A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...

While the journey of a 100 marks begins with just 1 mark.

Haiyou. My Semester 1 results are just as horrigible as the way I just spelt "horrible" in this sentence. USEABB. Wah biang. I can rant on forever, but this blog is supposed to be HAPPY! So I shall shut up here. Hehe

Holy hydrogen! I'm going to fail last week's chemistry class test. =( Got owned by so many questions... and not to mention the Lewis diagrams, which really should be classified officially by the government under illegal material for the good of all Singaporean chemistry students.

I think I got owned by A level chemistry. Oowch. Used to be able to cram a day before chem test and still score As in tests. Looks like it only works for the O levels. =P Whoops.

Oh well. At least that's not the lecture test! I'm going to work smarter this time for the coming lecture test. MRS CHAN, I WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN ANYMORE!



I was reading the Sunday Times today when I came across a small report on Chen Wei Lian. (Project Superstar 1 winner, who is a blind singer) And it struck me that he has the same English name as my current chemistry tutor, Mr Kelvin Tan. Hahaha!

I shall now tell you what other crappy stuff happened to me last week:

1) Rubik's Cube Competition in HCI (college) organized by the Mathematics Appreciation Club during Math Week.

There were only around 10 participants, and I was the only girl. Boo. (hurray for girl cubers!) I met Tejin (astro senior) there! He was super friendly and even gave me words of encouragement, although I was already mentally prepared to get owned by all the guys there. =D My mental preparation came at an opportune time though.

Contestants were to solve 3 scrambles. The average of the 3 timings would be taken. Timings were recorded by MAC members using stopwatches. (not very accurate... because Jen and I noticed that they started recording timings at different times although they uncovered the cubes at the same time!)

UNFORTUNATELY, no inspection time was given at all. I panicked during the first solve and ended up with a rubbish timing of 1min 6 seconds. The insanely fast guy next to me (who was using F2L + his own 'commutative' method for the last layer... I will lose to him for sure as I use the working corner method. The guy next to him uses Petrus. Damn fast can?!) didn't help to calm me down either. He finished it in around 24 seconds! Wanna know what contributed to my crappy timing? Here's the breakdown in chronological order:

1) Couldn't find the green/white edge --> took super long time to make the cross
2) Performed wrong formula to insert last white corner. Dang muscle memory.
3) Performed 2 wrong formulas to make entire top face yellow. sighhhh
4) Kena 2 wrong top layer corners diagonally opposite each other. RU'R'DRUR'D2zU'RULU'R'U', my most hated algorithm, had to be performed. =(
5)To add to my misery, I kena-ed diagonal double edge swap. RU'R'UDR'DU'R'URD2F. Oh lao tian ye! I hate D moves!

I apologise if the above was too technical for my beloved readers. Anyway, it was a nightmare. BUT BUT BUT! I did well for the second solve. 47 seconds, one of my best timings! =) The 3rd solve took 58.3 seconds, which is my average timing.

By then, I felt depressed. Jen had to go for her tennis training some time later, so we decided to stay and watch the other guys compete. The second batch of guys were pretty impressive on the whole. One of them even managed 14 seconds for one of his solves. Holy??? The last batch of guys were not that fast. I picked up a stopwatch to time them, and discovered that their timings ranged from around 50 seconds or so to 1 min 30 seconds.

The very same day, I was on my way home when I started cubing in the bus. This dunman high JC guy suddenly plopped down next to me, smiled, and said "lets play!". (which is kinda odd, considering that I'm not popular with guys anyway) He was friendly, but he was fast. He averages around 30s with Fridrich. He told me to lubricate my cube too, and let me play around with his super smooth cube. Later I found out that he lives just one bus stop away from me. Hmm I guess there are more cubers around me than I thought! =)

and now for more crappy events.

2) On Thursday, I got my right index finger stuck in the main gate lock of my house in the morning.

Had to forcefully pull it out. Yowwwchh! It bled at the rate which ice caps are now melting at the poles of the earth. Sob sob sob... it still hurts till today.

3) Saturday's Student Research Symposium

To my utter dismay, female student VIP ushers had to wear court shoes. I was tottering around noisily (and clumsily) like jelly on a pair of Heelys. The back edges of the shoes also scratched off a fair amount of the skin on my heel. ='( Why are court shoes so freaking difficult to walk in?! AND why do women have to endure such self-inflicted pain? Gah! On a brighter note, playing with the flight simulator in the SRC demo lab was fun! =D



-end of crappy events-

I *finally* got myself a can of silicone lubricant spray on Wednesday after school. Cost me $8.50, but it's quite a big bottle. =o After I sprayed it on some of the innards of my cube, the cube felt odd to play with, so I left it in my bag for a few days. When I took it out to play on Friday, it turned like a dream. Not as good as that dunman guy's one, but still decent. Looks like silicone spray needs some time to dry and set in. = Shall spray some more of it on wednesday night. =D

After lubrication, I could get down to 40 seconds. Still looks slow to me on video, due to the numerous regrippings which I have not learnt to avoid yet. Hehe.

btw my right index finger is bandaged because it was the victim of the gate lock. (see above, crappy incident no.2)

And I restickered the white face of my cube SILVER! Pretty eye-catching huh.

remember people

this coming thursday is Labour Day!

which means it's a

PUBLIC HOLIDAY!!! WHOOOOOOOO!!! :D
have a great week ahead! =D