Not a bad Monday today. Quite enjoyable. I was told that I appeared in Assembly again. OK that's like the 2nd time in a month. For me, that is a huge achievement, because I have never done anything to be recognized by the teachers. The problem with today was that I forgot my belt, and DK just had to implement new disciplinary procedures today. I managed to get through the day without being spotted though. When he was telling us about these new actions to be taken, he named some examples and I was thinking in my head "Keefe" for each of them, because today, he was late for school, he did not have acceptable hair, he was not wearing his tie properly and he had ankle socks on. Looked really like a bad kid. So it was Keefe, Keefe, Keefe, Keefe, then next one was belt, so I thought "crap" in my head. haha.

Nothing much to look forward to tomorrow, except that it becomes Day 10...

Today was green day. We were allowed to wear home clothes to school, and I have my nice Green Shirt from Switzerland which is very comfortable, so I wore that. Everyone was looking at it and thought that it was Heineken or Carlsberg. I myself, when I saw it first, thought that it was Carlsberg.

The Interschool Nationals Table Tennis Championship ended today with 3 highly contested matches. I don't count ours because we basically got trashed. Dong Shuai lost 3 - 0 in the first singles, and we anticipated that St. Gabriel's would want to kill us ASAP, so they would be sending their stronger doubles first, but we were wrong. It seemed like they had predicted this and knew that we too would be putting our China pair forward, which they did not seem confident of beating. As such, they sacrificed their Local pair, which of course we would win. The 2nd Singles by You Hao was not really a competitive match either although he lost 3 - 1, but we had a chance in the 2nd Doubles when Edwin and Benedict played against their China pair and were losing 2 - 1, 10 - 9. But they lost the last ball. At least they took a set from them.

Both teams had barely any supporters, Anglican had a small group, Cedar Girls Supporters came into the hall at least 6 times, while Hwa Chong and Raffles took up half of the Grand Stand as they evened their numbers. Our cheering was COMPLETELY pathetic compared to theirs.

We were the first to lose, as B Division Girls, A Division Girls and Boys were playing tougher matches between more evenly matched China players in the case of the girls. The boys had more locals playing. Cedar Girls beat Anglican High 3 - 2 for the B Division Girls Champion Title. For A Division, Hwa Chong won the first singles, Raffles won first Doubles, Raffles won 2nd Singles and I don't know if it ended at 2nd Doubles, I wasn't present at that time, but I think it went on to the last Singles as the A Division Boys were playing the last Singles when they were packing the tables, but Raffles won. Raffles won 3 - 1.

We were playing outside since we lost early and it was estimated to end in about an hour, so we scouted the area, went in and out of KFC 3 times in a group of about 15, then we decided to go back to the old days. We played catching. Yes, catching. Freeze-And-Melt, rather. Running around and tapping people in the Grand Stand, then watching that prisoner while his accomplices try to free him. Sean went on to do some parkour moves over metal railings and got himself a wound on the leg, not a very smart move. Well, we came back perspiring, of course

For the A Division boys, Hwa Chong brought the score to 2 - 0 when they won the First Singles and Doubles, but lost 3 straight matches after that in an epic comeback by Raffles although Hwa Chong put up a really tough fight in the last Singles when Dai Ming Lun led 2 - 0, but he was rivaled when it became 2 - 2. However, he won the last set 11 - 9 to claim the Title for A Division Boys.

Today was a very nice day for me. Although I did not take public transport eventually, I was accompanied by many other disobedient students who arrived in cars.

When I stepped in to the class for the 2nd time (I went out to get a drink), I was greeted with a birthday wish. Then they publicly announced it to everyone in the class and I was told that one of the China Scholars in my class became one year older today.

I was wide awake the whole day, managed to keep alive well, until lunch time, at least. I finally got the hang of the Mole Concept in Chemistry. Then for Geography we just laughed again as usual, and then it was PE, which our teacher concluded that our class had a worser attitude than yesterday's class, which I definitely agree to. There was no coordination at all. And it so happened that homework yesterday was a Composition on Dangerous Sports, which I classified Softball under, and that was what we were doing today.

Then during recess, I handed in my Physics worksheet and the Chinese Project :). I hope she doesn't take marks off for being 1 day late, I couldn't find her yesterday. It did not look like she remembered that the deadline was on the 19th anyway.

And then Maths, was again, tiring and fun at the same time. I got back my Base Test result. 18/20, I predicted it right, what I foresaw wrongly was the question that I was denied marks from. My working was perfectly fine for the last question which I expected to be wrong. The deducted marks were a result of careless mistakes. I was told to form a Quadratic Equation, so it will be bla bla bla equals to 0. My final statement was something like "Equation = x^2 + 20x - 4", I can't remember the exact equation. Firstly, I am not supposed to put the equals sign, it's supposed to be "is" in that place. Then, I did not write that the equation was equal to 0. 1 mark taken off for that.

Mistake 2 was that the equation given is always positive, so I solved it with proper working all the way to the end, where I forgot to reject the negative answer. It's always positive, but I left the negative answer there, and k was the coefficient of x^2. Another 1 mark off for that.

For English, we discussed the format of a letter, which was quite interesting when she gave us examples of funny, wrong formats that students had written in the past. When the bell rang, the class sang "Happy Birthday" twice, after which Ms Leng expressed her own wishes to us too. I went for lunch and rushed to the library 2 minutes before the next lesson.

The lesson at 1.50pm was Social Studies. I was late by 1 minute and I went through it with a heavy heart because the teacher was dragging the lesson until 3.30pm. Not that I don't like to stay, but I had important things today, which turned out to be not so important afterwards. She told us that at 2.45, and then gave us a 5 minutes break which was supposed to give us the required energy to last until the end of the lesson, but I suspect that she knew some of us had brought our handphones and wanted to let us inform any important people of the late end to the lesson today. We were allowed out of the class for 5 minutes.

Green Week started today. All classes switched off their lights in an attempt to conserve energy consumption. We left the fans on, though, it would have killed us if we did. Tomorrow, is car free day, so I'll have to get up earlier and leave earlier as I'm taking Public Transport to school tomorrow.

Living without lights on a Monday was perfect, firstly because it's half day for us, and also because of the periods scheduled in the half day, they don't really require lights. For English, Ms Leng just needs her brain, not the lights, to tell her stories, although we did read an article, but that only took about 10 minutes. As for Biology, he was using Powerpoint Presentation, so the lights are supposed to be off anyway. But using the computer isn't really reducing energy consumption. After that, was Physics Lab Lesson. We didn't need the lights here as it's on a higher level, so the Sun shines in. Overall, it was a good Monday. Now I'll just have to think about how sleepy I will be tomorrow. I'm expecting a bad Tuesday.

I had a nice training session yesterday although I was not really on form. I had never fa diu so many balls in one day.

I started off training AT girls to fa quango, and they of course, cheated in their counting. 4 of them counted their outs to have no penalty on them. As for the other 2, after the first successful la, anything that went in during the rally after that increased their requirement. And if they hit out during the rally, they would just add 1. So it was a really really cheap way to finish it, but it did not benefit them afterwards.

Jia Lu turned up and I offered to play a match with him after he had not come for 3 weeks. He declined at first, but 5 minutes later asked me back for the same thing. So we played a nice Left-Hander match that went 1 - 0, 2 - 0, 2 - 1 and then I won it 3 - 1. He asked for a rematch after a 2 minute water break, and this time he won the first set, but again I came back with a 3 - 1.

Next, we were both made to play a full round of Doubles with Daryl and Darren. We were to partner each other only in the final match. I took Daryl first and we started losing to the Lefty pair because Jia Lu's smashes are really fast and the balls go in awkward directions, so we couldn't catch them. Losing 2 - 0, Daryl started to make miracles happen when Jia Lu failed to return his service continuously after that. We won 3 sets in a row. It was Darren and I next, my turn to be with a left hander. This time, we led the match 2 - 0, but Daryl again did some things that let them catch up to 2 - 2, but we had to win the final set 11 - 8. In the last game, I wasted many services, more than that in the previous 2 matches, which costed us 1 set. We won 3 - 1 in a close 11 - 9 for the final set.

I was asked to play against 3 of the 6 AT girls after that. So, having not trained properly earlier, I beat all of them 3 - 0, which marked the end of my training session.

It was a rather nice Sports Day today. Better than last year at least. It is just sad that just 1 more Sports Day remains for me. We started off the day with Chemistry which was supposed to be held in the 21st Century Classroom, but trying to use it so early in the day meant that it was locked. We spent 10 minutes trying to get through a door that wouldn't open, then when Ms Yeo decided to go back, she was climbing the stairs when the door opened and Mr Wee came out with many apologies. So we did have our lesson in the 21st Century Classroom. We started Calculations of Chemical Equations today.

Social Studies was quite fun as usual. Our teachers are very nice :D. Then it was Physics. We were supposed to be released at 10am today, but she wanted to go through some important things, so the lesson pulled on until 10.15am, when we were dismissed from class.

Meaning to go out with Keefe, I met Reuben and Russell just outside the classroom as I walked out of it. They were waiting for me to end my lesson and planned to go out together. Such wonderful friends :). So 4 of us, we went to J8. They kept pretending to be suspicious characters using their bags as bombs on the train. Reaching there at 10.45am, I realized that Breakfast was still available at Macdonalds, and I wanted to eat that, but Keefe insisted that we go to the Food Junction instead. And I couldn't remember the reason why I didn't want to go there until we entered it. I took Cheese Prata again for $6.60. It's nice, but I wanted to eat Hotcakes :D. But nevermind.

I was about to go to the Stadium, but Keefe wanted to mess around, so he just walked into Popular when he saw his friends in there, and they were coming out. But he stayed in there. 5 minutes later, he went to queue at the counter with 2 blue pens and said that he wanted to buy them. Then he decided that he only needed 1 and spent another 1 minute to put it back and return to the queue which had extended in his absence. When we finally got out of Popular another 5 minutes later, I told them that I wanted a Hot Fudge Sundae and went down, but they found something else to look at. 27-inch iMac with a Magic Mouse and a Bluetooth Keyboard attached to it. Next to it was the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro in 13, 15 and 17 inch variations. Spent another 5 minutes there. 11.40am. In a toy shop, yes, a toy shop, they played around for another 5 minutes. They went in after I pointed out a 5 x 5 x 5 Rubik's cube to them...

Getting my Sundae at last, I finished it in about 5 minutes and needed to wash my hands as they had overfilled it with fudge this time, so when I dipped the spoon in for the first scoop, fudge spilled over onto my hand. And sucking it up just doesn't feel right. Wash my hands = Go to the toilet. And why did the other 3 of them have to follow me there? I managed to slip in there before they caught up, and they went past the toilet in the wrong direction. I just went in there, left my hand under the tap for half a second and came out again. And I did not see them. Waited for 2 minutes then Reuben called me to ask for my whereabouts. After regrouping, we headed back to the MRT Station.

Dropping off at Serangoon to go to Hougang, we reached our destination in about 7 minutes. I don't know why I'm so particular about the time spent in this post, but I guess I'm just trying to see how I spent my 3 hours of free time. So anyway, none of us knew where Hougang Stadium was from the station, like on Wednesday. So we just picked an exit and got out there and as expected, it was the wrong one. Returning to the underground passage to get out through the other side, we met a group of people including Benedict. That made about 15 of us. We didn't really know where it was, but we led the way. When I thought that they were just following us blindly, I wanted to play the fool, so Russell, Reuben and I, we turned into a HDB block, and they followed us. And it turned out that it was the right way. OK so we managed to find Hougang Stadium through a prank. I thought we were already a big group, but at Traffic Junctions, we could Nan Chiau High people in groups of 30, and there were many groups. Yeah, they had been using the Stadium just before us, so they were leaving and we were just taking over their place then.

Arrived there to be greeted by Daryl and Ee Jin. People in yellow shirts filled one side of the place. Benedict was also in the same house. Russell did not know what house he was in and was wearing the school uniform so he didn't care and just sat with us while Reuben stood out in the crowd as the only green among us until our ex-classmates came to bother us. But they found a wide space to migrate to and Russell and Reuben followed suit, but I wanted to stay with my Table Tennis juniors.

We just talked, as they were still preparing for the event. At about 2pm, we found Daryl and Kai Shiun, both yellow shirts too :D and Zi Ping. That's 6 Table Tennis players in the same house :D. Then our fellow China players. Talked even more. I lost track of time after that, but at some point in time the councilors came up with boxes of buns to chuck around to the crowd. Russell and some primary school kids in front of me kept asking for more, and they just gave it all to me. Being a fan of Chocolate Buns, I took all of them like a greedy pig, but of course I returned some of them and kept 6. Haha. And that excludes those that I threw at and gave to other people. But of course I didn't eat all of them there.

They took 2 and a half hours to run through the 100m, 400m and the 4 x 100m Relay from Primary 4 to Secondary 4. Ming Xuan told me that I was to record his 100m sprint, but if he was not in the top 3, delete it. I didn't bother, and he did not get top 3. At 4.30pm when they were about to start the 4 x 400m Relays, it started to drizzle and the lightning alert came on. We were told that the event was to end there due to unsuitable conditions. I was missing the most exciting part of the event where each individual was of vital importance to the team's victory. It was the one that I stayed for and wanted to watch, but they cancelled it.

They dismissed us according to our houses. Keefe asked me if there was a direct bus home and I told him I didn't know, but I had to worry for him since he isn't used to getting around Singapore on his own yet, so when I found that he did not come out with the Blue Shirts, I called him. He had gone on ahead. Kai Zhong, who lives near me, was coming along too. So the 3 of us, we went back to the station. On the way, we found a bus stop and Keefe checked the bus numbers. 165 was on the schedule, but then I pointed out the stop that he was about to end up at. Hougang Central Interchange, 3 stops away. Haha he changed his mind.

We went back to school to take a bus back, on the way meeting Russell yet again, and Marcus. As Keefe had a direct bus, we left at the stop before Coronation Plaza to change our bus. Chatting more about nonsense with Kai Zhong in the limited time, I dropped off at my destination and went home.

It was a tiring day, like all Thursdays are. I'll skip details on today. Sports day tomorrow, yay!

Started off today with double Chinese, we were practicing for our Oral today. Being a chicken, I stayed at the back and did not volunteer myself, instead suggesting for others to do the talking. The result is that I have to do it tomorrow :(. At least I have some idea on what to say having heard my friends' opinions.

Following that was Maths Base Test. The teacher was so kind to forget and only tell us that we had a Base Test today, yesterday. It's not that I can't prepare in one night, but many of us panic when time seems short, especially when most of them are busy 24/7, unlike me. So ok Chapter 4.1 and 9.3, we made sure by asking him several times yesterday. And guess what, he came today and told us that Chapter 1 was included. Now what's chapter 1? Quadratic Equations, the Alpha Beta part of the chapter. I immediately went "Oh shit" in my heart, because as far as I could remember, I was slacking when he taught that as it was just after the Exams. So naturally I was weak in that when it came to homework. But it turned out ok in the end as I asked my friends for help. However, I was still not entirely confident of my ability to solve those questions. That's where the sarcasm ends. Mr Wu gave us a quick 2 minute revision to pity us for keeping from us the fact that Chapter 1 was included in the Base Test, and then I suddenly remembered everything. I was fully ready for the test then.

4 questions, 20 marks. Turned out very good. Confident that my answers are all correct, working-wise, not so much. Only applies to the last question anyway, so I'll just take off 2 marks from that. Should be 18/20 or higher. I'll wait :D.

The rest of the day passed like usual. Ms Leng told us stories during her period, and Mr Teo extended this section by telling us a couple of stories of his own, and he even released us early so that we could be punctual for our NAPFA test! Includes lunch time. Went with Russell and Reuben. None of us knew where Serangoon Stadium was from the MRT Station, but they met a classmate of theirs who knew the directions, so he lead the way. I still arrived there 40 minutes early at 2.20pm. By 2.45, the group that was supposed to start at 2.30pm hadn't even begun. They just kept dragging it. There were 4 groups of about 20 people per group on the track, that makes 80 students running in circles, some sprinting like they can't tire out, most panting for breath and moving at their comfortable pace. When I finally started at about 3.30pm when my class had been scheduled for 3pm.

It wasn't as tiring as I thought it would be, but it wasn't fun to feel breathless either. I clocked 11 minutes 56 seconds, 4th in my group :D. That's a B for me and it secures my Gold. Ming Xuan had a timing of 10 minutes 48 seconds. If I had not sprinted the last half lap, I would probably be position 10, I think. That's how close we all were. It was as if we all had the same constant speed. I jogged throughout the 6 rounds, pausing once for half a second to catch my breath, but then decided that I could not afford to stop, so I continued running. Poor Waise missed his C by 3 seconds, and I told him to beg the teacher to be merciful, but unfortunately for him it didn't work out as he could not change the timing, the receipt still showed the actual time and that would prove to be very suspicious when they came to check. So he is one who has 27/30 points for NAPFA, but has a Silver. That is really, really hilarious.

Went back to school for training, shouldn't have bothered though. If all my juniors skipped it, what's the fun of going for it?

Blogger just screwed up today's post, and I'm not typing it all out again. I'll just make it short

I was puzzling over my timetable in the morning.
Today is Daryl's birthday (my classmate).
Did not run for PE today.
Crapping in Maths lesson (again).
Made Copper(II) Sulfate crystals during Chemistry.
Failed to do the ICAS test after they stole my money.

Taking my NAPFA test tomorrow.

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...