Even though it's still may, it feels like the holidays are about to end already. i guess it's because of all the scheduled lessons and training and all that junk. to help organize my thoughts better, i've come up with a little to-do list, comprising of the things i need to do by the time school reopens. and here it is:

Urgent, important
- Chem homework
- Maths homework and revision
- Physics homework and revision
- Econs homework and revision

Important, not urgent
- NYAA report
- Develop photos for the report
- Chem revision

Urgent, not important
- Sleep

Unimportant, not urgent
- Play

guess you can see that i'm quite the busy man, eh? it's kind of sad that the holiday, which is meant for rest and relaxation, has to be spent like this. but oh well. it *is* A-level year after all.

the class chalet (i'm going to drop the "study camp" thing) rocked. though some couldn't make it, those who did still had lots of fun. for the first time in more than half a year, i finally touched mahjong tiles again! needless to say, being totally out of practice, i became the biggest loser for the games i played. but it was all in good fun in the end. it's times like these that reinforce my belief in the fact that i'm in a great class.

after the chalet, i went to watch X-Men 3 (again) with a few classmates. if anything, i think the movie got better, except for certain boring parts. this would probably also explain why i came home and immediately crashed, sleeping from about 4:30 pm to 1:00 pm today, missing all of today's lessons entirely.

whoa. it's getting kind of late. better cut it off here, since i have lessons tomorrow at 9:00 am. to serve as a mental stimulus, the next post will be about parents and what someone did during my absence from home.

-thingy of the day: Nothing today.-

GP has taught me an important lesson today. namely, that i suck at time management. for both the essay and compre, i had what appeared to be lots of excess time, which quickly burned down, leaving me with only minutes to spare. but still, everything was completed on time, though not in the way i'd have liked. too much condensing of stuff due to insufficient time.

midway through the papers, i had a real, honest-to-god case of exam fright. it was like all of a sudden, i looked up from my script and thought, 'holy crap, it's the exam already! what am i doing here?' i think calling me unprepared would be a little understatement, no?

other than GP, the other significant thing today was X-Men 3!! after 3 years of waiting, i finally got the chance to see it. once again, no spoilers, but it was a pretty good movie. it's kind of funny how some parts didn't follow the comics continuity, most notably the Phoenix's origin and Juggernaut's powers. such discrepancies aside, i think it was a great movie, with a deep, emotional plot. i also like the fact that certain seemingly unimportant plot points eventually figure into the story in a pretty big way, and the fact that Beast said his famous "oh my stars and garters" line. all in all, i'd give it about 3.75 to 4.5 upon 5. too bad they said this would be the end of a trilogy. i just hope they produce more movies in future.

tomorrow...start of the holidays. training. one day before chalet. many definitions. and i'm running out of stuff to post.

-thingy of the day: I need sleep.-

The school declared today a holiday, using the reason(s) that it was a study day, and they had to take a day off because of polling day anyway. so, they effectively conned us of one day's holiday. cheapskates.

anyway, my "study day" was spent doing everything except its original intended purpose. yay me. and there's an exam tomorrow. GP, to be exact. i'm not feeling particularly scared/nervous yet, seeing as english has traditionally been one of my stronger areas, and that people simply cannot study for an english test. well, i suppose the closest one could come to studying would be reading the dictionary, but that wouldn't be very practical.

i didn't go and catch X-Men 3 as planned. simply didn't feel like getting out of the house today. besides, it was raining. oh well. maybe after the exam tomorrow. so far, i've heard a few things which make me rather interested in watching it, things which i'll withhold for fear of spoiling anyone's experience.

as for major upcoming events, there's the chalet study camp, as well as grading. going by the chalet last year, the "study camp" looks to be a lot of fun. but as for grading, it's going to be slightly less fun. i've mostly got the techniques part down, so no worries there. it's the sparring part i'm worried about. other than that, i think i stand a good chance of passing. after all, this is still pretty low-level.

well, that about wraps it up for now. honestly, i can't think of much else to write, except that my moron of an arm is still giving me some trouble. i think i'll go get it checked soon, maybe take a couple of X-rays, that kind of thing. somehow, i'm thinking really bad internal injury, or a really minor fracture at worst-case scenario, but i'll worry about that at the checkup when i do get it done. right now, it's just counterpain, and lots of it.

-thingy of the day: GP tomorrow. Sian.-

No more SPA!! yays. i'm not sure whether to feel 100% happy or not, seeing as 20% (or was it 10%?) of my A-level's sciences grade has already been decided, for better or for worse. anyway, i feel pretty confident about it, except i forgot one important reliability point, about the amplitude of displacement. then again, i did have 6 points down already, so i think that'll make up for it.

doing 3 econs DRQs in one night is definitely not fun. by right, in exam conditions, a single DRQ takes 45 minutes at most. multiplying by 3, i should complete everything in 2 hours and 15 minutes or less. of course, that's the ideal situation. by left, these DRQs might never get done at all. man, it sucks when you don't have the motivation to do your work. what sucks more is that my tutorial appears to be missing, and one of the three DRQs is located there. can we say "trouble"?

at long last, i remember one of the thing's i've been wanting to blog about for the longest time. NYAA. gold participants (that's me) are to hand their reports up sometime in july. and guess what? i've only written the residential project part of my ENTIRE report. glory. anyone care to guess how most of my june nights will be spent?

short day tomorrow. i'm actaully quite confused about tomorrow's after-school schedule. i know there's the scholarship talk going on, but i'm not sure if there's training, seeing as it's a tuesday, or if there's S-paper, seeing as it's friday's timetable. confusion abounds. regardless, i doubt i'll be bringing my gi. 2 days isn't sufficient to stop the pain just yet.

-thingy of the day: Now to settle those DRQs...-

Crap. i think i'm falling sick. scratch that, i know i'm falling sick. body temperature being higher than normal, a developing headache, and general lethargy serves to confirm this. normally, i wouldn't mind falling sick so close to the end of term, but i have a physics SPA (my last one!!) tomorrow. it would be inconvenient to have it rescheduled, so i think i'm going to load up on panadol and try to make it through the day. annoying.

also, an old injury of mine has come back. during training yesterday, i took a fall which involved rolling on my right shoulder. this caused my collarbone to start hurting again. my question is, "why now?" just when intensive holiday training is being planned, someting retarded like that has to happen. not only that, i think my right ankle suffered a minor sprain. all in all, it wasn't one of my better training sessions. but on the bright side, one of my opponents said i'm getting stronger! yays. it's always good to know that my training is paying off.

lastly, next week is a very short week. three days of school, one day of holiday...umm...study break, and a GP exam. oh yes. X-Men 3 starts screening on thursday, which is the day before the exam. since one can't really study for GP, is anyone interested in catching it?

-thingy of the day: Too tired to think of anything.-

A prime example of the concept of scarcity would be too much work, too little time and energy. having insufficient time and energy means you are unable to get sufficient work done, i.e. you are not meeting your needs. to solve this problem, a reallocation of time is needed so as to derive maximum utility from the same quantities of time and energy, ceteris paribus.

with such brilliant essay skills (as seen above), i wonder why i can't get an A for econs. heh. anyway, today wasn't quite the best day of my life. i got screwed over for incomplete MCQs, i think i'm going to fail that prestigious econs quiz, and i'm aching all over thanks to PE. damn.

in case you're wondering, the scenario depicted above is real. that's why i can write it so accurately - because i have first-hand experience. i have an outstanding 60+ econs MCQs, a few normal distribution questions, and 2 electrochem questions to clear by the respective tutorial times tomorrow. so far, my plan is to finish up as much normal as i can, and complete the econs today. then, i'll do the rest of normal during the maths tutorial, and chem during break. sounds feasible.

it's been said many times before, but i don't feel as driven/motivated as compared to O-level time. part of me wants to push all the blame to the environment, but deep down, i know that that isn't fair. i hate my ability of rational thought sometimes.

oh well. i suppose this is just one of those low points in the graph of life. i'm feeling old, tired, and ready to quit. but that's just temporary. i'm sure i'll bounce back within the next few weeks. while on the subject of feeling lousy, i wonder if it's possible to skip school tomorrow? there's only one lecture throughout the entire day, and most tutorials are spent answering questions, so i won't miss out that much, except for the econs test. then again, it's not the right thing to do. might as well face the music sooner than later. ah well. time to finish up the MCQs and call it a day. staying up too late is bad for health.

-thingy of the day: Must find a new source of inspiration.-

Oddly enough, there has been an introduction of alcoholic drinks into the fridge. don't get me wrong; i'm not complaining, especially when i have 24 hour access to them. i just find it to be rather out of the ordinary.

it's week 9! just 6 more schooldays before the GP paper and the june break. yays. however, based on what the teachers have been telling us about the topics tested in the mid-years, we're in for a lot of revision throughout the month. also, with grading and competition coming up, we're going to be pushed extra hard for CCA as well. i mean, there's going to be a june training camp! someone save me...

luckily, there are little things to look forward to amidst the pain and suffering. a prime example would be the class chalet study camp taking place somewhere in the start of june. i just hope it doesn't clash with the training camp, otherwise some tough decisions will have to be made.

you know what? i have an econs test tomorrow, and i don't even know which topics are being tested. hallelujah. at least i know it's an MCQ and DRQ paper, so i'm not *completely* clueless. but still, i don't see myself doing that well, considering i haven't studied yet(!!!). oh well. i'll try to chiong a bit during break, then we'll see what happens and work from there.

-thingy of the day: I'm losing my memory...-

4 days have passed since the sports carnival/class outing. guess i'm a little slower than usual in updating.

firstly, the sports carnival. it was pretty fun, and like last year, T20 walked away with some prizes. let's see, first for captain's ball, second for the 4 X 400 race, fourth for softball (?) and 10th for orienteering. not that bad a haul actually, considering we won a medal in 50% of our events. sadly, i didn't contribute to any of the wins since i was busy with timekeeping for the races and officiating for floorball. and speaking of floorball...

during one of the matches (the finals, i think), one of the guys hit his opponent with his stick. when asked why, he said, "it's because he hit me first." now i have no way to verify if this is true or not, but from what i saw, his reaction was overly hostile. to quote ghandi, "an eye for an eye, and soon the world will be blind." how true.

class outing! seems like my class is attracted to marina square, as we've gone there for almost every outing (or at least the ones i've been to). anyways, we did the usual stuff...lunch, then we split up for pool/LAN, the rest of them went to watch a movie while i stoned around and did a bit of shopping, then we went to eat a bit more, and some of them went to play cards (at 11+ pm, no less). not having the energy to keep up, nor the money to take a cab home by the time the game would end, i decided to call it a night and headed home. halfway through, our junior class somehow got split up from us, and i think they went their separate ways. makes me feel kind of bad that we didn't try harder to include them in the activities and bond with them.

you know, it's this kind of stuff we do outside of school that helps improve intra-class relationships. it's extraordinary that such strong ties can be forged in such a relatively short time. i get the feeling that we're the type of class that will have annual reunions after graduation or something. and that's good.

it's week 9! just 8 days more before the month-long holiday study break. even though 8 days doesn't seem long, there's a lot of stuff happening. such as the last SPA for both sciences, training, and the usual late days. arrgh. time to kick it into gear soon.

-thingy of the day: Chem SPA tomorrow...-

Thank goodness for little miracles. today is officially the last schoolday of the week, since tomorrow is the sports carnival (and class outing!!) and friday's a public holiday. gives me more time to rest and to play catch-up with econs, in which i am very, VERY behind time.

i'm quite excited. it's mainly because we got our class jerseys today! i think it looks pretty good, though black wouldn't have been my first choice in colour, especially in singapore's hot weather. anyway, the number on the back is 50, and the name says -KL- (with the dashes!). i like, i like a lot. i'm perfectly happy with the name, but on hindsight, i'm thinking that i should have picked 75 as my number instead of 50. oh well. there's always a next time (end of year? university? army?). all the same, 50 doesn't look too bad either. somehow, i have a liking for numbers that end in 5 or 0, so it doesn't matter to me that much either way.

i think i'm getting old. well, yes, everyone's getting old, but you know what i mean. the main reason i say this is because my memory appears to be slipping. for instance, i think i've asked at least 6 people to confirm that the sports carnival would be held at CCAB. maybe it's out of fear that i've misheard the announcements, but that would mean i'm going deaf, which is another sign of aging. saddening thought.

this morning, i had a pretty bad dream. i dreamt that one of my classmates (not saying who) died due to some poisoned drink or something like that. and i was with that particular person throughout the whole thing, from discovering the poison, to the person's death. even though it was a dream (and quite a crappy plot-less one at that), and even though the odds of something like that happening in real life is slimmer than an anorexic person, it was (and still is) pretty frightening. if it should really happen *touches ton of wood*, i don't think i'd know what to do or how to react appropriately. oh well. i suppose it's for the best that i'll never find myself in such a situation.

my joints are aching, especially the elbows and knees. that's what happens when you have PE the day after training. as a result, i'm forced to keep my limbs on a more-or-less stationary position with minimal bending. arrgh. irritating.

speaking of training, yesterday's session proved to be more productive than usual, seeing as i've discovered a throw which i can perform with relative ease. another move to add to my (pretty limited) arsenal. only downside (which also happens to be one of its merits, depending on perspective) is that it's a surprise attack, which means that it's unusable when holding has been established. ah well. i'll have to remember to incorporate it into regular training as well.

so, that's all from me today. tomorrow looks like fun, except that i'll have to get up extra early in order to be there by 7:00 am.

-thingy of the day: "Depends" is a very important word. More of that in a future post.-

I think i should start carrying a notebook around, because by the time i get on blogger.com and open the posting window, i usually forget about something or another which came up in my mind sometime earlier in the day. then, when i close the window (or publish a post, depending on mood), i'll suddenly remember the issue i was dying to blog about. by then, i can't really be bothered to start another post and blog about it, so i'll put it off to the next post. and no prizes for guessing what will happen at that time. maybe i'll go notebook shopping sometime soon.

anyway, i don't know if i've mentioned this before, but there's less than half a year to the A-levels. *gasps* the truth is a sad, scary thing. to be more precise, there are only 5 months and 24 days or so until GP starts. as a reference mark, we're 4 months and 7 days into the year, yet it feels like such a short time. somehow, i've got this strange premonition that i'll be blogging the day before the papers, asking the exact same question: where did all that time go?

moving away from the depressing stuff, i just remembered one of the many things i've forgotten in the past, with an open blogger window no less!! go me. my memory's not failing that badly yet. so, it's about photography. i figured i need want a digital camera, preferably an ok-ish resolution one with anti-shake technology. maybe i'll reward myself on my birthday. but i'm getting ahead of myself. that only happens in another 5 months or more.

all right. time to wrap it up. i have to get dinner, a shower, and do at least some work, all before 11:30. as a last thought, everytime i see a basic password script on a blog or website, i can't help but laugh. don't they know how easy it is to crack?

-thingy of the day: Next week is a short week!-

Weekend. no 7-letter word sounds sweeter. let me say it again....no - even better, let me spell it out: W-E-E-K-E-N-D!!! such a beautiful word.

as you should be able to see, i'm feeling kind of stressed out. school's been quite a drain this past week. maybe i'm still feeling the after-effects of pulau tinggi, but i've been feeling tired more easily. i probably need to invest more hours in sleeping.

on the subject of school, things are going less smoothly than expected. econs is killing me because nothing seems to stay in my head for long. i'm losing my edge in chem, especially when it comes to the out-of-syllabus stuff required in s-paper. ironically, it's my physics and maths that are surviving well (for now). it's kind of screwed up, really. and don't get me started on GP. somehow, i find that a certain someone is rather rigid when it comes to marking. of course, i won't rule out the possibility that my standard has dropped, but i don't think i'm the only one to blame.

speaking of standards, i realize that we are really influenced by people and things around us. for instance, let's say i'm the best chem student in NJC (not true of course, but i can wish, right?). if, by some twist of fate, i was transferred to, say, YJC for a year, i would be the top there, but i may not be the top back in NJC any more. somehow, bad environments sort of "moronize" a person.

producing a child can be fun, but being a parent is not easy. being a good parent is damn near impossible. parents have to be careful with regard to what they say and/or do around their kids. personal experience shows that they may say something really horrible to their kid in a moment of anger, and think nothing of it. what they don't know is, their words have a profound impact on their offspring.

since i'm topic-hopping, that must mean that i'm tired. there are a few more things that have caught my attention as of late, but i'll save those for another post.

-thingy of the day: Time to stay low-profile.-

2 weeks have passed since i first heard of that unhappy event. quite a lot has happened since then. see? life does move on, whether you want it to or not. in the past half a month, things have returned to a more or less normal state, with the usual worries of school, CCA and other things slowly making themselves known once again.

over the long weekend, i went back to pulau tinggi to complete the expedition part of my NYAA. practically nothing's changed on the island, except that the swimming pool is now not green and can be used. anyway, i won't go into much detail about the trip, since i'll have to write a lengthy report on it later. the only thing i wish to express my frustration on/about is the sandflies. i swear, sandflies should be strung up by their legs and/or wings, impaled upon a rusty skewer, roasted over a low fire for 3 hours, raped, and fed to the pigs. next time, i think i'll call the people who are general pains in the ass sandflies, then direct them here to show them what i'd like to do to them. my hatred for those tiny little buggers is mostly because they've given me several (think 20+) not-so-tiny bites on my arms and legs. and the sad thing is, they itch like hell. what's even worse is, the bites spread when scratched, not to mention they'll leave a scar after healing. while i'm not too concerned about any scarring, i AM concerned about the time needed for these (literally) bleeding bites to heal. arrgh. i need one of those collar things that dogs wear when they're not supposed to touch their wounds, only modified to suit my hands.

today was actually one of my more productive wednesdays. did up a chem practical, physics assignment (both overdue) and some maths. feeling quite drained now as a result. i still don't really have the hang of CRV as of yet, but i think it'll come soon.

chem test tomorrow! still haven't studied. nitro, acids and NMR. for once, chem is stunning me. my grasp of NMR is shaky at best. the sadness. oh well.

-thingy of the day: The library is cold!-