muggingseason | by jk

Dawn

2010-01-24T02:31:00.002+08:00

I've decided that I might actually start penning down a few thoughts here and there here as well.

Much has changed since the last time I've written. Looking back, it has been about eight - or rather, slightly more than eight months since the last time I posted here. Since then many things about me have changed. I've lost weight, gained (and maybe lost some) friends, received IB results, etc.

Most clearly, on the surface, I have seemed to enter a new chapter of life, in the form of what I spend a large portion of my time doing. The challenges of the IBDP have passed and now I am in BMT, having traded the SAC for the cookhouse, TOKEECASIA for 5BXACBTPGAC, my subjects having changed somewhat from Physics HL and Economics SL to First Aid and Individual Fieldcraft, and my official designation from being in 5 or 6.14 for Quebec P2S3. The former chapter ended well; perhaps not as well as my terribly greedy ego wanted it to end, but I cannot deny that it ended well at all... I'll be hoping the latter will start and finish well as well.

At this juncture, indeed writing about various aspects of my school life that have been changed now that I am in BMT brings back many happy memories I had in school. I shall elaborate on this point later, where its relevance will become clearer.

It has indeed been a period of change, and thus facing such change I often seek stability; I'd think that would be natural among most people. I guess that's why "Admin Time" is very valuable to me - I end up spending most of my Admin Time on the phone, usually with my parents and then if time permits 1 other friend. Perhaps it might seem a little unusual for me to say this here since I have already been in BMT for three weeks, but I must say that I haven't fully settled in, though I believe I am coping reasonably well with the stresses of military life and training, and perhaps at times even found some enjoyment in it (PT before my shoulder blew up, and a certain part of arms drill - Lepaskan Sepering is honestly quite nice, IMO, if done well and in synchronisation).

Thinking about NS reminded me of a poem I've read in the past by Robert Graves - it's called Two Fusiliers and was one of the exam poems in Sec 4. The poem extols the nature of friendship between two soldiers at the warfront, claiming that such friendships surpass marriage (if I recall correctly the poem mentioned there being "no need of pledge or oath / to bind our lovely friendship fast" or something like that). While it's not within my expectation to develop such a strong friendship as discussed in the poem, bearing in mind the frequent use of lyricism and stereotypes in poetry (I know I'm generalising here), as well as due to the lack of the stimuli for friendship under those circumstances (forced interdependence or death, for example), I guess one thing which I hopefully will develop from NS would be friendships. This woud apply both to those in my Section and Platoon (most obviously), as well as even my friends outside of NS, or those who haven't enlisted yet and are going in in February or April. I'll see how this goes...

Anyway, today during "Bible Study"/Cell (which, honestly, the way things are going seems more appropriate, as meetings often are just worship with maybe a short sharing, and then prayer, then fellowship) the 7 (later 6 and then 5) of us were praying about various issues both on a micro level as well as on a macro level. My mind was thinking, and noticing a pattern in the previous prayers that had been made, I decided to follow the pattern as it would give a good framework for me to sort out my fairly disorganised thoughts with regards to various issues. The structure was fairly simple and would be something I'd have planned out anyway - an introduction, followed by micro and then macro-level prayer issues, followed by a conclusion. However, the importance of the introduction did not really occur to me...

Until it was my turn. I don't know why but upon reflecting on various issues that we had talked and then prayed about, such as the Haiti quakes and the political turmoil faced in some parts of the world, a sense of thanks, or rather gratefulness welled up in me. Perhaps the mentality of "I'm glad I'm not in the other position" is not a good one to adopt, but interestingly in that moment it did not occur to me that that statement might've been an implication of my emotion. Instead, I really felt thankful for God's blessings in my life, many of which are things that I've taken for granted. In a way, my 3 weeks in BMT may have led up to this lesson as well - having assumed that I'd have a comfortable bed, good food and the like, being forced to use a simple (though more than adequate) bed, and eat acceptable (OK would really be the best word for me to describe it) food has made me appreciate the good versions of these comforts. Perhaps having these comforts temporarily taken away has made me more able to appreciate their presence.

In any case, I learnt a lesson today - not one in the IB sense, such as how to perform implicit differentiation, nor one of BMT, such as rifle handling and stripping, but instead a spiritual lesson. Perhaps lesson might not even be the best word for it - reminder would be more appropriate, actually, given that this "lesson" by right would have been something I've learnt long ago. Anyway I do hope that I will remember this, to be thankful for what I have been blessed with.

the needle and the club

2009-05-07T23:40:00.002+08:00

At times, including today, I do feel that my mind is like a quartz club, and I'd rather it be a feldspar sword or dagger.

clean hands and a pure heart

2009-05-04T22:49:00.002+08:00

We bow our hearts, we bend our knees -
O Spirit come make us humble.
We turn our eyes, from evil things -
O Lord we cast down our idols

So give us clean hands, give us pure hearts;
Let us not lift our souls to another.
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts;
Let us not lift our souls to another -

O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob -
O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob.

Give us clean hands; (O give us clean hands -)
Give us pure hearts; (Oh, and give us pure hearts -)
Give us clean hands; (Let us not lift our souls to another -)
O God, O God we cry out -

Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts;
Let us not lift our souls to another.
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts;
Let us not lift our souls, let us not lift our souls -

O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob -
O God let us be a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob.

---

This song hardly fails to remind me of something I consistently have to aim for, even though I know I will never fully succeed here on this earth; our hands are washed, but we dirty them again almost immediately. Other than the verse from which the key line of the lyrics are taken (Psalm 24:3-4), this also consistently reminds me about the passage on faith without works being dead (the second part of James 2).

I guess right now, though it seems a really superficial interpretation of the song and verses, clean hands and a pure heart are something I really need. The song ties in to a struggle that I find comes up very often in my life - namely, the problem of discipline, both in the professional area (i.e. work) and also elsewhere, in the form of my own spiritual walk, relationships with friends and family, even how I spend my time.

Time and time again, I do feel that God has touched my life with this song; He has reminded me of it many times, such as during the Primers' retreat last year (I think), many isolated incidents over the past 2 years or so, and actually quite recently, on the Sunday before the 3rd May (26 April I believe), when it came to mind while I was praying about my own issues with work and discipline. It's meant a lot to me, and consistenly serves to remind me to evaluate my own actions and responses to a situation to some extent after the situation has passed.

closing a door behind.

2009-04-18T18:50:00.002+08:00

Father Lord,

Even as our Primers term comes to a close,
We pray we will continue to grow deeper in love with You.
That Lord, we will continue to live for You and grow in You.
If it be Your will, Lord,
We pray that You will lead us to serve further, Lord;
Whether it be through BB, the church or elsewhere.

Lord, we just want to thank You
for giving us the opportunity to be in Primers, Lord.
We thank You for Your guidance these 6 years;
we thank You for how You have changed our lives through BB.
We just want to commit all these experiences,
and to commit all of us,
the 12th (I) Primers 2008-2009,
into Your hands, Lord.

In Jesus’ name we pray,
AMEN.

---

I guess, my last words (for now) to this Company and my fellow Primers. I'll still be around. Thanks for everything. Really.

Inertia and the Continuum of Sanity

2009-04-13T22:00:00.002+08:00

Right now, I don't have too many short-term projects but quite a bunch of long-term ones.

The notion of inertia makes me feel terrible and undisciplined. After finishing two medium-term projects (TOK presentation and ROD video), I just don't feel like I have the drive to delve into EE draft 3, World Lit draft 2 or TOK essay draft 4.

jk.

a broken comet

2009-04-08T17:09:00.002+08:00

i'm sorry i did that to you.

i figured out your possible reasoning, actually.
i didn't act on my reason about your reason.

and now -
i just hope i'm not becoming hypocritical -

jk.

Partial Sums

2009-04-07T23:01:00.003+08:00

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
James 1:2

The verse has meant a lot to me.

---

I have loads of backlog and the BB video is crawling by slowly
But I actually feel happy (:
I really wish to echo the thoughts of many in the video -
it's not awards and the like that count,
it's the friends, and God, that do.

jk.

Instrument

2009-03-29T01:14:00.005+08:00

Your Name

As morning dawns and evening fades
You inspire songs of praise
That rise from earth to touch Your heart -
And glorify Your name;

Your name, is a strong and mighty tower
Your name, is a shelter like no other
Your name, let the nations sing it louder
Cause nothing has the power to save, but Your name.

Jesus, in Your name we pray;
Come and fill our hearts today;
Lord, give us strength to live for You
And glorify Your name;

Your name, is a strong and mighty tower
Your name, is a shelter like no other
Your name, let the nations sing it louder
Cause nothing has the power to save, but Your name.

---

I originally thought I ended up there by chance, but my experiences at MCYC have shown me that sometimes it is in the things I least expect to have an impact on my life be meaningful. I initially came, somewhat unaware of what I was going to do, and somewhat in a pursuit of CAS and an NYAA Residential Project. However, now I do feel that the experiences of bonding, and getting to look at issues from varied perspectives have been beneficial, more so than a bunc hof CAS hours or the NYAA project. My overall experiences there far exceeded what I originally expected.

I'll miss many of them there. I looked at the Excel CAS attendance table spreadsheet, and... it just seems to have passed so fast.

I know I'll try my best to visit them at the end of the year.

---

I can't quite reason why I did that, but I can say I felt called to.

jk.

The Orb in the Night Sky Hiding the Princess

2009-03-26T22:52:00.002+08:00

Raw, heartful desires accumulate.
They remain locked behind this sphere.

"I want to stay this way.
Leave everything in the status quo."

Her last words, before disappearing for the night.
She had her tools beside her -
Five treasures beyond conception of the average human mind.
No one could stop her; but that wasn't the point...

For fighting would not do much, but break her mind.
She locked herself, locking her world from external influence.
Her counselors and advisors couldn't understand -
Why didn't she want to go back? Life there seemed so much better;
The work-days then lasted but three or four hours a day...
Back there, she was a Princess. Here, she seemed but a fugitive.

So, tonight; she heard of the group coming to take her back,
And she focused her mind, built her own cage -
The Orb in the night sky holding her, the princess.

adapted from the story of Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night
---

In other Touhou though non-random poetry news, I had a very weird MoF Extra run today. I reached Suwako 5/5 as per normal, but then died on super-easy cards: 2 bows 2 claps (a pure trick card - incredibly easy!) and long-arm and long-leg (another trick card!). I survived most of the rest of the way, dying once on Jade of the Horrid River (careless) and then near the end of Suwa War. So I faced Mishaguji with 0 lives, 5 power. I bombed once, and capped it. A rather bad run, though I think I did pretty well on Froggy Braves the Elements, with only one bomb on it. Only captured 2 cards I think - Kanako's second, and Frog Is Eaten By Snake due to Croak thingy. Normally, capturing 2 bows 2 claps 1 bow, Long-Arm and Long-Leg, and 7 Stones and 7 Trees (and possibly also Moreya's Iron Ring) could also be done... I wonder what I was thinking then.

jk.

fall through

2009-03-21T18:20:00.004+08:00

I thought things would have been fine after yesterday, but I guess not.

I've been sleeping at about 1-2 every night for the past few nights; and I guess it's because I've been doing work till then. I never expected it to reach the point it did yesterday though; I spent 2 hours in the morning writing the World Lit essay, worked on math port, and then a physics IA. I hadn't fully finished the physics IA (about 90% done), but I just crashed and fell asleep at about 2.30am, almost completely involuntarily. The lights were on, I hadn't brushed my teeth; et cetera. My mind just feels weird - "big, strange and foreign" to the rest of me.

---

No BS today. It was weird. I went to school at about 8.50 am and I saw only the year 5s in the Primers' Room. I was like - ok, let's call Luke, since he told me yesterday night it'd be at 9 am.

Call 1 - Luke - No response.

I thought, hm, who else might be aware that there might be BS/might not be BS? Well originally when finding a day to go out Russell suggested Saturday after BS, before remembering he had something on then; hence he must have expected there to be BS, so...

Call 2 - Russell - Says Jayne said no BS

To find a 3rd opinion...

Call 3 - Shaun Ong - Not sure, suggests I call Mr Lee

I was going to anyways, but since Russell suggested check with Jayne,

Call 4 - Jayne - No response.

One last time just to check:

Call 5 - Luke - No response.

So.

Call 6 - Mr Lee - No BS today... originally supposed to have, but feeling unwell...

I planned to do some English in school but decided against it (too sian) and just went home to emo and do Econs IA5.

At least term 1 seems to be the toughest term of the bunch...
jk.

Pendulous

2009-03-19T00:51:00.004+08:00

junyi: although 6 days isnt much better than 4 days
jk: well at least its quite reasonable
junyi: u get sick, 1 day later u feel ill, u decide hey lets just go for sch i should be ok
junyi: saturday you drop dead
junyi: therefore lesson learnt from math port, if u feel sick pon sch and see doctor b4 u die
jk: haha win XD
(oh, and get treatment by the next day! or else.)

It's these little moments of humor that can really serve to brighten up an otherwise dreary and boring day at times. Thanks! =)

---

It's been one of the tougher holidays for me - working up to 2 AM for a few nights and from 6 to 13 hours a day has really had a draining effect on me. I guess I've still been making time for my friends, been catching up with them over the phone and all, but I can say that I haven't really had a chance to just rest completely.

At least my outlook on things has changed since Friday night. It's really something I'm thankful for.

jk.

Trust and Obey

2009-03-14T20:50:00.007+08:00

When we walk with the Lord, in the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way;
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

But we never can prove, the delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor He shows,
For the joy He bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

Then in fellowship sweet
We will sit at His feet,
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do, where He sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.

---
Why doesn't anyone know "You Are"? =(

I thought it would be fine, since on Thursday in pt 16 during the first practice
Jeremy: "This song is really nice, it's meant a lot to me."
Luke: "God has used this song to speak to me before..."
Russell: "The third song is...?"
(Luke sings the first line - "You are Glory, You are faithful")
Russell: "Oh, I like this song."

---
Thanks to JX and Shaunlee for organising a camp where you had to "be serious and yet have it a fun camp". Having that kind of balance isn't easy.

Thanks to HJ and XM for talking to me a bit after worship; I was quite drained. Thanks.

Thanks to Luke for having confidence in me and playing the guitar for worship today, as well as for discussing with me several pertinent points with reference to faith and worship. Really. It's a lot... thanks! :)

Finally, thanks to God for guiding me through worship, the POP camp as well as the NOI, and for just speaking to me quite a bit for the past 2 days. I know I need to re-gain the discipline I once had with reference to spiritual matters and at least now I can visualise myself successfully doing so, which is a key step on the way to real successes. Also, the choice of this song. I originally wanted to sing Tim Hughes' "Living for Your Glory", but I somehow heard a calling, "Do "Trust and Obey" here instead." I played it down as a random thought of an overactive mind, but then when Luke also said the song's more suited for a solo performance and the chords were too hard, I went home and prayed over it, and the song "Trust and Obey" re-surfaced again; hence, I chose it.

jk.

Q&A in a blue ocean

2009-03-12T21:14:00.006+08:00

what i might have said, if i was on the stage
---
"what are the 7 things in SQA?"
(honestly i wouldn't try answering this one)
"1. leadership 2. customers 3. processes 4. results 5. information 6. people 7. management?"
(aside: that was typed without referencing, and isn't quite right. PLANNING not MANAGEMENT.)
---
"are you wearing school socks?"
"hmm yes." *pulls up pant leg to reveal school socks*
---
"can you sing the school anthem without mistakes?"
"in days of yore, from western shores
Oldham dauntless hero came
and planted a beacon of truth and light
in this island of the main
here may it stand, from year to year
emblem of grand endeavour
the regions round echo the sound of ACS forever

sing ACS forever more, our ACS forever
God save our land and Heaven bless our ACS forever

our students hail from China's plains
and the land of rising sun
we have many sons from India's strand and the islands of the main
our hearts our hopes, our aims are one
no discord e'er will sever,
we'll stand together for the cause of ACS forever

(repeat chorus)"
(side note: yeah i typed that without referencing, from memory)
---
"what colour do you bleed?"
"red. red is a colour associated with passion; furthermore by saying red I am showing you that I will do my best in being a truthful and direct councillor. I know of the possible metaphorical underpinnings behind the question, but in a situation like this why not just go straight to the point?"
---
"how far is initiative a part of responsibility?"
"okay. to answer this i'll first establish the parameters for initiative and responsibility - responsibility as what is expected of you, both in a mechanical sense as well as in the social-societal sense, and then initiative is what you choose to do out of your own intention, typically above and beyond what is established for you as responsibility.

so i'd say no; while it's true that we should go out of our way to help others, beyond our responsibility (IE initiative), we should only do so as far as is reasonably comfortable for us since we can say that that would violate responsibility to ourselves. the idea of expecting initiative, presenting it as a responsibility, is dangerous."
---
"it has been said that leadership is lonely, so what'll you do to maintain connected with others?" (not too sure how close this question was to the actual one)
"having some personal experiences in this area, i will apply my best efforts in maintaining open communication lines and allowing for participation of the student body in decisions, using the frameworks of forums and referendums(i'm not sure if this is the right plural form). generally for more minor decisions referendums may be acceptable but for major decisions forums are better recommended since they allow an expression of consensus rather than plurality. i know it's tough but i'll do my best."
---
"what is one practical initiative you can do right now to change the school for the better?"
"implementation of better assembly discipline control, for the y5s and 6s. eg by stationing more people there and asking the CTs/PCTs to be more vigilant?"
---
"i see that few of you have got many acad awards or are renowned sportsmen, so what makes you think you are worthy to run for council?"
"despite having received quite a few acad awards, i'd like to say that i don't think these should be prerequisites for running for council. i mean, while it is true that asking those with academic awards and/or renowned sportsmen could possibly have some kind of correlation with responsibility, intelligence and other positive traits that might be expected of a councillor, i think that the most important trait a councillor should have might not correlate so well with these two. personally i feel councillors require a heart of service for the school; i see this as to some extent different from acad award recipients / sportsmen in the sense that the latter seem to gain glory that's largely personal, while it's true that councillors get a nice CV, the tasks seem to be of a very different nature. so it's really not about winning loads of acad awards or being a renowned sportsman, but more about showing that you care and really have a heart for the school."
---

As a side note, I've been talking about it for a few days now, but "You Are" is awesome. I first heard it during Mr Kan's worship during a Chapel sometime last year; I found it a rather interesting song, with descriptions reflecting different facets of God. I didn't remember it much later until Shaun Lee gave me the Faith CD for my birthday, which had Mark Roach's version of it (presumably the original; at least, he composed it as well). I started listening to it more since I'll be singing it for worship on Saturday and... yeah. It's a really beautiful song.

Also: Physics Test, survived with 24. In my class I think that in addition to that only Clarissa and Nick Lim passed. Math Test: Wow I never realized my math class was so pro at math, with plenty of scores on the high end of the 40s! Oh, and my results are =D

jk.

Headphones

2009-03-12T00:29:00.002+08:00

I'll be leading worship on Saturday for the POP camp. It'll be a simple affair, with just me and one guitarist (Luke). I figured out the songs about 2 days ago or so actually, but I felt this was worth a mention cause one of the songs I picked, "You Are"... I really feel somewhat even... called to sing it. I'm listening to it now actually, preparing for practice tomorrow so yeah.

---

discipline.

what happened to it?

oh noes
jk.

C.LAZY_CAT

2009-03-09T23:39:00.005+08:00

I guess I'll be writing a series of computer science-related posts as and when I have the time; it's a good way to blow off some steam after a high-adrenalin academic activity.

Today I will be discussing problem C from the National Olympiad for Informatics 2009, Singapore. This problem, known as LAZY_CAT, is quite significantly harder than most of the previous NOI questions that I've seen (for example, 1999 has only three problems and they are all much easier). It's roughly about a problem 5 or 6 standard on the previous local NOIs. That said, it was one of the two problems that I could devise a proper algorithm to solve.

In general, the NOI was a great experience; the challenge of quickly absorbing and then applying a new programming language of C++ was definitely very interesting. That said, I'm lucky the competition focuses strongly on algorithms and not on skilled manipulation of the language.

LAZY_CAT essentially involves a cat starting at a position "S" that moves around a square grid with maximum dimensions of 10 times 10. The cat moves only orthogonally (i.e. up, down, left, right.) one step at a time around the grid, and must remain within the grid at all times. The grid itself contains four main types of squares: "0" meaning a blank square, "F" meaning a square that contains Food or Fish (not too sure which one), "B" is the cat's Bed, and "X" is a wall that the cat cannot step on. The aim is to get the cat to eat all the Food/Fish and then get to the Bed to sleep in as few moves as possible - or rather, on the programmer's part, to design an algorithm that returns the minimum number of moves required to get the cat, from start S to eat all Food and then go to Bed.

The parameters of the question setting are as follows - the memory cap is so large that it might be ignored (it is on the order of magnitude of one gigabyte). The cap on computational time is 10 seconds. Also, the grid is between 3 by 3 and 30 by 30, and there is a maximum of 10 pieces of Food/Fish on the grid.

For example, a sample grid might be as follows.

X0X
0FB
SFX

In this case, the minimum number of moves for the cat to eat all Food/Fish and then go to Bed is 3. The cat moves right to eat one piece of food, moves up to eat a second piece of food, and then goes directly on to the Bed. No better solutions are possible; hence the program written given this input should return 3.

Sometimes, however, the cat just can't do anything. For a simple example,

FFF
XX0
SXB

Obviously the cat has no legal moves and hence can't do anything! In this situation the program should return -1, for an input with no solutions.

I spoke to Hui Jun about this question, and he suggested a brute force method, much like, according to him, what chess programs often do (play a move, see the consequences, and do this for all possible moves and submoves). Of course, this is an inefficient approach and is furthermore made unacceptable by the strict limit on computational time. The solution I have implemented does involve some optimization, but is consistently able to give a correct answer within the prescribed time limit. In a way, it works somewhat similar to how some chess programs execute pruning methods, such as alpha-beta pruning to optimize their efficiency.

The algorithm I have designed involves a recursive call to a function I have defined as test. The function's method signature may be seen below:

test(int x, int y, int Foods, int Moves, char[] modGrid)

x and y refer to the current position of the cat, Foods refers to the number of foods the cat has eaten, Moves refer to the number of moves the cat has made up to this point, and modGrid refers to the present state of the array. This is important, because squares which had food will no longer be considered to have food - in other words, they will have changed from 'F' to '0'. Of course, we cannot just use a global variable for this since in some of our candidate solutions, some foods will have been eaten, but not in others.

The function stores the values of the first four variables into a system of four parallel arrays that will be discussed later; it then recursively calls test to create four new solutions for evaluation that represent motion in the four directions. If the square being hit is an 'F', Foods and Moves will be incremented, the modGrid will be changed along with the relevant changes in x or y, and the function will be called with these different values; if an 'X', the solution will be rejected and the function will not be called to generate a new solution. In this way, solutions that go nowhere will die out. If an 'O', or 'S', it'll just be passed on with the new x and y, and the modified value of Moves.

You might be asking: what's to stop the cat from travelling infinitely between two '0' squares? Well, (fortunately) I thought of this problem as well, and wrote an if-else conditional statement to block solutions exhibiting the following properties:

(x,y) match an (x,y) in the array of all solutions
Foods is less than or equal to another solution
Moves is equal to or more than another solution
(block equal moves only if food is less)

This will eliminate inefficient solutions and get rid of such problems - once a solution travels from say O left to O right, it will reject immediately travelling backwards to O left, since the pairs of (x,y) will match, Foods will be equal to the previous solution but Moves will be 2 more than the previous solution.

Also, in the event that 'S' is reached with all Foods found, there is not much point in continuing to roam around - the cat should just go sleep, being lazy after all. Hence once we have a full solution, with coordinates matching that of S, with all foods collected, we immediately eliminate all of the other solutions since they cannot be more efficient than the solution already found.

It might seem like a very computationally intensive approach; I don't doubt it is. I guess that's why the board was limited to 10 by 10. It doesn't seem to take that long to traverse the long stacks of recursion this program creates - the algorithms to "weed" out bad or inefficient solutions do their job quickly.

Because I have to parse the entire array of possible solutions each time a new solution is generated, this requires cubic time relative to the total number of solutions M (quadratic each time, multiplied by the number of times it must be done, which is once per solution). Recursion, which determines the total number of solutions, can be said to be proportional to 4^N where N is the grid size.

Hence M = 4^N and T = kM^3
T = k * (4^N)^3

So... the algorithm seems to run in cubic exponential time. I hope I'll be able to find a better solution, this works but looks terrible! The problem definition allows for such algorithms, but I do hope there is a better way of doing this...

Role Reversal

2009-03-04T20:05:00.004+08:00

Something's wrong with my subjects this term, I think.

HL1: Maths
I had a test today. A rather okay paper for me, though quite firmly on the hard side relative to most IB HL Math papers that I've seen. I lost about 5 marks I think because my Volume of Revolution answer (the very last question) was terribly complicated (so probably wrong). Well, I just hope I can still pull out a rough 7... I'm assuming that's about 83, so 50/60. I hope I didn't lose 5 more marks, yet I'm quite sure I did. Somewhere or another.
Self-Predicted Grade: 6

HL2: Computer Science
About 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 marks gone out of 60; I had no idea how to create a virtual non-dedicated device (5 marks), ran out of time for the binary tree deletion algorithm (did most parts, except the i have 2 children deletion, so can probably get about 4 of 7) as well as didn't have time to answer a question on serial vs parallel connection in networking (2 marks). Well, I'm very sure I didn't perfect-run the rest of the paper, so...
Self-Predicted Grade: 6

HL3: Physics
Whee! Let's just fail.

Seriously, it was hard but probably not as hard as many people made it up to be. I screwed up countlessly; I misread a number from the GDC (10 power 7 and 10 power 8), and because of that lost about 7 marks I think. B fields question and circular motion, I ran out of time. So...
Self-Predicted Grade: 4

SL1: English A1
Ispahan Carpet was awesome. I was hoping for a little bit of marks on the high side to scratch the surface of a 7, but I guess not this time.
Self-Predicted Grade: 6 (7 is being too optimistic)
Actual Grade: 6

SL3: Economics
I saw the test paper and was quite relieved, though I felt a bit cheap choosing question 1 to dodge the new topic of Unemployment. They should just have set 2 questions, 1 on unemployment and 1 on inflation to stop people from doing this kind of stuff. Oh well, not difficult at all.
Self-Predicted Grade: 7
Actual Grade: 7

Wow. Unlike last year, where my HLs dominated my SLs (7 7 7 - 5 7 6), this term looks like an almost complete role reversal (6 6 4 - 6 [7] 7)!

---

On another note, I created a very nasty mathematical problem based on what I learnt from Econs as well as Math...

Suppose you have two economies A and B producing two goods, X and Y. Partial units of goods are considered lost and the resources wasted. The PPC for economy A is modelled by 8x^2 + y^2 = 100 000 000 and the PPC for economy B is modelled by x^2 + 2y^2 = 51 840 000.

Consumers of the goods value them at the following rates:
the nth unit of good X produced has a utility 4/(3n),
the nth unit of good Y produced has a utility 3/(4n).

Find the maximum possible total utility achievable between the two groups of people supported by the two economies, assuming that free trade, with zero tariffs and zero transport cost, is allowed to take place between the two countries.

For a bonus challenge, be like Keynes and do this without drawing the graphs. Seriously, modelling impressive equations without drawing the graphs is awesome.

jk.

You Are

2009-02-18T21:56:00.003+08:00

You Are // Mark Roach

You are holy, You are faithful,
You are Saviour, You are friend,
You are all I'll ever need, Lord you are -
You are every question's answer,
You are every reason why,
You are moving, You are still, Lord you are -

You are the Lord on high,
And You are the way, the truth, the life
You are the Word made flesh,
You are the bright morning star, Lord you are -

You are Glory, Hallelujah -
You are hope of peace on earth
You are Alpha and Omega... You are -
You are comfort, You are refuge
You are love personified,
You are kindness and compassion... Lord You are -

You are my God and my King
You are the words that I sing
You are the reason I make this offering -

---

Beautiful song. I like the chord progressions and all, but the words do serve as a good reminder of what and who God is, or at least to some extent, should be to us. Not too sure how this came to mind, but I felt I should post about it. I particularly like the bridge (rendered here as the last 3 lines), both musically as well as lyrically.

jk.

crossing over

2009-02-11T22:58:00.002+08:00

There's someone out there who's just crossed some form of a boundary of his life. Upon reading this, I think he'll know that I'm referring to him; some of those closer to me would probably know as well.

Thanks for being a friend, especially through the tough times. I know I haven't been the best friend that I could have been... thanks for just looking out for me, even though there are times where I'm quite sure I don't really "deserve" it. (:

jk.

Riverside View

2009-02-09T21:55:00.005+08:00

There've been a few occasions where I sat with a friend, and we just sat back and talked while a buzz of events ran around or by us. I had this unusual feeling thrice in the recent time period; twice in the SAC, sitting and just talking about a variety of issues and watching everything else around rush by in a busy, blurred semi-montage of images. The other time was slightly further back and slightly hazier in my memory; I remeber sitting on a bench by the Astro-turf, watching the school's cricket team practicing or something, and just talking about some variety of issues, as mentioned earlier.

Even before I studied Siddhartha and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for English A1, the concept of rivers has somewhat intrigued me. Thinking back to Secondary 4 Geog, linear population distribution patterns typically occur along roads or rivers, because these provide a means of communication. While it is true that travel along roads may be more expedient in that travelling along rivers often requires the construction of structures that can float; and for that matter water resistance often exceeds friction (this is dependent on surface areas, actually), rivers have their own practical applications as a source of (hopefully clean) water, as a supply of various recreational activities (kayaking anyone? or fishing or swimming, and stuff); they also make the environment nice to look at (as long as it's not too muddy, at least from my point of view). Rivers can also be used as a supply of hydro-electric power, which is nice as it's clean, little CO2 is produced, and renewable.

I remember hearing Diverse System's remix of Riverside View from Phantasmagoria of Flower View. It's essentially an acoustic guitar rendition; indeed, as I would agree with someone's comment on the song, "I can imagine sitting by the river and watching the boats go by."

When I went to New Zealand in Sec 2 (I think?), a particularly memorable experience at some point in the holiday was simply sitting by a river; it was somewhere in its middle or lower course in that the flow velocity was high and there weren't really big foamy splashes that would be more characteristic of the upper-course; for that matter if I remember my Geog correctly a river in its upper course typically is loaded with stones and the like; but that river had hardly any debris of a significant size. This probably means that much of the sediment had been worn down through hydraulic action and other erosionary processes into small particles, possibly some in solution with others in suspension and/or undergone deposition.

For me at least, rivers seem to symbolise some degree of fluidity and adaptability; they can erode through the path of least resistance in a floodplain (if i recall correctly! not sure), they can help farmers out by depositing fertile silt in floodplains. More relevant, rivers in areas where I usually view them (i.e. middle or lower course) typically flow quite fast. This high flow rate inevitably makes me think of the word "flux"; sitting by the river is relatively static, and for myself can be taken to be symbolic of watching by as changes go on; not to be completely outmoded by them, but more to be aware of them and to gain a broader perspective on what's been going on. This includes reflection as well; watching the things which you dropped when moving through the river flow away from your sight into obscurity; not just mourning their loss, though that's one thing you can do, but more looking back, and possibly figuring out how to avoid losing more items as you keep going after taking the break of watching the river.

Resolvable

2009-02-06T21:29:00.003+08:00

There are two major conflicts that seem to underscore most of the difficulties I personally find myself to be experiencing - namely, the conflict between positivity and negativity, and the conflict between productive relaxation and indolent slacking. Whether a duality exists between the two or not is another issue; but as far as my experiences go, it seems both dualities exist, and they are also pragmatic to the discussion of said experiences (pragmatist theory of truth).

The things I write can be pretty unusual when my mind's out of place, like now.

Huck the duck and Finn the fish was an awesome video for Econs... Guess my own ordering of videos was pretty close to that of the judges.

---

A few days ago, I thought of some kind of a list - "People whom I really need to talk to more". I wonder what criteria I might have subconsciously used at that time; looking at it now, the list is rather short (less than 10). I wonder what makes me think I really need to talk to a person more, though. I can say that in at least two of the cases, it's a matter of having some kind of special respect for the person; in one or two others, it's because I used to talk to them more a while ago but now am drifting quite a bit from them, and in some others, it's because I guess I just want to get to know them better? ...

---

I'm getting back academic feedback, and hopefully things will stay this way - I'm very relieved my English written commentary turned an 18; I was concerned that after not writing commentaries for several months my standards would drop, especially after much negative feedback about World Lit (which is right now hopefully resolving itself). I felt awkward when writing the actual commentary itself, unsure about how to balance general ideas I saw with precise, close reading. Econs essay hit a 9, very good; apparently I lost the 1 point for real-world examples. I haven't got anything back for math; the one comp science worksheet got a rather mechanical 20, and the physics IAs have been rather shaky since Simple Pendulum came back. I messed up electrostatic attraction due to bad choice of distances. I think Party Balloon's okay; Muffin Cup, on the other hand, seems really tough. TOK and EE feedback has been generally positive so I guess that's a good thing.

---

jk.

Domino Effect

2009-02-05T20:02:00.003+08:00

Multiply by several tables, (most of them had more interesting or complex designs, I think).

Most enjoyable prac I've had so far, I'd think. Probably, the IA was thrown into a far corner of our minds as we built the domino structures and destroyed them too.

jk.

On Intuition and Mathematics

2009-02-03T22:19:00.005+08:00

beta. alpha. gamma... dream.
run. away, against the wind.
and sigma f(core) = 0.

i think of drifting ships, in -
john clare's "sea of waking dreams".
waves, amplitudes, frequencies.
three dimensional topographical space.
sine. cosine. varying amplitude.
a cos (bx + c), da/dx negative.
it's much easier to think of it as ripples.
perhaps.

i stare at the tangents among the ships;
in visible yet illusory figures they form.
rorschach in danmaku? or in invisible lines.
yet starkness of straight tangents fades into obscurity.
those four over there -
they don't form a parallelogram. the coords looked off.
coordinate geometry shows me so; off by 0.2%
maybe.

but still my eyes, my nerves;
they keep firing the parallelogram image.
in the world i see a mess of angles, of vectors -
in badminton, a masterful mesh of action and reaction.
in ddr, a firing of synapses and impulses all over.
somehow when i play, i don't see it. no rt 2, no pythagoras.
i'm probably bad cause i can't see the math.
possibly.

it was a while ago, i remember -
describing this unique game of logic as "Renyi's Obsession".
this queer yet beautiful synthesis of intuition, reason, emotion, language.
but is that all? must it stop at a game?
if it did, it'd be sad; the subject would be closed. a closed function. bare.
something tells me it's not though, it can be applied.
logic. rational proof? necessary all the time?
perhaps not. just flow -

beta. alpha. gamma... theta.
no longer struggling; flowing in motion.
but sigma f(core) = 0.

background

2009-01-30T22:18:00.003+08:00

I'm not one who likes big groups, I must say. In fact, most of the time I prefer to be working alone, or in groups of 2 or 3. The same applies even to conversations and parties - in pretty much all cases where I have two friends A and B, I'd rather spend 30 minutes talking to A in a one-on-one setting and then 30 minutes talking to B in a one-on-one setting, rather than 60 minutes talking to A and B together.

I guess the nature of the conversation shifts as groups seem to become smaller. I wouldn't talk much about my personal life in a big group; even in a smaller group, with say 4 people, if I don't know even one of them very well I'd be unlikely to bring it up, I'd say. Hence, I think it isn't unreasonable to establish that conversation shifts towards a less personal, less "serious" tone as group sizes increase. It's quite rare, though not non-existent, that I find myself in groups of 4 or even 3 talking about real, significant problems (of an emotional/spiritual sense, not in the logical/academic sense).

Very often, when in a big group, I've noticed I have a tendency to pick out one person or a small group of people, and talk to them specifically. This happened quite interestingly on several occasions - during the Primer's Parade held before the CNY break, a random bus ride home earlier that week, even the Primer's Challenge last year. This is somewhat linked to the idea that I'm an introverted person, though not without my needs for social interaction; a group of 7 is by my standards large already. Sometimes even six or five fall under this "categorisation" if I feel it fits there, or I'm in a more solitary/emo mood. That said, most of the time I'm quite open to groups of two (ie one-on-one) or three...

---

Missed the bus today. Not just any ordinary bus. 6.14 people would know what I mean. =(

jk.

examples and samples

2009-01-19T18:21:00.003+08:00

"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in life, in love, in faith and in purity."
-- 1st Timothy 4:12

---

One thing I've been doing for the past few days, or actually for quite a while already, I would think, would be to aim to set an example for others, whether this be in schoolwork or wherever else. This is probably not a product of knowing of the existence of this verse; it's just that this verse came to mind quite strongly today.

I would be inclined to say that to some extent there are areas where I've been trying hard, and if the impressions I've received from Mr Dumortier and Mr Eric Wee are being interpreted correctly, to some extent I might be partially succeeding. Still something just feels rather exasperating about all of this business... What I mean by exasperating is that the reactions I get seem to evoke some degree of queer estrangement. I guess this is to some extent natural yet estrangement distances myself from what should be my purposes in aiming to set an example.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps I'm just going about it for the wrong reasons (personal glory, pride, who knows) rather than because I really want to possibly exhibit some form of a positive influence on the lives of others, or because I want to truly glorify God. I'm not one to be inclined to believe that it is completely wrong to try and influence others... However doing so for the wrong reasons certainly isn't a good thing. So maybe it might be right that I'm getting the non-reactions I'm getting.

There was a day, a few weeks ago, where I stayed behind after school to talk to a close friend. It might seem a bit unusual, but I asked him what about me striked him the most, as a person in general. He said that I have the ability to focus when I want to... Seems somewhat true, thinking about it, yet there are times when I think this focus can be misguiding me, like what is going on presently.

Life, love, faith and purity. In my case, I guess that translates to general conduct, relationships and spiritual conduct as well (for the last two). I figure that as much as I think that I can do a reasonable job in some of these areas, I also need to realise that I still have a lot to learn. I should still be doing my best in these areas, and consequently hopefully in some way setting an example for others...

---

jk.

white noise, black noise

2009-01-17T20:15:00.005+08:00

serious discussion, walk away, walk back -
integrate sin four x dx, bio IA, physics IA.
2 by 2s, 3 by 2s, 36 seconds -

appearances and reality.
2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, confirmation bias. recognised.
unwritten laughs, 10 beats 9, queen beats jack...

regimentation/respect of communication -
allegiance, labelling, intelligence...?
wrong point, try another checkpoint. unreverse psychology, even degrees -

temptation, greed, gluttony, two chocolates -
guitarist, silent melody of refreshment.
philosophy, pessimism, perfectionism -

dissolution to recreation, find d crotchet d x.
sitting on rocks, more anecdotes of life -
group shot, back row, concealment, fade.

regrouping, silence, dissonance -
warmness, coldness, analogy.
punishment of the serious and the focused -

I realised an emotion that bears yields a deep sense of happiness is one of connection.

---

jk.

Integration by Substitution

2009-01-13T23:35:00.001+08:00

I've been feeling very tired these days. I guess I've been drifting around somewhat as far as spiritual issues are concerned too. Not good.

I did loads of Integration by Substitution today. Worksheet 3 is loaded with hard problems; I cleared all but the final one of 5 and another random one in question 5 today.

I just feel some degree of uncertainty... I don't know why. I may be applying myself too hard in the wrong direction.

jk.

under influences

2009-01-10T17:34:00.002+08:00

I think work has influenced me.

SHAUNLEE: Hey are you going with the rest of them to watch Ponyo?
JK: Huh? What's Ponyo?
SHAUNLEE: Some fish movie...
JK: Well I haven't really been keeping up with the movies.
SHAUNLEE: About half the GEPs are going down.
JK: When's it?
SHAUNLEE: Today. Some of them are going, we can join them after Primers' Council.
JK: Nah, I've got World Lit to work on.
SHAUNLEE: Me too, I have work to do.
JK: However, if it was La Casa de Bernarda Alba, I'd go.
JK: That's one of the plays which I wouldn't mind sitting down and watching, even if it was movie form.

---

Primers' Council was rather... weird. I was a bit surprised by the way the promotions were issued, and I wasn't the only one. I was going to query the validity of the attendance statistics; yet, I knew that there was a possibility that I would be excluded since I did not attend LDC, and Shaun Lee and Tim Liang who were with me in Korea (Scholars' Cup) also did not. But Shaun Ong who also went received a promotion; I was somewhat suspicious. At least I checked and cleared up some of it...

Speech for logistics comm went well; I was really concerned as to whether my speech would pass, but I guess it did. I felt rather uneasy though, cause I'm quite used to a rather formal style that stood out; this was exacerbated due to juxtaposition with the other speeches.

---

jk.

a step on the way

2009-01-06T15:57:00.002+08:00

i guess i'm safe...

thanks to ms lim chiou yann, mdm loo shek kien and mdm chen li, and of course my chinese tutor mr siaw who have helped me along the way, in a direct way.

and also those in a more indirect way. thanks for all the people that asked me whether i did okay or not - i can remember isaac, russell, henry, levin, jonny, junyi, junming, sharry, among others. i know it may seem pretty obvious that i'd get a 7 sometimes, but still i was pretty nervous because the consequences of hitting a 6 are pretty heavy, as small as the chance might have been.

on a random note this brought back memories of something a few years back - the release of the gce o level chinese results in yr 4. thanks to henry and louis for helping me along back then.

jk.

as bread that is broken

2009-01-03T21:41:00.002+08:00

As bread that is broken, use our lives
As wine that is poured out, a willing sacrifice;
Empower us Father, to share the love of Christ
As bread that is broken, Lord, use our lives.

---

The parade today had a special occasion attached to it, one might say; it was a handing-over of captaincy parade; given that Mr Jonathan Ng has been there for 12 years, it's the first one for many of us...

In many ways, Mr Ng was a person whom I've developed some sort of respect for; a major contributing factor to this was, as many people mentioned in the tribute video for him, passion for BB.

I did Programmes for LDC 2 this year, and the rule that I was informed about - "no 'formal' items later than 2230 (or was it 2330? not sure)", while causing me to cramp programmes somewhat and even to bump the reveille time from 0630 to 0530 to compensate accordingly, it does reflect the extent to which he cares about the welfare of the Boys... Thinking a bit about it, I realised that it wasn't right to bump the time; playing the system in this way would mean losing out on the greater aim that Sir had with regards to this.

As another point, Sir mentioned during his closing address that one of his strengths was leading Bible Study; he considered himself "an unlikely Captain" due to, as he claimed, his lacking of some of the traits stereotypical or traditional Captains might exhibit. I would be inclined to agree quite strongly as far as Bible Study is concerned... The sessions that I do remember were meaningful.

To end, I will quote something Sir said; it's something I really agree with.

Each generation must find Christ for themselves.

jk.

missing power

2009-01-02T19:01:00.006+08:00

apparently i won the comp science academic award. wasn't expecting anything anyways. unfortunately couldn't compete with shaunlee, but i guess i was somewhat slacking off last year anyways -.-

i've always wondered if to some extent i'm a bit "different" from a lot of people. a while back, i watched a bunch of youtube videos on the game persona 3, and the "date sequences" with this character called elizabeth are something i can identify with to a small extent. of course, the imaginary character is far dramatised beyond myself; yet, there are also times where i do feel to some extent out of place.

i was doing a bit of studying on paddyclarke this afternoon, and while i guess it is true that i do not remember very much about my childhood prior to the point where i turned about 15-16 or so, quite a number of the experiences depicted by the narrator leave me in a sense of awkwardness and even distancing; i guess the studying is what made me think about this.

---

the beginning of a new year (well, somewhat late typing this, but...). i remember discussing with a friend a few days ago about what had changed from yr 4 to yr 5, in a somewhat reflective way. now, looking forward, i can't foresee that many changes from yr 5 to yr 6, except hopefully i'll be able to return to my more hardworking yr 4 days, where studying for 2-3 hours straight after coming home from school, even if this is at like 5 to 6 pm, is not a problem. study habits and personalities are probably going to change somewhat for me...

another lesser change would be the loss of direct usage of a bridge between the two blocks; that said, i only need to cross to 6.8; the rest of my classes are on the pt 14 side of the block.

hls and econs better get 7; english 6 is tolerable but a 7 would be greatly desired as well. for some reason the econs 7 seems to keep eluding me, whether due to generally falling short of it (mid years) or a colossal mistake in one section of the paper (end years). hl 7s are pretty secure; english is problematic cause its way too inconsistent. honestly my average commentary is a 6. but i really want to get a 7... which happens rarely, once in a while.

---

a random quote from class this morning.
"in this world, there are 3 kinds of genius.
the one who is very very smart, like jarrel seah,
the one who is very very hardworking, like shaun lee
and the one who is somewhat of both, like *points at me*"
- jonny

i feel good to be the 3rd type. cause i wont feel guilty for not working yet i wont deal too much with the sickening pressure of working too much! haha =) but better not be complacent either............

ive sort of felt this way quite a bit especially last year.

---

on a side note,

argh. too much touhou. seriously... laugh at the bombs used 46, but a 1cc is still a 1cc. i think i finished 0/x where x is like 2 or so. so yeah... done using SakuyaA.

jk

a little something

2008-12-30T16:21:00.005+08:00

I was pretty surprised that I could clear this (Subterranean Animism Normal 1CC). I guess after a morning of revising Hedda Gabler a few Touhou runs would be fine, and... the run went pretty well. The late-stages were bad, but most of the stuff prior to it was good.

Stage 1 and 2 were pretty much perfect runs; stage 3 went quite well, think I capped everything except 怪力乱神. Stage 4 was tricky; I believe I died to the midboss pattern as well as to Boundary of Wave and Particle. Capped Flying Insect's Nest, which is pretty much the only of the second half cards that I have a shot at. Stage 5 was tough as always; especially Orin; I think I only captured one card - "Thousand Needle Mountain" or something like that. Stage 6... well... I think (hopefully intelligent) use of bombs and lives got me through it. Interestingly, for me actually I think the most capturable of the final boss patterns is actually the last one - the death on that was completely careless. Finished with 1 life in stock and 2.xx power, I think.

Interestingly this is the first time I've played SA in a while. Then again, doing Hard runs of Imperishable Night as well as Extra runs of my own scripted TNN Touhou seem to have improved my dodging skill.

jk.

wisps of air

2008-12-29T22:57:00.002+08:00

The holidays are coming to a close, and I guess I've finished my TOK and EE first drafts, which is fine. I'm still rather pissed with myself at being unable to accomplish reading more of next year's texts (namely, Paddy Clarke and Miss Julie... which is actually this year's but I haven't read it!) and also develop some other skills and interests, like playing the piano or the guitar (yes, I do both, though I personally am rather inept at either of them).

My SAT scores have returned; they're decent-good, not particularly great yet not worth complaining too much about either. Daniel Yee outscored me (by 20; not much to say), and I think Hui Jun did (7xx for all 3 categories implies a range of 2100 to 2370; given that Mathematics is likely on the high end, Reading as well, we're looking at maybe a high 22xx?).

I've been going out a bit more the past few days, since I finished off my TOK essay; first with Russell and then with Shaun, Shaun and Hui Jun. It's been a good way to release some stress, though in notably different ways...

Apparently Jayne might be switching out of my class next year. As far as this is concerned, I guess I can say that I'm rather fortunate to be in pt 14; I wouldn't swap it for any of the other classes given the option. True, it might seem that many of my closer friends are in actuality from the other classes (13/15/16?); yet, pt 14 seems to be a nice environment. I guess not sharing classes with friends can be a good thing in a different way as well...

For the duration of this Christmas season, I've tried to avoid using the greeting "Merry Christmas"; and as far as I'm concerned my avoidance seems to have been fairly successful. For some reason, the word "Merry" seems to bear a negative connotation from my perspective; it seems to lack an element of reflection or sobriety that appears appropriate for the birthday of Jesus Christ. True, joy should quite definitely be a part in celebrating such an occasion; yet, senseless joy at the abandon of sobriety appears questionable.

jk.

a night of fellowship.

2008-12-13T18:38:00.002+08:00

Thanks, guys. Thanks for all the memories, and for just being really good friends. =)

Hearts on Fire

2008-12-03T23:54:00.003+08:00

The MCYC Camp was one of the most eventful camps I can say I've been to. It was only 3 days 2 nights, but I think it was enough.

---

Day 1

I honestly didn't expect the camp to go too well (expecting substantial misdemeanor and the like), and the first day was pretty... rough, I would say.

I lost my temper somewhat during Night Games. I was honestly pretty sick of some of the campers disrupting the smooth running of the games, by screwing around during the preparation time. While I don't think it would be too unreasonable to be irritated, I overreacted somewhat. When one of the campers tried to splash me with a waterbomb (before game started) after several attempts to do that to other campers, I grabbed his hand and knocked the waterbomb out.

Doesn't seem too bad, except I forgot that when I'm angry, my grasp can be quite hard. So the relevant camper began to cry a little. I felt bad, but still somewhat justified in the sense of a lack of better alternatives that I could see. I spoke to the camper for a while (there was quite a bit of time before the games started); though I must admit it was more out of my need for self-justification than out of love for the relevant camper. (Tough love, I guess...).

I was really tired out by the end of the day, more in an emotional sense than anything else really.

---

Day 2

I enjoyed running the dice station game. I must admit Joel Tieh had very good insight for this one - when I first opened the dice pack, I was wondering: "12 only? That means a structure of 6 - and I have to occupy them for half an hour?" But 12 was more than enough.

I did several things in order to try and solve this - firstly, to hold a somewhat longer introduction to the game, done by talking a bit about math and perspectives in playing the game, and then secondly to add an additional (nasty) rule - the orientation of 2s, 3s and 6s must be correct as well.

The day went much more smoothly (except for the skit, I guess) in an emotional as well as spiritual sense, even though it rained which to some extent was initially bad for the barbecue yet proved to be a blessing in disguise. The atmosphere of togetherness in the hall was, I'd think, preferable to each group being at a separate bench cooking their own food.

I also cleared up an old grudge that I've been having for quite a while. The new feeling of some sense of unity, some sense of amiability is indeed refreshing. Indeed, I believe this is one area where I really need to learn. To learn how to relax; and to learn to love those who, at times, seem difficult to love.

---

Day 3

Actually, it was very short; I don't have much to say, honestly. But in general, the camp was, as I said, eventful, and also very tiring. I guess it doesn't help that the SATs are incoming.

consequentiality

2008-11-21T00:25:00.002+08:00

Things haven't been going too well. I just feel that I haven't been devoting myself to the right things for this week. I've been living a pretty robotic existence for the past few days, and today when I met Russell I did want to talk about this somewhat (this was what I forgot... amazingly.) While as far as EE is concerned I've been doing my job (programming completed), I've not been closing up some things I arranged with various teachers (World Lit guidance, Discussion of Paper 2, TOK Discussion) and even with other people. I just feel I need to take some time off, reflect on what I've been doing all this while and... yeah. I just feel it's bad.

jk.

crimson butterflies

2008-11-16T02:41:00.002+08:00

the past 6 days have been incredibly busy for me.

i was at the gep chalet for 4 days, but then really collapsed at the end of it. somehow, it wasn't as fun as last year's one. perhaps its because 4 days is too long, but then again, i enjoyed the home stretch of the chalet, with the airport visit with mark, louis, ian and quite a few other ppl, and of course the 2nd night of fatal frame (i slept somewhere in the middle of the 1st night due to exhaustion as well as lack of adequate ghosts). of course i found some time to have a few walks, both by myself and with one/a few other people. the changi area is pretty nice for that.

then i came back and i slept. O_O i slept till 10 pm so it was too late to go to my class chalet =( so i resolved, never mind, i'll rush my ee coding!

so i started work on ee programming. i worked until like 4 am and then slept, and the next day straight till 9 was spent on programming. now i think i'm sick! arrgh.

then i guess i've made it a point to take a break from work. so i spoke to a couple of old friends whom i haven't quite spoken to for a while. it sure was nice talking to them again, in the sense that they are the kind of friends that are, how should i say, the kind that i can be reasonably sure will look out for me when i need it. don't know if that makes sense but to me it seems to.

so i'll be taking a break from ee, till monday probably at least.

jk.

breaking point

2008-11-03T16:06:00.002+08:00

tomorrow's the chinese b exam. less than 24 hours.

i can't quite accept that like 13-14 years of learning chinese will (hopefully) culminate tomorrow. having struggled with chinese every year since primary 3 (i do remember winning a prize for top in chinese in primary 2 or something), through the gep years and even on to higher chinese and now chinese b. i don't think it's a problem of lacking foundations... i don't know what.

this brings to mind a weird incident in primary 6 where i topped a class test for chinese (out of nowhere; i'd been actually about average in p6 gep), but only because the sections were tian xie han zi, tian xie chi yu, wan cheng ju zi, zao ju and duan wen tian cong. (the first two, and to a lesser degree the third and fourth are learnable by memorisation) in a way this seems to somewhat parallel cases where people 'mug' math compared against jarrel's "the exams are essentially over" being left with only math papers. similarly, i have been surviving chinese to some extent by mugging, cause i don't have a flair for it...

on one hand, the pressure of taking chinese as an examinable subject will hopefully be off. on the other hand, there'll be a new kind of pressure in the sense that i'm concerned as to what will happen to my chinese after the exam. as in, my standard of the chinese language. slipping from higher chinese to chinese b, my standards have dropped quite badly. i don't want to let those 13-ish years of learning chinese fade away into oblivion. which means i must actively pursue keeping my standards up...

i've made some arrangements with my chinese tutor, and made it a point to read the free half-english half-chinese 'my paper' as and when i can, but will it be enough?

i hope so ... the clock ticks down...

jk

---

明天就是我的中文B考试。考试之前剩下的时间，连二十四个小时也没有...

我其实难以接受这个考试能这么快地来。明天，我学了13-14年的华文就会被考察。从小三开始，我的华文其实已经有问题了；它非常弱。我相信这不是基础的问题，因为在小二，我在2.2班的华文成绩最好，得到奖。我在高才班和中学的高级华文课程一直地更华文“挣扎”，好多次只是刚刚及格的。

我想起了一个发生在小六的事情，我从这个事情能看到为什么我的华文一直不强。我们的班有一个小测验，我考到第一名。这可说是个意外惊喜，因为填答案是，运气特别好，但是我相信不是。那次的测验有五项：填写汉字、填写词语、完成句子、造句和短文填充。填写汉字和填写词语其实可以死背词语手册的，完成句子和造句也可以这样。我在这四项都考到满分，只是短文填充失去了几个分数。这好像好多学生希望可以死背数学的问题--我对语文没有什么“天才”。

从一方面来说，做好考试是减轻一种负担，因为以后（希望）不需要做华文考试了。但是，我对于自己的华文水平也不禁有点担心。我从高级华文换到IB课程的中文B课，水平已经降低了。学习语文是逆水行舟的，我们不近就会退。

我跟华文补习老师已经做了一些预备，也特地去读“我报”的华文报章，但是这两项会不会足够？

我希望它们会足够。时间越来越近...

jk.

a vapor in the wind.

2008-10-29T22:31:00.002+08:00

The song this title is sourced from reflects metaphorically the insignificance of man in relation to God - explicitly as far as time and space are concerned, as well as probably implicitly in other areas as well. From this, it seems reasonable to extrapolate this to the idea that the actions of a man, or even man, are insignificant as far as the universe is concerned. This feeling of insignificance does not mean that we should not be responsible for our actions since they produce little change, whether positive or negative; indeed, this does seem to be a reason why some of us aim for Christlikeness, or to live with a "clear conscience", with "good morals", etc.

I'm not too sure why I thought of this, or thought of writing the above paragraph...

---

I finally finished scripting Extreme Heat Rhapsody (a TNN-touhou game), at least a reasonable demo of it. Six stages are completed, albeit only on one difficulty, with two possible choices of player characters. Assuming time allows, I will add a stage 5.5, of course the usual Extra and Phantasm stages, as well as more player-character options and of course additional difficulties.

Dean's Lists have been pretty okay; Math is on series and differential equations and time seems to pass very fast. Physics not so because we've been taught about the content in Olympiad, at least most of it up to this 2nd Lesson, including the Galilean and Lorentz (sp?) Transformations.

jk.

focal point

2008-10-28T23:48:00.003+08:00

Company Camp was a surprisingly good experience - initially, I wasn't really looking forward to it as it seemed to not fit very well with the Dean's Lists and other classes I'd be having over the previous week as well as this week. Most importantly, I'll remember the four messages that I was around for, shared by the various Officers as well as during Church.

I arrived on the second morning, as a result of having Physics the day before. The first day ran in a rather uncomfortable way, I must admit, seeing as I did not know the other members of Philippi that well at that time. I had a lot of duties, further exacerbating this problem - I was involved in running the Drill War Games for Xi Min, as well as performing carpark ushering. The potluck had an embarrassing mistake (sp? gosh i can't spell simple words) in that we took the scouts' pizza, though it was a good thing that we were able to resolve it relatively quickly. The (third) day wasn't very eventful.

Though the Coy Blog hasn't been launched and I don't know what's going to happen to it, I did receive a compliment with regards to it from one of the Officers who's left the company, and whom I have a lot of respect for, so I guess that brightened my experience to some extent as well.

Through this camp, the things I'll remember are basically the four messages, as well as the worship sessions. In summary, though I did not really enjoy this camp that much (on a transient level), it was spiritually a good experience, and did stimulate me to think about what really matters, after drifting for quite a while.

jk.

lessons

2008-10-20T19:51:00.003+08:00

You are forever in my life,
You see me through the seasons.
Cover me with Your hand,
And lead me in Your righteousness.
And I look to You, and I wait on You,

I'll sing to you Lord, a hymn of love
For Your faithfulness to me
I'm carried in everlasting arms
You'll never let me go, through it all.

---

This exam period, and the results that followed, I can definitely say was a period I'd best describe as learning.

I scored 38 points. This isn't particularly good or bad, it's the kind of in-between, slightly-good yet disappointing result. HLs were good as usual; triple sevens and all possible Dean's Lists were sealed. (I did get owned by Jarrel for Math by 7.5 or so marks, even though I got second place.) SLs, on the other hand, weren't so good, especially SL English which was a major flop.

SL1 English - 5
SL2 Chinese - 6
SL3 Econs - 6
HL1 Math - 7
HL2 Comp Sci - 7
HL3 Physics - 7

The pattern is interesting. Although I noted with Levin during Physics Olympiad today that we both had sequential patterns in our grades (one 5, two 6s, three 7s), I didn't realise mine was really in sequential order! Oh well.

English was terrible. My Unseen got 14, which is the lowest I've ever got this year even though I thought I did a pretty good job on it. I guess I'll have to see Ms Runima or something to go through it, and find out what happened. Set Text got 15 which admittedly was my fault, seeing as I had run out of time - as I did mention somewhere here I had to cut 5 to 4 and then to 3 angles. So essentially I wrote just 60 percent of what I had to say, and in fact less cause I had to cut off and shorten some points due to a lack of time. At least I avoided Focus Camp.

Chinese was so-so. Paper 1 crashed terribly, and though my Paper 2 wasn't bad (23/30), I realised that I should have gotten 26-27 instead as I lost 1 mark for formatting (O_O) and furthermore left out one section out of 7 completely. I'll have to remember: 开头，目的，地点，活动，时间，需要注意的东西，结尾/联络. Grrr. At least I know zhi nan or tong gao are good questions to tackle now...

Econs was strange. I still am not too sure why I'm wrong. The essay part b was basically about how governments can ride an economy out of a recession. I chose not to write about monetary policy, seeing as the question said specifically 'governments' and NOT 'the central bank'. So I got a 7/15 for it. My DBQs went 16-16 and the first part of the essay was a 7/10, so I guess IF I didn't read too much into the question the 7 would be more than safe. I don't feel too bad; getting 70.4 despite messing up this question mean that 75 should be easy if I got things the right way round.

Not too much to say about HLs though, other than I need to work more quickly in Math as I ran down the clock on both of the papers, and for Physics and Comp Science I need to watch out for stupid mistakes rather than just rushing. Levin's idea in Physics Olympiad, that you can sometimes, if unsure, write a big equation and then suddenly collapse it to the answer actually DID get me marks for one of the Math questions, so... =)

What I mean:
(Physics)
'State the Rayleigh Criterion.' [1 mark]
ANS: theta = 1.22lambda / b
(Clarification: That is NOT the Rayleigh criterion. The Rayleigh criterion refers to a situation when 2 sources are just resolvable, where the central maximum of the EM wave produced from one source coincides with the 1st minimum of the wave from the other source.)

---

Initially, this exam when I got the results I was terribly disappointed. I wanted to sort-of break down, but didn't. I spoke to a friend after school on Friday, we talked for a while about results and perspectives. Thanks :)

I guess now, I feel quite okay about my results especially since I've learnt stuff from the papers that went wrong.

jk.

fall

2008-10-10T22:36:00.002+08:00

post exam, crash period again.

adrenalin levels low, cannot do work, CAS documentation, Econs Commentary, Extended Essay work and datacollection, etcetera.

grrr =(

---

The past few days have been spent in a way different from what I'm normally used to; in fact, in some way the Physics Olympiad training sessions have been essentially keeping some sense of order and drive in the day. Because of these sessions, I don't sleep TOO late (2 am max).

Today was very unusual though. Normally, I notice I have more problems with figuring out which equations to apply, rather than calculating and simplifying data once said equations are found. I couldn't do basic division for nuts today...

n1 + n2 = 37/25 = n3 + n4
(some working later)
hence 12n1*17 = 5n4
n4 = 12*17/5n1

(cancellation)
hence 12n1*17 = 5n4
n4 = 5/(12*17) n1

(noticed i missed out some division earlier)
hence 12n1 = 5n4
n1 = 12/5n4

(finally)
n1 = 5/12n4

seriously. 4 tries to get some rather easy question right...

Thermodynamics isn't really my kind of physics topic though I guess I'm fine with it.

I was rather light-headed today when I went for lunch. Probably the physics, as well as a book I bought yesterday from Kino called 'Killer Sudoku: Vol 4'. Like regular sudoku except there are no numbers in the grid, but there are various shapes marked out on the grid in which we know the total. Consequently, it ends up becoming a Kakuro-Sudoku hybrid, both of which I've done individually though not together. It was very interesting though, even though I failed the par time by 22 sec on the first puzzle I did. Good thing is, 4th puzzle (par time 16:00) took just 7:59. I feel quite good about THAT one.

---

For some reason, I thought of a rather strange math question:

Three bullets are fired out such that the smallest angle between any 2 of the bullets is 120 degrees. After reaching a distance 10 cm from the origin, the bullets start to undergo motion in a planar circle with constant angular velocity 0.1 degree s-1.

a) If the radius of this “circle” doubles after each revolution, increasing uniformly relative to an expression in terms of the radius of the existing circle, show clearly that the rate of change of distance from the origin is given by

dx/dt=lg2/45 * 2^(t/3600 - 3)

b) Suppose one of the bullets is fired due east, show that the bullet's position relative to the origin may be defined by the parametric equations

x= 10 cos (t/Q)

y = 10 sin (t/Q)

Hence or otherwise solve the value of Q.

There was a part c that wasn't finished as at time of writing...

---

jk.

Riverside View

2008-10-03T11:16:00.003+08:00

Looking at it, it's just 2 more real exam days and it'll be over.

I feel bad; this end has come too soon for me I think. Typically, exams mark the end of the academic year for me, and hence I'll reflect on what I did, taking the point of view of schoolwork. Academically, I've backslid this year in many ways than one. The concentration and efficient use of time and resources present in sec 4 just doesn't feel right anymore.

Perhaps it was 4.9. The heavily competitive environment there made doing well in pretty much anything a decent challenge. Then again, 5.14 is one of the best environments for me to be in as well, if you want to look at it that way - judging from the PSC scholarships thingy, our class has 3 out of 8 (ridiculous overproportion) places. However, a net result is still that I've not been paying so much attention to academics and my work, but this is not just about 4.9 or 5.14...

This can be partially attributed to somewhat increasing involvement in the BB as well as in the two Olympiad teams. However, in the end I really do wonder, at times, what I have gained from these experiences. With regards to BB; there have been many times that I find that I'm doing things because they're there, as a duty cause of chairman position or technical skill, without seeing how they come into play in creating a big picture. Being involved in Logistics and the company blog do seem to be largely individual/small-group projects, anyway. The Olympiad knowledge is good, yet at times it still feels very disconnected, probably because I haven't been able to attend much of my Physics trainings, and much of the topics discussed for Math are either rather broad topics (e.g. series and sequences, AP-GP, trigonometric identities) that can be linked up, or small ones for which this is hard (e.g. pigeon hole principle, Chinese remainder theorem).

In any case, there are 2 more exam days left, both important HL papers (math-2 and comp science) so I'll try and do my best to make the most of them.

going for 100 for paper 2 after the crap paper 1,
jk.

Exams 2008 - part 1

2008-10-02T22:11:00.004+08:00

I've never felt so screwed for an exam before... =(

CHINESE: Incredible fail. Paper 2 was fine, but paper 1 was like wtf compared to the other paper 1s in the IB book. I usually get 36-38 out of 40 for those in the past yr question book, but i'll be happy to take like... a 32 for this paper.

ENGLISH p1: ok this wasn't too bad. Prose was handle-able, poem looked workable but prose seemed easier. i don't think i'll do too badly, but i don't know if it'll be enough to cancel out the paper 2 crap that i wrote... hopefully i can still get a 6 (17/25). if i don't get at least 5 (14/25), i'll cry.

ECONS p1: grr screwed up the part (a) cause i didn't study 4.1 that well, got the definition of expenditure approach for 2 sector economy wrong. fortunately i still remembered how to define GDP correctly. part (b) was fine, but i only wrote about fiscal and no monetary policy, which i think is right but i'm not sure, since monetary policy is central bank and not government...

ENGLISH p2: no time. question on characterisation in Siddhartha and Huck Finn. i knew the points, but i screwed up cause i wrote for really long about plot, so in the end i had to change analysing the question from five angles to four and then to three. grrr!

ECONS p2: data response. hmm i did the questions on rising prices of oil and commodities, and the lower lea valley in the london olympics. i had trouble with the definitions, but i think other than that should be acceptable. not good, but acceptable. i hope.

PHYSICS p1: mcqs, not much to say. looks like i got 1 wrong according to bryan. but i'm not too sure also, and in any case it seems quite decent compared to a lot of other people's mcq, so...

PHYSICS p2: option G question was seriously wtf at first until some inspection and thought. then i got the common pressure question wrong, sadly. at least the copper-pot fail one i got right. and the first of the B questions, the one on the regular part of waves. THAT was ok...

MATH p1: incredibly shocking and hard. 14a was a really ??? question (i didn't even see 1st part, fortunately i did manage to achieve some progress by taking the result of area and then calculating the value of theta for which it was acceptable) so i'll at the very least get a few N marks and maybe 1 or 2 M marks for that 9 mark question. some of the questions really looked like a calculator would be nice. ah well other than jarrel i don't know of anyone who finished this paper proper... and of course, the irritating bit is that there's still p2 and we're going to have to count this crap p1 result...

anyway i need to get back into a study mood for comp science and math part 2. given how bad paper 1 went, i better get close to 100 for paper 2. comp science is a just-whack paper... see how.

disturbingly, the exam structure for me sort of has been reminding me of the subterranean animism stage 4 boss battle (jonny, herrick and i dunno who else would know). but basically you're fighting a boss that uses 3 simple patterns and then suddenly, the difficulty jumps into utter crap. granted for me i can't say its true that i find my HLs (the later 3) more complex than my SLs (the first 3) - seriously, english A1 SL is worse than math HL for me - but it feels like that in some way, because essentially the stakes are different. for SLs, the key goal is to avoid focus camp; for HLs, it's to land a spot on the dean's list. hence yeah. diff stakes.

jk.

2008中文B年终考试

2008-09-22T21:33:00.003+08:00

9月22日天气：晴

考试快要来了，压力越来越高。明天，年终考试就开始了，我其实认为自己还没有足够地准备。属于说：“平时不烧香，临时抱佛脚”。我幸好相当早地开始温习功课，但是这也好像是不够的。

然而，我不因该写上个周发生的事情，因为陈老师今天在华文课之中再三讲解各种问题的格式。她在谈日记时，总是强调：要写当天的事情，或昨天的事情；不应该写很久以前的事。

中文B的考试就是明天早上，我希望能得到九十分以上，因为我已经知道口试成绩相当理想，所以九十分不是不可能拿到的成绩。要是我能在理解问答和文章回应考到不错的成绩（不少于36分，满分40分），九十分的可能性就会不错。为了预备这个考试，我不但温习一些虚词，而且也记起各个文体的格式。

今天，在体育课时，我们在水里玩橄榄球。虽然我个人的运动技巧不是那么好，但是我不但发现到个人可以进步的地方，而且玩得非常快乐！幸好我没有受伤；游戏结束后，家荣的眼睛好像有一个小红点，好像眼里的血管有问题，也许是因为有人撞到他的头部。我希望以后有更多机会跟其他同学一起做这些运动，因为运动不但让我增强自己跟同学之中的友谊，而且也让我锻炼自己的身体。

wordless

2008-09-22T00:28:00.002+08:00

i guess this is something i've been thinking about for a while, amidst the backsliding of my physics marks (from the practice papers: from 90-ish at mid years to hovering around 80 now).

recently when finding some spare time i've read some of this book - "the race" by the bishop, dr. robert solomon. one of the images that the book painted in my mind, though somewhat cliched, is the idea of a guy climbing a ladder all through his life, only realising at the top that he'd climbed the wrong ladder, largely misguided by others around who cheered him on (probably symbolic of society in general). hence, what the book says (and what we can infer from this) is that we should be careful that we don't merely go where society wants us to go, but rather follow what we value, whether for christians this be following God, or for non-christians perhaps something else like inner peace, an ethical life, etc.

i find that in many ways i'm pushing upwards along a ladder, both in the way i do things as well as in the way i tend to neglect some other things. there've been many things external to schoolwork that i've wanted to do, yet not really considered as they're blocked out by the volume of schoolwork in the foreground. schoolwork in the sense of not only academics but also CCA related work and all. i want to spend more time with my friends, especially some of those i haven't talked to in a while, re-learn piano and guitar, finish scripting a touhou game, et cetera. the list goes on and on...

im not sure how i'll do it. even the holidays / post exam period don't look very appealing, with cas documentation, ee and what other random stuff it might bring.

then again even if i'm generally focusing on the ladder, i know i'm not climbing it properly. the physics paper i did today, or rather yesterday night, made me really unhappy:

Q12 Suppose you have a ball that rolls off a table horizontally at velocity of v. It hits the ground t seconds later at a horizontal distance x from the table. then, you have a heavier ball roll off the same table at the same velocity v. (Take air resistance to be negligible)

a) it hits the ground t seconds later, x from table
b) it hits the ground t seconds later but less than x from table
c) it hits the ground x from table but less than t seconds later
d) it hits the ground less than t seconds later and less than x from table.

i chose b. i feel *very* stupid now. (answer is a. time is same because the acceleration of free-fall, g = 9.80655ish ms^-2 is independent of mass. and then, think of it in the sense of projectile motion - horizontal velocity is equal to v in both cases, so if the ball can travel for the same time, then x must be the same.)

its not just physics. the other subjects are falling backwards as well. exams are starting in 2 days, and i haven't even done a thing for comp science! =x

but worse than that, in other, more important areas, i'm beginning to falter, if i haven't already been doing so. relationships, lateral and vertical, but most importantly, vertical......

was it something i said
or something i never did,
or was i always in the way?

heartful cry

2008-09-05T02:24:00.002+08:00

i like that song... from persona 3 fes soundtrack.

anyway.

just figured i should write something.

as for why i don't know.

life's pretty normal now i guess... mostly back to mugging, with a bit of time carved out here and there for friends as well as relaxation, i've been playing some touhou over the holidays as well (grr almost 1cc PCB hard, fail on resurrection butterfly)... work's going not very well but still acceptably.

jk.

Breath

2008-08-11T21:52:00.002+08:00

today was a good day; a good conclusion to a good weekend. for some reason i'm actually feeling quite happy now =)

this weekend i pushed my IOP, chinese script, physics photogates prac and TOK essay all out, as well as a... minor essay on Economics. i feel quite happy that i've cleared all that... did some scripting for touhou as well. started working on the end boss of stage 4...

this morning, i was writing up the second draft of my TOK essay. i realised i had to cut the third AOK - visual art. so i just wrote on math and medicine. still hard, cause there were just too many problems with the first one. and i don't feel as accomplished as i did when i finished up my previous TOK essays in years 3 and 4. in fact, i read my year 4 TOK, or rather POD essay. i was like o.o i can write like that?

then, i met russell for lunch at this japanese place at novena. i go there quite a lot, probably because its very good value. $8 ish for a rather full and good quality meal. after lunch, i followed him to orchard to say hi to ellius, and there i met a few of the other BB ppl too.

i came back and slept -.- and now am printing out a lot of stuff that i did over the past few days/weeks.

amazingly i still feel quite happy with today. =)

jk.

13.17

2008-08-05T20:30:00.003+08:00

A certain event yesterday, as well as a certain post on a blog I read is the inspiration for this post.

We were basically forced to listen to a lecture on library techniques, how to construct effective search statements and the like. Naturally, given the content of the lecture, especially one going beyond the dismissal time of 1640, it was sort of expected that there would be much disappointment...

The effectiveness of having such lectures would be something I would probably question, given that I'd think that in general, the people who are actually listening and/or not being disruptive are probably those who already know most of the content. It's not the fault of the lecturer; rather, it's just that those who are (somewhat) attentive are probably those who know, and that those who are the ones who need to be taught are most probably not listening. (I know, I lack evidence for this claim. It's just a hypothesis.)

Of course, there are reasons why such lectures have and will continue to take place. Firstly, if said lectures were made voluntary, I don't think many people would go, and the message would most definitely not reach the people who need to be told. Also, from a pragmatist point of view, making such lectures compulsory is probably an easy way to occupy the students during the EE period where they are supposed to be in school (since the school is accountable for what goes on during school hours...). Furthermore, holding such lectures reflects positively on the accountability of the school in that it contributes towards the school developing students holistically. Hence, I guess I don't have much against the idea of holding such lectures; even though I don't really like them, I don't see much of a better alternative, as detailed above.

Essentially, what happened was that due to said disappointment leading to noise especially beyond 1640, the students were held back till about 1730. The choice of punishment was certainly not an easy one to make; while I would indeed agree that the students concerned including myself should have been punished in some way, and the structure of the punishment is, in my opinion, generally acceptable (probably better if it was shifted to staying back the next day, since keeping parents waiting = bad idea), the justification provided for the punishment seems to fail under logical scrutiny. This "justification" - lack of respect.

Now the problem is, you cannot (or at least, I believe people cannot) force respect out of other people. Was it the students' choice to attend the talk? You could argue yes (ponning as an alternative), but given the nature of the alternative I think a 'no' fits this question better. Hence I don't believe that expecting "respect" out of the students is reasonable, since I disagree with the notion of forcing respect, and there does not seem to be a reasonable argument that the attempted establishment of said respect was not forced - unless you wish to encourage students to skip said lectures.

In my opinion, what I find questionable about this judgment is exacerbated by the fact that no attendance was taken, further increasing the incentive to skip such talks completely in the future, in anticipation of both not spending the time of the talk in an efficient manner, as well as not spending some of the time after that in an efficient manner.

That said, I think I can understand, to some extent, the intentions of the person who meted out said punishment described above. Naturally, the choice of what punishment to issue would not have been easy. Still, I would be inclined to maintain that the justification for said punishment seems somewhat off.

More accurately, I think the appropriate reason for punishment is really failure to APPEAR respectful, since after all that's what (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) others see, and I think it's also what's important. I don't know if I would personally consider myself innocent or guilty, but I was there in body, physically doing little and speaking little, but very far away in mind. For some reason, this reminds me of a certain legal case I read about, where the "contents of one's mind" can be locked away securely from others; in that situation, a subpoena for the accused to reveal his password for a drive on his computer was quashed because revealing the password was believed as equivalent to self-incrimination, which is not something one is allowed to force.

jk.

End of Night ~ Border Distortion

2008-08-03T01:11:00.005+08:00

Yesterday was one of the most draining parades I think I'll go through in my life as a BB Primer.

As a Primer, on one hand I do bear some kind of responsibility to my peers, in the sense that I'm supposed to be an example to them. It was this reasoning, coupled with the fact that I believe that elementary levels of character in certain respects should be consistently demonstrated, that made me carry out the course of action I selected in the end. However, I do know the risks inherent in following this path; namely, possibly risking relationships with several of the other Primers, as well as creating an increased level of workload (yet, I believe this remains necessary). Hence making this decision, and following the course of action that I took was not easy; but somehow, before parade started, I really felt compelled, for some reason or another, to pursue these actions.

In the declaration that the Primers made during the Enrolment Service, the phrase "be shining examples to the Boys" was mentioned. Personally, I believe that this idea of "shining examples" shouldn't only be shown to those under us, year 2 or not, but also among ourselves and even to our officers. Naturally irresponsibility plays little of a role if we try and act as "shining examples"... Of course, we can't be serious all of the time, something which I'm trying to learn. However, I do believe that there are some elements of responsibility and discipline that should not be compromised.

I think I've really had enough of the headaches for now. Had a good talk with Mr Allan Lee today on this. I'll try and think through some of these issues, but not now.

Expectation

2008-07-20T09:40:00.004+08:00

this is bad. i'm expecting stuff out of others that i'm not too sure i even have myself.

discipline, responsibility. i don't even have these traits yet i expect them out of others.

had a conversation yesterday with a friend; one topic we discussed about was motivation and profit incentive. if something doesn't give us adequate motivation, we won't do it, or at least put in a reasonable amount of effort. i don't know why i typed this out, but it's on my mind now...

it's wrong. in so many ways...
jk.

demystify

2008-07-12T22:47:00.003+08:00

Results are back and I did ok. I won't say too much. Ok, can do better, you know, the usual stuff.

HLs awesome, SLs a letdown. Overall still fine.

Apparently the Logistics Com policy paper was set as a model paper for other committees to follow. I feel good, but also a bit... uncomfortable. There's still room for improvement.

jk.

crossroads.

2008-07-09T23:07:00.003+08:00

results will be out on friday. and as much as i initially wasn't too worried, i'm starting to get rather... concerned. won't say worried, it's not that bad.

honestly, i don't think i want to say too much, especially given the environment of people failing subjects, geog's highest being a 68, chemistry killing off a lot of peoples' hopes, weird mean subject grades and all.

i think my hls will be fine, but not my sls. hopefully i can pull some 7/7/7/5/6/7 for a 39 if i'm lucky. cause larts (which might be 4 or even 3) and chinese (HOPEFULLY at least 6) are quite screwed.

this brings me back to something i've wanted to write about for a while. what do we mean when we say we tried or did our best? because how do we know what our best is. many times, if we consider our best with specific relevance to the task it is often possible that we could have done more, and done better. but, at least for me, i don't think i will every really know.

a while back, i got a 59 out of 60 for a math test. can i say i did my best, knowing that i could have gotten a 60? the same applies for many things for me...

today was a reasonably good day. tiring, but good. i had a conversation about life with someone whom i didn't really expect to have one with. but it was good. it's nice, for me, to know that there are people out there who are concerned with their, and my, spiritual lives. for i find that many times in this fast-paced lifestyle i forget God, and QT sometimes becomes routine even.

but i was reminded of something. during chinese tuition tonight, i noticed there was an extra piece of foolscap paper in my ke ben for some reason. on the front side, it had some mathematical working on it, with a cubic graph and some calculus thing. then i flipped it over. i don't know why, but i saw that in the past i wrote almost randomly in the centre of the page (with underlining):

Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another

that's something for me to remember.

jk.

silent melody

2008-07-06T14:35:00.002+08:00

In church today, the pianist played a song during the time allocated to silent prayer that reminded me of some things.

Things in the past; things yet unseen
Wishes and dreams that are yet to come true
All of my hopes, all of my plans
My heart and my hands
They're lifted to You

Lord I offer my life to You
Everything I've been through; use it for Your glory
Lord I offer my days to You
Lifting my praise to You, as a pleasing sacrifice
Lord I offer you my life.

Surrendering everything to God isn't easy. The way I see it, for me it'd really be nice if I could, but there are many things holding me back.

the limit

2008-07-02T22:26:00.004+08:00

im really tired. and telling me i wrote large paragraphs of nothingness isn't going to help.

a detached outlook i can throw on sometimes helps. but not this time.

combined with recurring stress of... other things. i won't say them here, too personal. but other things.

been having a bunch of bad dreams recently. probably to some extent reflects the fear and insecurity i'm experiencing now.

so as again, like always, there's something in which i've gone wrong.

jk.

caesura.

2008-07-01T22:57:00.003+08:00

so.

Comp Science: decent stuff. not good not bad. what can i say.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/6/3/1 was it? i think so. not sure.

---

exams have ended. which is a very ok-ish thing, not good not bad. exam period is different in many ways. i work differently, interact with people differently, and maybe even think differently during an exam period. i prepare schedules that i stick to, unlike in a 'normal term-time' situation. so exams throw some sense of discipline into my life. yet, they're also a source of lots of stress especially because i know i want to do well. still, exams are a blessing; a different type of lifestyle that's out there to be enjoyed. not all the time i guess, but once in a while.

jk.

Voices

2008-06-30T14:21:00.005+08:00

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
Huge success.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science.
We do what we must because we can.
For the good of all of us;
Except the ones who are dead.

But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
And the science gets done and you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive.

I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart and killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
And as they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you.

Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we're out of beta we're releasing on time.
So I'm glad I got burned; think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa -
That was a joke. Haha. Fat chance.
Anyway, this cake is great:
It's so delicious and moist.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do.
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you.
I've experiments to run; there is research to be done
On the people who are still alive

And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing science and I'm still alive.
I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.

Still alive; still alive.

- "Still Alive", GLaDOS (Ellen McCain) from Valve's Portal.

Hearing a computer-ish robotic voice sing songs can be rather disturbing. GLaDOS stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System... the content is also rather... weird. Singing about points of data fitting a regression line? The perspective - one fascinated with science, and cake, is rather unusual.

Good thing Robots isn't tested for Comp Science at mid-years. Still, I think I'm going to die for Comp Science tomorrow. Starting yesterday afternoon only was a... bad idea.

jk.

Anchors in the Storm

2008-06-28T08:45:00.003+08:00

Where I left off.

ECONS paper 1: umm question 2 was easy, but apparently i didn't define merit good completely right. so. mixed feelings. hopefully at least like 21/25 or so.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/2/1/1

PHYSICS mcq paper: easy, though i have 2 careless mistakes.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/3/1/1

PHYSICS paper 2: fine, though i might be penalised for the diffraction grating graph i think. also definition of damping.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/4/1/1

ECONS paper 2: screwed up. changed question 5 minutes into the actual 40 minute time, screwed up my graph for the last question and left out one reason for the last quesiton as well. hopefully i can still salvage like a 15 or so.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/4/2/1

MATHS: fine. i hate the ambiguous case sine rule diagram though. hopefully can get like at least 112 or so out of 120.
good/ok/bad/fail: 0/5/2/1

so it's been an exam period that's left me with very mixed emotions with so many papers being like okay, not good.

---

yesterday, after math, i had 2 conversations that were rather thought provoking. The first was with a close friend which I had sort of planned in the sense that I felt the conversation would be something reasonably beneficial; and the second, a totally random one that yet bore some meaning in an unusual sense.

hence the title of this post. i'll leave it at this.

jk.

the things we've learned.

2008-06-24T14:30:00.002+08:00

Chinese B paper 1 = epic fail. I cannot do grammar for nuts. -3 for that. no time to finish written response, et cetera. haven't touched chinese properly for VERY long.

40 marks. first passage i think i lose like 4 or 5. out of 10. second passage was okayish... maybe 1 out of 9. third one was fine too. maybe 2 out of 11. written response i think i'll get a seven. so...

29/40? fail. nice 73 when you need an 86.

good/ok/bad/fail: 0/0/1/1.

Chinese B paper 2 composition = ok. i did question 2, investiture speech for president of student council. very manageable task. basically what i did was thank ppl for their support, then talk about what the role of a student councillor entails, and then concluded by praising the previous council and saying how i'll do my best in building on the strengths they had in their performance. on the whole, an ok task. i think i should be able to get around a 24, depending on marker.

if i get 24 plus 29 even a full for oral won't save me (83 is um, 6). no more 7 for chinese. *poof*

good/ok/bad/fail: 0/1/1/1.

on a better note, i'd like to thank all the people who've prayed with me and for me about these exams. it really is comforting for me to know that i'm not the only one going through this. of course i know i'm not the only one going through exams. by this i mean a certain kind of stress that can be tough to describe.

look. i'm sorry for all that.
i just... wasn't in the right frame of mind then.
please.

jk

pain

2008-06-23T21:45:00.003+08:00

I probably have said somewhere before, that for me most of the physical pain I have experienced over the years is generally of a relatively low order; it tears at you and it hurts, but usually it's only transient; or even when it's not, at least I find myself preserved reasonably in a psychological sense. Mental stress through work, mathematics and the like is of a somewhat higher order, but still not very high, as the stress is still largely easily linked to inanimate external sources... and it's generally transient too. Emotional and spiritual stresses cause the largest ripples, because (for me, at least), they work from the inside out, destroying my psyche and mental constitution along the way.

The exam period is a bad time to face pain of various types, especially given that the exams themselves are a form of mental stress.

I am not making sense anymore as far as I can tell.

English A1 today. was really bad. I did Prose, and wrote on how love remains a powerful emotion regardless of circumstances. Still, I only had 2 major devices (characterisation and setting) and hardly any good elaboration. 5 sides leaving lines is pretty short to moderate-ish... it'd be like 2.5 sides if you don't leave lines...

good/ok/bad/fail: 0/0/1/0.

jk.

Cleaning up

2008-06-20T19:18:00.002+08:00

Today was... not very productive.
unless i count yesterday morning.
morning cleaned up econs, then afternoon switched to physics.

the problem is, i have not done any practices.
so far, for comp science, econs and physics all i have done is make notes.
not even finished comp science and physics.
math have done practice, but i just found out that i either suck or am incredibly rusty.
english, chinese - how? no practice
at least i have weekend for comp science.

and the exams is NOT world scholar's cup. 67% average will (generally) kill you here.

i want like a minimum of 40. but im not even sure if i can make it or not this time. leeway of three points - chinese is going to take away (at least) one, english at least one, and somewhere some other subjects are going to take away more points until i may have like a 36 or 37 instead...

stress

i'll probably post again sometime later today if i find the time. got something i need to clear of my mind...

jk.

Rise and Fall

2008-06-19T10:57:00.004+08:00

The quasi-holidays is drawing to a close, and the past few weeks have really been a rush.

After the Scholar's Cup, I focused on rushing my IOP Essay on Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary and Medicine. Following that, I did some math planning and then came other stuff like the Primer's Standby. Admittedly I slacked somewhat, stoning around on my bed or wherever.

The final week came, and I started mugging. My work efficiency has dropped significantly - Computer Science took me like 2-3x as long to learn compared to previous occasions, and this morning as I did a past year Mathematics paper, I had lots of problems; after clearing many of them I was left staring at a matrix question for 10 minutes not seeing that I misplaced a minus sign halfway through the equation. Physics hasn't seen much action recently, especially on the later topics, and Economics hasn't been touched at ALL.

I take a lot more breaks nowadays though, which depending on the way you see it can be both a good or bad thing. But I think I need it for my mental health. Previously, I'd work 2 hours and take breaks for 15 minutes. Now, it's more like 1 hour 30 work, 45 min break or even more.

I listened to Danzai no Hana ~ Guilty Sky recently. The lyrics were good stuff. Or, at least, the English translation that I saw. (not the English version; that one is in my opinion bad)

I met Russell for lunch at Novena yesterday; it was the longest lunch I'll probably have for quite a while (just under 2 hours; my usual lunches are like 15 minutes). It was a good experience, as I rarely ever get to just sit down and talk about a wide variety of issues, ranging from sensitive to umm... "normal"-ish, one-on-one with a friend. In school the recesses are hardly long enough (50 ish minutes after deducting the usual "frictional" time wasted); and for that matter, it's rare that I meet just 1 person in the SAC for lunch, and even then sooner or later someone will come along and join (not that this is a bad thing; it's just that when you want privacy, the SAC is not the place). Admittedly, I was a bit concerned that the arrangement might be somewhat inconvenient (he has to change train), but he said that if it's to meet a person it's ok, so I guess it should be fine.

analog data refers to data incoming in a continuous stream, typically of a sinusoidal nature. it is often found when measuring realworld phenomena such as temperature, light intensity, sounds, etcetera. conversely digital data refers to data separatable into discrete units. since computers work on a binary-based system, they necessarily can only store discrete units of data. hence analog data must be converted via an A-D converter before being stored and processed by a computer.

realworld phenomena includes life?

*sigh*
keep mugging jk, you can still finish mugging all subjects...

Experience Wash

2008-06-10T10:51:00.002+08:00

The second hand has made one full turn, and I'm sitting back at the same position I was approximately 60 seconds ago.

Yet things aren't the same.

Compare sec 4 holidays - a time which I actually found rather relaxing, both in March and June.

Year 5 holidays are effectively nonholidays.
March was filled with BB stuff. Busy, admittedly enjoyable but not really relaxing...
June. Math Olympiad --> World Scholar's Cup --> IOP Essay Prep --> Comp Sci IA --> IOP Prep --> Primers' Standby --> Exam Prep...

I enjoy my activities and it was my choice to have these so I know I shouldn't be complaining... but I need some time to get away from things.

Conversations on the Frontier

2008-06-05T15:43:00.002+08:00

World Scholar's Cup was a very mixed experience; for the competition itself I performed rather poorly, the only real notable achievement being a second place in Mathematics. After the competition, the trip was, on the whole, reasonably enjoyable; though there were certain... issues that somewhat disrupted my enjoyment of the trip.

Having said that, I wonder why I originally signed up for World Scholar's Cup in the first place, and the rather strange journey I took to reach the World Finals. I can see several reasons why I signed up - I figured I should be able to win something, I went with my friends (not as valid as it would have been with the original team I had), I am interested in some of the material (well, History and Lit were interesting)...

A statement I remember making when asked if I would participate in the World Scholar's Cup next year was "It was a good experience, but I'm not going to put myself through that mental torture again." No doubt the Scholar's Cup was enriching in many ways, both on the frontiers of academia as well as relationships - but it was also a form of mental torture as I had to study till 2 am every day for the week preceding Regionals. (I only studied a bit for Worlds, but it was strenuous enough)

Next year's theme is "The Fall of Empires" which seems somewhat biased towards the Humanities subjects, unlike "The Frontier" which is, admittedly, quite an intelligent choice of topic for a multidisciplinary academic competition. It's possible to select a novel and appropriate poetry (Epilogue to Death of a Hero from our Lit guide book is possible), and I guess History and Economics would come in useful. Mathematics would probably just be there cause it needs to be examined in interdisciplinary competitions... and Science? Defense Science? I don't know...

Mr Andrew Wong asked me about coaching the Math section for World Scholar's Cup next year if there are any teams that wish to participate. I guess I'll take it on if I have enough time.

jk

uncut

2008-05-26T17:20:00.005+08:00

2 more 10 footers on SM down (I dunno. I may or may not have passed them before) - both ITG songs. Fleadh Uncut EX and My Favourite Game EX (both long streams at relatively low speed). I should go do Paranoia Survivor and Paranoia Survivor Max Heavy soon - similar stuff, except with crossover runs at the end. I wonder if I can still do MAX300...

This screenshot is for Jonny -

---

SIMC was tough. The math modelling problems were quite insane. On-site was a 2d restricted packing problem, aka berth allocation problem. It's like packing rectangles into a space defined by linear berth location and time, but some rectangles are only available after a certain period of time...

Now mugging Scholar's Cup. Not much to say...

jk.

lack of understanding

2008-05-15T22:16:00.003+08:00

markov chains
0 order approximation
nondeterministic polynomial time function
random tree modelling
F(x,y) = F(y,z) + F(x,z) + 2z

grr..

i once said i'm not typically stressed by mental issues. so much for that.

---

on a happier note, thanks to 3 of my close friends whom i spoke to today. thanks for your concern. yeah i will slow down after all of this. i know this lifestyle is way too busy for me to comfortably handle. it's going crazy.

jk.

two blades

2008-05-11T17:16:00.003+08:00

you know there was once you said something to me.
something based around the words i said.
and then i didn't know how much my words impacted you.

now as we meet to talk again
i caught a hint from the tone of expression --
do you know how much your words impacted me?

i'm just feeling there's something wrong about all of this.

jk.

breaking point.

2008-05-04T01:17:00.003+08:00

We bow our hearts, we bend our knees
O Spirit come make us humble
We turn our eyes, from evil things
O Lord we cast out our idols

So give us clean hands, give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts
Let us not lift our souls to another

O God let us be, a generation that seeks
That seeks Your face, O God of Jacob

---

Primer's Retreat was an experience that I would describe as meaningful. I originally thought of the retreat as something to be enjoyed - in the end, I guess it turned out to be something largely to reflect on.

I spoke to Mr Chow about several things about abstract algebra. Essentially, he gave me a refresher on the Schaum's Outline on Modern Abstract Algebra that I read (or rather TRIED to read) through last year. After discussing a few simple questions, I'm starting to remember all the strange terms - 'ring', 'field', 'equivalence class' etc.

For me, the highlight - in fact the main part - of the entire Retreat was the Bible Study / Worship session on Friday night.

Sir spoke on humility and servant-leadership, following which some of the Primers commented, spoke and prayed about several things. What struck me the most was about doing the wrong things in relationships, and seeking forgiveness for them.

Lost in thought about a variety of issues, I was completely lost for words after the session, and stared at the floor of the then quiet and nearly empty Primer's Room while thinking through things after many people cleared out. I have to thank all of the people who checked on me, ensuring I was OK, for talking with me for "a while" (from 5 mins to almost 1 hour). Honestly, I appreciate all of it, even if it was short.

It was a... surreal, slightly disturbing yet eventually beautiful experience.

jk

evening star

2008-04-28T20:14:00.004+08:00

two tests over the past week. one went reasonably well (physics), the other didn't (econs). i seriously think i am going to fail econs test. i got a definition incomplete (1 mark gone i think), and also couldn't answer the evaluation thingy (8 marks) properly. hopefully for physics i can actually pull out something decent, like maybe 34 or 35 of 40.

and for econs, mr dumortier is no longer teaching our sl3 class. because of one of the year 6 teachers leaving, he supposedly has to focus on helping out the year 6s. it's quite sad... he was really one of the best teachers i've ever had, actually; has very deep understanding of his concepts (including stuff outside syllabus), teaches quickly and effectively. in any case he left what i can say is an impression on me. a very positive one. :(

---

i need to seriously discipline myself more. have to light the fire within myself to actually be more proactive in my work and studies. cause right now how it feels is like i'm somewhat hanging on, barely. essentially, i'm just clearing out what needs to be done in the short term it seems i.e. 得过且过 and that is very. very. bad. i haven't done up my english a1 file, my chinese b file, CAS documentation, EE proposal... the list goes on. also i haven't been managing my work and assignments properly. although this one shares many similarities with last year. instead of filing stuff nicely into files, i have one general file (which is OK) and another home general file which consists of random bits of old work that i haven't bothered to file into the appropriate files, yet is so old that leaving it in my bag only adds to the mass already in it.

i talked to a close friend on the phone recently. and he said that himself and another mugger/friend used to represent 2 extremes - the one who gets by on virtue of effort and the other by virtue of his intellect. and i'm at neither extreme - according to him, in the middle. interestingly i find that im sliding (can't say backsliding) towards trying to get by with less effort. that need not be a bad thing, but if i push it too far, which i may or may not be doing now which is making me somewhat concerned, the consequences can and are likely to be quite bad.

cause honestly i know that my academic successes in the past are not based on raw talent alone. there was an element of effort that played somewhat of a big role as well, especially for subjects like geography and chemistry.

maybe my new subject combination has shifted me towards being a more slack person. in secondary school, the subjects which i didn't really focus very much on were actually math, physics and computer science. which are my three HLs now. the subjects which i used to invest quite a bit of effort in - chemistry, geography, language arts - now i take just one of them at standard level. so perhaps its subjects that is making me slacker. or its just that my schedule this year is more demanding than last year. so i need to conserve more power and slack more.

but really its probably just a lack of personal discipline. a problem that i need to overcome. rationalising it in the way ive done in the preceding bunch of paragraphs is somewhat like being like a bad worker blaming the tools that he is given.

in an academic context, its hard to imagine that time is flowing at this speed. it's already term 2 week 7. three more weeks and we have a 4 week pseudobreak which actually implies math competitions + mugging + more homework + EE preparation + CAS documentation + possibly i might go back to acsj for juniors camp (honestly i want to. but i dont know if time allows) + whatever other weird stuff... and then we have exams. which is a primary factor in contributing to why its a pseudobreak and not a break.

at this rate i will get by. i think. but not properly. where were the close-to-100 marks that used to characterise my math and science subjects? you can argue that its because its year 5. but seems not. people are still getting these kinds of marks, and i know that with enough effort and tenacity i should be able to get those marks again. with enough effort and tenacity.

quite a number of high expectations have been placed on me and sometimes it's just irritating to have to deal with them. a few people in my class offered me a bet: for my EE, if i get A then i treat them to drinks, else they dye their hair green. and there are people saying that i should be a future 45 pointer and all. which honestly i don't think i'll achieve because of lang arts. 43, 44 maybe. but no 45. of course i'll do my best. but i seriously think 45 is unlikely.

---

which makes me think. to me problems are very strange things. i don't want to face them yet sometimes i like them. because problems bring about a sense of familiarity and security in the sense that im used to facing streams of problems.

also i have some... spiritual problems. won't talk explicitly more about this here.

there's been a song that i've listened to a couple of times this week and i'm quite sure you've heard it before - "give us clean hands". that's something i want to have really. to have clean hands and a pure heart, essentially focusing on God, doing the right things, having the right thoughts and intentions. how difficult... especially in the pursuit of so many things in our daily lives, sometimes i really wonder if i'm "not lifting my soul to another" in a subconscious sense. getting caught up in things i guess.

it's based off these verses which i think i should share...
"[3] Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?
[4] He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol, or swear by what is false."
(Psalm 24:3-4)

this is something i'll hopefully be able to learn how to have as time passes on.

jk

wednesdays.

2008-04-23T23:14:00.003+08:00

I'm not particularly looking forward to my schedule on Wednesdays from now on, it seems.

0730 - 1440 School
[the problem is, on week B, this ends with 8 periods of Maths. Week A is better, but there will always be the looming task of a physics IA.]

1500 - 1700 Physics Olympiad Training
[total brain damage. form radial equations for the motion of snails! rawr]

1930 - 2130 Chinese Tuition
[i guess it's ok. but, especially on week Bs like today, my brain is totally fried.]

2150ish Call
[this is about just when i reach home! nice yes, but we're usually both tired out.]

---

Mock IOP is over. I guess I could have done better. My marks are fine, quite good I thought especially for such a rushed presentation, but leave something to be desired still. Highest in class (so far), tied with Carren, so I guess I can't complain too much. It's 4-7-8-4-23 (out of 30). Looks like I have to work on criterion B (duh), trying to push that to an 8 first. THEN go for the extreme band marks. To quote Mr Brian Ng when I asked him how a 23 is - "It's decent, but for your standard it's not good enough. You should be aiming for about, maybe, 27." Scary stuff.

I have to agree with this in part - at least to the extent that different people should set different targets for themselves, and respond differently to the same marks.

Firstly, to quote a friend of mine, "I got a 59 (out of 60, for a Math test). It sucks." To some of us, him included, given the difficulty of the test paper and the like, I think we would easily expect 60s, hence making us disappointed with a 59 (largely because the reasons for the loss of 1 mark are careless in nature). Yet, I'm sure that there would be many people who would be more than willing to take a 59, and receive it with joy.

Another example can be found on an acquaintance's blog - "only getting a MEASLY 22/30 (for IOP) which was pretty disappointing for me." Bearing in mind that Adwyn did mention that he was considering an English EE on his blog, I would guess that it's reasonable for him to think that 22 would be bad - especially in this case, quite a few people would be disappointed with a 22 - more so than the Math Test case. Then again, I don't think I'd be too unhappy with a 22, though I wouldn't be satisfied either...

But yep. I agree that different people should set different targets for themselves, and respond differently to the same marks.

---

The LKY interview yesterday was surprisingly relaxed. I talked much and was queried much about World Scholar's Cup, the merits of the IB programme, and computer studies. Interestingly, they asked me about the NUS Singapore International Math Challenge, a mathematics competition in which one section is mathematical modelling! (IB IA-style, except much crazier, from what I see)

Not too much to say, other than I had to wait quite a bit. I was 2nd after the tea break though. Hopefully that was a good thing...

---

Many thoughts on my mind right now, and my brain is quite fried too.

jk.

when the tears fall.

2008-04-20T23:53:00.004+08:00

today, i got somewhat angry with someone over the phone.

usually, when people (including myself) get angry with people, typically there is some kind of a reason. it can be what i think is a reasonable reason (e.g. the person stole something from you), an unreasonable reason (e.g. i don't like his face) and, of course, there are countless possibilities between the two extrema.

now. here lies the problem. i got angry with the person over what i believed to be an irresponsibility on his part, and as far as that is concerned i believe that my "scolding" was justified, for two reasons - firstly, because it was an attempt to reduce the incidence of such things, and secondly, because i felt i would feel better opening up than not doing so. i know that when i become angry i have a habit of taking a 'just whack' attitude, which can be very dangerous. consequently, i also knew that i had to temper my anger somewhat because it rarely happens, with this person in particular, and also because he is a reasonably good friend to me, and a single incident like this is not worth staking and/or losing a friendship for.

so as far as the scolding is concerned i think things are ok, and yeah. its pretty much settled.

but. another question arises out of this.

i know ive probably expressed this emotion somewhere or another, here or in normal conversation or in writing elsewhere. but is it right for one to admonish, to scold another if one himself is guilty of the same flaw? to inform i think is ok. but to scold?

naturally this makes me think of the Bible - if one has a plank in his own eye, he should not comment with regards to the speck of sawdust in another's eye. so for the example used above, the 'flaw' is irresponsibility. am i responsible? probably not very. somewhat. but not very.

then again, how do we draw the boundary lines? do we base it on what others do? (appeal to common practice?!) or on what we feel is right? or what?

---

econs video finals was over. yeah and expected my team got 6th. the 2.5 hours of effort or so that we put in is probably way less than the other groups (notably Louis's donuts and the Survivor one) and our group just cleared it as 'another piece of homework'... oh well. the other videos were good though. inflation in zimbabwe was good; donuts was good; big store vs small stores, the winning one, i felt wasn't as strong in editing and postprocessing, but had good actors and a nice concept. organic food was a reasonably good topic, and survivor was... interesting, if anything. $8 does have its uses i guess.

for the quiz got tied 1st though. yays! reminded me of world scholar's cup. oh the adrenaline rush of answering MCQ in short time limits. and got a lot of toblerone which i guess i'll be bringing around and sharing over the course of monday.

bingei and luke sang a song on economics. and they were good, especially luke. my congrats go out to them, both for skill as well as for daring to take on this kind of task. seriously singing r&b songs on economics is... a bit weird.

---

this is a beautiful song i've found over the weekend. i think it is quite applicable to me, as well as to many other Christians out there...

I've had questions without answers
I've known sorrow, I have known pain
But there's one thing that I cling to
You are faithful, Jesus You're true

When hope is lost, I call You Saviour
When pain surrounds, I call You Healer
When silence falls, You'll be the song within my heart

In the lone hour of my sorrow
Through the darkest night of my soul
You surround me, You sustain me
My defender for ever more

When hope is lost, I call You Saviour
When pain surrounds, I call You Healer
When silence falls, You'll be the song within my heart

And I will praise You, I will praise You
When the tears fall, still I will sing to You
I will praise You, Jesus praise You
Through the suffering, still I will sing to You

When hope is lost, I call You Saviour
When pain surrounds, I call You Healer
When silence falls, You'll be the song within my heart

I will praise You, I will praise You
When the tears fall, still I will sing to you
I will praise You, Jesus I will praise You
Through the suffering, still I will sing to you

When the laughter fails to comfort
When my heart aches, Lord You'll be there
When confusion is all around me
And the darkness is my closest friend
Still I'll praise You
Jesus, I'll praise You.
- "When the Tears Fall", Tim Hughes.

jk.

irresponsibility.

2008-04-15T03:25:00.004+08:00

crap. this is the first time something like this has happened for me.

when i reached home at about 6-ish, i slept at 7.30 pm figuring I'd get up at possibly 9 or 10 to do some work before sleeping by 12.

i guess the time of this post should tell you something.

im somewhat sick still, and apparently, as i found out yesterday morning, im not the only one. sometimes i wonder if both him and myself are overworking ourselves. then again, there are people who work harder that me that don't seem to be very much affected by this problem.

some people just seem to have stronger immune systems, i guess...

grr. i know i need to do some work yet i'm not doing it. right now my brain is not functioning properly and i just want to go back to sleep. which is not good.

still somehow despite becoming more of a slacker this year, ive come somewhat to accept this demanding yet enjoyable schedule that i have. basically my schedule "ends" at a different time each day. usually its the time when i first come home. but not always.

mon - 6
tues - 5.30
wed - 9.45
thurs - 7.45
fri - 10.30
sat - 3 or 8 (BB activities after parade? EG MCYC)
sun - 3.

ok. now. back to studying comp science and preparing for EE meeting on friday...

jk

when silence falls

2008-04-13T23:21:00.003+08:00

Enrolment yesterday was a decent experience, though now I'm somewhat sick possibly because of marching/practicing in somewhat wet conditions.

I managed to meet several people I wouldn't ordinarily meet - two Officers who were my seniors when I was in sec 1, whom I haven't seen for quite a while; several of the boys I trained in Juniors last year (both the P6 --> S1s as well as those still in primary school) who, for some reason, can still recognise me. They also asked about Bingei - in fact, one of them wanted to look for him. It was quite sad that I had to disappoint him with the answer that he wasn't at the Service. I also managed to talk to Mr Wong (the Juniors captain) for a while, who apparently hasn't got his replacement Junior NCOs yet.

The parade went OK though I think I may have made one or two random mistakes with my hands slipping when standing senang diri. Service was a good experience though, with many "traditional" (?) BB songs, as well as the Company Theme Song. Also, about 20 of us or so got the Long Service Badge plus about 7 Barker boys (the original size was "35, congruent to 11 modulo 12" but not everyone came).

Sadly I couldn't join the people going to Island Creamery after the parade. Had to rush off...

---

now im starting to wonder if what happened was really the best course of action. i was so happy about it then. i didnt know it'd cause so many problems.

still, that situation, and the present one, are both under God's control. i guess i need to learn to persevere and trust Him.

sometimes i wonder if it really should have happened or not. it seems good on the level of resume and achievement. yet if it tears us apart as friends, i'd rather it not happen.

jk.

a song

2008-04-08T00:44:00.002+08:00

chapel today was in its own way beautiful.

i've blogged about "still" before, which we sang today and was really nice. but for me the song that struck me with the strongest impression was actually the simplest one i'd think.

the last verse of the song made me think. really.

I love Jesus; does He know?
Have I ever told Him so?
Jesus wants to hear me say;
That I love Jesus everyday.

of course He knows it, if we do love Him. but i think He wants us to proclaim it.

jk.

hands and spirits.

2008-04-02T22:09:00.002+08:00

had a rather short yet thought-stimulating conversation with a friend today.

what do you do in a situation where you want to help but you know that you can't?

what do you do when you know you can't stay much longer yet you also know the other person may for one reason or another need your assistance?

jk.

fatigued

2008-04-01T20:26:00.003+08:00

Displacement
Pushing downwards, against my inclination
Yet this is the course of action I've chosen to take;
Paths few have trod, trails few have walked -
In my eyes, they're there to take.

Some transverse standing waves form;
I know my efforts aren't going to waste.
Consequently, I keep going and going -
Forming more and more waves.

Finally, I stopped to take a break;
As magnified waves appeared and disappeared.
The weather was really too hot that day -
I wonder how through things I persevered.

The waves came back, reflected off somewhere.
The cool water splashed over me -
I felt a sense of relief,
Satisfied to some high degree.

But yet, I noticed, looking far in advance,
It wouldn't always be so.
For I could see the clouds above,
Beginning to merge and grow.

The rain fell much like bullets,
As the waves continued their motion.
Swirling, pushing,
Blazing a path devoid of emotion.

I knew that earlier I'd crossed the line;
Pushed and pushing too hard -
Yet "pain is weakness leaving the body".
I'll keep pushing, no matter how I'm scarred.
In conclusion to all of this,
I took this path expecting nothing but the least -
Yet, in it, found bliss.

today during physics i thought of a very strange metaphor for myself. yet i found it interesting.

we were studying interference patterns using a ripple tank. so i wondered. am i a dipper in a small ripple tank? the rationale for small is that the waves reflect back on me. in some ways it can be good that this happens (who would want to have their efforts totally unrecognised) but also bad in several ways (stress, headaches, etc). i want to push myself very hard even though i know that inside i want to slack as well. now that im somewhat feeling the pain of pushing (the reflected waves all coming back), i still find that pushing myself has become normal, a way of life that im starting to learn to somewhat appreciate.

i think that explains the poem above.

tired out.

my head hurts.

jk.

time slipstream

2008-03-27T23:06:00.003+08:00

There are several periods on the school timetable marked as "Break". The choice of word is rather unusual... I think "Recess" is a better term; because I spend 70% of my breaks doing work. The remaining 30% is spent eating or having a private meeting with friend(s) [typically 1] so... perhaps "Break" isn't quite the best word to use.

I talked to a relatively close friend on the phone today, a Scholar's Cup competition mate, and suddenly my brain felt better for seemingly no reason at all. It's still tired (thats what one week of mugging close to 800 pages of content and sleeping at 2-3 am does to you) but its better.

Academics are getting somewhat shaky because a lot of my scores are very borderline. I like the concept of borders in general, but its difficult to appreciate it sometimes when it presents a danger to you. And of course, I want 45 points (who doesn't?) so that places a great deal more pressure...

Despite all my complaints about mental headaches, I can say that the experience of World Scholar's Cup, despite bringing about such mental "anguish" (?) was more than worth it. Other than giving me a sense of satisfaction for my effort as well as getting to know my teammates Shaun and Timothy better, it was also, I believe, to some extent a display of God's control.

I was somewhat concerned about the debate section, though I breathed somewhat easier when I saw the rubrics (style 20, organisation 20, content 50) that we would be assessed on. Looking at the teams and resolutions, I was pretty confident of winning round 1, but not round 2. Still, it wasn't the debates specifically, but really many other things that just fell into place. The prayers we said before and after the debates, the Scholar's Quiz and the award ceremony were really answered.

As I've said before, I really never expected to win the Scholar's Cup team or individual prizes. I figured at the start of the competition that my team was lucky if we scraped a pass through to the World Finals - and, by God's grace, we did more than that. God has really showered my team and I with blessings for this Scholar's Cup, and I know that when the World Finals rolls about we will really do our best to glorify God through the competition.

The products of 2 days of last-minute mugging (especially last day):

Overall Team Champions
Overall Individual Champion
Sub-Team Champion (ie guy with highest score within the team)
Scholar's Challenge (MCQ Exam) Team 1st Place
Scholar's Quiz (MCQ... Quiz?): Team 1st Place
Debate: Team 2nd Place
Literature: 3rd place
Mathematics: 3rd place

repressed.

2008-03-26T23:26:00.002+08:00

im tired and still recovering from scholars cup.

half finished poem on scholars cup; half finished ldc programmes, half finished written commentary.

this week hopefully can be a break for me. cause my brain is really dazed. even now.

leaving everything hanging off like this

jk

we were the reason.

2008-03-23T11:55:00.003+08:00

As little children we would dream of Christmas morn
Of all the gifts and toys we knew we’d find
But we never realized a baby born one blessed night
Gave us the greatest gift of our lives

We were the reason that He gave His life
We were the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live

As the years went by we learned more about gifts
The giving of ourselves and what that means
On a dark and cloudy day a man hung crying in the rain
All because of love
All because of love

We were the reason that He gave His life
We were the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live

I finally found the reason for living
It’s in giving every part of my heart to Him (every part to Him)
And all that I do every word that I say (you know I’ll be saying)
I’ll be giving my all just for Him, for Him (every thing for Him)

We are the reason that He gave His life
We are the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live.
-- We Were the Reason, Avalon

Two main things for this post - Easter, and the Scholar's Cup...

Salvation in Jesus Christ is one thing I am quite amazed at, partly because we live in a world where hardly any "deals" as good as that are offered... Technically, I'm not sure but if I'm not mistaken, the atonement for our sins happened on Good Friday (we usually say Jesus died for our sins, not Jesus rose from the dead for our sins); Easter was to show that Jesus was truly God and had conquered death. I'm somewhat confused on this, still...

God really gave us all that He could give us, with regards to sin and salvation. In our world, if we commit crimes / offences, we (usually) have to pay for them in one way or another...

With regard to Scholar's Cup, what happened was truly amazing. I never expected to win like 7 prizes, including overall best individual and overall best team. I really didn't expect to do so well but I guess my "all-round" strategy paid off somewhat as I pushed through almost 800 pages of notes over the past 3 days.

I need to thank the following people for the Scholar's Cup success:

of course, Shaun Ong and Tim Liang, my team-mates who studied, mugged and debated with me;
the main competitors for me - Shaun Lee, Jarrel Seah, Jonathan Tan; as well as, indirectly, Levin Tan and Adwyn Chong, for making me push myself quite hard for this competition...
Mr Andrew Wong for hosting this entire thing and having some confidence in me...
Daniel Yee for understanding my reasons for changing teams;
Russell Chan for understanding my reasons for changing teams as well as for wishing me luck before the competition this morning;
Kevin Wong for helping out with the organization, as well as the rest of the helpers,
the Organisers for making a successful albeit late competition;
and lastly, God; for without Him none of all the achievements we made would have been possible.

The Depended and The Dependent

2008-03-20T23:52:00.003+08:00

Life often brings about lots of ambiguities, which often make me uncertain...

Over the past 2 days, I'd had 2 rather "tough" conversations with 2 close friends on a certain variety of issues. In one of them, I could consider myself the listener, the depended; listening to the other as he talked his perspective with regard to several things, mainly personal value out; yet, in the other, I was the talker, the complainer - essentially, the dependent, as I tried to search for some kind of security or support to grasp on to from the uncertainties of life - seeking a friend's perspective on myself both on a general as well as on a focused basis - as a friend, and as a Primer.

I think I'll end here. I don't want to go into too personal details, this being a public space and all. I wonder though - though I'm willing to listen to the stresses and complaints of friends, how much of this stress do I end up passing back to my friends (as a collective group)?

I've got to be thankful I have friends who don't mind listening to me even when I can be somewhat irrational at times. Interestingly, I am fine with listening to emo thoughts and rants. I've got to thank the 2 people whom I had the conversations with - they were somewhat "searching" experiences for me that have probably helped me along. Thanks! =)

"A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother."
Proverbs 18:24 (thanks, Russell, for pointing this out!)

So basically, choose your close friends carefully - for they can, and will, have a large impact on your life. Having loads of acquaintances is well and fine I think - good for networking purposes - but ultimately, don't be so caught up in networking that you neglect to develop several stronger relationships.

jk.

silence

2008-03-17T18:15:00.007+08:00

today after my chinese oral, which went ok-reasonably-well (ziyang is pro at bsing in chinese), i decided to walk along the bridge. so i asked laoshi to let me use the toilet, and went for a walk.

while i was walking on the bridge, a certain thought hit me that eventually manifested into a question that i raised at the council forum this afternoon. of course, it wasn't in that form at that point.

it was merely - how does one define friendship, and/or love?

direct definition of this kind of concept is extremely difficult. so i figured i'd try to establish some
ideas of factors that could point towards friendship.

i thought, and i scribbled in probably very bad handwriting on the exam pad that i was carrying:

1. commitment
2. responsibility
3. chemistry
4. bonding
5. respect

for me i know that i am a stickler for (1) and (2), especially (2). (5) is somewhat important for me as well... but technically i do know that eventually all will be necessary. in fact initially (3) and (4) are quite important, i'd find.

most of my friends are found through work - if i can call them friends, that is. if we define it based on the five criteria above, i'd find it hard to give a number of friends bigger than 5 or so. perhaps the 5 criteria are better for describing a close friend rather than just a friend.

so most of my friends are found through work. partly i've been lucky cause of who i've been getting to sit with in my classes (year 2 was henry, 3 and 4 isaac and russell, and this year, i like who i'm sitting with for physics, and sometimes math). starting from work, and then going into other areas.

but when i think of my friends and compare them with these 5 criteria i end up disappointing myself even though i know that probably only those who are close friends can actually fulfill all 5 of those requirements i wrote up on.

i won't go into love since i didn't really examine it properly.

anyway. now to the council forum. the question i asked was something like this:

"I have noticed that in quite a number of the campaigns people have argued for "love", "care", a personal touch or "friendship". I believe these are four very idealistic concepts. Given the large size of the student body, your resources won't be enough to allow a personal consideration for each and every student, which undermines the personal aspect of these 4 concepts. I know this is a hard question, but I think I'll just whack. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valour - how can I place my vote for a councilor if I can't trust that he won't blindly make promises he can't deliver on?"

a mouthful. admittedly it is a tough question. if asked this i won't know how to answer. then again, i don't think i'd be in this situation so much since if i was running for council i would focus more on service rather than personal touch.

the thought of running crossed my mind at one point, actually because isaac suggested that i run. but i knew there probably wasn't much point in running, cause there isn't much i can advertise about myself, other than that i can provide a reasonably serious voice in the council...

the highlight wasn't this or jarrel's question though, i think it was the last question really, or rather the last answer. it was, in its own awkward way, beautiful. ownage.

today during comp science i was really quite drained out. i don't know why, but it was the first time this year i've been having trouble with Java. i guess i might have been too sleepy this morning... i don't know.

ps. shaun, i miss your presence in class too. =)
jk

Sparks and Fires

2008-03-12T19:19:00.004+08:00

It only takes a spark, to get a fire going;
And soon all those around, can warm up in its glowing,
That's how it is with God's love - once you've experienced it
You'll spread His love, to everyone
You'll want to pass it on...

Three main things over the past few days - Primers' Challenge, Leadership and Management Programme (LAMP) and the YDSP Science Congress. I'll mainly be talking about Primers' Challenge for tonight.

Primers' Challenge was really one of the best camps I ever went for and far exceeded my expectations. In terms of company, other than most of the 12(I) BB Boys (Shaun Lee didn't go...), I also enjoyed the company of the other Primers to quite a large extent. I managed to catch up with some friends I haven't quite had the time to talk to, like Juzzie, strengthened some of my bonds with the other Primers, notably Yi Wei and to some extent Sam Chan and Jonas, and of course found time to talk to my closer friends as well (for this trip, Russell and Hui Jun, arguably Tim Liang and Shaun Ong as well, though to a lesser extent).

Perhaps I'll do some kind of organised re-write on this.

Day 1
Lots of time spent on transportation, and perhaps playing Munchkin, Bridge or other card games on the bus. I got put in charge of the pretty nice dorm and was the key-bearer. After quite a lot of free-time, during which I witnessed the AQ people playing Texas Hold-em for push-ups, we had dinner and then set off for the Night Walk.

Night Walk was ok... a bit scary at times but quite beautiful in an abstract way. We came back and then I did a bit of follow-up with Russell with regards to the meeting we had the day before, then we had a short photo session that descended into a camwhoring session (actually, there were only 3 proper non-camwhore photos) followed by more card games and then sleep.

Day 2
The air conditioning was way too cold and I got up at 0430h. Of course there was no one out there at that time, so I did my reflections and QT after which it was about 0600. I went back to the room and started doing more writing... until suddenly I got shocked by Sam Chan asking what I was doing (it was 0645).

With regards to the activities, they were generally OK. Tent-pitching went fine, though I couldn't remember very much about how to pitch the dome tent other than assembling the poles and sticking them through the holes, and then lifting it up and sticking the ends of the poles into the ground. The cave was ok though I got rather dirty, and then we went for lunch and the 4-wheel drive.

The 4-wheel drive was one of the best parts of the camp for me - more particularly, the second run through. During the first run, I sat most of the way, however I decided to stand up for the second run for reasons I know not. Anyway, it was fun dodging the plants in the way, even when the rain became really hard, much like needles. Fortunately for me, Yi Wei was standing and dodging stuff with me, so I guess I wasn't too lonely.

The waterfall was quite nice even though the water was very cold. After taking some photos I decided to do some swimming and I guess it was fine. Not too much to say.

The second night was spent doing some preparation for the Night Special, which was to be a skit-musical of 7 minutes. It went fine. Debrief was quite interesting as I found out that I wasn't the only one making comparisons between philosophical and TOK-type ideas and the events we went through. Following that, we had to sleep early cause the next day's activities were going to be rough. At that point, I hardly knew that it wouldn't just be the official activities that were rough...

Day 3
For some reason, I kept getting up early during the Primers' Challenge. I got up at 0530 this morning, before my alarm even went off. I wasn't the only one awake - I met 1 guy in the toilet while washing up, and bumped into Russell on my way out (this was still before 6).

Playing bridge at 20 pushups per hand was asking for trouble, I think; though it worked out fine since I won all 3 hands that I played. Tai-ti at 4 pushups per card was a bad idea though since I'm generally weaker at Tai-ti than Bridge. I also remember playing Texas for push-ups as well and there was one crazy hand where we raised to 17 (we agreed on a limit of 20 per hand). I can't remember what Marc Lai had, but Bryan had a pair of Aces and I had three 10s. Suddenly Jonas flipped over his cards to reveal a flush - not something I expected, though I suspected the possibility. I only did about 25 or so for the entire session though.

White-water rafting. It was... quite ok. I guess there wasn't much "new", though it was my first time handling a 1-bladed paddle. The confidence test was relatively fun though I don't know why I was one of the first few to go for it.

Following that, paintball was ok though my group didn't have much of a strategy. I merely camped the whole way through both rounds, eventually getting shot close to the end of each round. Pretty uneventful.

The cooking "competition" was quite enjoyable though I found that I couldn't do much other than come up with weird ideas for dish names. The campfire, Night Special and final debrief was, as usual, pretty good, if a bit tiring. Xi Min's group's parody of Purple Light for the Primers' Challenge was really well done, I'd think. I was quite surprised that my group and group C (Xi Min's, Russell's and Yi Wei's) got joint top group based on the cooking and skit...

After the Night Special, I decided that I had to settle something pretty... painful with a close friend of mine. I guess I'll just leave it at that. Thanks a lot for listening. You know who you are.

Day 4
Pack up, no need to strike tents, leave. There really isn't too much for me to say with regards to Day 4. We did visit a Peanut Factory, though, at which I bought 2 packets of peanuts, and a mall at which I went to walk around, have lunch and shop with Tim Liang. Little to say, really...

I wrote some of this poem during the Primers' Challenge but decided that I'd finish it when I came home... so here's the completed version.

A Primer's Challenge
Taking this road today is by no means the easiest path.
I choose to take it now anyway, not because I need to.
It's not a blind choice, I know I can handle it.

I could just as well have waited -
for the water to fade to Level 1.
Then jumped in the raft and smoothly paddled -
To my destination, till my journey was done.

Past the river, I knew it'd be worse, though not by how much;
Rain like needles and bullets blew freely.
I did know one other thing though -
Driving through the forest that day wouldn't be easy.

For it wouldn't be simply in a protective shell -
I'd be voluntarily exposed. Open to fire;
From the plants left and right -
So why go now? Why walk this wire?

I could argue challenge - the desire to perform,
To achieve, to see our barriers undermined -
Yet what separates complete, plain blind stupidity
From making a decision that's not so blind?

Personally I believe it's resources -
In particular, relationships, making all the difference.
Looking both laterally and vertically,
I know it's these making that difference -

The last push that we sometimes all need,
Approaching our task, as Brothers and Friends;
Yet this alone can't always carry us through -
For the rest, on our God we depend.

More about LAMP when it properly ends, and YDSP tomorrow.

I wish for you my friend, this happiness that I've found
You can depend on Him, it matters not where you're bound
I'll shout it from the mountaintop, I want the world to know
The Lord of love has come to me,
I want to pass it on.

jk

sunset horizon

2008-03-06T22:34:00.004+08:00

end of term 1.
pretty tough term for me, but hopefully things will ease up soon.
many things tested this term for me.

academics wise i guess i did ok. im happy about my tok essay. and im quite satisfied with my chinese b 85. though i can't say the same for my other subjects...

relationship wise was really messy but i'm happy that most of the stuff worked out in the end.

spiritual wise was also tough, and i guess i still have some difficulties but things are starting to look up...

must thank the following people. really grateful for all your help...
* disclaimer - this is a thanks post. i know some ppl aren't interested in this kind of stuff*

isaac for being there for me so much and being willing to listen to my rants at times, also helping me to check my logic and ideas i throw forth in each argument. i know i can produce really long and shaky logical arguments so thanks for tolerating all of my stuff at times. i know, it can be hard. but thanks. seriously.

russell for the weekly meetings, and for caring for my welfare at quite a few points in time this term. as i said its not easy for me to share, so thanks alot for listening even though i know you have a tough schedule yourself and all. as i said today the meetings might be short but they still give us chances to share our thoughts and feelings with regards to life. i also have to thank you for encouraging me in faith periodically. thanks! =)

shaun lee for being willing to stay up with me to suffer last-minute work together (policy paper), and being so willing to help with a lot of things for awards comm in BB. shaun ong for being cooperative with regards to world scholars' cup. tim liang for discussing many sociological theories and concepts with me as well as pushing world scholars' cup. daniel for... reassuring me of several things? a bit hard to say but i know i have to thank you. louis for being a reasonably good friend and watching out for me. hui jun for meeting me on several on the mornings as well as emoing with me quite a bit. sam chan for walking round the corridor with me and providing a seemingly mature perspective on things. ivan for providing a mature, Christ-centered perspective on things quite often. thanks for inviting me to the prayer group! :) henry for being a good friend and showing quite alot of confidence in me, as well as being willing to meet and talk during breaks to angst somewhat.

and i'll end off here. if i missed anyone i'm sorry. but know that i appreciated what you did for me.

jk.

failings

2008-03-04T23:31:00.004+08:00

another angsty rant. short cause i'm tired.

tim liang said i'm a stalien (sp?) bond-maker in that i form a small circle of close friends and then consider many other people as just friends. yeah i guess so. but 'close friends'? how many can i even say i have? 0? 1? 3? who knows.

we discussed this in the primer room, and then we came up with an axis something like this:

--S----E----C----R--
--a--b-cd---------e--

where i am at a, tim liang's crush(?) is at b, shaun lee is at c, liang himself is at d.

yet sometimes i just feel lonely. loneliness can be both beautiful and sad i find. like dark chocolate. bitter, yet sometimes in its own way sweet. that i guess is one way in which i can consider a possible downfall of a person who sticks only to a few close friends - as much as they and you try, they can't be there for you always. furthermore i'm really not comfortable with sharing serious issues (relationships, emotional and/or spiritual) with people whom i don't consider close friends. so if they aren't there i bottle it up. then sadly what happens is the charged waste material ends up being thrown on someone. which i feel bad for, then i become guilty. which means more material...

im like a machine running out of battery and not getting much supplement. this calculator has been doing 7-by-1 multiplication, is trying out 7-by-2 and nCrs and is going to fall out soon. there are people whom i'd have to thank but then it'll feel empty thanking them now. if i do so i'll do so later on another time.

Spirit, touch Your church, stir the hearts of men
revive my soul, with Your passion once again
I want to care for others, like Jesus cared for me
so let Your reign fall on me.

jk

ambiguity.

2008-02-28T21:27:00.003+08:00

continuing from yesterday,

i find that so much is just not going the way i want it to this year, and though i know that the world as a whole doesn't have much of an incentive to follow what i want, i still feel somewhat disappointed and yet this itself is making me go in the way i don't want to.

with regards to academics, econs left me with a bitter taste. then came physics. and for that matter i think i screwed up math and chinese. comp science might do fine, and it's all not counted, but still. it's an ego deflation... and the problem is that my marks are all very ambiguous. if you get 32 its probably bad, if you get 97 its probably good, but what about 73 or 81? what to make of these??

im also not as on top of my work as i'd like to be, even though i never really was. there's so much work and documentation i need to do for CAS yet i'm typing this out and angsting about my lack of ability to do work. there's the physics worksheet due next week, chinese zhuowen due monday, etcetera... the problem is when i come back from a long day i just want to ANGST. and SLEEP. and... i dunno.

as i explained to russell and isaac, i'd like to be able to call myself busy. probably to delude myself into allowing myself to rest... but somehow i don't really feel that i can consider myself "busy". since i know that i can take more and still hang on...

currently my official/quasi-official days end at times like these:

monday 1640
tuesday 2000
wednesday 2130
thursday 1900
friday 2200
saturday 1430 or 1800
sunday 1200

but i know i can take more than that. i can probably take six 2100s - since i'm not stretching myself, can i really call myself busy? both said yes. which i guess made me consider the possibility of it being the answer, but i'm still really confused with regards to this.

ironically business? busyness? has probably boosted my work efficiency. like during yesterday's recess break, i had lunch with daniel yee, henry, sam chan and a couple of other people. what happened was something like this

*i eat a bit of chicken rice. usually i buy the economy rice instead but for wednesdays it's fried chicken and i like it*
*do physics*
*talk a bit*
*eat*
*physics*
*talk*
et cetera

so i finished 2.4 - Uniform Circular Motion during lunch. which makes me somewhat happy i guess. but still...

a couple of people whom i've been speaking to on the phone have commented that i sound exhausted when i call them (usually, about 2200 but it has been later before). somehow i think i still like the idea of being busy, partially cause i know i do have sadistic tendencies at times...

next, onto ccas. i sometimes do feel that even if i work hard i won't advance very much in the BB (lack of profit motive) because i don't have much of a reputation there. yet i do know that this can't be completely true seeing as i got placed as programmes com i/c for ldc, which shaun lee says is a very important role. i guess... he's right. since the activity comp ppl have to send me their stuff...

today we had drill practice. which was ok, except i made a mistake on the last wheel of the second round, by turning early. naturally the person in my file wasn't too happy (i hit him with an arm swing, and f ~~= ma~~ = d(mv)/dt = mdv/dt + vdm/dt = m dv/dt since dm/dt is negligible). it's my fault. which made me doubt my own drill skills. perhaps i shouldn't march on that day ("call in sick") if my drill sucks, yet i know that if i don't i'll feel that maybe 7-8ish hours of rehearsal was wasted.
so i'll march.

i haven't felt too good recently about maths comp. i'm very slow with questions (the whole team has trouble, but that's no excuse to not be able to do the questions) and also haven't been able to attend properly because of many little events (JAE Orientation Games, Rehearsal today)

there's more. relationships, spiritual development. but i think i'm done emoing for tonight.

what a pointless, aimless rant. as discussed in the tok lecture no matter how much i say i'll never be able to fully say what i mean to say merely via language...

i also need to thank many people. for a variety of reasons. but especially those whom i've discussed this angsty problem with, who've listened to my often meaningless and random-emo rants...

thanks to: russell, isaac, henry, sam chan, hui jun and tim liang.
also to: shaun lee, daniel yee, hsieh wen.

thanks.

it hasn't been the best of times i guess. but i'll be fine.
jk

divergent pain

2008-02-27T23:30:00.003+08:00

The problem with a mark like the one I got is that I can't complain too much because the mark is strong in relative terms yet it makes me direct anger at myself for failing.

I hope I won't kill myself. My academic performance is backsliding (I might not even manage an 85 average this term with 41 points) and I'm burdened by CCAs and all.

I don't know where to go from here.

Continuing this tomorrow.
jk.

Chiitoitsu

2008-02-22T23:57:00.003+08:00

His voice rang clear across the table.

"Ron!"

He hesitated before knocking over his tiles.
Then leaned back, and smiled somewhat.
"Ah. Chiitoitsu. Strange, unorthodox;
Fitting for a person like me..."

Kokushi Musou wasn't for him;
Yet he couldn't escape the fact that he stood out.
Itsu and Sanshoku were too graceful for him;
Men-Tan-Pin too robotic, too common, too plain.

"Riichi, Ippatsu, Honitsu, Dora 4 -
Akadora 2, Uradora 2, Yakuman!"
He reminisced a game he'd played in the past -
2700 points, but with it came first place.

He collected his points and left the mahjong parlour.

(For non-Riichi mahjong players)
[Ron - call used when one declares a win]
[Chiitoitsu - a hand of seven pairs]
[Kokushi Musou - a hand containing each of the terminal and honor tiles. 1 needs to be paired]
[Itsu - three straights - 123, 456, 789, in the same suit]
[Sanshoku - three straights of the same numbers in the 3 suits]
[Men-Tan-Pin - a concealed hand containing all simples and all straights]
[Riichi - Japanese declaration of ready, adds 1 fan but you can't change your hand]
[Ippatsu - winning before your next discard after Riichi]
[Honitsu - hand consisting of only 1 suit and honors]
[Dora / Akadora / Uradora - bonus tiles worth extra points]
[Yakuman - a big hand, awarded for lots of fan or special patterns]

i'm barely going on. but thanks for your time
jk

Hold

2008-02-18T22:04:00.005+08:00

81
It began just two weeks ago -
At a fork where dreams lay strewn.
I focused myself, looked down each path -
Planning paths through fog immune.

I stared down the three paths -
None looked simpler than the rest;
I settled on the clearly toughest -
Knowing that I'd have to do more than my best.

81 wasn't good, 88 neither.
95! Nothing less -
Any more would impress me,
Any less, a sad regress.

It came back. I failed.

Through my life, I've tracked many other paths -
Hoping to remain "good" all the way,
Searching hard each day to find -
A sequence that wouldn't dismay.

These numbers supposedly reflect potential -
To understand, comprehend, apply;
I'd been caught up in a rave of spirit -
Chasing them without knowing why.

As I look back on these paths,
There's something else I've found -
For these 2 digit integers can never truly reflect
Our skill; they merely confound.

Still we can't reject their existence,
For who could deny their use?
Efficient, quick scanning;
Who to keep? Who to lose?

-- Answered promptly by these numbers.
They shout out their role -
The prestige, respect commanded
Needed for "life" to be whole?

Note to the reader - I obtained an 81 for Economics - just a nice number in the low 80s to leave me with mixed feelings. My stance on exams and marks are that though they aren't a good reflection of our true talent, there is little better alternative, and since the system is in place it's no point fighting it, really.

More seriously, sometimes I wonder if I'm really doing the right things or not. The Bible Study conducted during BB on last Saturday has made me think of some things.

To be a leader, we have to serve first - yet what is meant by serving? I've considered this before as keeping the welfare of one's charges in mind. Still - how can we be sure that there is no ulterior motive in keeping the welfare of one's charges? Can there be ulterior motives in true service? ...

The song below, Alabaster Jar, is something that I can say I perhaps... aspire to? Being more than willing to give up one's life for God at one shot seems difficult... This line, in particular, is one that I like but also one that has caused me discomfort at times - You gave Your life for me; so I will live my life for You. What is meant by living our lives for God? During BS I believe Mr Allan Lee talked about standing up for what is right - which I, honestly, find tough at times.

During Chinese B period today, I really felt quite bad. Some people in the class were joking to Mdm Chen Li who is fairly new to the English language. They tried to misspell words like "infiltrate". Furthermore, some of them chose to try and deceive her with supposed "new" computer terms...

I kept quiet, even though I felt it was wrong. I don't know if that was the right thing or not.

This alabaster jar, is all I have of worth;
I lay it at your feet, Lord; it's less than You deserve.
You're far more beautiful; more precious than the oil,
The sum of my desires and the fullness of my joy.

Like You spilled Your blood, I spill my heart,
As an offering to my King;

Here I am, take me, as an offering;
Here I am, giving, every heartbeat;
For Your glory - take me.

The time that I have left, is all I have of worth;
I lay it at your feet, Lord; it's less than You deserve.
And though I've little strength, and though my days are few;
You gave Your life for me; so I will live my life for You.

Worthy, worthy; You are worthy
Worthy is the Lamb.

jk

Blessings

2008-02-14T23:15:00.003+08:00

The passing of Valentine's Day for me was ironically laden with tension, sadness and instability. Yet, for me, I feel God has really blessed me today... through the aforementioned tension, sadness and instability He has shown me much mercy, as well as a sense of contentment throughout the mania of the day.

This is actually related to two major events that happened today, the first being the break from 9 am to 9.40 and the second being Dr. Ong's calling for all students except year 3s to go to the auditorium during Chinese period.

During the break, I spoke to a close friend who was really depressed - it was the first time I've seen him cry before. In any case most of the stuff is way too private to post here so I'll leave it at that.

What is the value of life? I've evaluated this question several times at various points in my life, and yet it's typically tough to come up with a good answer. I posted a couple of days back about Siddhartha and the cycle / spiral of life - are we really ascending in any way?

Personally, I know that committing suicide is a sin as it shows that one does not value the life God has given him - consequently, even in times when I feel like it is the easy way out, I will stop myself; no matter how hard things are at the moment, they're transient - the eternal suffering one will experience should one commit suicide is really much worse than any kind of transient suffering (if you know basic concepts of infinity in mathematics, infinity divided by a finite quantity is infinity).

The Student Council has branded this week as Agape Week - Agape generally refers to a kind of divine, unconditional love, much like the love God has for man. There are also other types of relationships we share with others that involve love. I can see quite a few - romantic love, friendship, storgic love (I recall this from CS Lewis' The Four Loves), familial love, love within a church or organization, et cetera. In many ways some of these are going to overlap.

I'm not experienced with many of the types of love mentioned above, so I'll be focusing on friendship really for today.

Aristotle divides friendship into three types, based on people's motives for forming them - friendship for utility, friendship for pleasure and friendship for "the good". It seems that most of our relationships are going to overlap the first two areas easily. For me, I find that quite a number of my "friendships" (I'd rather call them acquaintances) only hit the utility level - that is, they ask me for help in Maths, I check work and schedules with them, et cetera. Quite a number more hit the pleasure level - that is, I enjoy their company... yet, the relationship still seems rather superficial. By the time I hit Aristotle's definition of friendship for "the good", I can only say that I have a few of these friends. Supposedly, these friendships are those in which both friends enjoy each other's characters - that is, the motive behind the friendship is care for the friend, not anything else. These relationships can be (and usually are) tough to forge, but I find them really rewarding and satisfying compared to my other relationships.

There have been other dualities I've discussed with people before, but I guess there isn't really time for me to go through everything now.

you're such a blessing; such a joy in my life.
you may not know it. you probably think you unloaded stuff on me. but i really treasure it.
jk

Phenolphthalein

2008-02-12T22:30:00.001+08:00

Things are getting tough, I find. I've been falling sick recently, probably over work - physically and mentally I can handle it, but when I'm hit with an emotional issue things become much worse than normal "hits".

World Scholar's Cup is stressful, and so is school life yet I know much of this is self inflicted. For example, I briefly talked about one question in the econs test with Sam Chan - define ceteris paribus. It's 2 marks, and I didn't think "a Latin expression meaning all other things being equal" would be adequate for 2 marks. 1 definitely, but not 2. Perhaps I'm getting too cautious or afraid to lose out. It's reasonably well expressed by the Chinese expression 草木皆兵.

The very first results of the year are coming out, and while my results aren't bad I wonder what is good and what is bad? An absolute percentage like '67', '90' or '72' often bears little meaning (barring cases like '100' or '1' which could still possibly lack meaning, by the way...); conversely, relative measurement isn't always a good gauge (according to Hui Jun, in his class last year he got top with a '79.xx' but in 4.9 you'd need an '86' and in 4.10 you'd need to find some way to beat '84' still) because it's possible that the people you're comparing against might be 'good' or they might not be. I got a 19 for the Siddhartha KP1 commentary, which I could argue is 'bad' (usually for set texts I shouldn't get less than 21) but also seems 'good' (second in class with top person having 20). The problem with marks in the 60s and 70s, sometimes the 80s, and for Chinese B and Math, the low 90s is that often times they fall into a very ambiguous position. Are they good or bad?

Still, having masochistic tendencies sometimes when stressed I just throw myself into more stressful situations, consuming myself you could argue. I try effectively to enclose myself in stress, depression, or mathematics (there's a book on the Chinese olympiad I have that is pretty good). Escapism. Which I think is not a good thing.

I'd like to post something more structured. However, I'm tired, I don't have much time and for that matter sometimes just a couple of lines of random free verse can express a point much better than an entire structured essay.

i'm left behind. filled with a void in many ways.
yet it's only because i got left behind
did i have a chance to show myself.
and even though things didn't work out well
i know that i've learned something.
the lesson embodied in the words i couldn't find.
jk

Gift

2008-02-11T21:57:00.000+08:00

just a moment in time.
when two souls can add something small to their shared experiences.
both tangible and intangible, though small but meaningful.
though it was but a moment.
i'm thankful for what you did.
and though it might seem to be some kind of subversion
you gave me a gift that was - in its own way, priceless.

thanks so much. may God bless you richly in the year ahead.
(you know who you are)

jk

Cycle

2008-02-06T09:57:00.000+08:00

I was reading Hesse's Siddhartha in class yesterday, and something in the book made me think about our approaches to life.

This was during their stay with the samanas, basically a group of wandering ascetics who seeked to allow one's inner self to shine through by denying one's own physical body. Siddhartha noticed that the eldest of the samanas was about sixty or so, and after about three years he felt little closer to letting his inner self shine through then when he was born as a child. He wondered if he was going in circles; and to this his friend Govinda replied, "The circle is a spiral. We have already ascended several levels."

As we go through courses of education, and our daily lives, we go through many cycles. The cycle of the academic year, the cycle of the circadian physiological rhythm, possibly even the cycle of happiness and despair, regret and realisation, et cetera.

Are we merely going in circles?

Admittedly, I fear that.
jk

Drain Point

2008-02-03T23:49:00.000+08:00

This week's been rather taxing. Friday was mostly LMS work and then drill practice and then physics tuition and then more LMS work and then... sleep. Saturday was BB, more BB, MCYC, dinner, LMS work, sleep. Sunday was a rather long QT session, church, written commentary, LMS work, two 30-minute phonecalls, more LMS work, mug, mug, blog, and after this sleep.

In many ways I'm very grateful to God that he has brought me through the recent 3 days that have been pretty tough on me mentally, physically and emotionally. I had a couple of arguments with friends, both distant and close; and of course, a large amount of work to do.

Let's go:
Language A1: ~~Written Commentary on Strange Meeting~~
Chinese B: 专题作业、~~剪报、文章回应, online assignment~~
Economics: Nothing
Maths: ~~AP-GP Worksheet, online LMS AP-GP-Sigma Worksheet~~
Physics: ~~Tutorial 2-2 pt 1, 2-2 pt 2, online MCQ quiz~~, printout on Dynamics
Computer Science: ~~Worksheet, prepare for Test~~
TOK Essay

What a headache, for 3 days of work...

Things are looking set to heat up. I've ended most of my arguments about relationships by this point, but still... I really hope that academic work and CCA commitments won't take too much of a toll on my relationships.

On another somewhat related note, today I somehow found the courage to actually admit that to me, "my phonecalls this evening are more important than my Lang Arts commentary". Interesting...

I know it might seem that I was complaining a lot about the activities in the first part, but visiting the MCYC was, spiritually, a refreshing experience. The worship really featured many songs that set me into a thinking, active, reflecting state - other than Still which I mentioned in an earlier post. I talked to a few of the youth/children there who were making cards for their parents for Chinese New Year. I tried to impress upon them that what mattered most was the thought and the message behind these cards - these would hit harder than artistic design, or especially for the younger ones, shininess (they were provided with glitter tubes). I'm not sure if I did the right thing. Earlier tonight, or rather yesterday night when I read Psalm 19, there was a verse that I noticed: "Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults." (Psalm 19:12). What are these hidden faults? It seems quite often that I wonder if I've committed a certain sin that I might not know about. I've also asked a few people - I remember Isaac and Henry, among others, at the conclusion of 2007 if I had done anything that might have hurt them without my own knowledge - so this seems to be a parallel in that we should try not to do such things, except that in the context of sin, the wages of sin is death - in other words, it's very serious (I'm used to taking relationships very seriously, but I don't know about others). I'll post more about this another time.

Despite now having the ability to rest, I still feel drained out. I've been talking to a few people over the past few days, and although I might not have really said it then, you guys really helped. (You know who you are.) Thanks! =)

I can't express my thoughts very well.
jk

Still

2008-02-03T07:03:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was a long and tiring day, in a physical, mental and emotional sense. I got angry with a few people after what happened during War Games, and of course I was physically tired (left house at 7 am, came home at 9.30 pm).

Worship at MCYC reminded me of something though - a bit like Siddhartha. Basically, what Siddhartha forgot and remembered eventually was the final syllable of the Brahmin prayer - the "om". For me, this song has been close to my heart for a while, but I somehow couldn't remember it until it was picked as the last song for Worship.

Still
Hide me now, under Your wings
Cover me, within Your mighty hand

When the oceans rise and thunders roar
I will soar with You above the storm
Father You are king over the flood
I will be still, know You are God.

Find rest, my soul, in Christ alone
Know His power, in quietness and trust

When the oceans rise and thunders roar
I will soar with You above the storm.
Father You are king over the flood
I will be still, know You are God.

ah. what a nice song...

jk

Breaking Spirit

2008-01-31T21:58:00.000+08:00

长江后浪推前浪,世界新人换旧人.
(The people on earth are replaced, just as the later waves replace the earlier waves on the river.) - my poor translation

These 14 words in my Chinese B book stare me in the face. I feel like I've been flailing and failing this year, not getting much. I somehow feel my life is in a mess. My relationships, both vertical and lateral, don't seem to really be going anywhere (in general - of course there are some exceptions); as seen from today's Math Comp session, my Math is steadily weakening, and I'm starting to fall behind in studies. I wonder if I'm the 旧人,having burnt myself out in Sec 3 and 4, which were, both academically and on a relationship basis reasonably good years.

But you're not! Some of the things that have happened *THIS* year show that you're not just an "old" person who is on the brink of fading into obsolescence. You are still well ahead of the class in Physics! In economics! In mathematics, and computer science! You made it to the top three of the school's selection of their representative for the Lee Kuan Yew award for all-round excellence; your academics are like "how pro". I have confidence in you to get a Gold for Math Olympiad this year, even though it's Open. You shouldn't be doing the IB; you should be in an engineering course in a university. I'll be disappointed if you only get 45 points. You're in the running for the DSTA Physics Award and Lee Kuan Yew Math and Science award! Clearly, that reflects that you're not fading yet, at least.

Well, I can accept what's been said, and I have to thank you. Somehow, however, these things aren't going to give me something lasting, whether I get them or not - for such material possessions promote unhealthy desire for more. There's something else I need to solve, and I'm only going to be able to do it directly on my own. I guess what's been said has helped me though. There's still a long pathway to walk, and I know that I'll have to face a large part of it alone.

(In case you didn't know, the red section is based on encouragement I've received from many friends who've been so helpful in their own little way. While I might seem a bit cold at times, your little contributions have really helped me keep going. The "long path", of course, refers to my spiritual journey with God and the problems that I feel have arisen. I know it's difficult to help me there, but for some of you, notably Russell, Hui Jun and Juzzie, thanks a lot for your efforts. Thanks so much! *hug*)

On a lighter note, I'm going to be a special agent for BB company war games on Saturday. I've already prepared some pretty sadistic challenges; I'll describe the first one I thought of below, which should be familiar to people who watch the Kaiji anime. I thought a psychology game from Kaiji might make a reasonable choice. However, Gentei Janken aka restricted rock-paper-scissors is too messy to do, and Ningen Keiba or human horseracing is just asking for trouble. Hence, I chose the natural choice - E Card which only needs 10 small cards and a small table, really.

In E Card, there are 2 sides - the Emperor and the Slave side. Each side will receive one eponymous card, as well as 4 "Citizen" cards. Basically, the Emperor beats the Citizen, and the Citizen beats the Slave. 2 Citizens is a draw; however, the Slave kills the Emperor. In Kaiji, the titular character wagered distance to the destruction of his ear; of course, for this game, they will simply wager "gold" which they have earned. Their aim will to be get six points in six matches - a win as Emperor scores 1 point while a win as Slave scores 3. However, they must play at least 2 rounds as Emperor and at least 2 as Slave. It's a bit tough to describe so I'll leave it as this for now.

Honestly, I don't know the logic I used in the above post.

I'm tired.

how many times have I broken Your heart
but still You forgive, if only I ask
jk

Lonely Road

2008-01-24T23:38:00.000+08:00

This year has brought about quite a few changes to my routines.

During early-middle year 4, early in the morning I would go to class and sleep or socialise a bit with the people in class. During late year 4, I would on some occasion have gone to fireAC. During exam period in year 4, I went for a prayer meeting with Isaac, Russell and a few other people. Post-exam was a mix of early and late year 4.

This year, I find that I've become more reserved, more sealed up, arguably more lonesome. The first 30 to 50 minutes of my day that are spent in school first switched to the SAC, where I'd sit alone, and bump into people once in a while, such as Herrick or Henry (there are more, but these are the only 2 ppl I remember meeting). FireAC grew in size, and honestly even with the previous size I felt a bit uncomfortable... It's not a good excuse, but I guess I gave in to my egotistical impulses. Later, I switched it again, to a more private place where I'm rarely, if ever, disturbed.

The other change, I guess, would possibly be my recess routine. Previously, I would often go around with the rest of the GEPs, forming tables of 9 or sometimes even more people; nowadays, I rarely have a table sized more than 4 or 5 (I usually aim for 3 when I plan for lunch), and in fact I've started meeting people on a 1-to-1 basis significantly more than last year.

In a way, I consider myself quite blessed to have these opportunities to talk on a more personal level to friends who are closer to me, especially the 1 to 1 sessions. I find that with the IB system I have little spare time to balance quite a few relationships - sometimes, even pushing out 2 hours per week outside of school can be tough, especially given that my schedule is starting to become busy (5 days like last year, just Saturday is busy instead of Monday), Scholar's Cup is approaching soon and I'm starting to get back into the mugging spirit of things.

At the same time, I don't want to become an antisocial, angsty outcast either. Things seem tough when I spend only 1 out of 6 classes with my class 5.14 (there are quite a few people whom I spend 3 or 4 classes with and are not in 5.14; conversely, there are also quite a few 5.14ers whom I share 0 classes with), have two CCAs where I am active yet not 'on' in both, and also because I have a pretty introverted and reserved nature. I've noticed that I'm also not very good at small talk - I tend to go little further than cliched issues such as O level results, IB targets, IB life etc, before going into tough areas like philosophy, science, sociology and theology.

But for some reason I really like 1-to-1 interaction. The personal factor makes it very... heartwarming? I don't know.

Work's starting to heat up, and effectively Russell told me today it hasn't quite reached terminal velocity yet. STRESS.

two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference.
- robert frost

jk

Bearing Thoughts

2008-01-21T21:33:00.000+08:00

I'm tired out.

There was something I heard today that I'd touch on. It seems strange to analyse human behaviour sometimes but I guess I'll just write about it.

Hopefully it won't be too insensitive or illogical; I'm really sleepy.

I'll try to protect the identities of the people but I think you can probably guess them anyway.

I met two people, A and B after school today. Among other things, a certain line from A hit me - "Hugs are always good."

Hmm. I'm not too sure about that - there are many reasons why. If you hug someone whom you don't know very well, after that will you feel happy with your action? What is a hug in the first place? Is it merely something a person can give another to make him happy easily - in other words, a free good? Or is it a show of affection and emotion? Somewhere between? I have no idea.

Anyway B said then that they weren't and I agreed. A later commented on how he finds it strange that other people can be emo. He said that the most, he's feeling down for typically half an hour, maximally 2-3 days before he returns to his happy self. I said that that's strange cause I typically can have down periods of 5 days or even more. Having a yo-yo emotional cycle is not a good thing in my opinion.

A tried to hug B. B said A's hugs didn't help, after which they and I engaged in some banter that I think is pretty redundant for this post.

I was going off then and I said goodbye to B, then A. I mentioned at some point that I felt like I needed a hug, so B was going to give me one - of course since I was so wet from PE I told him that Thursday might be a better day.

Thoughts leave me in a mess. For some reason the closing song today in Chapel was pretty meaningful. I don't really know why either. I guess to some extent I can identify with the lyrics, but I'm not completely sure either.

Higher Ground
I'm pressing on the upward way,
New heights I'm gaining every day,
Still praying as I'm onward bound,
"Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."

Lord, lift me up and let me stand
By faith, on heaven's table land
A higher plane than I have found,
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

My heart has no desire to stay,
Where doubts arise, and fears dismay,
Though some may dwell where those abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground;

I want to live above the world,
Though Satan's darts, at me are hurled,
For faith has caught the joyful sound,
The song of saints, on higher ground;

I want to scale the utmost height,
And catch a glimpse of glory bright,
But still I'll pray, till heaven I've found,
"Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."

jk

Responsibility

2008-01-20T16:43:00.000+08:00

This strange concept came to my mind - in life, we are "responsible" for many things - to God, to our teachers (i.e. academic areas), to authorities, to our (future) lovers, to our friends, to our classmates, to our CCA-mates, to our peers, to the environment, to "society", to "morality in general" etc. The word has many different meanings, some though not all of which are well-defined in the dictionary. Typically, when I see the word, I would associate it with reliability and accountability. However, these words do not seem to be appropriate for all the responsibilities mentioned earlier.

In my opinion, the nature of responsibility depends largely on the context. I will subdivide the situations outlined earlier - though they are by no means exhaustive - into four main groups of cases, and then analyse the form of responsibility that is involved in each of these groups. The four groups refer to spiritual responsibility (responsibility to God), relationship responsibility (responsibility to lovers and friends), professional responsibility (responsibility to teachers, authorities, CCA-mates and peers) and ethical responsibility (to environment, society, morality in general). Of course, certain cases are not very well-defined; for example, in my case, there are people I would consider friends, CCA-mates and peers as well as a part of society and humanity in general. However, instead of being an inhibitor to the discussion of this concept, it helps to reflect that the responsibilities we have to a certain person or entity may span two or more of the aforementioned categories.

I will discuss the hopefully simplest case first - professional responsibility. I find that "responsibility" in the context of school typically refers to preparing and handing in one's assignments on time, preparing adequately for tests and examinations and the like. With regards to CCA-mates and peers, it would include doing one's share of a group project or completing various CCA duties; in the context of authorities, it could refer to properly filing tax. Hence, in a professional context, responsibility somewhat seems to be related to being dutiful or accountable. Yet, does responsibility stop there? Or does it continue on -- are we responsible to, for example, help our teachers even if they do not request it? Are we responsible to do more than one's share of a group project, for example, by becoming the group's leader? For a personal example, though I am no longer the Juniors NCO, am I responsible to help the new Juniors NCOs ease into their jobs if they don't ask for any help? In short - is initiative a part of responsibility?

Quasi-predictably, my answer is yes and no. I think the reasons for "no" are fairly simple. Many of these "extra"-dutiful actions are described as "going the extra mile" - that's it. "(E)xtra" - not necessary. Typically, not becoming a group leader does not make one unaccountable or unreliable. However, I am not too comfortable with a completely "no" answer, even though I cannot find strong logical ground to reject the answer - the reasons for this will be detailed later.

I will now discuss ethical responsibility. Many aspects of ethical responsibility would relate to aspects of spiritual responsibility I will discuss at the end, because many of these appear to appeal to the conscience, and I find that generally, if one carries out his spiritual responsibilities, it will be fairly natural for him to carry out most of his ethical responsibilities, at least to the point where ethical responsibility is generally not directly committed e.g. intentionally lying to a blind man when helping him cross a road. It seems, however, that sometimes there is a lack of duality in ethical responsibility - the line between 'responsible' and 'irresponsible' can be very difficult to draw. This problem holds true to some extent in each of the four types, though it appears to hold the strongest here. Is eating shark's fin soup irresponsible to the environment due to the toll it takes on shark populations? Is eating it irresponsible to morality, due to the oft-publicised cruelty of finning? Is eating it irresponsible to society, due to the fact that with the cost of one bowl of soup (easily $40), you could easily feed an ACS(I) student in the IB canteen lunch for almost three weeks (assumed at $2 per meal) or for that matter improve the lives of many of Singapore's poor via donating rice or noodles to a donation drive? Many of these issues are highly ambiguous, since a person can dismiss many of the questions with the simple answer that he had the money to purchase the soup, and take advantage of the ambiguity with regard to these responsibilities.

I am not really 'of age' yet, so responsibility with lovers will remain out of the picture for now. However, for me, responsibility with friends has been a very touchy issue. I think it is not unreasonable to expect that many people would want friends who are responsible. However, what does this responsibility entail? This appears to depend on the individual's definition of responsibility - to the point where the dictionary definition can be totally expunged. For some people including myself, a responsible friend is one who can be trusted, who will listen to rants and complaints, who will help you physically, professionally and spiritually (within his means), look out for you and accept you as a person. It's a hefty requirement, but I find this definition suitable; because I believe that to some extent one should treat others as one wishes to be treated. Hence, I typically am careful to see that I can consider the person responsible before entrusting so much to the person. Yet, for others, a responsible friend might simply be one who is constantly willing to lend money, or one who constantly parties around with him (fair-weather friend).

I've experienced painful rifts in friendships before, largely due to my own ignorance (I think all of the people I know fairly closely now, except Shaun, have experienced this before). I must thank God that most of them have worked out now. This could reflect some further element of responsibility in a friendship - overlooking the faults in the other person. But can this really be considered responsibility - or is it, again, merely going the "extra" mile? Tough question.

Finally, spiritual responsibility. I will quote from Ecclesiastes. I think I have quoted this verse before, probably in the essay on The Meaning of Life I wrote last year, but I find it a very memorable and appropriate verse.

"Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter.
Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
(Ecc 12:13)

This has two parts - fearing God, and keeping His commandments.

I will start with "keeping his commandments", for it seems simpler to discuss. The commandments referred to here would seem to include the Ten Commandments in Exodus, some of the "commandments" Jesus mentioned in the Gospels (loving God, loving your neighbour as yourself). There is a third group of "commandments" that I am a bit hesitant about their inclusion in the discussion, but they are generally related to fearing God - such as when God spoke out of Heaven, telling the people "This is my Son, with whom I am pleased. Listen to him!"

To me, keeping the commandments is clearly a type of responsibility somewhat analogous to following school rules, societal rules and the like, except that the commandments are more absolute than school or societal rules since the latter might not be so upright. However, what about fearing God? This seems to involve developing a relationship with Him, as many Christians like me might say, a "walk" with God. This brings even more questions - are reading the Bible and doing QT, which we are seemingly supposed to do as "good Christians" - responsibilities?

In conclusion, I think that as I have covered the various cases, I have gained a little bit of insight. There seem two different senses of responsibilities which I will call "cold" and "warm". "Cold" responsibility typically refers to dutifulness on a mechanical level (largely the case in professional responsibility); typically, we will have to face strong, mechanical negative consequences if we do not exhibit it. To some extent, there is a small amount of "cold" responsibility in ethical and relationship responsibilities, since constant "infractions" against seeming responsibility in the ethical dimension can result in one's conscience tormenting one's psyche, and I would not think that people would like their friends to leave them. Conversely, "warm" responsibility refers to initiative and dutifulness transcending the mechanical level mentioned earlier, and it seems to apply in all four types, though more strongly in relationship responsibility as elaborated earlier, and of course spiritual responsibility. To excel in situations, it seems that we will need to exhibit "warm" responsibility - going the extra mile - for if we don't, we can be outshined and overshadowed by those who do. For example, take a work situation. A worker who cultivates a strong relationship with one's superiors often results in a much better professional situation for him than another who does not bother, ceteris paribus. Even though the worker who does not bother has not been explicitly and directly irresponsible, he has "lost out".

I believe that it should be restated that responsibilities are not mutually exclusive - to various entities and people, we have several types of responsibilities. Hence, I would not recommend for one to try and show lots of responsibility in one specific area to a person while neglecting the other areas. It would not be too unnatural for the person to become suspicious...

On a closing note, I should say that from a Christian perspective, our deeds alone cannot save us - the only way we are saved is through the grace of Jesus Christ. However, WE have to make the decision to accept Him. As oft-quoted, though cliched to some extent - He stands at the door and knocks. Will you open?

Your grace has found me just as I am
empty-handed but alive in Your hands

jk

thoughts...

2008-01-17T21:43:00.000+08:00

Crossed Spirit
I decided to hate you for one day.
Actually, less than that cause I knew;
Or rather, I thought it'd end by night.
I shot icy bolts at your warm advances
Thinking, again, that it'd end tonight.
When I could become a friend again.
I knew what happened, created a facade.
Shrouded myself in angsty mist of books;
Of formula, of number, of graph.
I glanced at the wall clock. It was 10.
I braced myself; and yet the first plan failed.
Plan B. I was well-received, yet not completely.
Found that you were then no longer there.
It might be a small, pointless issue
But it doesn't destroy the guilt.
It remains there, formless, negatively empty.

I'm sorry. I know now that that was really something I shouldn't have done.
In fact now thinking over it I forgot about this possibility. I made an assumption that I thought reasonable though, apparently, not.

jk

BB Day 08

2008-01-10T23:10:00.000+08:00

After the 2 practices, me having to learn a command and execute it in front of the school in less than 1 week (seriously, I hadn't heard of maju before Saturday's practice...), and some comments about my uniform, there was one question that I thought of as I was standing senang diri before the parade started.

Why am I a BB boy?

My relationship with the BB is probably best described as a fairly inconsistent one. I found Year 1 a very 'flat' year for me, possibly because I did not get to know my cohort-mates well then, and furthermore, Philippi - to be more precise, Philippi 2 - had an NCO who was busy with other commitments for a large part of the time. Hence, in Year 1 I didn't really like the BB, and there were times where I wished I could quit. Still, for some reason I stayed on...

Year 2 brought about the LTC and a memorable, albeit difficult Adventure expedition due to rainy weather. Actually, there weren't too many changes from Year 1 because, for some reason, there was still the issue of a missing NCO, and I, at that time, was probably too preoccupied with my own existential problems at that time to really care much about others. I was very self-centered then...

Year 3 was a challenging year because of the shift to the pre-IB course, and also because I took up a 9th subject, which would make my schedule like this:

Monday - CS
Tuesday - CS
Wednesday - Math Training
Thurs - None
Fri - None
Sat - BB

Four days a week is probably nothing to some people, but it still stands in rather bold contrast with the amount of staying back I did in Year 1 - two days a week. My reactions to becoming Admin were rather mixed. At that time, I didn't feel very close to the rest of my cohort-mates; however, on the other hand, I remember liking my officers then. For me, this resulted in a painful dilemma during the Admin Interviews. Eventually I was assigned to be the Juniors NCO.

Year 4. I was quite appreciative that I became the Juniors NCO, as for most of the year especially after the June camp, things were relatively light - a parade length of between 1.5 to 2 hours contrasted with the expectable 6-ish hours (report early, admin meeting after parade) of a Saturday parade. Still, as I said earlier, I wasn't very close to many of my cohort-mates, and being Juniors NCO may have exacerbated this problem due to the lack of common bonds forged over the shared experiences of developing and training the then Sec 1s and also that of preparing for the National Day Parade. I guess the break in class from 2.12 to 3/4.9 may have helped as I had a lot of BB boys in my class (me, Russell, Sam Chan, Shaun, Shaun, Bryan, JX, Xi Min, Seng Wei, Jerrold. 10 out of 29) and naturally I did get to know some of them better over the course of the year.

ROD and the end of Year 4 would have brought another tricky decision - should I become a Primer? To answer this properly - which of the four Ways of Knowing (WOKs) can I apply to this issue? I don't think language would feature strongly here, because the position of 'being a Primer' does not seem overly difficult to define - in this context, it just means continuing in the BB during year 5 and year 6, without entailing being active or dedicated or anything else positive or expected of a Primer. Sensorial messages would appear not to help very much, so that leaves two - emotion and reason.

What my 'cold' reasoning would tell me about becoming a Primer is - Spend between 1 and 2 days each week helping out in the BB. Get 200ish CAS hours, aim for NYAA (Gold), other awards etc.. Somehow, thinking of it in that way leaves some kind of emptiness and hollowness to becoming a Primer. There is a song of praise, Consuming Fire, that I remember and thought about upon typing that... probably because of these 2 lines:

There must be more than this,
O breath of God, come breathe within

Perhaps an answer that seems more appealing, apparently based on both reason and emotion would be to develop the (now) Year 2s as well as the rest of the company, to serve them out of love and dedication to them. Yet, how does one define "(service) out of love"? Without expecting return? Shaun (Lee) showed me one of Shaun (Ong)'s books - C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves (if I remember correctly) that touched on this, and it's something I'd like to finish up reading if I get the time... That book might have the answer somewhat. I might have also been drawn back due to my relationships(?) with the Officers and some of the members of the cohort...

This makes me think of something else - what is meant when one says he is doing something for the glory of God? It doesn't seem to be an easy question for me to tackle... perhaps I'll go discuss it with some other people and think through it with them...

Anyway, I digress; back to the point - why did I choose to become a Primer? The CAS hours and accolades is one factor, but those alone seem rather inadequate. I think the main factor is some sense of loyalty that I have developed to the BB, and arguably to the officers and some of my peers as well. It's quite hard for me to express this kind of strange feeling in words.

I guess this should complete my analysis of why I've remained in BB over my 5 years in it.

i never knew i hurt you by that
i've been using double standards. not good.

jk

IB Stress

2008-01-08T09:07:00.000+08:00

Our school did very well for the IB exams...

Which means I have to revise my target. New target: 45.

That means I have to get a 7 in Lang Arts SL (sch average: 5.5). I think I'll take tuition and work as hard as I can to realise the 7 if possible... while still watching out for the rest of the subjects as though the averages are like 6.1 to 6.94 I mustn't get too complacent. Bonus points are going to be tricky also (sch average: 1.99, at least near there), so I think I'll aim for an A in both EE and TOK, doing a Comp Studies EE and pushing for 48 marks (34+14) for TOK...

I'm quite disturbed about the grades for EE and TOK because other than ISO in Year 3, for me my ISO and POD teachers in Year 3 and 4 were VERY lenient (*cough* 100% for final essay in Y4?? seriously...)

Grr. STRESS.

jk