Wow today actually turned out to be fun. It's a public holiday (Good Friday), but I usually treat my holidays as weekends. Today was different. It was the first time this year that I was outside with friends for a casual outing, but the problem was that everything I did seemed to be wrong.

I left my home at 12.50pm, was dropped off at Newton MRT Station to take the train to Dhoby Ghaut. 3 stops only, but the train was super crowded. Without the Circle Line, this would be worse. So I arrived at 1.25pm, then I found Daryl waiting. Without a clue where the correct exit to Plaza Singapura (It's the Dhoby Ghaut Maze) was, we asked a security guard and he pointed us to the right direction, which appeared to be where Daryl had previously come out from. Then, finding Dawn and Hanzhi was the next problem. Which part of Basement 2 would you be at? We met up anyway. With just 5 minutes left to the start of the film, I did the queuing for the tickets, Daryl lined up for the food and the girls went to the Arcade, how nice of them. Of course they paid their own share for the tickets, but Daryl sponsored the food completely. The first mistake was to watch Jack Neo's film, which I was supposedly banned from after his scandalous act, but I forgot that he directed the film Being Human although Daryl had mentioned it before. $10 gone to him just like that.

It was ok, I suppose. The storyline was not very exciting, but the jokes that they cracked up were quite good with a nice balance of English, Mandarin and Hokkien. It was basically a story about a man who cared only about his wealth and in the process, caused hurt to others and even lost his loved ones. He had no conscience and did not care about the lives of other people and thus did many wrong things. I shall not go into details, but it was a really dumb ending where the whole film was rewinded very quickly over a period of 10 seconds and the main character decided to do the opposite of what he wanted initially. Daryl bought 2 boxes of popcorn, one which was fully salt popcorn and the other which was mixed. We did not finish it, I can't stand Salty Popcorn. The sweet ones were consumed by the girls.

After the movie, we decided to walk around. Went to Carrefour, looked at things a little, then we visited the Arcade. Misdeed number 2. Play in the Arcade. Dawn was emo-ing over the numerous failures to catch that little plush toy and she looked really sad, so I went for a go. I got it on the 5th try. She didn't seem too happy with that as she wanted to do it herself, but I made her take it anyway (You know you wanted it). I accidentally wasted $1 worth of Daryl's tokens after hitting the wrong button in Time Crisis 2, so sorry about that. Then we did a couple of games in Spot the Difference, which seemed incredibly easy to them, I couldn't see anything! We spent about 45 minutes in there, then we went to Burger King to eat as Daryl had not taken his lunch and it was 5.20pm.

"Lunch" turned into Dai Di as Daryl had brought a pack of Poker Cards. So instead of sitting there and eating, we were using the space to play Dai Di. Wrongdoing number 3. They had their suitable reason of "I'm still eating" albeit at an incredibly slow pace. But it was true, the food was not completely devoured until about 7pm. Hanzhi kept winning, then when I finally joined in Daryl started winning. Dawn failed miserably with Triple Di in one of the games, screwed up big time near the end. I, of course, did not win at all, I was not familiar with the rules of the game. We eventually broke off from hogging the table at 7pm and went home.

Random

The thing I hate about April's Fools Day, is that when someone asks you to do something or tells you something, you don't know if it's an April Fools joke or a legitimate statement, and moreover is when it's at 12am on the 2nd April and someone tells you something that could be an April Fools Joke, but they were just late by a few minutes. You still can't be sure if it's real. And when you ask them if it IS indeed an April Fools Joke, they'll tell you that it's already the 2nd April. And so it's sad for people who are born on 1st April, they get loads of jokes for their birthday present which might not be considered fun to them.

Maundy Thursday was started off with service. During the service, they were talking about Servant Leadership and how Jesus was a leader who came to serve and not be served, which he evidently displayed when he washed the feet of his disciples. That particular incident aroused his disciples and caused them to think that Jesus was wrong to be serving them in a way. They went through "Stations" when Jesus made his way with the cross to the place to die. In each "Station", they described the events that happened such as the fact that he fell 3 times and Simon helped him carry the cross. In them, they represented the values of Jesus, of his love and perseverance, his willingness to die for the people and other inspiring qualities of Jesus. They followed it up with Marists who exemplified Servant Leaders, and apparently my form teacher felt that I was one of them, after observing my behaviour for a while, so she had nominated me. There were about 7 people whom they mentioned, and in the 30 seconds where my name, class (put wrongly) and picture (A 2009 picture, they couldn't find any other photos of me) was revealed to every single student in the hall, I became more famous than I ever had been. Random people whom I had never met recognized me even after the Service, I don't know how they did it, I would not even be able to identify who the other 6 Servant Leaders were in a group of 10. Well, I had one day of "fame", if you could call it that.

For Geography lesson after that, we learnt about Biomass. My teacher told us that everything that we ate could be traced back to plants as plants are the core units of an ecosystem and if we lacked them, the whole population of animals would be affected as they are the start of almost every single food chain. So my teacher came up to me, asked me what I ate for Breakfast and I told him I did not eat Breakfast. He then told me I had eaten air, which was what I did say previously, then he asked me why I did not eat, was it because I was too poor, I could not afford food for breakfast and in the midst of all that he was saying rapidly without waiting for an answer, he withdrew a $10 note and put it into my pocket and walked off. My classmates started shouting that they had not taken breakfast either, in hopes of free money. Naturally, I returned it to him, but if I did not, it would really have been mine. When he asked me again why I did not eat and gave me a chance to answer, I told him that I barely took Breakfast.

After lessons, I went to make up for a couple of Biology Lab Experiments that I had missed when I had attended the Table Tennis Competitions. Kai Xun came as well, since he had missed them too. The very first two food tests... Mr Teo gave us the answer sheets to save time. Experiment 1 was ok, but when we were doing Experiment 2, we found that we were short of Dry Test Tubes. So Kai Xun asked for extra Test Tubes and returned with 4, which we split evenly. After doing the first part of the Experiment, we found that 2 was not enough, we needed 6 each. I still had 1 dry one since I reused 1 of the Test Tubes in the first Experiment, so I went to ask for 3. I told the lady that I needed 3 Test Tubes, and she took out a book, flipped it to the last page where any entries were made, and asked me to fill up the slots. It appeared that I had to write my details when I borrowed test tubes, so I did that. Date, Name, Item, Quantity, Signature. When I wrote my name, I looked at the slot above mine and wondered why Kai Xun's name was not there when he had borrowed 4 test tubes 15 minutes ago. Nevertheless, I filled up the rest of the required blanks. While writing the quantity, she asked me how many, to which I answered 3 and she looked shocked. I supposed no one had borrowed that many from her simultaneously before. When I was done, the lady told me "不用现在赔钱“. I looked at her, thinking "Why do you think I would pay money to borrow 3 Test Tubes?" Then when she made no effort to get 3 Test Tubes and repeated her words, I suddenly knew why. The book had been to record down the details of Broken Laboratory Apparatus. That's why I needed to write my name, which item I had broken, how many of them I had damaged and my signature to confirm that. It would then make sense for her to say what she had said about paying for the Test Tubes and the reason why Kai Xun had not filled up the blanks. It would also then explain why she had been shocked when I told her 3 Test Tubes. Hence, I told her again that I was there to borrow 3 test tubes and she looked at me for a second before taking over the pen, striking off what I had written and then going to get the Test Tubes. I was right, she had misunderstood me, or maybe I did not make my point clearly. She told me that she thought I had broken 3 Test Tubes, and I corrected that.

Now with an adequate number of Test Tubes, we conducted the 2nd Experiment and finished it up. It was 3.40pm then. Yan Tian had told me earlier before my lesson that he would wait for me before going for the Competition. He had skipped his Chinese Lesson. Walking out to the Porch where I had told Yan Tian to wait for me, I found Jia Ming and he too was about to make his way to PLMGS. We went to find the missing Yan Tian who was supposedly at the Library while I was doing my experiment, but failed to do so. Returning to the Porch, I felt my Phone vibrate and found that it was Yan Tian calling me. He told us to go to the Rock Wall. So he had decided to take a step further and leave us misinformed.

Making our way to Serangoon, I realized the mistake to go with Yan Tian and Jia Ming. They both jaywalked like before. Again, I disregarded them and took the long way with a run. Upon reaching PLMGS, we saw Dong Shuai starting his Final Set. After watching him lose that, our China Doubles went up. Losing 2 - 1, it seemed like they could not make the win, but they were the Miracle pair that made a 10 - 7 become 10 - 12 in the match against RI, and that was what they did again. With a comeback, we won that Match 3 - 2, and at that point Daryl was telling me again about how they were wasting time by playing all 5 sets. Of course it was not on purpose, each side wanted to win ASAP, but too bad it was true and it really consumed a lot of our time. You Hao gave us the 2nd point in yet another 3 - 2. Looking over at the Sports School vs St. Gabriel, we saw Pang Xue Jie lose to one of them 3 - 1, but there were incredible rallies which involved remarkable reaction time and speed as well as skill, which both players had. Anyway, Edwin and Benedict assured our win and Yan Feng just cleaned up to make it 4 - 1. We're now in the Semi-Finals, although with relatively low chances of winning, but then again, I expected a loss today, and it was a reverse outcome.

Yesterday, our C Division beat Catholic High 4 - 1. I wasn't there, I just knew that they won. I had extra lessons, again... Met Yan Tian, Benedict, Jia Ming and Darryl on the way anyway, and they were jay-walking. I did not follow them though. Our B Division match was against St. Gabriel's, and we lost the first 2 matches. You Hao looked like he had a chance, but his opponent was just so lucky and he dropped the ball onto the corner of the table in the final point, sealing the victory for them. We won the 2nd doubles as they were the only SG players in St. Gabriel and they weren't too strong, then Sean lost the last to make it a 4 - 1 loss. Tomorrow we will be facing SJI and it doesn't look like it'll be a win for us, but I shall see.

I had an "OK" training session today. Dozing off repeatedly through the periods before Recess, I was woken up during the break and was hence able to fully concentrate after that. And I ate more than usual, but I was still hungry during lunch, for some reason. I was hungry in the morning too. Braces hadn't allowed me to eat well, so I guess my body needed to balance that out. I started off nice and well with a very close win against Yi Kar 3 - 2. Then he played against Wei Yen, beating him 3 - 0. I lost to Wei Yen 3 - 2 after that, then Kai Xun won me 3 - 1, and that's ridiculous considering the fact that they hadn't come for training in recent weeks. So I was upset with both losses. What happened after that made it worse. Coach called for a Doubles match - Timothy + Me vs Daryl and Darren. He said that if we lost one set we would have to Wa Tiao. We took the lead to 2 - 0, then we started to lose in the 3rd set. At 10 - 6, it was time to put aside our playful mood, if there was even one. I brought the score to 10 - 8, then when we were playing the 19th ball, Darren had to hit it just above the net and cause the ball to drop right after it, which of course no one would expect, so we lost that set.

We won that match 3 - 1, but of course Coach wasn't happy. He let us rematch for a chance to redeem ourselves, and guess what, we lost the 1st set. I told Coach I would just Wa Tiao, but he told us to win the whole thing. Well of course the opposite happened. We lost 3 - 1. Wa Tiao it was.... 6 times. And that was the end of today's Off-Form training, although I felt ON Form.

I got my Braces on Saturday, they're white, so it isn't very obvious unless you're 5 metres away. I was fine with it initially, having worn the Jaw Expander for 2 years. The feeling was the same, except that there was nothing to block my tongue, so it's much easier to talk with it, certain vowels were made unclear when I wore them. Now, that issue has been eliminated, at the cost of additional temporary problems. About 7 hours after putting them on, I started to feel pain on both sides of my mouth. It hurt to bite. I was so blessed that dinner that night was Noodles, and noodles can be swallowed without much difficulty.

So then on Sunday for breakfast, was Hotcakes! Easy to cut and put into the mouth and swallow. Training was better than usual, my Win/Loss ratio was above 1. I felt that I had improved anyway.

Monday was ok, I felt lethargic in the morning when there was no reason to do so. I only had half a day, but I couldn't get through that without constantly putting my head on the table. The "extra" session for some course that I thought I had in the afternoon was a mistake of mine as it was not for me, but I had to stay until 5.30 for training anyway. I found Daryl and added to his History Homework in an attempt to pull up his grades, I'm not sure if I was successful. Then he left me to rot, once again, in at 3.30pm. With nothing to do, I read the Newspaper in the canteen for half an hour, then I decided to run off to J8 to pass time. Once there, I decided that I would have a Hot Fudge Sundae, then I went back. It was 5pm then, and the side gate could not be opened from the outside. It was also raining, so I obviously avoided the option of running round the school in the rain just to get in. Instead, I waited for someone to come out, which was what happened. He came out and I went in, held the door for that RGS Cheryl, who happened to arrive at that moment, then went in alone. I did not notice the rest of the group. Found Sean loitering at the hall, he was wondering if he should jump in from the top floor, as the door was locked. When I told him RGS had arrived, he made it a "No". 5.30, Coach arrived, ban zhuo zi... As I did that, NY came, then more RGS came. After I was done, I went to my usual slacking place. More NY came, then another group of RGS came, then an additional set of NY came. OK...... this training was officially cancelled for me. The "twins" Daryl and Darren arrived. We sat and talked until 7.30 when we were FINALLY allowed to play as there were now free tables for us. I was asked to play one match, which I won, and that was "Training" for the night.

Today's Table Tennis performance was unsatisfactory. I was dismissed at 1.20, so I could reach PLMGS in time to witness the C Division playing, which was embarrassing to watch. We are such a failure now. Our opponent proved to be formidable, or was it just the fact that the other schools had trained harder than us? SJI had only 1 China Player, which our very own counterpart lost to. Then Yi Kar and Zi Ping lost the 1st Doubles, our Xiao-Master failed at what he did best, possibly because his opponent had stronger attack capabilities. That sealed the win for them, followed by the untimely arrival of our own intimidating players made-to-win. If only the 2nd and 3rd Singles of either side's lineup had swapped, we would have won. But what's happened has happened, and there is no such thing as "If only", it will never happen.

Our B Division faced Sports School once again and it was another intense 2 hour match as Benedict lost the 1st Singles 3 - 0, our first China Pair balanced it in the 1st Doubles, then Sean got trashed by National Player Pang Xue Jie, while the second China Pair made it equal again, then we cleaned up with our final China Player. It was nothing to be proud of even though it was a win for us, because none of the Locals did the work. And the Locals in Sports School could match our tougher players. The 2nd Singles match would have been more interesting to watch if it had been one of our China players, but that would mean that the defeat of Sports School didn't exist, it would have been the other way round.

Our China players were always defeated by any fellow opponent of the same race, we used them extensively and that was how we claimed our Title of 1st in National Table Tennis. Now our reputation has gone down because we cheated and failed, and we did not improve as much as the other schools, to the point that Local players could now beat the seemingly invincible players of the team. This is why I feel that the School is being dishonorable and we do not deserve these awards that have been gained through unfair advantage. We failed this year, and the worst part was that our B Division team was the same as last year, only with an increased amount of China "Talent". However, this was rivaled by the massive improvement of the other schools, who seem to have enhanced their own players to the point that our most powerful players are no match for them, and they also brought the previously C-Division players over, who seem to have been refined as well.

Random

Dealing with anger on the spot is a tough and one of the most frequent challenges in life, most people are guaranteed to go angry once every 2 weeks. When I do get angry, most of the time I cannot control what I say, but recently I've found a way to sustain my cool and shut up so I don't make a fool of myself. And the anger I'm talking about is when two parties are involved in an argument or disagreement.

Firstly, try not to say anything crude and directly offensive. If you do that and the person retorts, you're probably going to get angrier and that will make matters worse. It's just going to backfire on you.

Secondly, DO NOT go for physical contact. It CAN happen if some feel that verbal insults are not enough to hurt the opposition, and no I'm not saying I fight and please don't even have that idea, but it has happened, I have witnessed it and it happens because of intense verbal conflict.

And lastly, the most effective way, is to know that it's meant to happen. Just think that the thing that made you angry has happened, it was meant to be so, you can't do anything about it, focus on the future and know that there are happy times to come. You will always have an enjoyable moment somewhere after a distressful experience, and this may not come until a month later, but there will always be something that will make you happy in the future.

Today, I was very sleepy in the morning, again. It didn't make any sense, I slept quite early last night. I made it through the first half because my kind teachers did not object to me putting my head on the table and closing my eyes for 30 seconds. Then I was deciding to sleep during Recess, but after buying my bun and eating it, I didn't feel sleepy anymore. I was actually talking. Now that's weird. I survived the next 4 periods, then lunch. I was going to go straight to the Biology Lab, but then I saw some people eating Roti Prata, so I decided I would take lunch too. Just couldn't resist it. The queue was quite short, but Prata was also out of stock, so it took quite a while. And they spelled it "Paratha" on the menu. My scholar classmate kept looking at his watch because he was afraid that there wouldn't be enough time to consume his 3 pieces. I had 10 minutes to finish mine, but that's ok, 5 minutes was enough. Made it to the Lab in time at 2:25.

Our teacher started it off with a nice round of admonishment. He was upset with the work that we handed in the previous lesson. I looked at my work and found that I had followed his instructions quite well, so I wasn't one of those that he was unhappy with. Just a ridiculous round of careless mistakes in writing down the contents of each test tube, but he didn't say anything about that part. I had 5cm³ of Starch, 5 drops of water and 1cm³ of Amylase in the first test tube. I went to fill in the exact same thing for the 2nd and 3rd test tubes, when the 5 drops of water were supposed to be 5 drops of Hydrochloric Acid and 5 drops of Sodium Hydroxide respectively. Small mistake on the worksheet, at least I didn't follow what I wrote when I was doing the experiment.

Today's experiment was to find out the rate of enzyme reaction with enzyme concentration as the limiting factor. We had 2 slices of potato about 6cm long, and 2 slices of boiled potate about 4cm long. The potato supposedly contained the enzyme required. With 5 test tubes labelled A to E, I had to put Hydrogen Peroxide into each of the test tubes to a depth of 3cm. The instructions said to use a dropper, but our teacher mistakenly provided us with a syringe. So of course everyone would misread the instructions and fill up the syringe with 3cm³ of Hydrogen Peroxide. So the depth wasn't 3cm. Sadly, I was one of those who messed up this part, but fortunately for me, I was slow in my experiment, so when the teacher reminded us that we were using a syringe, I could correct this mistake as I had not started the procedure yet. Cutting up the potato was ok, human error caused each slice to be about 2mm long and not precisely 2mm. Then the experiment was carried out. I will not go into details, it is not your business to know what I did unless I want to share it with you, which obviously this sentences tells you, I don't. But I have to say that the plastic container labelled "Throw biological waste in here" after the experiment was a sickening blue black coloured liquid with pieces of potato in them, with every group's container in the lab looking the same.

Then next, I had to choose what to do. 3.30pm. Training would start at 7.30pm. 4 hours of doing nothing? No. I happened to meet Junn Wei at the MRT Station, and it just so happened that he was going to Bishan, and it was so coincidental that we both wanted to eat even though we were not hungry. That meant that we were still in a state to walk, so we did not go straight to eat. He wanted to go to Popular first, to buy a Maths Assessment book, then about 5 pads of Foolscap paper. All ready to go hardcore studying, he just needs another 7 Assessment books for each other subject. So next, was Lunch? Dinner? Whatever you call the meal that you eat at 4.30pm. I think it's called "Tea" in the US. We went to the Food Junction, but as we were not hungry, we weren't very sure where we wanted to eat. Food Junction does not appeal to me when I'm just there for a light meal. So I told him to shut his eyes and do a 360˚ spin and see where he was facing, then we would look for something to eat at that area. He complied and we found him facing Golden Village. I rejected that and dragged him into the Food Junction. Golden Village was NOT a place to eat, unless you were going to watch a movie.

From the previous experience about a couple of weeks ago, I was sure I wouldn't touch the Chicken Rice again. When I bought it that day, the chicken was 50% bone and 20% Skin, leaving a mere 30% of chicken. And the Rice quantity did not adhere to my satisfaction either. All that for $4? No way. Well, today I had another shock, so that's 2 chances off this place. 1 more strike and I'll never come back here again, but we'll see what happens next time. Anyway, the supposedly "light meal" became my dinner. What was that? Cheese Prata. Just couldn't get enough of it after lunch. 1 piece: $2.20. I knew that 1 piece would not be enough, so I ordered 3, I needed to last until 9pm. $2.20? The one that I had for lunch was 2 pieces and it was only $1.50. OK, that was plain prata, so each piece would be 75¢, but one slice of cheese can't cost an additional $1.45. That was completely ridiculous, but what could I say? Feeble words of complain won't make them lower the price, that's not the way you haggle, and it's food, who haggles the prices of food? OK, I dealt with that short moment of resent. At least it was good quality, that's what matters.

Ate the food, did some work, then Junn Wei had to go for tuition, left me to return to school at 6pm and rot for another 1-and-a-half hours. No, I finished up the non-computer related homework (which is what I'm supposed to be doing now, but nevermind) then slept until 7pm. Saw the Taekwondo training in the TK Low Hall, then wondered how we would be having Table Tennis training because their training was until 9, according to Daryl(Not my junior Daryl). The last time they had it and we had training, Coach told me to go home. I also thought I got my training times mixed up, so I called Coach. He confirmed that training was on tonight, hence I felt safe that I had not wasted my time here.

I played just one doubles match. Yi Kar and Ziping against Sean and I. We took the first set, lost the 2nd, lost the 3rd, getting trashed 8 - 1 in the 4th set, then Sean said "Nevermind we still can catch up". The impossible thing happened. We did the difficult thing and brought the score to a nice 10 - 10, then kept our cool as we deuced to 18 - 18. I got a Service Ace, then Ziping served into the net. 2 - 2. We led the last set and won it 11 - 5. When we were losing 2 - 1 and Coach knew that, he looked at us disapprovingly, then when Ziping lost he was quite upset with him. It looked like he couldn't decide who he wanted or expected to win.

So that was today, tomorrow I have another long day, but I don't care, I like eventful days, and this has been an eventful week :D.

E-Learning today was great. 4 subjects only. Compare that to last year. What was it? 7 Subjects. And the portal wasn't lagging at all either, how great is that? Last year it'd take 15 mins to load a page with one question, 2 mins to answer it, and then click submit, and another 15 mins to display the next question. All I can say is that I spent only 1/4 of the time that I spent last year doing this E-Learning, I even had time for training! Last year you had to start early and end at like 11.59pm, plus minus 1 minute. Nah jk but it really could go that late to about 11.30pm, firstly because of the amount of work, of which 80% you would hate, and the fact that the portal was lagging with over a thousand students on the same website simultaneously. So, today was an excellent E-Learning day and I shall look forward to the next one in July, if it is just as good as this.

But of course, everything comes with it's downsides. Expecting a long day of staring at the computer the night before, I went to Studywiz to check if anything was out yet at 12am. I saw an E-Learning survey, so I took it. They asked me things like "Are you satisfied with the amount of work you get?" and "Are you satisfied with the speed of Studywiz?", something like that. Well, naturally, I wouldn't know at that time what it would be like today, so I used experience from last year. And of course, after what I said in the paragraph above, I went to check the Disagree options for those questions. And then there was a box at the bottom for "Additional Comments/Opinions". What did I put there? I requested for less work and a faster portal. Now, that's really unfair, after what they did today. 4 subjects compared to 7 last year, and I want less? And Studywiz was working fine, I don't need a better server. This is a case of "Don't count your chicks before they are hatched". I did the survey too early, more than 8 hours early, in fact.

I guess I should go and do the survey one more time and fill in the opposite of what I did the first time. I really didn't expect today to be a good E-Learning session, I thought it would be the same situation as last year, and with even more work. So, Strongly Agree and Disagree should cancel out to become Agree, so that should be fine. And I shall emphasize on my satisfaction with E-Learning today to make them happier.

Anyway, I was up late into the night this morning, listening to really funny conversations on Skype. It was just... epic. And as a result, I slept late, which means not enough sleep, so I was tired during training, I could really feel a significant drop in my reaction time and I was not in the mood to run for even 2 metres. Thus, training was somewhat bad today, but somewhat bad is in between quite bad and OK, so it's not too bad. I did really badly in the 3-point thingy though, it was quite cold today and I couldn't move.

We lost to RI with a score of 3 - 2. Even cheating with 5 China guys didn't work. But it does mean one thing, our SG players have got talent. So when they're up against Sports School, we'll see if they can do us proud and show us that RI has better players than Sports School, which will completely throw away the meaning of Sports School and shame them. It might be ok for Sports School to lose to China, but not to SG players.

Today is E-Learning day. Starting on it now.