It was a better Monday today then the past 3 Mondays. Maths was fun, Biology was fun, Physics was quite fun too, then the day ended. The problem was that it felt a little too lengthy, but I shouldn't be complaining since it's only a half-day. Assembly filled in the epic part of laughter of the day as Mr C. Kunalan, Singapore's greatest runner and one who set the record for 100m sprint at 10.38 seconds, entertained us with his numerous photos of his life. The caption that he threw in was valuable to causing our laughter as well. He wasn't the average height for a man, but he loved to compare his height with other people so he showed us many photos of himself standing beside people taller than him and there was this one where he was more than a head shorter than another athlete who was 1.95m tall. And with every of those pictures it would have a line above his head that stretched across to his companion in the photo which would show how much shorter he was compared to that person. He is Malay, has 2 daughters, one who married a Scotland guy and the other married a British guy, so he has an International family.

Tomorrow I'll have PE again, I must remember to bring my shorts, and for Chemistry, I must remember to bring the standard file duo and Workbook. And we'll be running tomorrow for PE, I can see through the evil plan of the teachers to tire us out on the day just before the official 2.4km test so that we will all fail to get the grade that is expected of us, but I think I'll still run through it tomorrow anyway. Oh and I had to return a couple of overdue books today...

My performance improved today, but I don't know if it's the bat or I just got lucky. Early in the morning, it's just to practise. But I did get a doubles match with An Qi and the twins, so that's 3 left handers in one match. Still won all 3 times though. Then I stroked with Yi Kar for a bit before leaving for lunch with Julian.

Same thing as last week, couldn't be bothered to get anything else besides a Hot Fudge Sundae. We camped outside the station watching the time. 3 mins on the board. I ate my ice cream and finished it with 1 minute remaining to rush into the station, down the escalators just in time to see the train pull over. Went back to school to continue part 2 of training.

Coach as usual put me at the last table. When I was about to start the 2nd game, he told me to go back down and let Yi Kar take my place. Then I let Xin Wei play. After that, Kai Shiun came and we played alternately. At about 3.30, I think, Coach made me play with Celeste. Celeste and Jia Wei wanted Doubles, but he said no because she has her tournament coming up. So it was Celeste vs me and Daryl vs Jia Wei. That's a 4th Daryl I'm mentioning in this blog. I was full on form then because to be honest, she looked quite tough. First set 11 - 0. 2nd set 10 - 12. Then I won the 3rd and 4th set. There were a number of lucky balls and I had to run around like I always do because of my tendency to fang gao qiu. Daryl won his match 3 - 1 as well.

After that, Coach called for a Doubles match. Si Min and I vs Daryl and Gerrad(is that how you spell his name?). Whatever I'll call him Carrot :D. We lost the first set and I think Si Min was quite pissed after that because I did not match their standards, but after that we took 3 straight sets to win 3 - 1, again.

And then in the final game of the day, I was made to play against the same pair but with a different partner, Benedict. I could just tell that we were going to lose 3 - 0 100% having played that previous match. And we did. I told Benedict that if we won I'll give him 20 cents (I'm a cheapo, I can't afford stuff) but of course I didn't try to lose.

I had extra Social Studies lesson in the morning today. It was supposed to be 9 to 10:30am, but at 10:30 she said 10:45 and that's it, and naturally we were dismissed at 11am. I went to Xin Ten afterwards.

I am really eager to go for training tomorrow. I have got a totally new bat although with the same 2 rubbers, and it feels so much better than my old one, which I got in P3. Maybe the broken wood was the reason for my lousy playing, and people complaining about my "Pirated Anti" should stop that tomorrow, it's new and if it still doesn't act like it should, it's not my fault. And this is the 2nd new thing this week... and I have a 3rd thing in mind although I should stop getting new things.

I finished my Maths homework :D. 9 graphs straight, it was so pissing off and I needed to find Graph paper on the internet that could fit my requirements and it was so difficult to find. I don't have a Graph pad, but I should get one. Anyway, the ones on the internet are either in inches or their width is too small. But I finally found one which was almost like the Graph Paper that I use.

Teacher: Apollos, come out and do question 1 on the board now.
Apollos: *Gets out of his seat*
Teacher: Wait, have you even done it on your worksheet?
Apollos: *Looks at worksheet* Er… I do now. *Sits down*
Teacher: You haven't even done your work and you're talking to your friends like a busybody.
Apollos: No… just… some people give the money already, some haven't.
Teacher: And why does that concern you, Apollos?
Apollos: Because I give my money already, then I scared my name not ticked (on the nameless).

That was part of Chemistry lesson on Friday. I remembered to bring my things this time :D. That 1 period should have been longer, because we had Chinese 听写 next, and I could just tell that I'd fail. So I was desperately but calmly trying to remember the words, then this teacher came in, and the class started to cheer and whoop because it was a relief teacher. In the midst of our shouting, our chinese teacher came into the classroom. The relief teacher looked surprised and they talked for a while, then he left. He was reliving the part of the class that was taking Chinese Literature, that is, our China Scholars (They don't take Higher Chinese). Then the class was in a moody state after that. Temporary moment of triumph backfired completely, it was an epic fail.

As mentioned, I am sure I failed, because I forgot at least one of the words in almost every one of them, just can't write the full thing correctly. This feeling of misery was enhanced in the next 2 periods as it was Maths. Mr Wu really went to check that he didn't have our E-Maths Book 2, so he assigned Homework, which is like 15 questions of which 10 require drawing graphs that are not linear, and that's what I hate the most. The flexicurve is one of the most hateful thing to use, it just doesn't cooperate with me and fit the graph nicely, so any part questions after that which involve estimation will be off.

Following that, Recess. Then double English period, where Ms Leng was absent once again. We were so happy for a relive period, but then in the last 15 minutes of the 1st half of the supposedly 1 hour 10 minutes of peace, Ms Wong came in to teach us whatever Social Studies information that she could in that amount of time. Then it was Chemistry, again as Ms Yeo took the 2nd period. I was dying for the day to end as I wanted to do my NAPFA test, it would be fun to see the results of the other students in my group. I endured the final period, Physics, in a depressing state. When it was finally over, my heart felt SO light.

But laughing at others about their NAPFA test isn't a really good thing to do in my case, as I'm not really fit myself. My group of 8 was comprised of 6 Scholars, Kai Xun and I. Of the 6 scholars, 5 had to do their Pull-Ups already. We started off with Sit and Reach, a D grade for me, 1cm more to C, which was same as last year. One of my scholars did not know how to do it and just pushed that metal thing as hard as he could and we were all laughing at him. When he did it properly, it was still 40+cm. Then my Inclined Pull-Ups was A, and 3 of the Scholars failed their Pull Ups, where just 1 was enough to pass. The scholar who did IPU was so tall that he could not lie properly and low enough as his hands were super long too, so he got a free A as the teacher did not know how to handle it either. Shuttle Run was A, Sit Ups A. I was happy with my Sit Ups result as I thought I would die from a weak Stomach muscle having not trained for it properly at all in the past year. Then came Standing Broad Jump. After wa tiao, I expected this to improve, but no, I did worse than last year. Another D. There goes my Gold. Kai Xun is guaranteed his, he has 4 As and 1 B, and that B was Sit and Reach, 1 more cm to A. Unsatisfied with this failure, I offered to retest, but the teacher said that I would have to wait for everyone to finish, which was likely to be at 4.30pm. At that time, my watch showed 3.30pm.

So I waited 1 hour for a retest with Jia Hui, Shawn and Ashley, they wanted to improve their results too. Jia Hui needed to redo sit-ups as I had caused him to get an E in the official test because Keng Wee shouted "Stop" near the end and I thought the time was over, but he actually meant that he was to stop, and I was confused so I stopped holding down Jia Hui's feet for him. He managed a D in the second try anyway, but 1 more to C. My Sit and Reach became C and so did my SBJ, by 1cm. "There goes my Gold" is history. Ashley still failed it after numerous tries and in the end he gave up. Now all I have to do is to get a nice timing for my 2.4km run and I'll have my Gold!

I got a new watch today, the one that I had since P2 finally died out. It has served it's time well though, even after losing the metal casing, which isn't important, and there are a couple of scratches on it, which would be natural since I have it with me for 90% of the time, I bring it everywhere with me, be it carrying it or wearing it. So anyway, it has been a really good timekeeper for me, I grew so reliant on it that I found the 2 days without it to be awkward. It just didn't feel right to not feel my watch in my hand or have an empty wrist. The way that it has become faulty, is that one of the buttons is being pressed in, and 2 buttons cannot be pressed simultaneously. The screen shows the stopwatch, but as I cannot press anything, I cannot switch to time mode. If it was in Time mode, I would consider it to be still functioning since that is what a watch is mainly for, but too bad, it will show 6 zeros on it's face forever in minutes, seconds and split-seconds, each value supported by 2 digits. But I am happy that it survived to date, I actually lost one which cost $104 in 2008, and that model is similar to the one that I have right now, it's still available, but my current one has a base price of $116. Due to an offer, however, the price is a wonderful bargain of just $69. After losing the watch in 2008, I had to revert to the old watch which just broke down today. This new TIMEX watch has a larger face, supports up to 3 time-zones, has 3 alarms and a nice feature to record Occassions on every date, which I can use to help me in my addictive challenge to memorize my friends' birth dates. Only certain friends get to be on this list, or if their birthdate is a really nice date, such as 11th November, which a couple of people have.

Tomorrow I'll be having my NAPFA 5 stations, and I haven't done anything to practice for it this year, but I think I'll be fine, since I never trained for my NAPFA in the previous years, I just did it on the spot and always managed to cover the requirements for Gold, although I missed C for my Sit & Reach last year, after which I offered to try again but the teacher said that he would just give that 1cm to me, so I achieved my Gold. In fact, I expect to do better this year after the more vigorous training that I have attended this year compared to last year, which would naturally improve my fitness, I hope. But good luck to Reuben, whose birthday had to be tomorrow, 9th April, so that puts him with the older age group. We were notified last week that the date of the test had been postponed due to certain important meetings, and it was really unlucky that they put it on his birthday, which means that he'll have to do the harder stuff now. I'm not there yet, but I will next year :). Until then, I won't care too much.

Random

If you ask why my blog is like a composition, the real purpose of it is because I'm trying to practise my English. Of course it tells about my life like a real blog, but it is more formal in the sense that I barely use singlish and improper English to write a post. It's also important not to use SMS or Chat language too much because if you consistently do that, you'll come to a point where you write it in your school work. Common words such as "You" and "why" will be seen as "U" and "Y" on your homework, and you'll be famous in your class when the teacher decides to show the class your amazing and daring feat to write that in your work.

The Dictionary is a good friend of mine when I'm writing my posts, because my English isn't really that superb and I do check the Thesaurus for synonyms of the word that I'm trying to say, and this widens the range of vocabulary. To a lesser extent, my spelling needs to be corrected sometimes too.

It was quite a nice day today. Started off with Geography, which is ALWAYS fun, and I really mean always. There hasn't been a period where Mr Low has not made us laugh at least once since day 1 this year, which is quite a record. Too bad it was just a single period. Well, it was followed up by Physics, where my test was ok. You just can't be sure if it's well done or not, for Physics. Then we spent our English lesson doing homework, that's how obedient my class is when we're left alone, which is a complete contradiction of my class last year, where every period, there would be at least 1 Macbook out unless a test was presently being conducted, even when the teacher told us to put it away. English lesson was off because Ms Leng had sore throat.

Recess succeeded that period and then Chinese was the next period, which was again, quite good, and after that we had a fun time in Maths Lesson although ironically I told Kaiser just before it started that I hated it because we had to do work all the time. But, like Benedict said to me earlier this week, I will be learning the "Art of Bullshitting" this year and it will turn out to be very good by next year. True enough, it WAS a lesson of nonsense. Firstly, our 2 main rebels of the class, Apollos and Samuel, had been placed far apart from each other in the class, but it just wasn't enough. They continued to communicate by throwing their voices across the classroom, and the conversation was ridiculously funny and everyone in the class could hear it so we were all laughing. Then Mr Wu said that he should ask Ms Leng to put them further apart, at both ends on the classroom.

Anyway, they continued talking crap throughout the lesson about random stuff and when the teacher asked questions such as "Why x could not be 0", Samuel would say "Yeah lor Apollos", and sometimes it would be the other way round. Then when he drew the graph that we were doing on the whiteboard with a black marker, Samuel said that it was racist to do that. They also kept telling Mr Wu that they did not understand his explanation for the same question and he had to elucidate it repeatedly. After a while, more people joined in this unreasonable series of crap talking, all just to delay his lesson. Then when the bell ring, we told him that we had Biology Lessons after that although it had been confirmed during Morning Announcements that Mr Teo was absent and thus his session was cancelled. He was about to give homework, but then he asked us if we had our E-Maths Workbook 2, and I told him I had a book 3, which of course doesn't exist. Then Kaiser said: "Let us go home and check if we have it", and wow, Mr Wu said fine and added that he would check if he had them too, so we were released with no homework. Nice one, Kaiser :D.

Today was quite bad, for the school part at least. Firstly, I forgot to bring my Chemistry Files and Workbook as I had misread my Timetable (That's the result of a 10-day Timetable), so I was in for big trouble. Then during Chinese lesson, I made the first mark of a bad student this year as I had not handed in my homework on time. It wasn't too bad, my teacher gave me another chance, but it would certainly affect her view of my attitude. And I managed to pass off the Chemistry part by
1) Borrowing the workbook from my friend in another class who has the same Chemistry Teacher
2) Photocopy the latest notes from my classmate so that I would at least be able to fill in something when she was teaching later
3) Telling her personally that I had not brought my files,
after which she was LESS happy but not UNHAPPY. So I was quite safe. She then told us that we were fit for the 21st Century Classroom, which has cool IT Stuff, but that she would prefer another class to have that opportunity because lately, we have been upsetting her in terms of attitude towards her lessons. She felt that the other class had better reasons to be eligible for the classroom, but their timetable just didn't allow it to be so. So she had to put up with that, and we entered that special classroom, which was Air-Conditioned, for the first time and told us that we would be using this in the future for her lessons. She also informed us that we would have to learn how to use the equipment next Tuesday, and just 2 people from each group are required. So I'll be attending that session as a representative of my group.

Then for Biology, Mr Teo had a Sore Throat and he wrote on the board “失声”, which meant loss of voice, of course. He then erased the 2nd word and wrote “身” in it's place, and then my scholars were laughing at that because it was supposed to mean to lose one's virginity. Then he said that he was a lousy man who only 失身 at 56 years old. That's how epic our teachers are in MSHS. So anyway, if we are lucky, he might not be here tomorrow as he has MC and can choose not to come tomorrow, which will then cancel our afternoon Biology Lab Lesson, freeing up 3 periods for an early dismissal. He only came today because he had 3 periods with 4L, and they need their teachers more than anyone else right now.

So after Biology, I went for training to find that it only started at 4.30pm, but we could still play if we wanted to. The whole group of us were there, but Yi Kar and friends went to Toa Payoh to buy Table Tennis things, they are all freaks who change their rubber every few weeks. Kai Shiun offered to stay behind to play with me. After a while, at 3pm, I had a match with Kai Xun. From a lead of 2 - 0, the score turned to 2 - 2, then I won the last set with a lucky 13 - 11. He called for a break at the Fitness Corner before we did a rematch. So we went there supposedly to train for Pull Ups which we would be required to do next year, I can only do 3 for now. We also found that training only started at 4.30 because the Primary School had competitions and our Coach would be needed there.

In the rematch, I won again 3 - 2, and we had even better and longer rallies this time round. Then I played with Yi Kar, and when the balls became the long and fast type, I always lost them, he was too fast for me. I lost 3 - 1, but I sort of expected it so I didn't worry too much. I still resent the fact that I could trash him last year and now he's doing it back to me though. But then, I don't get Private Training like my juniors do, so I feel good to be able to learn on my own.

In the final game, it was a San Fen match between the two teams of Ee Jin, Daryl, Xin Wei and Benedict against Kai Shiun, Darren, Zheng Yan and I. I was so grateful that Dawn and Daryl weren't here to kill us like they did previously :). With increased confidence, I pulled the team up but of course had to lose in the end. Our team led 20 - 15, but we lost 22 - 20. Benedict and Zheng Yan left, then they took Timothy, which immediately told me that we had increased chances of losing. Timothy can be brutal when he gets lucky, which he does quite often. We won that game however, I can't remember the score, then we started the third set. In a spree, KS made the score 4 - 2, Darren increased it to 7 - 4, then I made brought it all the way to 19 - 4, when Daryl started his own comeback to pull up his team by a dozen points in a series of lucky hits and well played gao qiu. When he came up, he served a double tyco serve, hitting his own corner to hit my corner. Then a rally was played in which one of them hit the edge of my table, but I was ready to hit it back and I got that point. In the final rally, I lost it when he suddenly sent the ball to my backhand and I was caught off guard. At 20 - 16, I lost but Kai Shiun finished the set with 21 - 17. In the final match, we led 20 - 13. Then Ee Jin soloed it to 20 - 17, when KS finally defeated him. They were made to pick balls while I went home.

Random

I find that when you're given a worksheet, the hardest and last thing that I always do is to write my Name, Index Number, Class and Date. Also, when this piece of paper is handed out, there will always be someone who asks "What's today's date?". Why can't people get a watch of their own that shows the time and date, because people also frequently ask others for the current time. I should create a group for the part about someone in the class asking for the date when a new worksheet is given out, on Facebook :D. Of course, someone can always do it first. Anyway, I always find it difficult to write my Name, Index Number, Class and Date when a new worksheet comes into my hands, and the sole reason is that I don't like to pick up my pen just to fill in that information. Of course, in the case of Exams, that is the first thing I will do, since we are very time conscious then and cannot afford to waste time. Besides, the invigilator will ask us to write it down just before we start the paper anyway. But it is usually the last thing that I write before that worksheet is handed up, because I will always get it returned with a request to write it from the person who is collecting it, after which I will write it down in front of him as though he is a servant waiting for my permission to allow him to leave with an important document.

Random

This title fits any post, which is why I use it for sort-of-unrelated-to-my-life posts.

On your birthday, if you have a meal that is undecided, fill up that free slot with a trip to Swensen's. If it's dinner, that's great, because Ice Creams are best eaten after Dinner as dessert, and Swensen's is famous for that. And what is even better, is that if you bring identification, you're entitled to a free Ice Cream in Swensen's, specifically the Firehouse, but it's still free. All you have to do is to go there on the day of your birthday, when ordering your meal, show them your identification card to prove that it is your birthday and ask them if you get a free Firehouse for that. Unless they explain why it is otherwise, it will be a yes.