a month in JC...

just checked the calendar a while ago and realised that january is coming to an end in 2 days. man that is fast...really really fast. soon i'd have been in JC for a month. running (i mean walking) between lectures and tutorials and the science labs and tutorials and lectures and PE lessons...for one whole month already. shocking stuff. lets recap the week as it has been so far shall we?

monday didn't stay back in school, 1st time i'd had gotten home so early, by 3.30 in fact i was home already. tuesday was SUPPOSED to go to watch Last Samurai with my class...but my dear mum went to organise chinese tuition for me on that day. pissed me off as she didn't even ask me, just set it up, so i had to miss the BIGGEST class outing ever. only 3 people including me didn't go. damn it.

on wednesday went for 1st official badminton training. just played with xuan rui for the 1st hour while the coach stood there, getting a preliminary feel of our level of skill. after the 1st hour of swinging around, he said that each of us will play one singles and one doubles match. so along we went, playing and playing for a place in the team. ended up playing 2 doubles and 1 singles. lost both doubles matches, particularly because of my lack of communication with xuan rui. but i'm glad to say that i won my singles match :) at one point i was like 1 - 10 down, then later on 6 - 12, then later 13 - 14, then eventually 15 - 14!!! WAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! i pity that guy man. he must have thought that he was gonna thrash me, ended up losing :p i think when i 1st start playing with a guy i play damn conservatively, gave him chances to smash the lights out of me, but in the end i just smashed the lights out of him :)

on to today then... it's been raining everyday for the past week, apparently some wind movement over china has caused the monsoon winds to return to singapore! weird stuff... anywayz, today was scheduled to be CJC's x-country at macritchie. not a problem for most SJI guys, but in the end it was cancelled because of the merciless weather conditions, with thunder and lightning beginning to show today only.

a hell lot of people are getting sick in my class. at last count at least 10 out of 26 are sick. must be the hot & cold weather. body temperature cannot adjust in time or something. hope they'll get well soon man, otherwise i might just fall victim to it sooner or later, but i hope i don't. take care of yourselves too!! Cheers.

finally...

i've managed to finish and develop my roll of film. so now the CI BTC and CJC galleries are complete. although i must say i look quite weird in the CI BTC shots...

played badminton at clementi today for 2 hours. tze wei, ian, chris ow and ming yuan all came along. all lived either in or near clementi, while poor ian lives in hougang :p anywayz it was a fun time, won 2 lost 1 singles, and won 1 lost 1 doubles. laughed alot...made my stomach hurt a bit. quite happy with my new racket, alot lighter compared to my old one which i've been using since primary 1. will keep that racket around, in case i wanna train up my muscles and use a heavier one again.

chinese new year was interesting...met 6 cousins whom i've never met before in my life. managed to get quite alot of hong bao, shan't say how much...but all i can say is that's the advantage of having a big family. didn't eat as much as i did last year...probably in fear that i'll die during tomorrow's PE lesson.

Cheers.

stuck between choices...

this morning was really REALLY a shocking time for me. ian and i went to the badminton board as he said that the team postings are out... and low and behold my name was there!!!! i was bloody shocked!! my jaws dropped... and i had to kinda hit myself a few times to ensure that i was seeing things right. reason being that i hardly managed to do anything against the school team guy, and so many people lasted longer than i did, so i'm surprised that i managed to survive the 50 odd people trying out and manage to get into the team. anywayz other SJI people are guo cheng, louis, zhe zhang and brian ashley. but zhe zhang wanna join choir, and guo cheng dunno wanna go where...so dunno who is staying there with me.

next problem is... whether to remain in track & field as i am already in it, or to shift over to badminton. the throwing team is small, and we've gotten along quite well together so far...but there is currently no boys team for the badminton, so if i go in most probably can get AT LEAST reserve. my original intention was to join a sports CCA, which i've already managed to do. next part was to get into badminton, and track was my 2nd choice. but since the postings came out so late, i decided to go track seeing as how slim my chances were...but now since i've managed to SOMEHOW get into my preferred choice of CCA...i'm STUCK!!! oh well just gotta think over it, sleep on it, see how it turns out. Cheers.

My brand new class....

1T20...in other words... JC1 Tutorial class 20. very interesting class.... alot of diverse people with diverse skills. we got along quite quickly, which is something i didn't expect, but hey i ain't complaining!! i actually like CJ now because of the wonderful people in my class. but then on the other hand, how many of the 26 of us will stay in CJC after March?? :(

the feeling of being in a co-ed school is completely different from a single sex school, which a majority of people in CJ should know by now. so many things that we cannot say and do... the most obvious one is shout as much as want... 2nd most obvious thing is that we cannot change in class, something i've gotten used to over the past 4 years :p

oh yah... we've managed to pass down an sji tradition to 1T20, and that is saying "and have a nice day" after saying the normal "thank you mr ***". since we've already managed to do that, next step is to implement "and may god bless you" :p talk about propaganda by the 7 sji people in the class man. hahaha. Cheers.

2 proud achievements for me...

1st news... went to macritchie for PE lesson today. supposed to help us get ready for x-country on 29th jan. i ran the whole thing non-stop!!! WAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! couldn't do it in sec 3, didn't run last year because i was sick, so i did it!! looks like all those badminton and basketball games plus CIBTC helped me :p

2nd news... SJI NPCC has gotten gold for the 4th consecutive year!!! although i think we kinda scrapped through, as we were a bit messy, but a gold is a gold, although what went into the gold ain't that exciting...

decided to stay in track & field and not go for badminton club anymore. most likely going to join discus, as that was the best i was at when i tried out all 3 items on wednesday. so official training is now monday, wednesday and friday. npcc training on saturday. chinese tuition on thursday....sheesh... only tuesday and sunday free. but tuesday might be taken up by campcraft competition training.

i think i'm getting used to the JC system, although i still gotta rush from time to time, but i'll get there. Cheers.

CJC PE IS THE BEST...and i'm not being sarcastic

getting in the swing of things...

last night attended my first area CI meeting at ACS Barker. at 1st met big red, jay jay, julius, leong woon, glenn, kah wee, yixiang, amanda and yan ru for dinner at holland V. according to julius, the common situation is that they will be late...which did come true in the end. went to the noodle restaurant to have my dumpling noodle :) after that headed for barker...

the thing that shocked me at barker was their open toilet concept. u can practically see the first guy peeing at the urinal when u look through the entrance to the toilet.....mad architects they hired. and the side entrances are also open the whole night, following their toilets' "wide open" concept i guess :p

went to a classroom for the meeting. started abt 8.15, ended at like 11.15. the meeting was... interesting because 1st time having a CI meeting, but boring becoz it was just sian. sat there fiddling with my pen, only towards the end did people start talking more. there are altogether 3 CIIs from D'03 in area 15, and about 8 or 9 PCIs. looks like an interesting 2 years ahead for me with regards to area 15 npcc, since Mr Chan is also an extremely busy man, meaning he'll use us now and then to help him.

went to popular just now to buy my big fat files, all ready to shove in notes. will most probably drag the files to class tomorrow and shove them under my table. after that gonna cross the road to PA, help out with campcraft competition preparation. i'll most probably be joining a more slack CCA in JC, seeing as how there's gonna be quite alot of work for npcc, so most likely will drop out of track and just join badminton club, if somehow they call me up for badminton team, i'll just take it lah, and cope somehow.

alot of people are saying how fun their JCs are because of orientation. but i think the orientation isn't a fair gauge of the fun factor of that JC. rather it should be how well the teachers interact with the students, and how well u can make friends in that school, after all orientation for most people is over already, and it lasted for about a week, and you'll be in JC for 2 years...so judge not by the activities they did for that 1.5 - 2 weeks, but by the people in that JC. Cheers.

it has begun...

of course i'm referring to lessons, and not the end of the earth or anything. but it simply HAS begun, whether i like it or not. while many of the "better" schools are still having orientation, we're getting down to homework and lectures and tutorials. today had physics and econs lecture, econs and maths tutorial, PE lesson, and a nice lunch :p

my maths tutor and form tutor Mr. Paul Poh is a really cool guy, even though he claims he can be a tyrant, but i've yet to see that side of him. anywayz the way he conducts lessons just keeps me awake lah somehow, maybe because of all his hand actions, and just the way he talks lah. shan't talk about my other subject teachers as i've only seen and heard them for like 40 minutes of the day, so i think it's quite unfair to judge them as of now.

the PE period was fun. was given Mr. Issac Lim, the ODAC teacher-in-charge. at first we all had this feeling that we were going to die, since he has such a "great" reputation. but the way he conducted the lesson was very well done, especially since it was our 1st PE lesson. all he made us do was... run one round, spell out "Happy new year CJC" while we were doing pushups, and then do 3 more shouting the whole thing out. then another round. followed by more pushups of spelling "I love PE". at the end shouted the whole thing 3 more times in pushups as well. then ran ONE more round. then just did 10 more pushups. somehow i didn't find it THAT tiring, surprisingly. after that did burpees to the count of "i feel very wonderful" and "i love PE" again. you just reading it here won't really see the fun in it, but i found it quite fun. next went to outside PE office to do pullups. I DID 3!!! WAHAHAHAHA.... improvement from my 2 last year even though i didn't particularly train my arms, only some badminton and basketball during the holidays. quite surprising for me, but i feel good about it to. but i still need 1 more to pass :p i'm always one pull-up under the pass rate, and it's beginning to irritate me!!!

oh well the homework is beginning to flow in, and the notes too. got a chunk of maths and physics notes already....gotta go popular this weekend to buy big fat files. not those puny ones we used in sec school, those massive ones that can store paper chopped from a whole rainforest!!! english, oops i mean GP, homework time...Cheers.

CHEESE......*pant*......BUN...... *pant*........

orientation today was the best!!! in the morning we learnt the whole mass dance. i must say it's quite a clever dance. although tough to remember when you so little time to learn the whole thing. but hats off the the person who choreographed the whole thing.

went to kallang in the afternoon for a nice dragonboating session. so now i've tried all 3 rowing activities. :) anywayzwe left the school last, as the bus came a bit late, but at least we had the WHOLE bus to ourselves after that. 1T20 really clicked quite well today, with ching lee (or however u spell it) telling super duper lame jokes on the bus, lamery that can even rival us SJI people's. (in other words....it's as lame as it can get) but when we got there, we found that leaving the school 45 minutes late was a blessing in disguise, as all the other classes were sitting in the sun waiting for us, whilst we were waiting for the bus under shelter, with a constant breeze and a slight drizzle to cool us off :p

anywayz after that, just dragged the boat a short distance to the water, put on our life jackets and grabbed our individual pedals and waited for the time to set off. while we were sitting in our boats waiting for the other boats to clear the area, we noticed quite a few dead fish floating around. so we he jia picked up one, and just randomnly flipped it with his oar. and it somehow landed in haresh's lifejacket. after that he was complaining of smelling of dead fish, and i just kept quiet :p

after that we set off, with rather boring timing. was rowing towards the sheares bridge, when someone came up with using cheese bun for to coordinate our timing for rowing. thus the title of this entry... so we rowed and rowed, got into some really cool battles. ones that looked even better from far away. when 2 boats were next to each other, u could just see water splashing around, reminds me of those ancient battles at sea with oar powered boats. some boats were really unlucky, as their boats got flooded really quickly. somehow they had brought along a few containers with them to empty their boats, and they were ingeniusly used during these "battles" as well.

then the most exhilirating part of the day came....the RACE!!! only 4 boats at a time sadly. our boat, having only 4 girls and about 14 or 15 guys, obviously won lah, since the other boats all had 8+ girls. so sorry...... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA brute force and CHEESE BUN reigns supreme in dragon boat races :) was a damn good feeling to look behind during the race to see so many boats lagging behind. at first some of the teams gave us a good run for our money, but before we knew it we were pulling away from them, and soon they were a boat's length behind us :)...cannot tahan, must do again...MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

after that as we rowed back to shore, we decided that with so many cheese buns, we needed lunch boxes. so we changed our tune to LUNCH.....BOX.... :p then waved to bro. paul as we rowed past him, like some honourary salute. returning the boat to the nursery was another story altogether lah, but it was interesting at the same time, since our arms were already a little stiff from all the rowing. damn boats weight A TON!!! i guess that's all part of the experience or dragonboating.

tomorrow's main item is CCA orientation and the finale. most probably going to join badminton, see how it goes tomorrow. mainly because if i don't join badminton, i don't know where else to go :p Cheers.

Day 2 of JC life...

today's main activity was WATER.... morning assembly exactly the same lah, only that the person shouting commands has more "potential" than the previous one, even though i can still do thousand times better lah :p anyway after that learnt the college anthem....the whole tune is made up of drums and a trumpet....sounds like a funeral march, a real grand one. then we got our orientation t-shirt and CJ pe shirt and shorts. they ran out of 44 for the CJ shirt, so they gave me a 46, and it's damn freaking BIG!!!! grrrrrrr........... trying to convince xin to change his 44 with me, since he IS bigger than me. orientation t-shirt quite cool, nice and simple, like i like all t-shirts.

anywayz after that had a short break, and everyone scrambled to the boards to check our classes. got posted to phys maths econs, the course of my choice. my class is the biggest that it can get, just like SJI....only this time the maximum is 26. anywayz got 7 sji ppl in my class, including me and 2 other sji npcc people, chewz and ben loh....also got hejia my LLTC group mate, and 3 other people i've never met before, but i know them now, so nothing lost.

after that went straight to our new classrooms for the next 3 months. it's on the fourth floor, really close to the toilet, which is never ever a bad thing. anyway it's a rather small classroom, facing the tennis courts, but apparently it's considered quite "big" by CJC standards. it's facing the tennis courts, and we get a nice breeze now and then. the most interesting thing is, there is this obscure corner in the classroom, where someone can stand and hide, unless someone happens to move towards that corner too. i have absolutely no idea what that corner is for, but it's interesting none-the-less. :p met my home tutors as well, a Mr. Paul Poh and Mr. Wang Zhiwei. poh is a maths teacher, and wang is a chinese teacher. most likely poh will be my maths teacher. and it turns out that there is one person taking french in my class, and 5 people taking A level chinese, all the cheena pro people lah....then lunch.....

tried the food from the "chinese wok" today. it's DAMN CHEAP!!!! and the good thing is... IT'S GOOD TOO!!!!! pork is okay, the egg toufu and the scrambled egg is yum yum..... magnificant!!! wahahaha... looks like chinese wok for me tomorrow again. after that was our wet games. altogether played 4 wet games. but i only got wet in the last one hmmmm..... anywayz last one was the war lah. 4 "families" warring against each other. bren and i decided to go and steal other families' water bombs to use against them. and we ran out empty handed (the brave fight to the death ;) ) anyway...the plan failed, because WE COULDN'T FIND WHERE THE WATER BOMBS WERE!!!! so we did the next best thing..... with so many people running around with water bombs, we just ran up to them, and squashed their water bomb so that they couldn't whack our base. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. right at the beginning, i was already hunted by rao, xin and neo jr........made my shirt nice and wet. neo made a 2nd run for me towards the end, but he missed. hahaha dodged it :) flew right past me.

then...mass dance. since my class has 18 guys and only 8 girls, i was paired up with someone else from another class, don't even know who :p anyway we learnt 1/4 of the mass dance, since the dance is with 4 songs, and we only learnt 1 song, oh well got a long way to go.

tomorrow going dragon boating, really looking forward to it, then i would have canoed, kayaked and dragonboated...all 3 :) but i'm really wondering, can a dragonboat be capsized? coz mr. poh told me that if they had time they would perform a capsize drill......but i really don't know how they're gonna capsize a damn dragonboat, with drum and all, unless they don't put a drum there lah. i'm in the afternoon shift, gonna get really tan by the end of the day, which is good for me :) Cheers.

Day 1 of JC life...

this morning....quite interesting lah. at first only about 3 SJI guys were sitting at the benches on below the office. then suddenly, SJI guys began coming in in large groups. before i knew it, i was surrounded by SJI guys. then soon, we extended our "zone of control" and occupied 2 whole bench areas. there were even a few groups nearer to the entrance of the concourse. anyway, after that when we were called to move in the auditorium (i rather use hall), we all agreed to move up last. SO....when the time came, we'll moved in together. all the other people were more or less seated (except for a few late comers). then the guy in front said "will the sea of white in the middle please move faster" WAHAHAHAHAHA....that was damn hilarious, then after that we'll just split into 2 groups, one on the left and one on the right. altogether there was about 100 SJI guys....that's about 1/3 of our cohort man!!! but after march it will probably be cut down to less than half of that number. but anywayz, later on when bro. paul came in, we'll clapped the loudest for him :p then 1st thing he said was..."where are the sji guys?" :p we'll just sat there laughing, since he knows us "so well".

anywayz that was the most interesting part of the day. my OG only has 2 SJI guys, me and ben goh (SJIMB one), and there were 6 IJ GIRLS!!!! WAHHHH!! thank goodness they're not that loud. oh yes..overall there were more IJ girls than SJI guys...but considering that we're one school and they've got 6, not bad that we can "compete" with them already lah :p there were a few RI and RGS people, abt 20+ NYGH and chinese high people, all these people we shall never see again after march for certain obvious reasons. did the "introduce yourself" thingy in my OG. said hi my name is blah blah from blah blah school. the norm, then played some games, can't remember all of them for certain reasons. the main idea of these games was just to get us more "hyped" up, and more energetic. considering that it was the 1st day, must say not bad lah. with people like ariel jiang and desmond woo around....dunno how it can ever be THAT bad lah...must give them some credit.

this is basically the day's time table....games, break, games, lecture on subj combi., lunch, registration for subj combi, games, tok for a while, go home. quite interesting as you can see. monday got wet games, they warned us already, then tuesday going dragonboating at kallang...looking forward to that one, never dragonboated before, but have canoed and kayaked, so soon can try all 3 :) will know what subjects i can take on monday, hoepfully can get my phy, maths and econs.

well from what i hear from other people, their open houses were completely boring :p thank goodness CJ not as bad, phew.... tomorrow got training, kiwied boots liaoz, but somehow my left boot can shine, but my right one just REFUSES TO!!!! wahhhh, must be someone stepped on it during CI BTC, then now jinxed liaoz :p maybe go use hairdryer later...smoothen out the surface. oh wellz..............Cheers.

Goodbye 2003, hello 2004...

oh well 2003 is out of the window, actually the year is but the memories are not. no way will i ever forget the year which i had the ability to affect so many things happening around me. first of all exactly one year ago we were all getting ready for the 1st training of the year, and now, i'm getting ready to go back to the 1st training of 2004 as a CI, big difference i tell you!!

being in 409 was fun, with getting to know people like zi xin, shaun, neo jr and some other people, especially since i didn't get to know jokers like them in 2002 :p anyhow cannot forget tan eng hong's lessons, where we're either falling asleep, or talking rubbish at the back, then after that chionging for her maths tests. tan pek leng lessons a.k.a. talk cock sessions were always "fruitful" in learning terms like dun lun and other stuff. chandralalalalala.......sian lah all i can say. bryan poon.....nothing much to say lah, only that his lessons were boring at times, and all the writing we had to do in his physics workbook. oh well....hopefully all the writing pays off. cheng...dok dok dok dok CHENG!!! also nothing much to say lah.....most importantly now she looks like sadako (replacement to sachdev). who's left ah?? ah yes... matthews...the self-proclaimed old witch. anyhow....always yelling at yes..BOYS!!!! and saying "Let's move" then we all start pretending to shift our things :p

oh well that's my class teachers for 2003. as for npcc, thanks to my mcm, yang wei, chew yi, inami, brendan, david, ian and xiang zheng. you guys were really great to work with, although a bit stressful at times, but what's singapore life without stress yeah? anywayz thank goodness we were a cheery bunch, with all u people always smiling and making jokes that brightened up our long and most of the time ardous meetings more lively. thanks to the others in SJI NPCC batch 2000, it was 4 long and interesting years with you guys, thanks for the memories, and best of luck to all of you in your future endeavours.

just listening to perfect 10's top 100 on 10 now. linkin park got no. 4, evanescence got no. 2, and "where is the love" got number 1. haha....that song is actually quite meaningful. talking about all the the wars and conflict going on in the world today and stuff like that. well...at least the no. 1 song is meaningful.

1st day of JC tomorrow.....should be an interesting time. haiz......so much to look forward to, and so much to remember and cherish. Cheers.