back to school *yawns*

miao. blocks are over. results are coming back *tears hair* I DON'T WANT TO FACE REALITY!!! plunged back into the hectic life of a J2 girl. got an OCIP presentation floating above my head, various OAC meetings, an upcoming concert (AGAIN?!!!) and some CIP stuff to settle. *sinks into floor and weeps*

haha, the past few days were like an escape into virtual reality. sit at home watch pple busy around, and log on to A3 whenever i'm free with nothing to entertain me at home... wake up play, before sleep play. lol. play the whole way. hm. i can really get to like this kind of lifestyle. miao. but i reckon there won't be many chances. when's the next long weekend? anyone tell me ^_^ sian ar.

just today, at first thought gonna be pretty lax, just go back to school for physics SPA, then who knows, suddenly an atlantis meeting pops up, and after that i've got pm with cherokees =_="" and on coming back, i'll have to rush the OCIP presentation. like WELCOME BACK TO REALITY, GIRL *throws confetti* pfh. i know, i know, i wasn't supposed to spend the long break this way. i was supposed to reflect on why i'm going to be failing all three of my A-level subjects, maybe even GP. i was supposed to catch up on all the homework i haven't done since the umpteenth century. and i'm supposed to do n questions a day on all the math topics i'm prolly going to attend remedial for.

GARGH!!!

sian diao ar.

then you guys nv ask why i'm sitting in front of the comp here, right before physics spa skill a. it's coz the teachers were silly enough to provide us only one/two practices before the exam, such that i have like, no revision materials. and i'm online acutally to check if my powerpoint presentation has been sent, as well as the answer to some skill a exercise. well, they ain't of course, that's why i'm blogging =_=""

very lethargic. still in holiday mood, i think. thank goodness tomorrow is a wednesday. hope rina comes to 05S68. and yeah, pray (hard) that i'll lose this urge to log on to A3 soon. ARGH!!! I'M ONLY 4 LEVELS AWAY FROM NECTEN!!! THEN I CAN AFFORD TO STAY AWAY FROM A3 FOR SOMETIME *pulls angela away*

sorry ar, she's a bit delirious le... this is called the A3 withdrawal symptom. the A3 addict has no control over mind or body, and has a constant desire to hit the next bench mark level.

*angela breaks free at this point and uses teeth to bite computer*

seeing she's in no condition to continue speech, the subject has decided to stop the blog at this point.

the blocks. the MINDblocks, more like.

YARGH!!!! *pouts* i am uber-sian. the only consolation now is that i'm typing on the new quiet keyboard of the new BENQ laptop my dad bought... SHANWEI STILL HASN'T GOTTEN BACK THE A3 CD FROM HIS FRIEND *collapse* haha, want to get it installed on the lappie quick quick.

today was MATH *scrunch up face* bleargh.

the ferocious three-headed bossy-worm raised it's gruesome head, baring rows upon rows of foul-looking teeth. angela threw her head back, and in one swift motion raised her shield, gleaming armour catching the fleeting glare of the brilliant sunset. sword raised, she made a rush for the throat of the bossy-worm.

it seemed her armour was aluminium foil, and her sword, a satay stick.

haiz. what i'm trying to say is. today's math was a huge flop. the questions i couldn't do, didn't do, weren't sure of, accounted for 48% of the marks. what to say...? really regretted bring chem instead of math to camp. surely, math would keep me more awake than organic chem at 2 am in the morning.

thank goodness i focussed more on differential equations last night with shieh yuan. those were the only questions i could more or less do. haha. not funny. and i made stupid mistakes. like even basic mistakes like (ln x) squared became ln(x squared). wah. give up on myself man. and i was just telling shieh yuan off about the many careless mistakes she made last night T_T really feel like crying arh. and ill preparation, on top of careless mistakes, marked my downfall.

not that i have much of a distance to fall. i didn't have that great math results in the first place. haiz.

bravely, she stood up, and adjusted her oversized helm on her lush dark hair... waitaminute. OVERSIZED?! it seems the bossy-drool has minimizing effects on human cells. she looked dejectedly at the increasingly heavy sword, the overwhelming shield. her arms were lost in the armour that fit about five of her.

she turned to flee.

haiz. and this is how i feel now. tomorrow's chem paper *shrinks* feel like running away. weak, i know. organic has like, hello, seven chapters in itself, not counting carboxylic acid and nitrogen compounds... and what about electrochem? and ionic equilibrium? *dies* i clean forgot about ionic equilibrium liaoz. have to revise later. best can get a few questions to do. haiz.

then tomorrow also got chem SPA skill a. WARGH!!! came up with a rather useful set of notes today. shieh yuan say can sell. haha. now it all depends on whether i can getall the equations commited to memory. and the format of answering the QA skill a paper.

funny, it's the "for all experiments, use blah and blah amounts of organic compound..." part that i can't seem to get down. if get reactions right, and quantity wrong, i might as well go bash my head and die. haiz.

hope that my incessant mugging on organic chem will pay off. like for differential equations.

it's not difficult to want to study organic chem. it's organised. and it's interesting. haha, i see a spark of that desire to do food chem, all over again! yippee~

kel-chan fell sick today. i wonder how he's doing now *dejected* and i can't even do anything to help. even fiftyone would provide faster aid than i can. so helpless *flails arms* i just WISH i can do something. even if just to send his cough syrup up. hate feeling so small.

like little girl like that. can't do anything useful.

kay le la. i'm going back to mug for chem again.

don't even want to think about physics day after tomorrow. fuck. i haven't even touched my notes, other than to dig them out from the pits of my locker and cupboards in school and at home.

indifference?

okay... maybe it's coz it's been so long since YLTC... i had left the sad things behind.

maybe i've forgotten. it's sad, to forget. to let go.

some say it's a good thing, that i am able to move on. that i can put things behind me so easily.

i think it's incompassionate. it's indifference. it's irresponsibility.

i feel so superficial now.

haha. it's confusing. 30th sea chiefs will always remember talking about sea expedition, disappointed, sad, tired and incoherent, on the steps outside the canteen. but i remember not the detailed sad contents.

alvin said "they used my towel as a rag for kitchen duty."

guess different things impacted different people.

so, to all nelchaenens who may stumble upon this obscure blog:

incoherent mumbling, tears tumbling
tired hand fumbling to place
the furniture of dorms and all that space
we occupied for days;

reminiscent of those 6 days now a year past.

we see in them, ourselves
shadows pictures once shelved upset
and spilt on the ground as we peer
thru the past year

and think of the roads we took
the forks at which we stray
and many lost sight
as our commonalities waned

and it took so much more,
for each of us to come back again
even if for a short while
we relived our (past, present and to be) bondedness
and came back in force, as one

if only for the short 4 and a half days

and though we cry, to think it's over
what we've put in
each day, every tear,
down to the last lecture we spent
nodding off to the lulling drones

it's hard to forget, it's sad to let go.
but keep in mind
cherish the cheer, leave the sorrow
and always

always remember the people
the good fun times we shared
and let that be the support
we grow on.

for even as days pass
after YL, thru to graduation
at heart, be reminded
of the day when we stood in a circle
and cried tears, not of sadness, but of gratification
that we should all still stand together
as one

that day, 12 months and 2 days ago.

catching my breath... phew *tumbles*

let's see... this past week was... eventful. well... lots of things happened... and i wish i was back to the good old days, back in J1, back in sec three, primary six...

PAYCO

the concert on the 12th was a booming success, in terms of ticket sales... what we could sell, we sold. and it was a full house, we even sold standing-tickets, i think. but the performance standard was not quite up to expectations...

dad's comments on the pieces were that it was rather disappointing as compared to previous performances. he thought the compilation of songs was rather badly done... too haphazard, with too many boring pieces. like "guan xuan". or "chuan ge". and even "qin wang" was a bit messy, i guess. yonghui hit one huge mistake. but overall, it's over, give yourselves a pat on the back, and move on.

sometimes, i wonder if it's because this current committee is incapable. i think we got the communications part down, but not the commitment part. we're all too preoccupied with school, first and foremost. the only person whom i see taking on everything, albeit not without complaints, is tsu yang. joyce is very commited to the scores. i'm not ven half there. i think. and with OAC around, i can never be always there. chongwu gets cynical at times. and 5/9 of us have our a's this year. my parents, for one, are pressing me to drop PAYCO for this whole year.

commitment problems are at best worse than at OAC. guarantee, plus chop.

wasted my time at qing gong yan on friday night, and further more on saturday afternoon thru evening, for ying xin hui. i've got to swear, meithing and pinyan, i love you guys, and i thank you for all the effort you guys put in, but the entertainment on these two occasions were largely self-entertainment. or maybe the times are just so different. i'll always remember the games wenyin they played. even medha and chongtang. or maybe that was coz i wasn't half this jaded about PAYCO.

the committee is inefficient, i admit. and i also admit that i'm part of the cause of this inefficiency, and i'm sorry to say i can't really make up for it in the short term.

i wish i was back in primary six, when i just joined PAYCO, and everything was so much more straightforward. just follow orders, and have fun.




YLTC

immediately after the concert was YLTC night 1. or should i say, YLTC started on the same day as the concert was on. shan't go on to elaborate on the nitty bitty things we did, just the things that made an impact.

happiness
when you know the juniors who stayed are really interested. and optimistic. the looks on their faces that say we'll live thru this. the determination each and every trainee wore on their faces on the first day of the camp. it was awesome. i wasn't there for long on the first day.

and when the days wear them thin, their cheers at the end of each and every activity really touch you. and you think "this is one batch that is bonded, rather strong. and even though there may be cliques (and pray they don't develop) this batch is cohesive, and we may see more from them yet". it is this sort of anticipation that keeps your spirits up, i guess.

anger
this is when they fail to meet our expectations as trainees. how should i say, it was probably more disappointment than anger. and it's really upsetting, when you try to get a message through, the understand, for just that bit, then they forget all about it again.

i was exceptionally angry at them during the first aid mob, and after land expedition. especially when we were all so tired and spent. haha, we were like taut strings, ready to snap and be restrung tighter. i remember huifen told me last year, "when you're tired, it's easy to lose your temper. that's when you don't have to worry about not being able to discipline them when discipline calls and they fail to perform." i fully understand that now.

like, how the hell do you expect me not to be angry, when i've been telling them to report aligned since precamp three, and on the last day of camp, they come back haphazard, and not even know that their timekeeper is supposed to be the second man? or when my "brother-in-law" scream in pain, and the trainee happily says to bandage his mouth first.

haiz.

sadness
or rather, wistfulness? it was sad/touching/nostalgic when we walked around and put their white shirts on their backs after mass repay on the last day of the camp. i almost cried. i know a few other instructors did. i'll always remember crying, in the wushu area, when i joined them for shirt collection, after sitting out the whole repay. and all other repays. it meant, for me, a symbol of acceptance, that i'll always be part of the nels.

i wonder what it meant to the twenty-eight of them. will they remember that one moment of bondedness? before the problems set in. when they know they've survived the camp together, and come out a closer batch than before.

as an instructor, the sad part was also during the repays, when the people slacked. i felt sad. sad for the trainees who don't know what unselfishness is. i won't say selflessness, because that's a different thing. selflessness is when you give yourself up to the bigger whole. unselfishness is when you lug your own weight, and make sure you don't become a burden, by always thinking of yourself first.

sad, when i saw the other instructors slogging it out, and feel so helpless, because sometimes, i simply don't know what's going on.

and sad, when sea expedition came to be so short. so uneventful. so disappointing. i felt like screaming, like crying. it was just too... haiz. how to say, it's everything the sea chiefs existed for. and we or i failed to perform. maybe it's my lack of commitment and consistency. that must be it. but i tried. i did. maybe it was just too late.

sea expedition was, in my eyes, rather a flop. haha. not that i really expected the juniors to make it up to TMFT. i can blame it on the time constraints. blame it on the weather. blame it on the juniors. blame it on PC. but in ther end, i know it's my fault that i didn't maintain my stand against mr lock, PC. to dare to stand against them, and fight all the way.

i don't know larh.

and yeah. the juniors DON'T LISTEN. i warned them. i told them "put seawater in your hair. make sure it's wet." they didn't listen. and what happened? PUS happened. exactly the same thing that happened to meishi during sea ex OBS 2002. i gave the same warning i took. i came away with no scalp burns. wh should they, if they listened?

joy
the metas grew. they learnt, however little -- they did. and we can only pray they remember what they learnt and be a better batch than we can ever be.

nels
we made it together in the end, didn't we? hope the camp lifted everyone's spirits, about us, as a batch. we came thru it together in the end. it ain't that easy being instructors. and it ain't that easy to make it without breaking down.

throughout the course of YLTC, i've seen people cry, i've seen people bitch, i myself was on the verge of just giving up. and it feels good, to know that in the end, we can all be sitting together, sharing gossips of our junior batch. sure, the cliques remained, but who cares, as long as we're still a great bunch of people. cheers, 30th!

"so what if you get tekkan'ed? your food and sleep are taken care of. so what if instructors get to bathe? we dont' get to sleep..." -- huijie [something along that line]




blocks

what to say?

i barely studied.

die lor.



HER

she got admitted on thursday night. and on friday afternoon, transferred from alexandra to well. yeah. anyway, i don't know. i feel so helpless. i'm sorry. i'm sorry i didn't know sooner, that i was so indifferent, when i first heard. i was so sure you'd feel better in a while. i was almost certain your practical side will get the better of you, and you'll find your old pragmatic preachy self in a while.

i wish i had paid more attention to you. sorry.

things have become so different since we left RGS. we hardly talk anymore. when we once bitched the whole world to each other. even bitched about each other. haha.

i don't even know where and how she is now *distressed*

dear gods, let her come to no harm, and keep her safe. let her find a pillar to lean on when she's tired, a shoulder to cry on when she's sad, and a fortress to hide in when she's vulnerable.

let her still be able to see this. and grant her strength to move on. tell her we care, that she's not alone. find a way to reach her.

please be fine.

random thoughts... it's OUR 1/2 anniversary^_^

precamps are over, somehow i feel a sense of temporary relief. at the same time, there's this inexplicable anxiety that i forgot some stuff along the way. hm... dunno. trying to get past it. it seems everyone else in oac is more busy than ever, but i don't seem to be affected.

i just realised, i'm more stressed out by the fact that i don't have time, than by the fact that i have things undone. it feels good, to know that finally, my afternoons are getting freed up... but only for like, today larh. then i haven't even started packing for YLTC. goodness knows when i'll have tie for that. midnight today? or midnight tml? haha.

bought a new pair of specs yesterday. damn funky. haha. (oh i heard that funky had some relations to sex too... it seems everything has a relation to sex these days.) oh yeah, i was saying. it's dark maroon! and it's squar-ish. and i'm gonna wear it for my performance day after tomorrow. hm... doesn't feel like it's so soon. feel very detached le, ever since my last breakdown about not having enough time, i thnk i've detached myself reflexively. let's just put it this way, the more indifferent you are, the easier it gets. things get done, your emotions are not so invloved, and you don't get upset as easily.

i just came to a new realisation. i have a life outside of oac, and if you can't understand that i have deeper commitments elsewhere, i guess its not really gonna matter, right? hm. that came out wrong. dunno larh. i do love oac and everything, but... erm. dunno how to say la.

OH! i got a hair trim yesterday too! hair's a lot thinner now. which rocks, coz the weight is gone, and its so much easier to keep it clean. no need to even comb lor. haha. perfect for camp.

precamps are officially over, we're all preparing for the big thing. the sea chiefs' job this year is a lot a lot lighter, coz we're not staying over at ECP you see, so feel a bit slack now... hm. maybe things will work themselves out again? *pray* haha, what kind of slack attitude is this. think the OAC pple will loathe me for thinking like this. but i guess we should take on a lighter point of view. take a step back, catch a breather. things will look so much more organised. if you zoom all the way in to the details, you'll be stressed out by all the nitty-bitty problems. not saying that you shouldn't be worrying about them, but dont keep going at them for such a long stretch of time. it makes you depressed. makes you think that yltc is nothing but problems and imperfections. you fail to see the better side ofthings and yltc becomes a worrisome event.

which is not what we want. this yltc is giong to be different from last year, but in essence, it's the same thing. we're going thru what we never did, this time, as instructors. it's our camp as much as theirs. why should we disallow ourselves the fun of it all? i really really think that's when sea ex comes in. because it's a very very simple expedition. kayak, beach up for lunch, kayak some more. not much logistics involved, no checkpoints, no detailed schedule, no worries. just an activity that all of us really enjoy.

which is why i always wanted to be a sea chief. the water has this amazing effect of temporarily removing all your troubles. all you want to do is to eat oranges and paddle around, bask in the sun, and see the trainees grow.

after swearing off the sweeper marker from OBS, i realised i made myself the sweeper again this year. coz alvin's definitely leading, wei leong might have to ferry amy, then leave me to sweep. hope this batch is better than the OBS one... but sweeper, to be honest is rather boring. you see the same old faces again and again. hm...

metas rock! they have awesome spirit man. but their zha ma all cannot cannot cannot make it =_="

okay. now with all the random thoughts out of the way...

today is OUR 1/2 anniversary ^_^

its been half a dozen months
26 weeks, 180 days, 4320 hours
and countless seconds spent waiting
for that one moment when
i glance at you and you

smile.

that one heartfelt lopsided grin
or hearty laugh
with it the light cuff
on my shoulder
and i am reminded of the one thing
i never want you to lose.

six months flew past
so swift, so fast
yet as we look back
hey, we've been thru quite some stuff,
tempers lost, silent embraces, with lots of fluff
in between
all the evenings just chatting
in the playground, like we are
once again kids, carefree in the presence
of the sweet scent of sunny hillsides

and for all the missing
the support, the tissues and sleeves offered
when i'm down
the cheer, the joy, the laughter
the LOVE,

thank you my dear.
for the past half a year ^_^

*huggles*

haha, my own feeble attempt at what you used to always do. maybe even now. hope you get to read this ^_^ like before i go off for camp (maybe i'll accidentally on purpose tell you i've blogged) cheers!

smile always.

lock ALERT!!!

today... lots of things happened. can't even begin to complain.

i realise i've stopped blogging about school. it's all YLTC. lol. i'm laughing, but it's seriously not funny. schoolwork's like, going down the drain and disappearing into oblivion. PAYCO is also getting neglected...

"why not let's do it this way... msg me when you're free to come down."

i was so so devastated when i read this in the morning... what happened to the angela who would go for practice even thruout her o levels? what happened to the angela who prided herself on her awesome attendance...? sometimes, i just feel so so so disgusted at myself *sobs*

the stupid school admin just cut YLTC from 6 days to 4.5 days. like what the FUCK! and they came up with some redundant committee to organise leadership courses and workshops to instil leadership qualities in the students... WORKSHOPS, bah. and what? oh, there may not be any YLTC next year. fuck lar. upsetting leh. i swear they're out to spite us.

it's like, all of a sudden, land ex is immediately after sea ex, trainees ain't staying over at ECP after sea ex, ms YL is held at ubin, and a campfire's not going to be the last event of a camp. and YL's gonna end on some obscure afternoon. everything's going wrong. pple are upset, shiwei's solemn, saykai's angry, and all of us are helpless.

and caught helpless. late.

now lock's threatening to cancel land ex. i sincerely, completely, desperately pray and hope that we can dissuade him from that idea tml morning.

and somehow, i feel so much like redeeming myself, for all the irresponsibility i displayed... but something in between will go wrong. and nothing gets done, again. i don't really know much anymore.

today's trip to bukit timah hill was good, for me. it took my mind off lots of things. but it horribly reminded me of the disturbingly low trainee count this year. i wonder how the enrolment for OAC will be like, this year. i feel upset, whenever i see any 1-man roll calls. today was the second last pre-camp. and guess what, two whole groups were missing during mass roll-call.

dunno larh. damn tired now. returning home later and later... a brief summary. i reached home at 12 am in the morning, and i have to set off at 6am.

i can't even blog properly now. just splashes of thoughts that flash randomly across my head. i'll give a more detailed account when i have the time, i guess...

let the melons hit the floor

today was meet ex. woohoo! haha.

technically, it's my first meet ex session, since i was still under YL-ban when navajos had meet ex last year. lol. then did some crazy things today. like eating wasabi. lol. i bought the wasabi with the intention of playing "hi harry" with the juniors lor. then end up i was very quickly promoted thru one-dot, then two-dot, then three-dot... then finally smear. and guess what, the dots were actually blobs of wasabi on your tongue, which you have to hold for like, at least 1 min 30 sec. "madness...

that's what you demonstrate. and that's exactly how anger works and operates. man you gotta have love here to set this straight..."

lol. siao.

then we smashed a whole watermelon and ate it. haha. and to think there was a total of two melons for navajos. crazy. we almost died eating one. haha. and my dinner hence comprised of: potato chips, wasabi, pandan coconut pound cake, wasabi, watermelon, wasabi, listerine + warheads... haha. not a very healthy dinner... but very fun.

navajos rocks! and rocks and rocks!

and cherokees is great too! *chants* we think we can, so we can...

they are like damn cute lar! C is for CUTE! haha. their songs all cute cute one, even their pledge is so cute. oh my god. i like them so much. haha. i like their GIs even more. wait. that's me! wee! haha. cheerios!

then the bad things of today. slept in phys lect. slept in principal's dialogue session... and i just totally screwed up my phys spa skill c,d. crap lar. my schoolwork is like *whoosh* flushed down the toilet bowl like that [which might be a good thing, considering that would mean i digested all that info. unfortunately, i didn't] [nvm, i'm talking crap] and it's never gonna come back to me. coz all drains lead to the sea... and i'm sure my work will decompose, like my brain.

*putty stuff flows out of ear holes* ooh... is that my brain?

haiz. and i pon qin wang pract today *hides in corner* please do not kill me... i know i'm seriously in deep shit. and QM day just extended into the afternoon... might have to siam halfway to go to PA for pract.

and there's PT tml. and there's pract + precamp day after tml. and there's QM day + pract on saturday. and there's sea ex mass recce on sunday. *tears hair*

dad's angry with me le... haiz. he's complaining that i'm spending all my time out... miao. dunno larh.

nava rocks!
*chants* let the melons hit the floor *evil smirk*

don't know what the hell happened sia...

dearest blog.

dunno why zui4 jing4 very crybaby. like wth. maybe it's mood swings... sianz.

today [as in 1st march] is joseph's birthday. quite sad, coz he didn't get the cake, card and songs that everyone usually gets... that even i got last year. lol. so, if you happen to be reading this now, happy belated birthday, i promise, your birthday gift will be delivered, albeit late.

mr lock agreed to the budget, i think. lol. he said should be no problem. miao. so pc side settled. sea ex settled. very good. was beginning to get paranoid that there was going to be no sea ex... *sweatdrop*

today, before pract, i dropped by kel'chan's place... i guess things got a bit sianified for me then, coz i was just reading newspapers, and waiting around for him to finish bustling around. well, guess i was being unreasonable, coz i never gave him the chance to know before i started, you know, complaining... hm... then maybe it's coz he didn't keep to his word, be it casual or not... miao. then after that, we went down to tampines together, and i moved on to kallang from there... so then he had to go to bishan, and we met halfway thru larh huh. shall skip details, but i guess somewhere along the line i just got that bit more sianified... think maybe coz i feel very bad i almost lost my temper at him. then coz of my inefficient time allocation methods, then well, i let slip a tear, i guess.

which was a bad thing, considering i held them for like god knows how long le... lol. then well, hope can settle things out before i turn in.

hm, feel like being an arrogant bastard and not study for phys SPA skill CD tml... sian. don't even know where my notes are. gonna dig for them. hm...

then i guess i'll call kel-chan to iron things out, yeah?

then i will turn in.

and i will sleep. finally.

and so, dearest blog, goodnight, goodbye, adieu, aloha, auf weidersehen, oyasumi, au revoir, zai jian...

wadever.