tag replies

[jeannie]
thank you once again for your encouragement! GP can get unbearable... but I will hang in there while you happily hang out with your friends! hahaha happy holidays!

[elain]
hey tjc is a good jc! dun be sad... i heard of alot of 2 pointers who got rejected from hc... this year competition for the places is really very jialat. i couldn't believe it.

you know what. go to tjc, and make the best of everything you experience there. make the most of your time. work hard throughout your time there. don't rest on your laurels and end up like me. i mean... top jc so what? it's really what you do with your life in jc that determines your future. your jc won't determine your future.

All the best to you, I have faith in you! =D

memorable quotes; unforgettable moments.

"How can the... FEMALE teachers not stare at you if your skirt is so short?"
- Mr Ken Yeow (discipline master), during the first CT session of 2009

"...your vocabulary is woefully inadequate."
-Dr Robert Wilks, during today's GP tutorial

Mr Yeow is an interesting discipline master who has the idiosyncracy of making hilarious jokes, and then asking us to stop laughing because it's a "serious matter", and we would be able to laugh when "I (he) tell you to".

hahahahahahahahahaha

Mdm Khoo and Mr Yeow would make a dynamic discipline duo, pun fully intended.

Just got spammed with a copious amount of GP homework today, including the daunting task of learning the entire SAT vocabulary list. I've never taken GP so seriously before!
But I must say that Dr Wilks has been a good teacher so far. (well... not many teachers would have the guts to tell us the pathetic level of our vocab in such a caustic tone) In 08S6C's GP life, he is the deafening wake-up call. And I'm thankful for that. (plus his sarcasm)

Had a wonderful gathering with SLS today at Plaza Singapura for dinner! =D
Met up with saccharine Samantha Lim... whom we haven't met in a loooong time.
we had a looooooong chat, but it was heartwarming and enjoyable.

SLS wan sui!

xin nian kuai le =)

as promised.

The Centad Journey.

1) Rush to NUS in the morning. And encounter odd behaviour in the MRT once in a while, such as this old man hanging his blue umbrella on the metal pole to dry. Secretly take pics of such acts.

2) Settle down at workbench. Lament to everyone about how much work there is to do, and also about how difficult C programming is. Update http://ambi-robot.pbwiki.com

And then get cracking!!!

It's programming time.

3) November: Stare in awe and amazement while lutheng and hewei attempt to fix the PWM.

December: Show empathy for lutheng as she tries her very best to finish the sound localization program.

Digital oscilloscopes are an engineer's best friend!

4) Laugh at the severely mutilated teddy bear in the lab, and take pics of it.

(btw that's hewei's foot. haha!)

5) Return home at 7pm+++. Attempt to take artistic pictures while waiting for the bus.

(hmm I remember the day when we finished at 10.45pm! really exhausting.)

Repeat the above 5 steps for about 1.5 months and you get...

6) The final product! Ta-dah! =D We are all very proud of Ambi. Hehe cute right.


And as soon as 2009 became a reality...

we had to finish chionging our research paper for SSEF.

Yet another gruelling task which we managed to complete just before school reopened.

Hooray for last minute work!!!

(haha to be honest, we worked very hard on the report in the 1st week of January.)

As soon as our school reopens, we had to chiong to finish filling up ALL the registration forms and what-nots for SSEF. SIGH.

Anyways, our written report, which... again... we are very proud of. Hahahahaha that sounded really egoistic.

Picture taken by Jiang Ying, with Lu Theng holding down the papers while she took a pic. We were at the benches outside the library, and it was ridiculously windy!

(hmm it has been REALLY windy in hci... sometimes I feel my head getting displaced to the side)

Jiang ying is very pleased about the cover page which she created!

Damn professional-looking right? Right??? =D

NICE!

WHOOHOOOO!!! Done with SSEF. Kinda!

Lu theng later asked if we wanted to participate in ISYF, but err we had to create another new powerpoint for that. Eh...but we are really really sick with chionging for SSEF already la. So we decided to give it a miss. Heck with it! =D

The next step is to wait for the science centre to reply us... Hope our project gets accepted. =D Junlin said it's easy to get into the exhibition but quite hard to win a medal. Lu theng says that they will spam us with LOTS of weird questions (like hewei did to us!!!) so we have to 'cover all grounds'. The ground must be quite shy.

Hewei has really been a great mentor and friend to us throughout this journey. We couldn't have done anything to do with robotics without him! Thank you Hewei!

Haha a funny thing I realised is that the 3 of us get along well together. Which is great, because I never knew that we would become friends after this project.

Anyway if we get shortlisted, we should really go out for a celebration dinner! =)

And talking about food.......

julia's birthday party!
this thursday, 15 Jan 2009

swensens [Marina Square]

we had the heck of a time trying to locate this place! The directory in the shopping mall wasn't very helpful either. Haha... We were left with 45 mins to devour our ice cream at first... or so we thought. But the service there was kinda slow.which meant that we only had <30mins>

Didn't know that you can get free ice cream there on your birthday!

Ju fanning away the wispy trails of smoke emanating from the candle.

Happy birthday girl!

The choc ice cream I ordered. With chun taking pics in the background.

"Don't attack my ice cream!"

Jael making a glam pose with the ice cream.
Hehe
The time we spent there was short but sweet. Pun intended. =)

1st week of school. new colours shown, more undone homework.

Staying back in school to study today has given me the opportunity to get to know some people in my class better... much more depth than last year. Some people whom I had a bad impression of last year turned out to be nice people. While the bad impression which I had of others have just changed for the worse. Take this guy for example, who makes a conscious effort to sit next to the academic high-achievers in class- daily. I'm not going to try to prevent myself from sounding as cliched as those typical drama serials, but don't you all think that his motive is obvious? He's really just being a fake "friend".

I'm glad that my dad has been cautioning me about such nefarious, contemptible people ever since I was a cute and innocent primary school girl. And I must say that I have never realised the sad truth behind his warnings to me until this year in hci. Must people resort to forced, artificial friendships in a desperate bid to achieve academic success? I doubt so. What goes around comes around. It does not pay to commit evil. Hope this guy realises his mistake quickly and gets his life back on track soon.

Oh ya. And I've been chatting with Jen over the phone more than ever now! Haha it's really rare for me to find people whom I can happily talk to for hours. =)

I originally planned to post up some recent pics, but I'm too sleepy to wait for all of them to upload.

Btw I'm extremely happy to have Lina as my chem lab partner now! She does titrations really fast and accurately. And I can talk to her, unlike my previous lab partner. Hahaha

Jen, I don't wanna swap lab partners with you anymore! =D I work better with girls. HAHA.

So everyone, stay real. =)

behold, the power of the internet.

Was googling the names of random friends when I came across my grandsenior class' blog. 06S6C. And then I just clicked on the link of this guy's blog.

http://millionaireterence.blogspot.com/

hope that this guy doesn't mind me koping some stuff from his blog. but here goes... it may be of interest to hc people... and jael too. btw this post was dated 31st december 2008, so it's definitely not outdated!

Coincidentally, I got news from my JC junior that Hwa Chong is implementing certain revamp to the school too. Our beloved students' lounge, more affectionately known as Fishtank, will vanish. Replacement is still not made known.

There will be changes to the entire canteen since there is a change of the canteen operator. My beloved eel rice from that Japanese food stall will cease to exist; ditto for Xiao Mi Mi （笑咪咪） economical rice stall; even Candy Yong Tau Foo has to go.

The bookshop auntie is evicted from the school too. She's probably the biggest loser from this revamp saga. Not only did she receive very little notification of the termination of her lease, the school did not even take into consideration of her many years with Hwa Chong.

To think that Hwa Chong has always boast itself to have a warmth and amicable environment, the sheer coldness that the administration has given to the bookshop auntie

is indeed an apt illustration of what the term "irony" truly means.

Whatever happened to 人情味？ We've lost that in this incident. We probably had lost it long ago, long before I could even realise.

原本弥漫整个华中校园的浓浓人情味，似乎早已飘散了。取而代之的，是人性里最冰冷绝情的贪婪与市侩。看来再伟大的治校使命与原则，也抵挡不过金钱利益上的诱惑。讽刺，讽刺啊！

uh ya.Just to digress a little. In case you want background info about this guy... Terence Heng. He got a perfect score for the A levels. One of the 63 perfect scorers. Wahhh... xian4 mu4 ah... (sorry can't find an IME for vista, have to stick with hanyu pinyin) Okok sorry for daydreaming about perfect scores. I don't even qualify for H3, how to get 'perfect score' huh?? SIGH, zibei. Nvm, I swear I will work my brain and tired right hand up to their breaking points in J2! Heck about H3, THAT PERFECT SCORE WILL BE MINEEEEEE!!!

and MIT will open its golden gates for me to be educated within its mythical ivory dome with other evil geniuses.

muahahhahahahaaa

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ok, reality check. the MIT part is highly unlikely to happen.

sorry ah, back to the topic.

we've all heard about the fishtank issue during the forum, so I'm not going to say much about it. and the comparison between canteen food in HC and TKGS is akin to comparing HDTV showing a blu-ray movie and the screen of your scientific calculator, so I'm going to drop that topic too.

(although I will somewhat miss xiao mi mi a little)

I've heard about the bookshop auntie's predicament a few months ago from some classmates, but never did I expect it to be for real. She has been with hc for a really long time, and it's hard to imagine how it would be like to visit the bookstore without her anymore.

This guy illustrated his thoughts vividly in the last paragraph, which was written in Chinese. I really admire how well he expressed his emotions, it made me feel somewhat ashamed of being a hc-ian.

Even though my language abilities are not of a high standard, I have found another way to express my thoughts: to let the school's values and beliefs do the talking.

Just take a look at the school's philosophy.

Underlining our mission is our corporate resolve to achieve our goals in an environment of joy, teamwork, integrity, excellence and resilience, while keeping a global perspective. Together, these form our school values.

Our Values:

Joy

We aim to make learning and teaching a joyous experience as joy brings about enthusiasm, optimism and passion for living. We also seek to bring joy to others.

Teamwork

We value people and relationships. We believe in teamwork, so as to harness the unique strengths and expertise of staff, and the potential of every student for individual and group success.

Integrity

We abide by our principles: our thoughts and actions are always guided by what is good, just and honourable.

Global Perspective

We take a global perspective while remaining rooted to our nation. In learning and teaching, we keep abreast of global developments and are open to innovative ideas and practices.

Excellence

We seek to set benchmarks of excellence. We strive for continual improvement in performance. Our performance targets are long term and sustainable.

Resilience

We regard adversity as an opportunity. When breaking new ground or faced with challenges in our learning journey, our perseverance, fortitude and tenacity will enable us to press ahead with our quest for excellence.

(shakes head)

A "corporate resolve". Can't agree more, huh. Sometimes, I think the school is being run like a business organization with a CEO, a Board of Directors, and all. But they're not entirely at fault for doing so, because...well...it can help to save costs.

To me, at this point of time in my life, 人情味 is more important than money.

But I cannot influence my ideals upon others.

Some people value money over morals.

Hope that my morals will not take flight if I ever become a high-flyer at work.

Many of us strive for efficiency and excellence. This is even more evident in the corporate world, particularly in big firms. But while we attempt to maniacally ascend the ladder of success in a state of freneticism, we should not forget those who have helped us up along the way. These people are like the rungs of a ladder; deceptively simple and forgettable, and yet undeniably indispensible. They quietly assist you in reaching your goals and dreams without asking for anything in return. Reaching the top would be a task of Herculean proportions with the termination of their existence; that is, unless you are really good at climbing up lamp posts.

When taking part in sports activities which require you to leave the ground far below you, people often tell us to not look down so as to negate the paralysing effects of a fear of heights.

But when it comes to the ladder of success, maybe, just maybe, we should take a glance down after every few steps, and thank the austere, taciturn rungs of the ladder below you.

Show your appreciation today.