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.