesson was a laughing session as usual :)

The cold I caught yesterday continues. Except it gets worse. The classroom was way too cold. Kept going outside. Sneezing and sneezing. Daryl and Tenn Joe thought I was crying and tried to be nice to me. Lolz. For the record I was not. I told them, and they didn't believe me.

I tried to go to sleep during A Math, because Ms Ong didn't come. I was disturbed quite a few times by some people. I find that rude. I also find it rude that people can be so noisy when its so obvious someone's trying to sleep. 

By evening I had got a terrible fever and cold. Again. Really really diabolically ill. On three different medications. Again. I could shoot myself for a careless mistake that might have cost me my life. Missed one antibiotics dose. Fell sick again. 

Thanks a million to the friends who were there for me, I don't think I would still be here if not for you :)

I made the hardest decision of my life today. I was given the opportunity to join the Science Competition Team. Unfortunately it clashed with my research schedule, in a way that could not be reconciled. So the choice is between research and competition. Since primary school, I kinda always wanted to do science quizzes stuff. 

I chose research.

I felt that I make a bigger difference at research. Its there I can create concepts and ideas that might change the world. How much can you change by winning science olympiads or quizzes? I felt that even when you win some big science quiz, people will eventually forget you. But if you research, and discover something, people will remember you forever.

That's how I want to be remembered.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
--Marie Curie

Different 9:48 PM

I must have the nicest bunch of friends in the whole wide world.

Its really nice how I can rest at home with the peace of mind that everything will be left in good hands. Jeremy Ong and Nico settled a ton of Moot Parliament paperwork for me while I was unwell. Jonathan Tang went so far as to email me a subject by subject summary of what happened the whole day, from start to end.

Thank you people, I appreciate everything you did. :) A lot.

Science Research was pretty interesting, and we were doing fluorescent microscopy. Its interesting to be able to see individual bacterium. We discussed a little more on our research projects.

It was quite a weird afternoon. First I still had a cold, and I was sneezing and snuffling crazily the whole way through. Then Environmental Focus Group came along and started to cook grass in these huge vats over bunsen burners. The fumes were quite terrible. EFG didn't bother with opening the windows.

I guess being in bed unwell the whole day kinda left me thinking about my life again.

I think I'm too stressed. I'm told I'm too stressed. In no uncertain terms by a doctor. I think I know why I'm stressed. Because I try too hard to be good at everything. But I guess everyone is different, and we can't really be good at everything.

I guess that the all rounded education thingy is really misguided. Its asking for nothing less than for us to be excellent in everything. I guess maybe some people are lucky enough to be able to do that. Its not the same for the rest of us.

Why can't they let us do the things that we are best at? Isn't what we are best at or not so good at that defines at least part of who we are? Most of the time nowadays, we're so busy we can't really spend time doing the stuff that we are really good at.

Why can't they accept that we are different?