a tough choice

Is it better to love, or to be loved?

I think that love should be a two way street.

And I hope that none of my friends would ever have to make an important life decision while considering this question.

it all seems to even out.

With all the cash that I've uncontrollably spent on technology, it is a weird feeling indeed to realise that technology can save me loads of money too. hmm...

I laughed my diaphragm into oblivion a while ago while chatting to constructionworker and alternating current on msn. I have no idea why I am easily amused (and that's a good thing, it makes life much more fun-filled!), but moments like those really make me feel like a kid again.

Without a care in the world. Ahhh.

dilemmas.

imagine yourself as a shepherd, and you have a black sheep in your farm of white sheep.

the black sheep seems to be giving you many problems.

but you don't have any qualms about keeping the other white sheep.

you want to get rid of the black sheep.

do you:

1) tell all the other white sheep to stay away from the black sheep, or

2) tell the black sheep to go away?

recently, the shepherd chose the first option and stuck to it. And sometimes, we do pity the black sheep. Sigh.

Mummy bought a bottle of silver nail polish for me today. I intended to paint it over the damaged areas on the reflector panel of my crumpler bag. (I decided on this after a few failed attempts with a $4 silver fabric pen. #$%^$#%!!!)

But it turned out to be a translucent nail polish.

To save this new resource from wastage, the white sheep decided to paint her nails silver. Heh heh. The last time I coloured my nails was when I was five?? :D

Had a great start to my day in the office today. Constructionworker welcomed me back with a joke. (or rather, a re-enactment of an earlier conversation.)

alternating current: (looking at the policy template) Who's lily?

constructionworker : Oh, the trainer.

alternating current: What? The traitor?

:D HILARIOUS!!!

By the way, the IT fair is on right now in Suntec Convention Hall. I checked the Nikon booth out this afternoon, only to find out that they don't sell any lenses at the fair. The salesman told me to go to either lucky plaza or the Fuji Xerox Tower to purchase lenses directly from Nikon. Hmm. Isn't it weird that everyone is so concerned with camera bodies? I want to check out the price of a Nikkor 50mm f1.4D lens. So do give me an sms if you see this lens around. Thanks! :D

having fun with the kit lens.

Shijia Outing No.2: Aston's Express in Bedok.

Food for thought...

and for drooling.

They offer pretty good food for under $10 per person. Not bad at all. :D

Yep, it's the IR. (Streaks of light! Yay!)

Taken at an area outside the Singapore Flyer after my family's reunion dinner this year.

Light Painting: my first try at this! It's quite fun.

Just find a light source and a very dark room.

Increase your shutter speed... up to a couple of seconds.

Increase the f-number to deepen the depth of field. Set the camera to manual focus/disable auto-focus. (the camera has trouble focusing on stuff in the dark)

Then, press the shutter release button.

Swish your light source in front of your camera until you hear the mirror in the camera slap down. And ta dahh! You get something like this. For this picture, I used the iPhone menu as the light source... Which explains the presence of the numerous little colourful squares!

Unfortunately, (?) you can see the fan in my room on the left side of this picture. :P So remember to point your camera towards an empty wall if you don't want stuff other than the light to be in the picture!

ice lemon tea

happy days: hippo and the sesame street guy.

Precious Moments: Friends write from the start.

nikon? Hmmm.

macro: a little bee on my mum's sunflower.

You... are... The Only Exception.

(just heard that Paramore song on MTV. Pun intended.)

Clearly, this was not taken with the D90.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of Adrian's new workstation on Tuesday. :D

(taken with my iPhone. Why are there vertical streaks in the picture? It may be due to the flickering fluorescent lights in my office. )

Going for the National Infocomm Scholarship talk tomorrow. And I'm going to have lots of work to chiong in the office tomorrow, too. I'm kinda too lazy to write essays for scholarship applications after I come back from work. Sigh. Must press on.

NUS open house on Sunday.

Learning to bake a shepherd's pie at Nina's house on Sunday too. :D Thank you Nina!

And yup. I just uploaded new pictures on flickr.

ok this is very late but.....

Just posted our previous shijia outing pics on flickr.

In case you don't remember the URL... (which is most probably the case!)

It's
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkphoton/

Didn't manage to post all the pics we took, because I'm a lazy scrooge who won't pay US$20 for a pro account, and I haven't optimised the file sizes of the pics. Heh heh heh.

And I apologise for any weird yellowish/grayish colour casts in the pics. Haven't got the time to photoshop them all yet. :|

Looking foward to our gathering this Sunday? :D
and the NTU talk this Saturday! :D

thinking when you don't want to.

Paiseh ah. Haven't been updating due to my new job. :P

As the days go by, I've been getting weirder and more horrifying nightmares every night.

From dreaming of my parent's petrified faces when they see my A level results to dreams of random people.

Uncertainty is worrying. And driving me crazy.

Must remember dad's words. "Whatever it is, you must live with it... Aiya anyway A levels not very important one la. Just study what you like."

I'm hoping it's NUS for me, I have nothing against NTU except that it's a 2+++hour public transport journey from my home!



I thought that walking/jogging for 1 hour at the gym every day could make me sleep better, but nooooo... Physical exhaustion doesn't eliminate weird dreams.




CNY was generally boring, as usual. But I realised that I like to see kids playing happily. :D Or kids *beaming* at the mention of pizza for lunch. Super cute! I miss the innocence we all once had. Don't you? The times when we never understood or heard of politics.

Didn't take many pics during CNY. My pot of flowers got thrown away, though, because it was completely infested with aphids. Haiyar. 1 month of gardening effort!

For some reason, many things have fallen nicely into place so far. I can only hope that this sense of order (probably imposed upon my life by an extremely kind higher being, thank you! :D) will persist.

I mean, a national infocomm scholarship with 1 year at Carnegie Mellon doing game design (whoohooooo!!!) would be fantastic! Plus 3 years at NUS doing electrical and electronics engineering. Heh heh.

Talking about game design... I finally got to setting up my Xbox in my room yesterday, so Shijia can have loads of fun this Sunday.

We must enjoy our lives while we can! :D

Mum and Dad are right. The workplace IS full of idiots.

"All truth passes through three stages:
first, it is ridiculed;
next it is violently attacked;
finally, it is held to be self-evident."
- Schopenhauer

So I may have only spent two days in this company,

but there are, indeed, many inefficient operating procedures...

and dangerous ones, too.

I pointed them out to the inexperienced, unreceptive trainer. She didn't listen. She didn't care for the welfare of the company either. She simply puts on a fake front, pretending to be concerned for customers, and then grumbling about them afterwards.

Can we call that honesty? The world may be a stage, but feigning concern an assault to your integrity.

Can't stand being mentored by morons...

Anyway, I won't be seeing this moron ever again. You thought that all I did was irritate you with a cornucopia of questions. :) I'm 18, and I'm inexperienced at work. But I'm pretty good at surreptitiously manipulating and sabotaging my enemies without them even realising it. You had a low threshold, I saw through your vulnerabilities easily.

(but seriously, I broke down out of frustration with your nonsense. Worst person I've ever dealt with, man. Gotta learn to control my temper better.)

You've offended the wrong person. So watch out for your rice bowl. Moron!

I'm moving on to better things.

You, remember to stay single!

Vacation pics!

Love my camera... :)

Now for the less mushy stuff.

This pic above is of a very luxurious-looking golf course at Monterey Bay (for the rich!) which I visited during my trip to the US in December. Love the tree! And the lake in the background! :D Don't think I can afford a golf membership there, though. hehe.



This was taken when we were just about to leave the Grand Canyon. (Ironically, the nicer pics I took there weren't of the Grand Canyon itself...) The skies there were cloudless. And the sunset was so beautiful. Sniff...

Ok these pics I've uploaded here are really taking up loads of space, so I've uploaded the rest on Flickr!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkphoton/

Hope you enjoyed the photos! :D

These are the days...

When I wish that I was born a guy.

Sigh. I hate cramps.

Will be updating when my cramps are gone for good. :D

By Request!

First of all, sorry for not updating for nearly a month. Lazy, lah. :P


In case you're wondering how I'm spending most of my time... Well, I've rented the first season of The Mentalist ( :D yay!) and I've enjoyed almost every minute of it! Patrick Jane is the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes, in my opinion. :P





Other than lazing around with my Patapon 2 PSP game and watching DVDs, my long period of mental shutdown also includes running on the treadmill once a week and following my mum out to do some shopping. And of course, cable TV! :D





Really, I'm just waiting for some job offers/interviews to roll in now.





By the way, here are some pics from our latest shijia dinner! There are 60 pics in total, and I think I sent about 5 pics to each of you. But the emails to Jael and Julia bounced back. :( I must have made your mailboxes explode. Sorry... :(





Like Jael said, we should set up a blog to post shijia pics only. Hehe :)

I did the Jacob.

Watched The Pink Panther 2 movie on TV last night with my dad. Alot more hilarious than I expected!

Aishwarya Rai: Excuse me, may I disturb you?

Inspector Cruzo (i.e. Steve Martin, looking stunned by the beauty): Oh yes! Please disturb me.

HAHA!

Also went to watch New Moon with Bahiah and Nina last Thursday. It wasn't a great movie... but the Jacob parts really made it worth our $7.50. Plus I haven't met the both of you in a very long time... :( Jacob's scenes were mostly hilarious, except for the parts when he was fighting with Edward over Bella. :O

Remember how much better Jacob looked after he cut his hair short in the movie?

Yesterday, I did the Jacob too. :D

Before: The unkempt hair of Jacob. Wasn't cut at all since October. GAH!

After: Transformation to a werewolf. It's in my genes.

(Ok, there are no vampires and werewolves in this world. )

I like my new hair! It's great for sloths like me; it doesn't require combing in the morning. :P

Now for some pictures I've shot over the weeks. I LOVE MY D90! And photoshop too. :D

Uploading more pics after a game of Sushido. :D

Theories don't always apply in our lives.

Just flipped through this week's papers, and discovered that Nikon is still selling the D90 kit with the 18-105mm lens (and a few other free gifts which I don't need, other than the rather nice 8gb card... hehe.) at $1988.
(Audiohouse seems to be offering more attractive free gifts at that price, though.)

STILL!
NOOOOOOOO!!!
WHY???

I thought change made the world go round.

Nikon just stopped my world from revolving for a millisecond. :P

That almost made me fly off tangentially.
(don't forget your circular motion, physics student.)

I thought the US dollar just depreciated against the Sing dollar. Why aren't our US imports cheaper? Why? Why is this so reminiscent of econs? :O
(it's ok if you forgot the exchange rate policies, though.)

8 more days, 1 week and a day has never felt like eternity.

On an even sadder note, my dad brought me into a Sony shop yesterday afternoon, and we were stunned by the prices (and arm-muscle-unfriendly sizes) of the alpha lenses. Especially those macro/wide angles I've been eyeing. Doubt the Nikkor ones would differ much from the alphas, then. Sigh. Rich man's hobby, huh. Guess I'll have to work hard for them! :)

On a happier note, my dad's new iphone casing matches mine. :D Mine's metallic pink; his is a very shiny silver. My mum's iphone now has a mirror-like screen protector! :D :D :D

And on an even happier note, Jael's new blog is now open! With 37 new captivating pictures of her cousin's wedding yesterday in her first post, you'll be shocked to know that she took them all with her sony ericsson phone. :) No kidding.

Hai. I'm pretty much in holiday/gaming/leisure reading mode already. Shall load my Michael Buble CD into my phone, and revise chemistry again.

Our much deserved break has never been so tantalizingly near.

I just hope that my A level results will be good enough to allow me to enter the electrical/electronics engineering course at NUS. I'll be delighted, really. :D

Be still, my beating geek heart.

This is quite funny! =D
Getting my D90 on 30th Nov, after the physics MCQ paper which marks the commencement of freedom!

funny

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."

by Woody Allen

now that's interesting.

Many quantum physicists believe your angry vibration can be felt in a larger universal energy field—thereby attracting negative circumstances. A well-known quantum physics expert, Lynne McTaggert, wrote about a study she witnessed where a happy person sent out loving energetic thoughts to an angry person, which then successfully calmed this angry person's temper.

from Oprah's website. :D cool huh.

Let's do this!

ARE YOU READY TO ROCK???!

15 days to our first A level paper! YAY!

Despite having failed prelim math (S, damn sad), and crying over it (and physics, who else but me could have made so many careless mistakes in paper 3?) for 2 days a loongg time ago, I've slogged my guts out over the revision packages after prelims, and I'M READY TO ROCK!!! :D

I'm only blogging today because I just finished the NJC 09 physics prelim paper this morning. Yay! I fell asleep, sprawled unglamourously on my bed at 1am last night, just as I had 1 more question left to finish paper 3. My dad said he came in at 3am to find me, this dead log, heavily asleep on the bed, with study lamp in my room turned on. hahaha :D He nearly scolded me for studying late again. For some reason, the hc teddy gives me motivation to study. We got it on graduation night from Mr How, under the nerve-wrecking glare of the stagelights, in front of the whole of the Athena faculty. Stage fright!


We all slogged for 2 years in this JC for you, bearbear. You better have some kind of supernatural powers which can increase our intelligence. :D




It has soft, curly fur, and dons the hwachong PE attire, minus the black school shorts with elastic bands of unusually high spring constants. Yes, it's made of the same uncomfortable dryfit material which we hate... But at least it keeps bearbear warm in case its homeostasis system breaks down. :)
Hey... stop trying to hug your computer screen!

Goodness, I haven't visited my blog since... I forgot. I was really happy to see Mrs Foo's comment on my September post! Oh man... Mrs Foo. You made the comment on 2nd October and I just saw it today. Paiseh. >.<>

Hello Mrs Foo! :D I miss you! I'll come back to visit TKGS after my A levels, hope you'll still be in school when I'm back, haha. :) Did you find my blog via Mr Yong's blog? hehe. :P

So, after all, it's byebye to hc diploma, no thanks to my math and physics. And my horrible GP. (sigh) After all the effort I put in for prelims, and all the time which has passed, I'm over the initial period of severe disappointment. :D

Miss Lim (GP tuition teacher) returned us our most recent compre yesterday, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I got 32/50. 6/8 for AQ. 11/15 for language. Seriously, I have NEVER scored >28 for a compre, >5 for an AQ, and >8 for language since I came to jc. Heehee. My English isn't THAT bad after all lor. Recently Jen and Shu Hui got 5 for their AQ, if I recall correctly! Seeing the fruits of your labour is really encouraging! Although Weilun meant to be sarcastic when he said "wah, you so lucky" in response to Ms Lim when she told him that I first met her 4 years back on a Europe trip, he has truly spoken words of wisdom. hahaha :P hc's method of teaching GP simply doesn't work for me. Sigh.

Nevermind, on to happier things, like graduation night photos! :) Not that I like camwhoring, but this is the last chance this year to catch some photos with my friends. :(

Mr Remedios, thank you for your patience, tic-tacs, colourful spring, brute force/iteration method for radioactive decay, and of course, the SuperStuds. (in other words, supervised study sessions)

Poon, who covered his head with a black bag after shouting HWACHONGGGG really loudly after we sang the school song. Go Poon! We love your antics. :D

Going clockwise, it's Shu Hui, Jen, Me, Lina. With photobombers Wilson and Nic Tan at the back, and Kennsiang's peace sign. Thanks Kennsiang, I think the world has enough terrorists, we don't need any more photobombers.

Shu Hui pointing at Wayne. Wayne goes "Noooo dun take photo of me!".

Shuhui and a suicidal Wayne. Nooo Shuhui don't shoot!

Jen and Shuhui have been studying with me all this while, so here's a little tribute to them.

(Jen I don't have a photo with you :( )

Shuhui is against photobombers.

And now for people from 08S6C to look out for in the headlines in 10-20 years. Hmmm. I smell talent hunters.

Chuan Khim.

Something has happened!

Xinyi's IQ increases by 10!

Talking about living in the moment...

Jun Lin.

Something has happened!

Xinyi's IQ has increased by 10!

And... my dear BBI/Centad/SSEF groupmate!

(pity Lu Theng is in Artemis... could've gotten a group photo.)

Without you, we wouldn't have had all those really good marketing strategies.

Presenting the future psychologist/successful businesswoman,

Jiang Ying! Trying to be funny arh. :)

If you're a 4 H2 PCME student like the overworked me, it's 36 days to the END of the A levels! You've only got to slog for another month! :D

On a bleaker note, the price of a Nikon D90 with a 18-105mm kit lens is STILL $1988 after nearly 3 months. Cheap DSLR, sadly, still remains an oxymoron. Guess I'll have to make do with that price. When I buy it, the first person I'll take a photo with is Nina! Because we're both not the camwhoring kind, we haven't taken a photo together yet!!! hahaha!!! >_<

I wonder if entering the NUS course for electrical and electronics engineering will be the right choice for me...? Mmmmph. Too complex an issue for my feeble and immature 18 year old brain. What's all the talk about this course being easy to get in, and difficult to score in? I just want to be in the team of techies creating the next coolest invention, and be happy while I'm at it.

A simple dream which seems so difficult to achieve.

Okie. In the meantime, I have to pia the chemistry prelim papers for tomorrow. The +20 intelligence I received on grad day is still coursing through my neural network. Ah.

If you feel stressed, remember that gorging yourself is NOT the right thing to do.

Even if you look cute while doing it.

36 days to freedom! Persevere. :D

time to catch your breath

Love Story meets Viva La Vida

The title may sound weird, but the music doesn't. :D

Also, some eyecandy for you!

YES! They're all cupcakes!! :D

Jiayou everyone! One week and 2 more days to go. :) We'll get through this soon.

Rethinking my life

It's odd that I don't feel very stressed out now, even though the prelims start tomorrow.
Yikes!

In fact, I felt much much much more stressed a few weeks back. Weird huh.
Suddenly, I lost my hopes of going overseas to pursue a degree in engineering. Just can't imagine how badly I'd fare at being independent. And I feel too lazy to apply for overseas unis. In fact, now I kinda don't care if I can't get the hc diploma. I'd be happy to enter NUS. :)
Is this laziness??

The past few days haven't been extremely productive. (only start revising each day from 1pm to 7pm. Then it's TV all the way until 12mn.)Wonder if the last minute chiong syndrome in me will ever surface. :/

Yesterday night, I had a terrible nightmare. I downloaded some RPG game from the Apple appstore, only to discover later that it was a trojan in disguise. It took over the entire OS of my iPhone and wiped out all my data. It took me a long while to get over the panic, and finally attempt to delete the app from my phone. Miraculously, the simple solution worked. And I woke up. PHEW! Definitely one of the worst dreams I've had. (I rarely dream.)

Oh yes... I am currently extremely sick of studying. SIGH.
Thankfully, we only have 3 more months to go.
And all I can think of is the day when we finish our A levels.
After that, I can:

-release 1000 mealworms in the Principal's office.
(just kidding)

-Meet up with Shijia and friends! :D
-eat at holy grill again
-Visit TKGS teachers
-bake for friends

-Buy a DSLR
-Learn driving (very important :D )
-jog for an hour every day. I think I'm becoming a mobile lump of lard; sitting at home all day mugging.
-Learn to read Japanese

-finish knitting scarves for my family
-US trip! Yay! My mum's friend and her daughter are going on the same trip too. :D

-finish reading the quantum and the lotus.
-finish reading a brief history of time
-finish reading the 3rd eragon trilogy. (embarassing, I know.)

Ah. I feel more motivated to mug now. :D
Keep the holidays in mind, everybody!
And good luck for the prelims!

Movie outing!

Had a very fun movie outing with Nina today at Century Square. After countless days of toiling our brains away in school, the free periods of our frenetic timetables finally coincided. :D

We watched the 5pm Up movie after lunch at Tampines One. Most of the food there is pretty expensive though.

Watching it in 2-D (not 3D, it makes us dizzy) may have removed the physical element of depth from the movie, but some of the scenes and quotes have definitely struck a deep chord within us.

I remember the rotund boy scout talking about his dad, and how they spent their free time counting how many blue or red cars they spotted on the road. The old man looked disgruntled as he reluctantly listened to the little boy's incessant boring chatter; but his heart immediately softened when the boy mused that "it's the boring stuff that you'll remember.".

Thinking back, I realised that the little boy is right. Whenever memories of TKGS flood my mind, the ones which I remember most vividly are the days when we returned to the school library during the study break to mug for the O levels. Those were the days when I was, oddly, happy amidst all the stress which the impending O levels was imposing upon us.

Maybe it was because we had superb teachers like Ms Yeo, Mrs Chan, Ms Tee, Mrs Pang, and Mrs Foo, Mr Peh, and Mrs Irene Tan who helped us to understand our work well. Maybe the O levels are way easier than the A levels. (definitely!)

Maybe it was how we came together, helping each other solve crazy questions. Maybe it was how we challenged each other to the Impossible Quiz, or checked out interesting books like "Mad About Physics" in the TKGS library when we got bored of studying.

I'm sure I bored you as much as the little boy bored the old man, but these are the stuff I'll remember for life.

Ah. I miss those blissful days in tkgs.

I received the results of the PSC psychometric assessment today, and I was stunned by its accuracy. (okay, except for jen's twin's report which astonishingly said that he's 'cool' and 'humble'. Once you tell others how humble you are, you lose your humility!) I was never an extrovert, but many incidences which I've witnessed in JC have made me more introverted. I have shut nearly all my doors of trust to others, and I silently think about agendas people around me may be having. And I've learnt to only fully trust and confide in true friends.

On a lighter note, the report also said that I am unable to work methodically (hehe), and that I can't stand boring work. My thoughts are also "somewhat disorganized". The joke of the year is the part where it said, "you are generally more easygoing than most people are when facing delays in assignments". hee... ;)


Back then, strong bonds of friendship kept us going.
Right now, some of these bonds may have faded;
but some remain, and have become stronger than before.

That will keep us advancing in this crazy race.

3 months is all we need to get through to reach our goal of freedom.
Don't give up, my friends! :D

So THAT'S how you kill gummy bears...