Triple day post. Went for training on all 3 days, that is, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Start with Friday first.

Well I can't remember much (lol) on Friday except the 三分 part, maybe I'll remember later. Dawn + Denise + Hanzhi against Ying Wen and some girl whose name I don't know, and me. I know we lost 3 - 1, then we had to 捡球, standard job for me. And I think the last set was 19 - 13 in their favour, then our side caught up to 20 - 20, then we lost. Oh then I played with Dawn, where I led the game 2 - 0, 10 - 9 to me. Then I lost that set, and the next, and the next. I was quite unhappy because she had made such a great comeback at the last possible moment. OK FRIDAY DONE, NEXT.

Saturday... Arrived at 3pm when I said I would come at 2.30, because I slept on the bus and missed by one stop, and the distance back was longer than usual. Once I got to school though, I think I was made to 推 again, for like 6 people. Then we had to 三分 again. This time, I finally got to be on Dawn's side (I'm scared of facing her) with An Qi. Julian, Joy and that girl became our opponents. I really can't remember the score, I think it was 3 - 1 though. It was 21 - 20, 21 - 20, 21 - 20 then the last set, woah. 5 - 5, An Qi took over. 16 points for our team straight to help us win the match. We were so impressed as Dawn and I stood at the side just watching our rivals go up and come back down in a minute again and again.

After that, doubles. Benedict, Dawn and Joy, we were supposed to be playing a full round, but we only got to play two. First, I paired with Joy. We had a less than good start, but not bad. We were down 2 - 0, then we caught up to 2 - 2, thanks to Joy's speed and her 一定进的拉球, 我只需要搓过去就够了. Never partnered with anyone else who had such consistency and confidence along with the ability to get into position so quickly. However, it was not enough and we lost the last set 11 - 9.

Benedict became my next partner and we did quite well, I guess. Another 3 - 2 match, we lost. The 短球 strategy didn't work because Joy was so good. Then Dawn used the effective method of hitting to my forehand as it would be to my disadvantage because left handers stood in a more awkward position. I still have yet to find out how to handle that.

When that was over, I got to play against Dawn once more. This time, I lost totally. 3 - 0, I was completely trashed. Day concluded, I was pissed.

Then came today, 1.30 became 1.50, I was allowed to play 升降 (Please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems right) first. Primary school kids don't count, so the first proper game was against Denise. She asked me to let her win because she had been on a losing streak and she was going off soon. I had no intention of doing that but did not play my best, and ended up losing 2 - 0. So I went down again. Then after another game, that session stopped. Then 升降 part 2, without Primary School people started. 教练拿着八个球拍，请我挑号码，我选了四，后来呢，发现人数是奇数的，所以一个人需要等着一场，真倒霉，那个人却被我自己选了，就一场没的玩. At round 2, I played Hanzhi, and finally won. But she was off form today, so I guess it doesn't really count? Ziping was shocked by his loss to Hui Li, for he didn't expect her to be so good.

I went up and played Gerrat, who lost to some girl that Ziping was confident of winning. I got the first set, led the second set 7 - 1 and still lost ultimately, so irritated after that. There was this one ball where I got too overconfident because I thought he would never be able to reach there in time, but I should have expected the old Gerrat back, ready for anything, 他把球拉进去了，让我吃了一惊，举起球拍接那粒球，可以经太迟了，我没准备，就打到网里. Wasted match, Ziping was taken aback again as he lost to the very same girl that Gerrat had lost to in the previous round, and he was wondering how they all became so good. I went back down and got Hanzhi for the second time, she was still very off. I played Dawn next. There was this one ball that she accidentally threw and was about to catch it again but failed, then she gave the point to me despite my words of refusal. It led to me winning the first set, she would have won otherwise. She won the second set with ease. Then I had to tyco the very last ball in the third set to win. (You should have taken back the point lah Dawn!) Ziping lost to Gerrat, whom he had previously joked as "a waste of my time". He was on a losing streak today.

I was VERY badly beaten by Daryl next, whose moves were so fast and accurate, though with a few overestimated shots. 2 - 0, in less than 5 minutes, I think. First to lose in that round. I was too discouraged by that loss, I don't remember who Ziping lost to this time, but he was having a really bad day. I know Deirdre beat Gerrat, apparently by numerous tycos. Back down to Dawn, I lost this time, 2 - 0. Ziping was losing to An Qi, then coach told them to play again, 五局三胜.

Then he put Deirdre against Gerrat, Julian vs Hanzhi and Dawn with me, again. 3rd point in, I was going to just play aggressive on the fourth, but my hand collided with the corner of the table at full speed as Dawn had served over there. My thumb instantly went numb and as I lay my bat on my table instinctively, I saw a red patch and immediately knew I was bleeding. And the first way I deal with it it to press on it to stop blood flowing out. Then our very nice Dawn came forward and made me wash it even though I told her it was ok. Well, I did, then she told me that I should not play. I insisted and she gave in here, but she seemed so worried. Well, I admit I was not able to hold my bat as firmly thereafter, but after than that it was fine. In fact, I somehow got a morale boost or something and won that set. In the end, I won, but I think Dawn may have been too worried about me being unable to play properly that caused her to lose some focus and result in her more frequent mistakes. I was happy anyway, for I had finally beaten her (the earlier one didn't count, that was total luck on my side) once after 3 days. And thanks for caring, Dawn, but you should listen to me more, I'm no stranger to injuries :) (applies to Deirdre and Hanzhi as well).

To end the day, 蛙跳.

It was yet another day of insanity today. I arrived at Kallang station, 11.55am. Then I waited.... until 12.20, where Daryl told me he had arrived. Our call was rushed as he was running low on cash. He told me to meet at the colourful building, mentioning the colours yellow, red and blue. I was completely baffled because I could not see any such building around me. I even scanned the whole station to look for another possible exit because I didn't believe that I could have missed him as he exited the station. At 12.30, Daryl called me again after buying a new prepaid card to save my life, by reminding me that I was supposed to go to Stadium and not Kallang. I was really shocked and quickly made my way over through the circle line. Naturally, I was the last to arrive, at 12.55pm. The rest had arrived already. They were eating Subway at Leisure Park. Kai Zhong bought 2 cookies and gave them away. Deirdre took one, I took the other then Daryl gave me one more to speed up his eating rate. So at 1.30, we left for the..... Skating Rink? It had a nice little queue outside, and the girls added to it. Daryl, Kai Zhong and I stood elsewhere. We got in at 2pm, finally. Kai Zhong and Daryl got a pair of gloves each (the girls had brought their own), it was too late before I realized I didn't have one, but I thought "Who cares, it's Singapore, how cold can it get?"

The ice rink was smaller than I expected, but could fit about 75 people quite comfortably, albeit with some really dangerous scenarios. The middle was reserved for tricksters, it was amazing. Well, we went into the ring after putting on our skates, 4 of us being first timers, total noobs :). At the start, it was very wobbly, wouldn't fall, but very unsteady. I kept using the side for support for the first 2 rounds. After a while, it felt like rollerblading though, and I slowly got used to it. Dawn suffered a couple of skin peels, one on each leg, like 20 minutes in. Deirdre and Hanzhi got her a plaster from the counter, it was their last one. Then Daryl got his own skin peel on the ankle. I suggested a tissue as a padding, but it shifted positions often and didn't really help, so instead, both Dawn and Daryl got long socks, then wore it over their current pair, and had trouble fitting back into the skate.

With continuous rounds of the rink, I slowly got more confident and was eventually able to move at a pace I enjoyed. I was the first to slip and fall, which was not my intention. Well, everyone fell except Hanzhi, in the end. I totaled 3, one by myself, another by Daryl's pushing during a race and a 3rd by an attempt to avoid someone which failed. I tripped Dawn in that one as well, she was so pissed after that. 2 hours spent there, we played around with the camera and basically did rounds after rounds on the skating rink. Endurance was key, but everyone got blisters. It was amazing to see certain people moving through so quickly and gracefully, though most were amateurs. Children got to use a mobile support made of metal, which took up some space but overall didn't affect us. We took many breaks but had a lot of fun. Kai Zhong spent quite some time with a friend of his though. He fell the most among us, and his gloves were really wet in the end. The floor got more slippery with time and repeated skating over the same area, which instilled fear in us and friction was further reduced, increasing the chances of falling. Speed was something which I liked, but greater speed meant lesser balance, and balance overruled speed. I did get some fast runs in the times that I decided to take the risk, though.

At 4pm, we were all tired and we left as time was up. Arcade came next, I played with the Claw Machine again. I wasted a lot of money here, I felt so stupid after that, really stupid. But I could have gotten it so many times, the machine just didn't want to let me have it. Pooh got played 5 times, after which it fell to the side. Hello Kitty 1 was swung to the side to, after being picked up thrice. Hello Kitty 2, didn't try much but gave up. Donald Duck, I did it until his head was right over the whole, and the body refused to go over. On my very last try, it grabbed its butt and just flipped it upside down, dropping it back down to square 1. I totally went broke here. Daryl dropped one coin because he had left his coins on the table and they were slamming the machine so the vibration caused it to fall, took a while to find it back. They were playing a game of reaction time where both players had an equal chance of getting the point. Quite interesting. Hanzhi did some physical tap tap thingy with 5 lanes, for like 10 minutes, she was complaining about the slow speed and was tired after that, but they had to add a round 2 to make her suffer. Then Daryl and Kai Zhong against, Dawn and Hanzhi, in Basketball. The guys failed, 38 against the girls' 175. Throwing two balls simultaneously wasn't the way to go, as they would clash and both would miss the basket. Then Daryl went to Time Crisis 2 again.

Dawn then went to eat at KFC because she was hungry (as usual), so did Hanzhi. That was Tea, and they just have to take every single possible meal available. At 5, we went to Suntec City Mall, which was at Promenade Station, something I'd never heard of before. Caught the train just in time. Anyway, Deirdre and Hanzhi used an umbrella to get across 40m, the rest of us ran across. At Suntec City... we discussed what to eat and failed. Then we decided to camp out at Coffee Bean, like really camp. 6pm to 7.35pm, we stayed there and 5 people shared 2 cups of coffee. Deirdre used it as a pacifier for Dawn when she got too noisy or said rubbish (Well, she is 艺乐妈妈 after all). We just talked crap and stayed there because we couldn't decide where to take dinner and no one was coming in to the shop. Daryl showed us some amazing mind blowing tricks. Hunter and Rabbit and a couple of other finger tricks which required multi-tasking of the brain. Then Solar Energy and Soya Bean, wow really laughed at that. Then Hanzhi got me on the head twice with the walk into the tree and the 7th person trick, I still don't understand that one by the way. Then jokes were shared, stories were shared, crap was shared. Black Magic came up again, I will figure it out one day, still impressed by how they do it without me catching it though.

Well at 7.35pm, they went to the food court to eat dinner after deciding that Daryl couldn't tank Kai Zhong's cost at some restaurant, and talked more. I left at 8.10, and used Google Maps to plan my route home. Apparently, I needed to go to Fu Lu Shou Complex, but the route shown was impossible. I had to cross a two way road which was separated by a metal railing, without any bridge or pedestrian crossing. There wasn't even a pavement. I tried to make my own way by running around (getting to the other side of Suntec City Mall hurt as well, I had to go back to the mall to cross), but when I found that I was just bringing myself further from the location, I got desperate and went to the nearest bus stop in search of familiar figures. Thank god, I really thanked god here, there was 61 on the list again. While checking the board that I was in the right direction, the bus itself came. I quickly looked for my stop then hopped on as it was about to move off. I stood throughout the 55 minute bus ride from 8.35 all the way to 9.30. It felt like going through the whole route like a bus driver, except I was not sitting or driving. And worse, with 9 buses available at where I had to change, for 5 minutes, no bus came, not a single one, and I was running late. I finally arrived home at 9.45. Even "anticipating" had failed, because of Google Maps. I had left early and reached home late, this was one of my worst rides back home.

Still an amazing day to spend, possibly the last for this year. Thanks, Dawn :D.

21 - 28 hours. Today was physical work, I was told to move books to create space for new books when they arrived. It was quite tiring when it came to the bottom rows. Anyway, I cleared about 13 shelves, each with 5 rows, finished at 3.10. It felt so hot in the library after that. And they kept dropping, frustrated me. My lunch was totally chocolate, I got so sick of it and took a long time to eat. Didn't even finish it. Brought the last waffle home. Anyway, after the book moving part, I had to make sure that the contents of a board game collection, meant for promoting team bonding, were in order. And there was really a lot of problem, miscounting in the contents. Well I didn't finish that part before 5 and it was a lot to count but I was let off. Tomorrow, final day!

I said that I would go at 2.30 for training today, but I only left home at 2.05 and I need 45 minutes to get to school, on average. Well.... I would have been late for 15 minutes only if I hadn't fallen asleep at the wrong time, which dropped me off 2 stops later. And this particular bus goes on its route infrequently, so it added another 15 minutes and overall I was 35 minutes past my target time. As I got into school I bumped into Dawn and friends on the staircase and they said hi and I walked past them with a responding hi but barely looking at them, I felt so rude after that (Sorry!).

Started with a match, with some AT girl. The first thing she asked was whether I was sheng jiao, and I told her I was Anti. The first set turned out bad for her, and she looked very upset, so I slackened a little. While we played, the rest of the AT girls came and told her I was Anti because they thought that she didn't know as she had not turned up for training recently, and they came one after the other so it was repeated quite a few times, and she seemed quite irritated after that because she already knew that before they came to notify her. Anyway, I lost the 2nd set, then when I found out that it was a best of 3 I gave no more chances, Primary School style (没杀球但也没乱打). I won in the end.

Then I had to 推 Julian and... I don't know what's her name, again. That one took about half an hour, I think. At first I wasn't doing it right (发力） for Julian was so aggressive that I decided to give him a harder challenge. It was more fun to do it that way though. But then I was asked by coach to not 发力, so I did that and it became a lot easier for him, but he still failed to reach the 50 that he needed.

After that, 三分. This took up a lot of time. 五局三胜. Dawn, Deirdre and Isabelle on one side, Hanzhi + Jerilyn and I on the other. I totally couldn't beat Dawn, I need to figure out a way, but I was grateful that Hanzhi wasn't on their side either because that would be a double death for me. We took the first set, they won the second, we got the third and almost won the fourth but Dawn made a comeback at the end, it was like 19 - 14, then she climbed her way to 20 - 20 and I asked Julian if there was deuce and he said yes but Deirdre was not for that idea, so we passed it and Dawn took the final point. At 2 - 2, they were sighing because I think Isabelle wanted to go home. Anyway, she was being a tyco queen over there, getting net-ins on all of us, twice in a row on me at one point. There was also this rule that if either side lost consecutively twice (6 times because there were 3 people), they would have to do 蛙跳. I almost gave them the honor twice, but Dawn and Deirdre both stopped it at the very last point. Well, I wouldn't have made them do it anyway, but it would have felt good. Last set, we won 21 - 14. Loser's side got to 捡球, then they went home. Dawn said bye before she left, and the sun was shining right into my face I couldn't see where she was and took a while before I found her and waved back. They called me a lagger. Then I was told that they had said it 3 times and I had supposedly ignored all of them. I felt even more rude after that. (Sorry again!!) But I really couldn't see and I didn't hear them.

Training hadn't ended though. I played against Julian after that (loser would have to pick 50 balls). When it was 2 - 0 with me leading, Julian asked for 七局四胜, so I agreed to that. But, I lost that third set even though I had a significant lead when Julian requested the extension of the match. 2 - 1, 3 - 1, 3 - 2, 3 - 3 and then finally 4 - 3, I triumphed over him once more. That 2 set pick up by Julian was amazing though.

Then Darryl offered to play me, to see my Anti Skills because he said that my ability was better than his (he used the word "Perfectionist", a word that was far too strong). It turned out good for me, but I was very impressed by his corner smashes on my forehand side because I normally wait for it on the backhand. It caught me off guard quite a few times. 至少他也有吃我几个发球. I won 3 - 1, but he had been really tired, so I guess it doesn't count.

2nd day of CIP was even more fun than yesterday. I was left alone almost all the way, and I was doing something more fun today. I was supposed to be writing out titles of the maagazines, state the date range of the issues along with the number of issues there were. It was tough to go up and carry the heavy bundles down then have to put them back onto the shelf again. And, I didn't know how to tie a nice knot, I spent more time trying to figure out how they tied it than writing on the list. I had to retie them after arranging the magazines in order, then return them to the shelf. The heavy sets were definitely not fun to tie though.

Lunch was a very nice time. I went to the canteen and bought Fish and Chips for myself, and found that the meal included a bun that I had not eaten for a very long time since the Hawker moved off from the Hawker Center near my home. It tasted the same, and what was even better was, I could buy it separately. I was so yay! I finished that up and was wondering if I had to dispose of the plate myself, so I went to ask this cleaner for a location to place my plate, because I had seen a sign that implied that this was a self-service area, but underneath that was "Muslim only". The cleaner took my plate and told me that I could just eat and leave in the future, how nice.

I still had half an hour, so I went to explore the lounge-cafe above the library. I got a Chocolate Waffle there and it was so delicious, I'm going for it again tomorrow. The chocolate was hot and sticky, like fudge. After that snack, I returned to the library to continue my list, all the way until the end, 5pm again. I finished a couple more rows, there were just so many bundles, and I'll be doing the same thing again tomorrow.

I did my first day of CIP today, 4 days left. 7 hours each for a total of 35 hours. I arrived at 8.30am, then scouted the area for the entrance to the library along with the food court. It's a complicated building, I must say. They just couldn't make a staircase down to the ground floor, could they?

So I was started off with a list of books for withdrawal. Scanning through the shelves, I had to look for books with "codenames" that didn't make any sense to me, but they are codenames for a reason, I guess. It was tiring to kneel down for prolonged periods to look for one particular book, because they could differ in just one letter so it did take quite a while to find them. 3 of the books were missing, 1 was a CD-Rom although there was a book as well. Then there was this Hello Kitty book that had 2 copies, but the barcodes were different. Another huge book that could not fit onto the trolley like the other books had 3 copies, all with different barcodes. Then there was a book about some guy, 3 copies as well. They had different designs, then I looked at the titles again and found that they differed too. In all, I collected about 70 books, I think.

With that done in 2 hours, my next job consisted of three steps. With a trolley full of books, I had to run the same process through everyone of them. Pull out the barcode, scratch the label and stamp "Withdrawn" between the covers. It was quite fun, but my first attempt did not successfully scratch the label the way it was meant to be, so I had to run through the shelf again to re-scratch them all with the penknife as it had to cut through the label. Pulling out the barcode resulted in constant pinching of my own fingers and it started to hurt after a while, so I didn't exactly enjoy pulling out the barcodes, but I realized after a while that it could be eased by pulling up a little of the barcode with the penknife. And stamping was my favourite part because it's so easy, but I had a hard time getting a nice chop on it. It was visible, but not clear as I would like it to be. With repeated stamps, it got better, but still not clear enough.

I did this until 1pm, where it was my lunch break. I took McDonald's again, and I think I was ripped off on Saturday's dinner. That meal cost $6.60 while this was $4.90, and both are the exact same thing. I was looking for more game labels since we had collected quite a number last Saturday, but they didn't give it this time. Whatever, I finished lunch in half an hour and spent 15 minutes loitering around the area, then went back to continue the remaining 3 hours. I was tasked with the same thing, which I did all the way till 5pm and I managed to clear 1 whole trolley (about 60 books) in that period. I will be hoping to do the same thing tomorrow, but probably not.

Media Production ICT Enrichment course: I don't think I learnt anything at all, not that I didn't listen, but it's like everything was common sense. But, the really good part was that we didn't have to do a lot, it was really fun just listening to him talk about his experience and that caused time to fly through.

I just want to post about yesterday's training. It was not bad but not good either. Started off with a match against Isabelle. Then she had to 拉球. Deirdre joined in a while, and the first ball scared me because it was aggressive immediately. It continued for a while, then Ben Yang took Deirdre's place and when Isabelle left, some AT girl replaced her.

Then, doubles Sheng Jiang again. This time, I was paired with Deirdre. And I didn't do well at all in this part. Wasted 9 serves, so Deirdre says, along with about 5 nets, which could have resulted in failed serves too. We ended up in the table below our initial position, which meant that we lost more than we won. Benedict and Edwin were both paired with small kids, and to balance the game, both the big boys were not allowed to hit hard or give spins. As such, it was a game to see whose 搓球 was better. The result was that we were forced to play them once, and we naturally lost, because of me, again.

After about 5 matches, we played Singles again. I lost to Hanzhi yet again. That's thrice in a row. I'm upset, with a smiley face :).

Woke up at 9.30 today, then went for my dental appointment today to tighten my braces and clean my teeth. Tightening wasn't fun as usual, but at least it didn't hurt too much. It was very cold too, today. Then we went to Fairprice to get some stuff. After finally getting home at 1.30pm, I was feeling very frustrated because I wanted to attend training, but do some work before that. In the end, I didn't do anything. I ate lunch, took a power nap, then went straight for training. Started off by la qiu with Deirdre, again. Well at least we swapped roles after a while, but I couldn't do it as well as her.

After that part was done, it was already 5pm. Then was sheng jiang doubles, again. We beat Jia Ming and Marcus thrice and that was it. We lost so pathetically when we went up, skill gap was so great. We could have won the first pair though, we were leading 10 - 5 and we lost 7 straight points. Daryl didn't even know we were leading. That concluded training. At the fitness corner, I totally proved myself a failure at Pull Ups.

We threw some time to exploring Nex, which was incredibly crowded. Didn't think about it being a hotspot as it has only been out for a week. After looking around the place for somewhere where 4 could sit, we realized it was impossible. Even walking was difficult as it was so crowded. Along with that, the escalators were situated at un-favourable points. So in the end, we headed to MacDonalds (the one NOT at Nex). With the use of Maps on the iPhone, and the compass feature which Dawn totally didn't know about, we brought ourselves to a familiar place, the Bus Interchange before looking for MacDonalds. We had to climb over a fence at one point, where Deirdre almosy fell, found the Macdonalds and eventually took dinner over there.

On my way home, I dropped off at my usual spot, then 'outran' the bus to catch it. When I boarded the bus, the driver gave me a thumbs up and complimented me for my run.

So apparently, Sunday wasn't insane enough. Today was so crazy that Sunday wasn't even weird (it wasn't anyway).

In the morning, I left for school early to attend the ICT course with Julius. I expected it to end at 3.30pm (which shocked Julius) as it had in June. Upon arrival, I found Julius at the Media Studio, having warned him the night before that the teacher had sent the wrong message. We headed down to the PC Labs but to no avail, so we decided to search the Mac Lab, which proved to be the correct venue. I asked what time it would end and the reply was 12.30pm. Sounded good, and the lesson went on with just Julius and I. We thought the rest were late, but when they did not turn up, I suggested that Mr Lee had sent them to the Media Studio with his wrong message. So he went up to check. Upon re-reading his message, I realized that his message had been right, but he had not sent the notification for today's lesson to any of the students, which resulted in the empty class of 2. He was in a depressed mood after that, but we managed to get through the lesson and ended even earlier, which gave me a lot of time to spare.

With the early dismissal, I quickly made my way home and find the best way to get to East Coast Park, which was a really tough job and overall I feel the place is very inaccessible by public transport. I arrived at 2.25, waited for the late Daryl until 2.45. Then we headed to Bedok Interchange, when Kai Zhong decided to join us. So we waited, about 5 minutes. Then he came, and he told us that the girls would be late, so his next plan? EAT LUNCH. Starting with Ice Kachang, followed by Oyster and a bottle of Sprite. Dawn told us to be late and I said we would be. By the time we were done, it was about 3.40. So we continued our wait. After a while, I wondered why nobody was in the 401 line, because surely SOMEBODY would want to go to East Coast Park, so I looked up at the timetable board again and saw "Weekdays: NO OP". Feeling embarrassed, we got out of the queue and decided on an alternative route, which, during my research, had proved to be overwhelmingly numerous. The reason I said it was inaccessible was its ridiculous time required to reach the destination. So along the way, Daryl was blaming me for my stupid way to go to East Coast Park because he had been there last week and it had been from Dakota MRT, with a much shorter route. The bus that we took brought us to the stop that he alighted from last week, with a longer period, of course.

Daryl led us to the underpass, providing us with shelter as well as an exit at East Coast Park. Of all times to do so, it started to rain there and then. It was just drizzling for the first 30 seconds, then it evolved into heavy rain and we were forced to make a run for the closest shelter, a pavilion. Thereafter, we took frequent breaks before switching between the pavilions which were conveniently placed 50m to 100m apart. We all got soaked during that period, and Daryl kept trying to boost our morale by saying we were about there, we just had to cross a couple of pavilions, which was totally not true. His 200m became 500m and I was desperate to protect my iphone. When we finally got to the McDonalds at 5pm, we were wet while the girls were dry. So we went to rent the bikes. Dawn, Deirdre, Hanzhi, Daryl and Kai Zhong rented the 6 seater bicycle, of which 4 could pedal, but I didn't like the idea of at some point being the one not pedalling (defeats the purpose of 'cycling'), so I rented my own bike, leaving my EZ-Link card there. It was between drizzling and raining. I caught up with the rest and followed behind their slow vehicle. Daryl and Kai Zhong took the front seats first, but Dawn, Deirdre and Hanzhi wanted a chance at the front later on. They said it was difficult, but it was actually Kai Zhong's fault because he was deliberately not pedaling. During the ride in the rain, people were staring at us because of the huge bike that appeared to be used by us only that day.

So after about 15 minutes of slow riding, during which I was offered one of the girls' cookies, (it tasted fine by the way, pity Kai Zhong and Daryl, the way you describe the intake of the salty ones) I went up ahead because the slow speed didn't cater to my needs (or wants), so I sped up and eventually found a dead end. When I turned back, I saw that the rest were turning that huge bike in the opposite direction with the intention to head back, and it started to rain even harder. As such, I went back (they were actually trying to lose me) and called for someone to help safeguard my iphone, thank god they had bags. So on the slow ride back, we all got wet because the big bike kept spilling the water collected on the "shelter" that did nothing when Kai Zhong swerved it too quickly, and he kept trying to collide with me. I repeatedly went in front and behind them for the fun of riding the bike, I had not touched one in a long time. They were all having a really fun and everlasting chat throughout the ride. When Kai Zhong drove the bike past a tree, a branch got caught on the underside of the shelter, and it was a strong one. With combined efforts, we managed to snap it off and continued our ride back. At some point, Kai Zhong decided to push the vehicle instead of cycling with it because it was really heavy to pedal. Pushing proved to be an effective method as the bike sped up much more, at the cost of Kai Zhong having to run.

We stopped by this part when someone came up with the idea of taking a photo on a rock which had "2A" written on it (and I was asking "What 2A???"), it was a silly idea but they had the mindset of "since we're already wet, it doesn't hurt to get even wetter". It did not happen as Deirdre had trouble moving, with the load of the bags restricted movement. Daryl led Kai Zhong to pick seashells, which he had found interesting. Getting the bike back onto the road was a slightly difficult job as moving backwards was something bikes weren't meant to do, but we did get it up and running in the right direction. Back at the place just outside the rent shop, the road was filled with muddy water that when both bikes crossed side by side, the murky water splashed onto me. I looked like I had just dirtied myself, and the rain wasn't strong enough to wash it off, so I said that I needed a bath, to which Dawn's response was to jump into the sea. Complying with the suggestion, I rode the bike next to the closest pavilion and jumped into the salty water, full body in. I had my wallet and my earphones in my pockets (They didn't sound right afterwards), but the muddy spots cleared completely, and that was my objective. So I got back next to them and we continued a while more. Kai Zhong told me to jump into the drain below the bridge that we crossed, but I absolutely refused to do it because first, I jumped into the sea to clean myself up and second, I couldn't get out if I did.

After pushing a little later, where Kai Zhong and Daryl sat on the font of the bike, blocking the view of the girls who then took the front seat, we decided that we wanted to head back. It was 6.20pm already. As we made the cooperative U-Turn of the bike, the refugees in the nearest pavilion took out a camera and snapped a couple of shots of us, how nice. We headed back and saw this tent in the muddy water with it's two occupants in raincoats outside it, which Dawn felt was cute and "poor thing" at the same time. So, after crossing the same bridge with the drain beneath it, I helped to push for about another 30 seconds, then they said they could manage it. So I got back onto my bike and rode after them. I slipped.... and fell. I quickly got back up and rode after the five of them again, they didn't notice that I had fallen. Next to them, I notified them of my fall like an attention-seeking fool, then Kai Zhong took over my bike and I was offered the first class seat of the large bike. It was indeed difficult to pedal, took a lot of effort. Deirdre helped me to wash my wound temporarily. When we tried to reverse because we missed the turn, Deirdre mentioned that there was another turning up ahead, just 5 feet away. With a facepalm attitude, we headed back to the rent shop and returned both bikes. I was offered first-aid by Dawn who claimed that she treated her brother when he got hurt. The person who rented the bike gave me antiseptic to apply, a piece of cotton and a huge plaster. I totally felt like a well-cared for patient. Thanks for that, all of you.

So then, wet from head to toe, we looked for a place to dry ourselves. First stop was McDonalds, which was crazy for Deirdre and Hanzhi who said it was cold, so we moved and found this Steamboat shop. A buffet started where they sampled every food the shop available and refilled their plates with those that they liked, at least 5 times afterwards. We had a hilarious chat. Kai Zhong used a lot of oil, which kept splattering and causing split-second pain when it came into contact with our skin. Deirdre, Han Zhi and Kai Zhong kept criticizing Dawn's cooking ability. Daryl was said to burn the food, proved by the blackened state of the aluminium foil on his side, while I failed to cook much. Dawn was said to be not cooking and purely eating, described by Daryl as a typical Singaporean. We changed the aluminium foil once while Dawn and Kai Zhong threw two eggs into the steamboat. The prawns were kept in there for at least 15 minutes, while chicken and beef and cow's stomach/intestine was repeatedly fried with burns and cooked ones in a 1:1 ratio (Dawn said she cooked her food medium-rare). They were used to compare each other's cooking skills and overall it was very funny. A couple of eggs were fried, which tasted good. Dessert was Ice Cream, which Kai Zhong shared with Dawn and Deirdre (food thief). We stayed there for a whole 2 hours, and while I was full after 45 minutes, they were still hungry after the whole dinner, which they said was probably due to the lack of carbohydrates, though Deirdre got some noodles. Deirdre introduced us to Black Magic, where we would tell one person what we were thinking of and she would point out random objects to another person and asked if that was what we were thinking of. First correct answer didn't convince me. I was bewildered when Hanzhi and Dawn got it twice in a row. Baffled when Deirdre got it the third time, we started to think up ways that they might have done this. Until now, I still don't know how they did it, but there is definitely something fishy in the way they work. It was an impressive trick nonetheless.

At 9.45, we finally decided to break off and call it a day. I took a cab home, dropping Deirdre and Kai Zhong first, while Daryl, Dawn and Hanzhi looked for the nearest MRT Station before parting ways. It was really a day where we behaved like lunatics, and my maddest one yet this year, possibly in my life. Thanks for the time Dawn Deirdre Hanzhi Daryl Kai Zhong. :D

Today was an insane day to start off. Woke up at 10.40, slacked until 2pm before finally deciding that I would go for training. Training wasn't as bad as last Thursday, but Deirdre was repeatedly putting that *sigh* face because of Darrel and my constant tycos. But she did a good job. Darren was asking me for a break when coach stated that the training would continue for 5 more minutes and we had to 坚持, so yeah, nice timing Darren. We had a good break after that, and time flew, really, because we only had time for 4 matches before it was 6pm already.

Then I had to wait for half an hour, before heading to Bukit Batok, it was so hot. After that, head to Bukit Timah Plaza, then home at 9pm. And I'm feeling displeased right now.

Exams ended long ago and I've been taking a really good break despite the crappy results compared to the class. It's above average in the cohort, but that doesn't count as good because of the majority.

So anyway, I've been happy and unhappy on and off for the past month, but more on the happy side, much much more, because what we should really do is enjoy life. Every part has a positive and negative side, regardless of how ridiculous they may sound. For example, a positive side of Global Warming would be that none of us have to worry about the future in life anymore because we would all die. But of course, I'd rather live. Also, everyone should be grateful for what they have and appreciate what their ancestors have done for them. I just realized the huge amount that has been spent on me is beyond me. I feel that I am unable to repay them and I've been a waste to raise.

It's time to buck up for next year, the final push. I've got a very strong feeling that God will help me, but I can't be sure and anyway, God only helps if you ask him to and you put the effort into doing that, not either one, so I'll try to make that happen.

2 days left, or make that 1, I'm being pushed to my limits at cramping stuff into my brain and being able to regurgitate it word for word, but from what I know, no one has used even half of the brain's capability, so this is nothing I should complain about. At this stage in time, the teacher has not gone through the whole Geography Syllabus, we have no more Geography periods on the timetable and the paper is on Friday. Last resort? Additional session in the AVA Theatrette tomorrow. Not exactly what I would like, but it's required.

Ms Wong wanted to "kill me" today because of a badly done piece of work, which would have been fine if I had just added in the 3 words "I can believe". Omission of those 3 words cost me the whole question, so all I got was 0. I had thought it was the test that she wanted to kill me for, but no, I did well there. I'm just happy that she accepted points that are ordered differently from the notes and phrased in my own manner, so word for word repetition is not required.

I hope to be able to study well in this last week I have

10 days left, I had a ridiculous start today when I found out that I did not do my Maths homework. I had mistaken it for the same chapter and only did 1/3 of the required homework. Maths lesson itself was fine, though. Biology is giving me more pressure right now, the amount we have to memorize. He poked a little into the A-Level Syllabus. Then Physics was double that pressure. I didn't know what resolving a force meant. Fire Drill happened halfway through the period. 8 minutes and 26 seconds, in addition to 4 minutes of getting ready. And the others could clap. They don't even know why they clap during presentations, just like monkeys.

EOY mass made me feel no better, but gave me hope that God would be with me and that my future has been planned by God, I can't do much about it but follow this plan. Well, I hope I can finish up my studying in time for the exam. God please help.

Second day, PE was quite fun, but it's sad that we are only getting 3 sessions of Volleyball. I failed so badly at aiming but otherwise it was fun.

The rest of the day passed quite smoothly, not so much for Maths, but at least I enjoyed doing the questions, for once, and without my notes as usual.

Oral was..... fine. Quite a few "ers", which should not have been there at all. And the examiner said that the conversation question he asked was a stupid one, but we had to talk about something.

This September Holidays has been way too much, in terms of homework. I got kicked out of the Dr Ng cup in the first round. I'm pretty sure I could have done a lot better though.

Today's training session was, reasonably enjoyable. The frustrating part was losing to 小马 5 times , but otherwise it was fun. I seem to pick the wrong days to come though, always come when its empty.

Had HSK Test yesterday, it was alright. Some people were so late that they missed the Listening Comprehension section completely. The rest was ok, some weird parts.

Patrick returned for training today. He was better than before, but had not had proper training. The whole day was basically just Patrick, Julian and I playing against each other, taking turns. And that was really all that could be counted in today's training.

Haven't had the mood to blog for so long. Nothing eventful at all anyway, but exams this time were screwed up. Going to try to add a little more for the final one.

Waahhh been out of the blog for so long. Right, papers begin tomorrow, all over again. Life has been so much fun in the past 2 weeks. It should keep getting better. :)

Loooooong weekend starts now, or rather, started yesterday. I've gone wrong for a couple more tests, did ok in the other 2, and now, with less than 2 weeks to CT2, I still don't feel the urge to study when I'm in front of the table. At other locations, I can tell myself that I'm going to study when I get home, but it doesn't happen. And worse, with the looooong weekend, it feels like a holiday.

I didn't really enjoy the part on National Day Celebration today, although Hong Fu and the other Management Committee did put in the effort. Thanks for ending the weekend in almost high spirits though.

Fridays are starting to include bonuses in them. This week's bonus is to be released at 12.10. The bonus for the majority, however, would turn out to be a dreadful evening for certain others as they attend the Founder's Day Ceremony for 3 hours. Fortunately for me, I was not one of them. So I took the early dismissal to catch 老牛与嫩草 with Daryl and friends.

The movie had a nice storyline which caught me unexpected. The jokes were good, thanks to the existence of Singlish and Hokkien along with Singapore humor. I noticed that the 2 Taxi Drivers drove the same car, which was obviously an overlooked mistake. It got really surprising towards the end, and didn't turn out as I expected.

Bishan ride home, wasn't too difficult to figure out once we got there, but I couldn't visualize the route the bus would take until it did.

Back for a post, I managed to get through today barely falling asleep and I was sure I would be tired because I got up a couple of times during the night, and when sleep is interrupted, somehow it just resets your rest period so you will need another 7 - 8 hours of sleep.

Nothing exceptionally interesting happened until Assembly, Mass for Catholics. Well, that was a respectable ceremony, but overall behaviour was appalling, to quote. I can see why it's important, but about 3/4 of them treat it as a joke, which is indeed a disappointment. After the service, for RME, we went on to Part 2 of erm Sex Education, but didn't manage to finish it up due to time constraints. Then the supposedly arranged remedial beforehand got cancelled because the teacher had a meeting, so I spent an extra hour and a half in school doing... stuff.

E-Learning day is as good as it was in March. Really good. Chemistry Practical went well, except for an answer that differed from the rest. I had quite a bit of time to spare, and I still feel that my answer is right.

Despicable Me. To describe it simply. CUTE.

I've been so lazy to post. Sunday was a great one, I got to meet scholars at their hostel and they were really sociable people like one big family. They were very supportive on me in my efforts to take a trophy from them, which I eventually succeeded in.

Not much happened recently, but it's still been fun.

+1 for Weekend already :). So lessons were fine, balancing Chemical Equations now are way easier than last year, because we really didn't catch anything during the lessons then. Now, it's like addition and subtraction. The second half of the day was fine too, more than half the class left at 1.20 for their Oral. Then Joel, Bryan and Samuel had to spend half an hour waiting for me, they were dismissed at 1.20.

We slowly made our way to AMK Hub, then looked at the time slots for Despicable Me. 4.15pm was the earliest, which I refused to wait for, so we picked Toy Story 3 at 3.20 as the alternative. It would prove to be to our benefit, as I was also asked for Despicable Me on the 18th already. So we would catch it on that day, as well as get to watch Toy Story 3. I was a little rusty on the characters, since Toy Story 2 was a 1999 film. But it's hard to forget Woody and Buzz Lightyear, as well as Mr and Mrs Potato :). It isn't exactly a sequel since the Toy Story 2 left no hint of a continuation, so one wouldn't really need to see the previous films to understand this one, but it would prove a bonus. Andy seemed to have grown in real time, he was now a college student. Throughout the movie, there were no sudden shocks and the volume wasn't too loud, but the baby definitely looked creepy. It was very eventful, many of the parts were fast-paced, and the jokes that came up were really original, such as Ydna and the Spanish Buzz. The storyline wasn't complex at all either. It was really well done, this show.

The bus ride back was a filled one, but at least the people knew how to "move to the rear" to make space for the front.

Eighth day of Term 3, getting used to school again. I arrived at school just in time today, thanks to a traffic jam. And Mr Kwok said that in my batch, 4 out of 5 people who were late even once were found to be in the bottom half of the class academically. I got into class half a minute before the first bell, so it wouldn't be considered late.

Today's Chemistry lesson was quite stupid. Class started with a calling out of groups who had not handed in their homework. I was safe in that list. After she was done with questioning those groups for reasons, she turned to those who had handed up but which she found unacceptable. I was found in that list. Apparently, Ms Yeo had been unable to open the google document page with our work on it due to a "security threat", to which she asked if we were linked to any terrorist websites. It was insanely ridiculous. I just checked and it's working fine for me, so it's not my fault. Other cases included one who copied and pasted wholesale into an email, and another who tried to present with Keynote, which she didn't have, so she couldn't open the file. We were asked to see her after school, which Jia Hui kindly asked to come along with me.

Geography was as usual, full of laughter and learning. The last 15 minutes was spent on a video completely unrelated to rivers. It was about caves which were so dark that any lights seen were merely worms glowing due to a chemical reaction in the back portion of their bodies. These worms hung onto the ceiling and let down a long thread of mucus. Flies in the cave would get caught onto mucus and be stuck there to be the food of the worm. Another cave was shown with 3 million bats in it, and the ground in this cave was all bat droppings, a full 100 metre tall mound of it. This served as food for cockroaches, which were seen everywhere among the bat droppings, and they were the meals of centipedes. The producers of the video had to spend one month in this mountain of bat droppings and cockroaches crawling every inch of the cave, and all they wanted to catch on tape was a smooth recording of the full mound of droppings from bottom to top, which failed repeatedly due to equipment failure and several other factors.

The rest of the day passed in peace, nothing too eventful, unless you count a flooding toilet about 10 metres away from my class which we did not get to see and caused quite a commotion. Biology was where the fun started, again. Mr Teo told us that the pig's heart would smell, but no, there was nothing at all. It was soft and slippery. So we Keng Wee cut through the left ventricle to see the Papillary Muscles and the Tendons, then opened the left atrium for the Bicuspid Valve, followed by the right atrium. The moderator band which Mr Teo expected most of us to break, could not be found in our heart. Faulty Pig's heart much? Nicholas's heart was half black, so we joked that the pig had smoked during it's life time. He went to fill a couple of veins with water and blood came out along with it. After the lesson was over, some cruel people decided to ruin the pig's heart completely by tearing it apart with their knife. Maybe they'll learn how to respect other's hearts when their own get played with such brutality in the future.

MYD for this year was way better than last year. I wore my favourite shirt and shorts, it was weird to be in school with them on. Assembly was like normal, except that everyone was wearing different clothes. Then we went back to class to give the representatives time to prepare. At about 8.20, we went out to witness a "mascot" from each class, symbolizing a different country each. I didn't really notice each representative much because they didn't attract my attention and the clapping was so loud, I couldn't hear which country they were representing. I did see Daryl came in with his England outfit with a hat. He took off his hat to the judges like a gentlemen, well done, Daryl :). After that, was my own class. Hong Fu, Wang Lei, Boxin and Jiahao wore some loose-fitting robe (don't know what it's called :P), we were doing Japan. Then Berwin in his ninja outfit with his stunts, all the backflips and stuff drew applause. Some of those that followed were more entertaining, including one particular group representing a Tribe and they had to act like one, which was really well done and really daring. I noticed that quite a few were centered on the World Cup that it seemed like everyone had a soccer ball of their own. After each class had done their show, we returned to our classes for a break before they announced the winners.

When that was done, we were free to roam the school and were trusted to return to class by 12pm. I stayed in class for a while with Bryan because he needed some help. I gave up my coupons, because I thought I would be staying there the whole day, but then decided later that I wanted it back, after being persuaded by Brendan and Yi Kar. I managed to get back 1 dollar and went up to Julius's class. I spent 1 and a half hours there on 4 games, all of which were payed for by Yi Kar, Julius and Calvin, thank you very much for that. And it was really difficult to manage the Administrative issues because Julius did not seem to have the co-operation of his classmates, so things were quite messy but it turned out fine and they really received a lot of coupons, although I don't see why Julius would have to pay to play his own Xbox. There were 10 macbooks side by side, all in for 5v5 DotA matches, along with 2 Xboxes in System Link, and it was a real hotspot for gaming enthusiasts.

After the day was over, I took the Bio test on Alcohol. It went well. Then we were dismissed at 12.45. I took a ride to Bishan and looked through the Bus paths. I concluded that I would have to cross to the other side, but I didn't check, because I decided that I wanted lunch. So I wandered back into J8, glanced at McDonald's, which was crowded, peered into KFC, where all the seats were taken, and went up to the Food Court, which was full. I took a slow walk back down and wanted to get an Ice Cream from McDonald's, which also had a queue, but then I heard Daryl calling my name from the back, so I turned around. Junn Wei was looking into McDonald's, wondering what Daryl was talking about, so I tapped him back to his senses. They were with Kaiser, Samuel and Yuliang, so I asked what they were doing. They wanted lunch too, so we made a tour around the ground floor and deduced that Lunch would not be taken there. PastaMania had a queue while Pizza Hut was not an option for them due to time constraints as they had to get back to school by 2.15 and so could not afford to wait.

I found myself back at the Food Court, which did not seem to have changed in the past 10 minutes. But they went in and found a place to sit, so we had lunch there. They found a better location, so we resettled there. We discussed their Money Investment Program as we ate, then it turned to Council Matters, then food. Yuliang kept insisting that I was being conned because the Cheese Prata was sold at a ridiculous price at $2.20 per piece. They thought it was Egg Prata at first, and felt that the price would be reasonable. But when I told them that it was Cheese Prata, they started to try and balance the price. If cheese was 50 cents, that would mean the Dough was $1.70, which was stupid, and so on. At 1.45, Samuel left us to meet his friend, and at 1.50, the other 4 had to leave, although Junn Wei felt bad to leave me alone. So they tried to drag it a little more, but 5 minutes was all they could manage, and I still had three quarters of my last prata to go then, so they left.

As I cleaned it up, Daryl and friends arrived. Another 5 more people, so all the seats around me were filled up again, but this time, I had finished my meal and they were just starting. So I waited through Round 2 of Lunch with a cup of coke. I was 5 cents short of getting the Large one, but I think it's better to have gotten the Regular one anyway. I was impressed with their eating habits. At the end of their lunch, Kai Shiun and the other 2 guys were gone.

Daryl and Kai Zhong almost made a bet (maybe they did) on the forced withdrawal from the Arcade if Kai Zhong were to enter it. He was made to leave. Daryl failed with his tokens, miserably. So did I anyway. After that, we left for home. Slight flood today, it was obvious that I had walked in the rain when I boarded the bus, and during the ride, I seemed to dry up, but I was drenched again as I ran home, worse than before. Almost slipped and fell at one point, but friction prevented that :D.

Eye hurts right now. Going to finish this up quick. Today we had 5 free periods in a row, which I spent doing the Maths Benchmark Tests on Hardcopy. Got Hong Fu to give me 2 sheets of Graph paper, thanks :). Wouldn't have been able to hand up the worksheet if not for that. Bio Lab was a comfortable session about the Heart, that's all for today. My eye can't stare at the screen much longer. Yay for MYD tomorrow.

Wednesday started with a good night's sleep. I survived the day well, enjoyed all the lessons, but didn't feel well in the first half of the day. Kept sniffing. But other than that, the day was fine. Our Chemistry lesson in the 21st Century Classroom was... reasonably fun. Kaiser said that his Macbook could explode at any time due to a Battery Overcharge, so the teacher was wondering what his next story would be because his previous one had been a faulty keyboard, but it was really just his bad luck. Then we had a couple of other funny cases for reasons why they had not turned up when Ms Yeo had called for them. The rest of the lesson, majority of the time was put into setting up the Interactive Screen for most groups.

Final period was slack, then the day was over. I went to eat with Ming Xuan and watched Choong Meng pass by the same route 4 times and then when he threw away his food, I took his bag and ran off with it :). It took him 5 minutes to find me about 20m from the original point, and I thought he had known where I was all the time. Turns out he did not, and he only found out when he caught me staring at him, because he wasn't wearing his glasses. No wonder he kept looking around the same spot.

So we slacked until 2.20pm then he left for his CCA and I went to the hall. Whole team was there already, the problem was that no one else was. We waited, doing stupid stuffs until 2.50 where Yi Kar told us that Coach would not be coming, which basically means CCA is cancelled. One possible reason was the Nationals Inter-School Tournament for the Primary School, so yeah, we left. Daryl and Kai Shiun must have been unhappy because I just wasted their time by telling them to stay for training. So we went to the Fitness Corner, did even more stupid stuff. We didn't mean to disturb the Band but I think we did. Some people just can't keep their eyes off others.

My Pull Up fails. Hanging doesn't help, so a tip is if you have to hang, don't do it. We fooled around with the Rock Wall, Kai Shiun couldn't get up. When Timothy came I told him to shut up because the Band was nearby. haha joke of course. Spent 20 minutes at that corner fooling around before we parted ways and went home.

First day back, yay for Monday :). Keefe dyed his hair, it's really cool, but... too bad, he has to change it back to black. Bio teacher was not in the mood for teaching either, so we went back to revise a little on last semester's topic. Lazy to post about today, and nothing much happened anyway. Everyone was talking about World Cup. And then we had to look into this:

All lies are just. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Holidays coming to an end, but at least it did feel like one month. I could do with more, but this much was good enough this year, I don't know why. Ending it being sick was not what I wanted, but it gives me a reason to sleep and get enough rest, not that I couldn't during the holidays, I just didn't try.

So the day started with a Flash Flood all round the coutry, replica of last Wednesday's event, except that this time, SG was more prepared for it. But, that "theory" about the flood occurring one time in 50 years proved wrong. I arrived at 9.05 in school, already 5 minutes late. But there was someone else, of all people, who wasn't present, and that was the teacher. He came into the room 1 hour later at about 10.10, and quickly got started. Another hour later, one student stepped into class but was rejected by the teacher, told to go home, for he was already at a stage where he could not catch up.

Appcode Programming was similar to ActionScript, but the functions are different, and naturally, the way to present the code for these functions differed. But, a standard procedure across these kinds of programming languages is that a semi-colon has to be put in after every line, and this was the most common mistake among us students. Programming languages were also ultra-case-sensitive, which would be the 2nd typical mistake next to the absence of the semi-colon.

Throughout the day, we created 2 really simple apps, but that was not the end of the Basic Course. We were told that the full course was 18 hours, just to get through with the Basics of Appcode Programming. At 2 hours per session, we were told that we could sign up for it if we wished by asking the teachers. Not what I would look forward to, so, no for me.

Today's training session was very enjoyable. I started 搓球 with Tian Yu, but 教练 didn't say how many. So we did 100, then I asked him how many. He said 100 and I told him we were done, then he told us to do again, this time 全台. No problem with that either. But next was 双打. 5 times, 3 against Tian Yu, once with her. Lost one. 双打 is ok, but definitely not something I can stand to play all day.

I thought I was free from it, until it was Dawn and Hanzhi against Benedict and I. All 3 of them were so aggressive, everywhere also smack. I mostly end the points in a disadvantage to us. I don't dare to 拉长胶, and Hanzhi's 发球很很转. Hence, we lost 3 - 2. I tycoed a lot again, now 放高也是擦边.

Then we slacked in one corner and talked, and I suddenly thought about whether I would have to play with An Qi at some point in time during the session. True enough, 2 minutes after I thought about that, 教练叫我跟An Qi打比赛. I was going to get out, but then he asked Yi Kar to play first. Yi Kar came back with a loss, and said she was suddenly on offence, and that was what I was most afraid off. But I suddenly felt so motivated. I had to 放高球 to win.

Like about another 5 minutes after that match, play against Dawn. First ball started with a rally that surprised both of us. As the match progressed, I realized that I couldn't beat her in the regular playing field. 她一直打到我的正手，我又不赶拉她的长胶，只好搓回去，但我又搓，她又反手到我正手, and that just continues until one of us drops it, which is more likely to be me, because it's difficult to use my backhand on the forehand side. And, tycos continued to contribute to my score. Sorry uh. We deuced in 2 of the 4 sets, I think.

Final game of the day, Hanzhi. No 长胶 here, but I la, she la back, then I die. 放高 didn't work really well either. And she could 接我的发球 now due to greater freedom than in Doubles. And my Anti helped a little as well, along with even more tycos (sorry for that). 3 - 2 was the final result.

7.20am started my day. I needed time to cut my nails, they were long. I was ready at 7.50, then I remembered that I hadn't taken my medicine, and I needed to eat something before taking it. So I just took a slice of bread and brought all my medicine with me. While walking to the bus stop, drained the bottle of Yakult and ate the bread, then swallowed all 3 tablets of medicine at one go. As I left the place, I remembered yet again that I was supposed to be sharing my medicine, so I called back home to ask if it was ok. It was.

The bus ride over there was just as usual, I really enjoy standing on Public Transports :). I arrived there at 8.40am, a bit... early. Then I opened all the doors so that everyone else could come in. And I saw this cockroach on it's back getting eaten by ants alive. I got a shock, because it's legs were wriggling and that's extremely creepy. Then I had to let down the shades, took me a while to get the right key. After that, tell the Scouts to lower their volume or get out of the area. Then, open half a box of new balls.

Training was not good today. The WHOLE morning, was spent on intensive training. China players feeding us balls, as Daryl said. At least it got less tedious as the training went on, partly because we did not bother to pick the balls and continued to hit them out of the net, so the amount of balls decreased with every round. We had really few balls, like 1 layer, and the China guy was like "How do you expect to train with this amount of balls?" That was really all we did the whole day, so it wasn't really fun.

Before I left, I had one last job. 把七个挡板从小学般到礼堂里. Something I had never done before. Well, the teacher walked one whole round to open the shutter so that we could enter the Primary School. There were about 20+ boards there. Took 7 and brought it back up one floor. I was a little rough with mine. It had quite a number of collisions :).

Random

Bus and Taxi Drivers seem to have very good concentration such that they can drive for many hours a day, continuously. If I were to take the job, I might do well for a week, but after that, in a couple of hours daily, I think I would start to miss passengers and in the case of Bus Driver, miss the sound of passengers requesting to stop. It would be so common for me to hear it that my brain treats it as nothing. That, would of course, lose me the job and get me an angry response from commuters. Add to that the highway code to follow, but it's easier to overcome that since one is constantly driving.

The IT Course today was really fun. First, Alfred and I did not turn up for yesterday's session (we didn't sign up for it) so the teacher was afraid that we might not be able to cope with part 2 if we hadn't gone through part 1. So he took time off to give private "tuition" for the first half hour. He told the rest of the class, those who had been present yesterday, to do as they wished. At 9.20, Joel came into class. He too, had not attended yesterday's session, and worse, he had signed up for it. So, he had to take off even more time. The "tuition" dragged on to 10.25, after which Mr Lee called for a 5 minute break before today's lesson officially started. His measurements of time were obviously different from ours, for his 5 minutes was in fact, 15. We only started at 10.40.

So the Flash Animation was rather amusing. Action Script looked really similar to PHP but the functions, I had never used them. It was a very slack lesson and I'm sure it could have ended 3 hours earlier, but I suppose time had been reserved for those who had problems, and considering that he had started 100 minutes late along with a 35 minute Lunch Break, That's about 2 hours and 15 minutes, but if added with the time he spent going around personally to handle certain issues, that would probably sum up to 3 hours. Anyway, we learnt how to assign keys to a certain action and how to set boundaries for an object, but Alfred's one was bugged, Flash's fault. Then there were other funny things that ActionScript did, which was pretty cool.

After release at 4.30pm, I went for training. Yeah, 1 and a half hours, 3 games. Didn't sweat much. That was how slack it was today.

Another partially satisfactory training session today, but nothing is free. I was so frustrated with the Doubles matches because I really cannot play Doubles, and each set seemed way too long. I lost two and won one, and there was someone new today, Glen, whose 拉球 is so accurate and has so much spin. He was part of the reason we lost, but more of my fault, failing to hit those balls properly. I was against him all the time. Anyway, when the Triple match finally ended, I was allowed to get a Singles.

First, against Nicholas, where we deuced 3 sets of which I got 2, then I won the last set. And we deuced up to 17 - 15. Nicholas beat Glen earlier on, 3 - 1, which he got 2 drinks for. Next, I played Glen. 我终于能好好地拉球了，如果我丢，就是我的错. Fun enough as I got really lucky with my 放高球 today. He asked for a casual rematch, then we 练一下, then, Doubles AGAIN. This time, full time Doubles. 3 matches, and surroundings weren't that clear either. It was fine, I suppose.

Oh and add one more Doubles match. Xin Wei and Ee Jin against Deirdre's sister and I. Went better than expected, she did surprise them anyway. And to end the day, a Singles with An Qi, which I lost again. After that, was slack, 捡球 and 蛙跳. I haven't recovered from last week's session, so this will require more time.

What felt like a bad day was half true, but at least it was only half. Leaving 1 hour and 5 minutes early this time round, I expected to enter the hall 15 minutes early. But what happened at MacRitchie made that 5 minutes late. I took my bus to MacRitchie Reservoir and saw Denise on the bus but did not recognize her until she told me later on. She took a different route anyway. At MacRitchie, I was just waiting for my next bus when an old man came up to me and asked me to tell him when I saw a Bus 130 coming because his eyes disabled his ability to see from long distances. I had never seen it before, and apparently, neither had he, for he told me to check the board to see if 130 was on there. It was, but the problem was, which stop does Bus 130 go to? So I told him to wait next to the Pedestrian Crossing in case there was a need to cross over to the other stop quickly.

My bus came by, but I felt that I should skip it as it wasn't very nice to leave him to find someone else for help. So I stayed to look out for that seemingly rare 130. When I saw a pole next to the stop that I was at, I looked up and saw a list of numbers. 130 wasn't on there. I looked over at the other stop and found that none of the numbers on that pole matched the ones next to mine, and 130 was displayed there. At that point, I was sure that the old man should cross the road to the other stop, but when I tried to explain that to him, he didn't seem to understand. Well of course he couldn't see the figures on the pole. When 130 finally came, it moved off towards the stop at the back, so I told the old man that he should cross the road then, which he did. After the bus left, I got a shock. Another Bus 130 was passing by, so I wondered if I had pointed out the wrong bus to him. But after some thinking, I am sure that I had led him to the right bus. Firstly, he was looking at the bus which was a mere 2 metres away, when he crossed the road, so he could not have missed the number. Anyway, even if his eyesight was that bad, the bus had an electronic 130. The 2nd bus, was a plate 130. Also, it seemed to be empty of passengers. Therefore, I conclude that they were 2 different buses.

When I finally reached the school at 9.05am, we started off with 发球. After about 5 minutes of serving alone in which I missed like 80% of them, Denise was put to 接我的发球. I managed to find new ways to make her 吃发球. After about half an hour, I think, we all had to do the intensive mass training. I can only last 30 seconds, I think, maybe less. At least there were 5 people in the queue (Zhan Heng, Julian, Me, An Qi and Kai Ling), so there is sufficient rest time. I think we did about 5 rounds each before we were allowed a nice break, in which we just talked. The twins and Benedict were going on about the World Cup at first, then the conversation turned to schoolwork. After that chat, 比赛. Something I looked forward to. But I quickly realized that today was not my day. I just didn't have the mood to react quickly today. First match was against Denise, which wasn't easy. We deuced until about 14-all in the first set, and the overall result was 3 - 2.

Next, Darrel and I against Hanzhi and Ying Wen. 长胶.... yikes! I had developed a partial phobia for 长胶 ever since the previous match with Jerilyn. 猜球后，铭轩就请我出去把他的功课本子交给他. Taught by Denise, Ying Wen was able to use the Touch method to 接我的发球, which put me at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, we were able to win thanks to Darrel's on and off mood. Sometimes he can put bad situations right, miraculously. I went back to the bench and then Timothy was telling me how he hated 长胶, to which I asked who he had lost to. His response - "Who else has 长胶？“ I was baffled by that question. I told him that the 3 girls over there (wherever I was looking at, that was), ALL had 长胶. Yeah, very funny question. He went "Oh" and then muttered "Kai Ling". I was about to find out that I couldn't deal with 长胶 too. Jerilyn and Ying Wen. Double the threat. Ying Wen told Jerilyn the "Touch", but it wasn't needed, really. She was that good. I tried every trick serve I could pull off, but she was able to take almost, if not all of them with ease and even countered them, which put Darrel in a difficult position to take the next hit. We lost the first set, won the next set, lost the 3rd set, won the 4th set, thanks to Darrel and Jerilyn making a lot of the finishing moves. Of course, Ying Wen was able to continue the rallies if either of them failed, and it mostly resulted in 短球, which I am unable to predict. In the final set, at 10 - 9, Jerilyn 发丢, which gave us the win.

Last opponent, Dawn. 又是长胶!!! Couldn't defend myself against her, and I didn't dare to 拉球 much today. All I could do was return and hope for the best, literally. The scores were close, and luck happened to be on my side again. Intense end to the morning, anyway. Everyone started to leave. I was the only one who stayed back for the afternoon session. Lunch was French Toast, thanks to the canteen being open.

The afternoon part was the bad part. I lost to Zhan Heng 3 - 2 first, which wasn't too bad. I expected a loss but I still hoped to win. He evened out today's tycos with this match. He was doing really crazy moves that I had NEVER seen before and the balls still went in at amazing spots like the edge of the table just next to the net. The AT girls didn't seem happy after a Doubles Match due to what they thought was miscalculations, so we had to play again. This match lasted 1 hour, because they kept taking breaks and some other stuff that delayed it considerably. Also, An Qi's rubber wasn't in a good condition. 教练奖我一杯水, which he insisted on, again. And finally, I was able to play Singles again. The problem was that An Qi's power mode was back. I lost to her, but the worst part is that she had a "broken" bat. Then to end the day, I had to play with Julian. I don't know what we were doing, but it definitely wasn't a proper match. We still tried to keep the points on our side, but we didn't try our best to earn them. When he asked for a rematch, I had to go. Today is the day where I really cannot stand another match because my legs still ache from Wednesday's 蛙跳.

Weekdays are spent at home on the computer 24/7 for the whole day. But Wednesdays and Fridays make this "law" untrue.

Training was intensive enough today and I originally wanted more. Arriving at 2.45pm, Timothy said: "Finally someone has come!" and asked to play with me. Well, it was what I wanted to do after all, so I did. Didn't feel the mood though. So after about 20 minutes I went back. Darrel, Darren and Benedict had arrived. I had to 推 while they 拉, again. At least I learnt the technique today, just haven't mastered it yet.

After that session, we were given a choice of 双打 or 三分。 Immediately my head went: 四个人怎么打三分？ A couple of seconds later, I realized who would come in if we chose 三分，so I immediately said 双打。Darren and I first. We won this 3 - 0, but that was because Darrel was playing the fool. I paired with him next, and I said that I was going to teach him a lesson. Well, I didn't do much, but they led 2 - 0 and I forced him to be serious, which led us to a win. The last match, we were losing 2 - 0 again but decided to play for real in the end, so we won.

After that, 捡球. Instead, we slacked and talked. After a while, we played amongst ourselves, singles. I played all 3 of them and won, and Darren lost to Benedict. Then just before we left, we were reminded again to come on Friday or suffer the punishment. Then coach asked me who played well among the 3 of them today. It was a hard pick, but I chose Benedict. It didn't make a difference though. Coach decided to make them all do 蛙跳, 6 times after the twins protested. I wasn't sure if I had to do it, but I joined them. :D

In the morning, just after coughing once, I was strongly discouraged from going for training. So I was left to slack in my room. Julian called me at 12pm only to know that I wouldn't be coming, but he urged me to find a way to attend it. I did get to, in the end.

I meant to go for it at 3.30, but as it would not interfere with certain plans if I went earlier, I arrived at about 3pm. Waited until about 4 while Benedict was called after a mere 30 seconds in the hall. When we finally got a table, I had to 推 for Daryl and Joy. 我又没有给他们好球拉，我推什么呀？ So I wasn't very good over there. Coach finally decided that I should then be the one to 拉球, and thanks to Jerilyn, I was allowed to continue even after I lost the ball.

After that, I played with Julian. Unsatisfied with the match results, 他不服气，要再打一次, this time in a table that was "Sun-Free". I got another tyco spree, so I won. Then, we went out to the Fitness Corner to slack. First, we tested our Pull-Ups, which we failed. Then Daryl challenged me to Push-Ups. He did 10 commando push-ups and I just ignored his request of me to do 20 standard ones. Of course I would feel guilty to owe him something, so I did 10 Knuckles? But he did it too, so 我还欠他. I returned it with 10 commandos of my own, though not as nice as his, I never did it before.

We played around with the Monkey bar, argued over the bar height of the inclined pull ups and climbing the rock wall, before returning to the hall at 5.45 to hear from coach: 你们大半天去了哪里？是不是去打篮球啊？ Sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Not really, he was very nice. He let us play a doubles match, which I lost with Benedict. As such, we had to 捡球. He let us pick the balls on the side that seemed like it had more balls, but he judged the book by it's cover, as the outside had a few balls but the inside was empty. So, we had less to pick than Daryl and Julian.

Following that, to end the day, a match with Daryl. Starting at about 6.15, Benedict and Julian left at 6.25 while we started our 2nd set as they could not wait for Daryl. The first set had been brought to an 18 - 18 deuce after which Daryl finally gave 2 points. Looked good for me, but I lost the next 2 sets 11 - 8 and 11 - 7, after which we left.

I got another impatient bus driver today, but it seemed reasonable for him to be angry as the other drivers on the road weren't sticking to the highway code such as not giving way to the bus and staying in yellow boxes, which caused inconvenience, obviously.

The day was fine. 我的反手差得很。I beat Jia Wei once and lost to her after that, then An Qi threw me down to the 6th table, where Denise was. 她逼我发球到她接得到，还请小小马去教她。When we were done with that, doubles... One of the AT girls and I against Denise and Ying Wen. In a desperate bid to end their day, they did not play their best.

In the afternoon, 第一场跟小马打。Coach wasn't too happy with the outcome, then I had to play with Yen Kar. I tycoed less this time round, about 5? Still quite a number. Following that, was Gerrat, again. I had not forgotten the previous time we played, so I half expected another 3-set comeback. Which WAS what happened. Despite my 2 - 0 lead, I lost the match overall when Gerrat finally got back into his full on mode. Again, he barely missed any of my tycos, he was ready for almost all of them. Nevertheless, a fun match.

The rest of the 90 minutes was spent slacking. I was supposed to 放高球, but they just didn't want to smash hard enough. In the last 10 minutes, 我又跟An Qi打了一场比赛。This time, I managed to counter her hard left smashes. I had to run out of the usual playing field as it was really too much to the left.

So I've spent the first 3 days doing some of my homework. I keep jumping from here to there so nothing is actually totally done. The 2 Benchmark Tests went well.

I meant to leave at 2.45 today, but I ended up leaving at 3.05pm because I noticed that my nails were getting long so I spent sometime cutting it short. When I finally left my place, I worried about the few minutes less I would have for training. Well, the bus ride there was about 40 minutes, not the longest, but a bit slow. And the bus driver was more impatient than others. He was behind another bus at the bus stop, and he just skipped that bus stop completely when no one came to flag it down so that he could overtake the bus in front.

Anyway, I arrived at about 3.45pm, only to meet a group of reds complaining about the lack of tables, which, seemed to be taken up by the other players. 5 minutes later, Coach kindly reserved a table for us to play 三分. 6 of us, Daryl and I must 分开. Choices were Benedict, Marcus and the Twins. He got to choose first because coach said so. He took Ben, I took the Lefty, he took himself :D and I was left with Marcus. Both Daryl and I weren't really in the mood today. He told me not to trash them all, which I can't do at all. It was somewhat fun though, and we were leading 2 - 0, thanks to Marcus, whom I figured can perform miracles too. When Timothy joined to start taking us out, Daryl requested that I, a respectable S3, do something about it, which was quite impossible because right now, Timothy is a notch above me in terms of Table Tennis skills. In the 3rd set, at 20 - 16 with us leading, everyone except Daryl, Marcus and I went for a drink. Daryl held his ground as a representative of the whole team in a one-man show while Marcus played for himself and Darren, and the result came to a 26 - 24 win by Daryl. Frustrated by the ridiculous comeback, we decided to just stop there. No one suffered any punishment, which was supposed to be 捡三百立球.

Then I had to play with Julian. This time, the score was 3 - 2, final set 12 - 10. Quite a lucky win because the last ball was a tyco and the 2 sets that I won earlier were both 11 - 9. The sets that he won, however, were 11 - 5 and 11 - 8. But, it's fun to have an intense match nonetheless.

It was about 5.30 then. We (Daryl) went out for a nice talk and break of 15 mins before returning to play for a while, then have a match. He asked for best of 3 but I insisted on Best of 5, and he gave in when I got to serve first. Fun match. Both of us trying crazy stuff. And 短球 doesn't work on Daryl because of his pen-hold. And he's got that epic short serve that I am forced to return lightly. But then, I almost never go aggressive on the returning of service, but I have to say that it's harder to return than other services, because unfortunately for me, it becomes high enough for him to smash when I return that ball.

The bus ride back was even longer. I skipped 3 buses at MacRitchie because they were full. I found one that was really empty because there had been one earlier like 3 minutes ago, so it stole all the passengers, and I got on. During the wait, I witnessed someone come next to me to dig into the dustbin for a newspaper.

Woke up at 10.15am today. Then I took Breakfast/Lunch and slacked for a while until 12.45pm. What next? Training, of course, just a little late today.... by 3 hours.

Now that the inter-school tournaments are over, coach seems to be giving those who did not play much during that period, opportunities to play. I was made to start off against Julian. I won 3 - 1, but it wasn't very easy. A harder match awaited me. Yen Kar lost to me 3 - 2, of which the whole match, I tyco-ed about 10 times. That's almost 1 whole set. Therefore, it was a lucky win.

After that, I had to play with one of the Primary School kid who wasn't too strong as we were out of opponents... Then as Yi Kar and I debated on our Table Tennis skills because he was insulting Mushroom for his skills despite training for the previous year, I told him that if her saw it that way, I was a lot more terrible than Mushroom because I had started much earlier. As we tried to convince each other that the other was better, we were forced to prove the truth when asked to play. As I expected, I lost 3 - 2.

After Yi Kar, I had to play against Hanzhi. First set, I was losing 6 - 0, of which 3 were tycos. But that wasn't the end of it, there were more to come. But then, tycos always even out, somehow, and it doesn't have to be against the same person. So I expected this was my punishment for tyco-ing Yen Kar so much earlier on. Anyway, even without tyco-ing, Hanzhi is like Yirong without Anti.

After that, 2 AT girls. I beat both of them 3 - 0, twice. Coach wasn't happy with them, but I have to say that they improved a lot. Really scary to see people a little more than half my height able to keep fast rallies going. Next opponent was Joy. I won 3 - 1 this time round, her strokes are better than mine.

The match against Zhan Heng was not decided as he gave up halfway with the excuse of his leg hurting. Score was 2 - 1, I was leading then. To end this winning spree, Yan Tian and Seth both beat me 3 - 1, and the worst part was that both of them were merely playing the fool. Yan Tian kept talking about Sean's style of fang gao qiu, which unfortunately worked against me, and Seth uttered words everytime he hit the ball. He said things from Pokemon, Mario and X-Men, which was really random, but I still lost.

Ending the term with a round of cleaning up the classroom is not what I enjoy, firstly because I forgot to bring a rag so I was sort of useless and also because the place is really so dusty and dirty, especially the fans and lights. I took a bus to school today, met Lionel on the bus and so sat next to him. That bus had no place to stand anyway. I usually stand on Public Transport because it keeps me awake and the seats can be saved for those with priority. Anyway, I arrived at 7.10am, not too bad, but much longer than the last time.

When Ming Xuan arrived in school, he directed his finger at me and very "kindly" informed me that I was about to die. The reason: I had not reminded him to bring his Physics file to hand up. None of us had remembered last night anyway. I have yet to know what he did, I shall ask him later after posting this.

We first returned the Report books, which wasn't too difficult, then started cleaning every single desk present in the classroom. Some people ripped apart a shirt to share. Then we cleaned the windows and the shutters. After that, we moved the desks and tables to a position such that there was a clear space in the middle where many people could move about like particles of gas (in random motion) without obstruction. When our tall people did the honours of cleaning the fans and the lights, it was a sickly sight that came down. Dustballs of unknown age fell from each fan and light, and when they requested a change of rags, few were up for the job as they would be receiving an extremely dirty, black, wet cloth in return.

I was part of the slacker clan with Ming Xuan and San Zeng as we did not do much. I myself found pride only in picking up litter, but that job was taken by Samuel. As such, we did the least we could, which was to sit aside to ensure that we did not block others. However, I found myself within the vicinity of Zhi Ming cleaning the light. In the process, I became the only one in the class to get caught by a dustball. Not too much though, so there was nothing to fuss about. However, I was sure I didn't want to be in the same position again for fear of the worse.

Thanks to the co-operation of the class, we finished cleaning the classroom by 9.15am but we had to wait until 10am for the official time of the mass dismissal. Thus, we sat and talked. San Zeng found a red coloured 1 dollar coin from somewhere, while I picked up a gold name tag belonging to one "Ng Yong Xiang" which fell off one of the lights during the cleaning session. Then I watched Hong Fu play chess and although he lost, I was impressed by his brain and told myself that I would never be able to play chess. His loss was a very close one though. Both players were down to about 5 pieces? Hong Fu had just his King and 3 pawns remaining, all of them which were blocked in their routes. His opponent brought his own King forward as well as a Knight, after which a pawn secured a promotion for a Queen, which eventually resulted in Hong Fu's defeat.

After we were dismissed, I went to the bus stop to decide if I should go out. I wanted to eat, but I didn't like the idea of coming back to go home. From Bishan back home, the journey is way too long. My bus arrived, but I didn't board it. Then Keefe came and suggested that we go and eat. With that, my decision was confirmed. We went up to Bishan and he found his friends there. Having begged to eat KFC on the train constantly, when his friends were going to KFC, he joined them. Thus, I was left alone.

I went up to the Food Court, sat down next to the Prata Stall and took 3 Cheese Prata. Now I feel that quality for extra money is worth it. It was delicious in good amount. I finished it and then started off back home. When I met Darrin at the station, he called me a loner because I didn't eat with him. He should have asked me earlier, or vice versa. Whatever. That was the end to the first semester of this year, and I'm already upset that half the year is gone, but I'm happy to have spent that time knowing more about the 2 friends I can rely on, Ming Xuan and San Zeng :D

The second last day of school was still enjoyable. Leadership camp was quite fun, but only because of the activities. Monkey See Monkey Do was so epic, our class had "great" coordination. Nicholas got picked at least once in each game, wasting one chance of each zookeeper. And it was so simply because he was the one who called the shots even though he was never the Monkey King. Forfeits included singing Baby, Mass Push-ups and Choong Meng's own set of push ups.

Then there was another activity where we had to form a circle, be connected in some way (simplest way was hands) and move one full circle as a group and arrive back at our own seat. 2 circles of 19 each, the slower group was forced to do a forfeit. Well, my group was faster thanks to Kaiser's method of getting together as a smaller circle so that we could move faster. As such, the other group had to walk down the corridor of our floor shouting that our class rocked. It was really funny and some of our group even joined them.

Then we had yet another activity where we remained in our circles and the coach would shout out a number. If 1, we moved one step forward as a group maintaining our circular shape. If 2, we backtracked two steps. On 3, we all had to sit on the knees of the person behind us. The circle had to be small enough for the right amount of space between each person. Ming Xuan was behind me while I supported Alex, and San Zeng, that idiot, caused us to break formation by giving Ming Xuan a zap, who transferred the same action onto me. I'm incredibly vulnerable to that, so of course I was shocked. After the coach was satisfied, we had to do it as a whole class. This time, Jia Hui was in front of me while Ming Xuan remained behind me. At least Keng Wee was there to separate him and San Zeng now :D. Anyway, we were not quite successful, but the coach seemed ok with it. When she told us to reverse positions such that I now had to support Ming Xuan, we fell a total of 3 times.

There was one last activity, although that was after recess, which involved 6 to 7 people in a circles sitting down. Legs were stretched out to meet at the middle, and by holding on to each other, we had to get up into standing position at the same time as well as not bending our knees too much. We failed that, so the coach allowed us to get up one by one. After we were successful with that, we had to go up 2 people at the time. Then 4. After that, was the whole group. We managed to do it finally albeit shakily.

Recess was not as entertaining as yesterday as we got only 40 minutes and there was no one to talk to. My juniors.... all disappeared :(. Meanwhile, Darrin totally ignored Ming Xuan throughout the day and me as well, but he decided to stop that ridiculous attitude towards me at the end of the day.

Report Books came back today instead of tomorrow. 18/38, better than I expected as I felt that I really did badly this time round. Of course, that isn't satisfying either. And at 18th position, my average is 68.8. So those ahead of me are really those who qualify for this class. San Zeng beat me totally this time round. From following me by 0.1%, he is now ahead by 1.3%. Darrin and I currently have a 0.5 mark difference, while poor Ming Xuan fell to the back at 28. Not to say he's a weak student, he's just giving us chances for now :D. He definitely has the ability to do well, after being able to tell me every single thing I needed to know even though he doesn't look like he heard them either. He has a knack for knowing the essential stuff that I usually miss out, so he's the number 1 reliable person to look for whenever I am in need of information.

Training was not too bad, but I definitely did not play as well as I did on Sunday. Lost to Kai Xun 3 - 2, then to Yan Tian 3 - 1. When I asked for a rematch, I beat Kai Xun 3 - 0 and lost to Yan Tian 3 - 2 after that. And that's ALL I did that is worth mentioning, in 3 hours.

Somewhat ridiculous day today. We started off with a Etiquette talk about how to be a gentlemen. The speaker was really funny with his actions and his stories, some really disgusting though. He got Kaiser to spray cologne in public as a demo. He taught us how to stand, walk, sit and introduce others (seniors first)

That talk lasted until 9.40am. Then it was recess, until 11am. A nice lengthy session of slacking. I just got 3 pieces of French Toast, went back to class with Russell, finished it then realized that it was only 10am. Went back to the canteen, got a pack of French Fries, then sat and ate it. Soon after, Benedict came with his own pack of fries, filled with light sauce by accident, and chilli. The smell was horrendous. It's like a garbage bin, seriously. And he still said it was nice. Well, we sat there and talked. Benedict's recess was from 10 to 10.40, so we had twice the amount of their time. Soon after, Tristan came, then Xin Wei joined the group followed by Reuben. We sat and chatted until about 10.55am. Then we went to the hall to watch a movie.

Finding an authorized place to sit was the immediate problem as Hong Fu was not present to organize the class. In the end, Zhi Ming took a random spot. It was a really huge space. Keefe, San Zeng and I followed suit, after which Ming Xuan came. 5 minutes later, the whole class was clustered in that space, but all I cared about was that there was enough space to lie down and stretch my legs because that's the hardest part, sitting in the hall. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was shown, a 2001 movie which totally made no sense in the beginning. There was nothing at all to explain the events at the start, but the plot gradually unmasked itself. I felt that it was really lame but it did seem good for a movie in that era so yeah I shouldn't be complaining.

Half of the hall were immature people who clapped at every change of scene which they felt deserved a round of applause which was totally uncalled for. They were really idiots who felt that they were cool, to use a less insulting term. Well, Apollos kept disturbing pupils outside the hall who came to count the number of lights in the hall as it was part of their activity. He gave them random numbers and told them to go away. Meanwhile, San Zeng, Ming Xuan and I, we were fooling around for quite a bit.

It's a great start to a fine ending week. Although it was tie day, we were given leeway during the major talk of the day to take it off in our favour. And now, I am treasuring every period in school that is kept away from studying, so I'm quite happy with the post exam schedule as it's all talks. Last year I'd rather have lessons, this year, I prefer them.

The first period today was started off with the confirmation and finalization of Exam Results. But before that, Ms Leng mentioned about our Conduct grade. By default, everyone has a grade of "Very Good", which will be demoted to "Good" should the student be faulted thrice. She added that 2 people in our class had gotten "Excellent", one whom had been given that because he did his job well, and another for honesty. For the former, Ming Xuan thought that it was Kaiser. She elaborated on the one who was honest by saying that it had made a difference of 5 marks in one of his papers and was thus recommended by the teacher for his conduct grade to be promoted, and immediately Ming Xuan and Darrin looked at me because they knew about the loss of 5 marks in my Physics paper which pulled down an already unsatisfactory grade to a borderline pass. Well, now we have a strong feeling that it's me, but we can't be sure until the report book comes back on Friday. Kai Xun felt prejudiced as he had lost 7 marks in his Higher Chinese Paper due to miscalculations as well.

I didn't care about the marks displayed on the sheets of paper. We had 35 minutes for 38 people to sign and confirm their marks, so we lacked time as some busy bodies also enjoyed comparing their results by pondering over the sheets of paper for extended periods of time in such an inconvenient environment. Also, what's done has been done. I'm not going to bother about the current screwed up combined results, I've gotten motivation from her to do better in the future.

After signing on the 6 sheets of papers, we were brought to the TK Low Hall for a talk on commercials. The teacher in charge felt that the 3 classes present were really quiet and encouraged a little bit of noise. Well, the commercial talk was really funny. He started off by telling us that NASA had recently found a moon which was full of cheddar cheese, even the surface was liquid cheddar. I almost believed it. Then he let us imagine scenarios in which more powerful people told us that same thing such as the principal and a news broadcaster. Under which circumstances would we believe that story? The news broadcaster is the most likely one. So that's how commercials started.

We were shown several commercials in local TV which he criticized to be "bullcrap". Then he showed us Thai advertisements which he felt were really creative and true enough, the one about the Cheers Beer advertisement was incredibly epic. He edited out the part where the beer came in and I thought the purpose of the advertisement was encourage people to be happy. He explained afterwards that the happy people portrayed celebration, and where celebration comes in, beer is involved. Thus, the significance of the people's excitement was important in the advertisement. Well, the link is here. Cheers Beer Commercial.

Recess, at 9.20am. I went to the Canteen, saw an empty queue in every single stall and went to buy my usual Chocolate Bun pair. Then I got scolded by DK. He said "Who gave you permission to buy food?" Well, he was in the wrong at the end, and he didn't apologize. But then, I had run back to class and just eaten the food there. 1 hour recess, Kevin was blasting music on his mac.

At 10.20, we made our way to the Shaw Hall where we were told that we could remove our ties for a more comfortable environment. It was a school forum talk where we could suggest improvements for the school. I did not listen to the elaborations of each student much, but I could roughly guess where they were heading. Suggestions such as air-conditioners in classrooms, allowing PE-singlets to be worn even after recess, not a compulsory rule to wear the PE-singlet. I'm surprised no one asked for Mixed School (OK, not really surprised), and I don't want it anyway. One of them even asked why his friend was not elected president of the student council. Although that wasn't a suggestion to improve the school, it was really daring of him to suggest that. It's like asking Obama why McCain isn't the president of the US. And Ming Xuan's friend, asked if it was legal to play poker in school, to which the reply was obvious, after which he pointed randomly (I think) into the crowd and said that they were playing poker. I don't think it was true as the teacher confiscated nothing.

Anyway, for the fun of it, I told Ming Xuan his own handphone number. A couple of seconds later, my handphone number came back. Darrin asked him what his number was and got it recited back to him. Not to be beaten, he asked for his house number, and got in response the correct string of numbers. I was baffled by that, but he then told us that those were the only numbers that he remembered.

So that's that for today. We were stuck in the hall until 12.10pm. Tomorrow... we will be looking at a Film Critique?? And a... what's this, Etiq talk? OK.... sounds fun?