live long and prosper

get out of my elitist uncaring face

2006-10-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

mom's friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called derek wee (WHY do all the idiots have my surname why?!) whining about how singapore is such an insecure place, how old ppl (ie, 40 and above) fear for their jobs, how the pool of foreign "talent" (dismissively chucked between inverted commas) is really a tsunami that will consume us all (no actually he didn't say that, he probably said Fouren Talern Bery Bad.), how the reason why no one wants kids is that they're a liability in this world of fragile ricebowls, how the government really needs to save us from inevitable doom but they aren't because they are stick-shoved-up-ass elites who have no idea how the world works, yadayadayadayada.

i am inclined - too much, perhaps - to dismiss such people as crackpots. stupid crackpots. the sadder class. too often singaporeans - both the neighborhood poor and the red-taloned socialites - kid themselves into believing that our society, like most others, is compartmentalized by breeding. ridiculous. we are a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement.

sad derek attracted more than 50 comments praising him for his poignant views, joining him in a chorus of complaints that climax at the accusation of lack of press freedom because his all-too-true views had been rejected by the straits times forum. while i tend to gripe about how we only have one functioning newspaper too, i think the main reason for its lack of publication was that his incensed diatribe was written in pathetic little scraps that passed off as sentences, with poor
spelling and no grammar.

derek, derek, derek darling, how can you expect to have an iron ricebowl or a solid future if you cannot spell?

if you're not good enough, life will kick you in the balls. that's just how things go. there's no point in lambasting the government for making our society one that is, i quote, "far too survival of fittest". it's the same everywhere. yes discrimination exists, and it is sad, but most of the time if people would prefer hiring other people over you, it's because they're better. it's so sad when people like old derek lament the kind of world that singapore will be if we make it so uncertain. go be friggin communist, if uncertainty of success offends you so much - you will certainly be poor and miserable. unless you are an arm-twisting commie bully, which, given your whiny middle-class undereducated penchant, i doubt.

then again, it's easy for me to say. my future isn't certain but i guess right now it's a lot brighter than most people's. derek will read this and brand me as an 18-year old elite, one of the sinners who will inherit the country and run his stock to the gutter. go ahead. the world is about winners and losers. it's only sad when people who could be winners are marginalised and oppressed. is dear derek starving? has dear derek been denied an education? has dear derek been forced into child prostitution? has dear derek had his clan massacred by the government?

i should think not. dear derek is one of many wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country, and in this world. one of those who would prefer to be unemployed and wax lyrical about how his myriad talents are being abandoned for the foreigner's, instead of earning a decent, stable living as a sales assistant. it's not even about being a road sweeper. these shitbags don't want anything without "manager" and a name card.

please, get out of my elite uncaring face.

fight club?

2006-09-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

whoa apparantly the fierce kids at acjc have some sort of fight club which proves that the chattering classes are not above petty violence when it comes to extra-curricular activities.

acjc kid 1: i say, shall we reconvene after school at a suitable locale to do most grievous bodily harm to one another

acjc kid 2: a most excellent proposition my good man, and may i first say that by the time our little altercation is over you will most surely have cried uncle

acjc kid 3: and might i be so bold as to suggest that we invite the other members of our class to this little after school soiree

acjc kid 1: by all means go ahead. after all, what could possibly go awry unless it appears on the front page of the new paper

and here i was thinking that only the proletariat were capable of such things. perhaps we are more alike than we like to think.

well apparantly in jc you are allowed to add 2 grades to your prelim score to get your projected results. so technically C is the new A. i'm just waiting for dead to be the new alive so i can kill myself and live off the insurance money.

dani california

2006-09-21T08:54:00.001-07:00

wow our first ever class outing in like, i dunno, a year? and it happened only because sim yee was the only person to enter some contest which meant she won all 13 pairs of tickets.

but nevermind, the night listener is an okay show. better than aeon flux at any rate and before the show there was like the most suspect trailer i have ever seen. it was for some jap horror movie called death note. the plot (as far as i could tell) is about some notebook that kills anybody whose name is written in it.

the point is the entire time the trailer was playing, the background music wasn't some weird techno jap shit. it was dani california.

california rest in peace
some jap guy with some typical jap hairstyle speaking in jap

simultaneous release
some jap guy with some typical jap hairstyle writing in a notebook

california show your teeth
some jap girl wearing some jap schoolgirl uniform giving one of those typical jap girl blank looks

she's my priestess, i'm your priest
some jap horror flick demon laughing with that typical jap horror flick demon voice

yeah, yeah
some jap title on the screen

damm and i thought date movie was random

dani california

2006-09-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

i am not alone

2006-08-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

omgwtfbbq whoever wrote this shit deserves to be awarded the public service star. screw JBJ these guys are the real deal. damm i only wish i could get to know them before they get arrested for sedition.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/National_University_of_Singapore

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Management_University

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Hwa_chong_institution

schiesse

2006-08-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

now is the winter of my discount tent says: dont worry as long as coms exist we'll always need com engineers

wtf joke function pawns says: yeah same with toilets

now is the winter of my discount tent says: shit maybe you shldnt have put it that way

hmmm apparantly i have just realised that i forgot to complete my post about my medical
checkup. well there wasn't really anything interesting about the rest of the experience although i thought having women's weekly, cleo and seventeen as the only available reading material in a waiting room full of 18 year old guys a bit weird. the only really crazy part was the MO

MO: so you got two balls and a dick
me: duh
MO: okayyyy any hernia fracture genital deformity drug allergy homosexuality substance abuse smoking problem tattoo hole in the heart
me: huh
MO: i'll take that as a no
me: uhhh sure

and then the killer moment. he looks up and delivers the line

MO: mannnnn, i'm tired

shit what do i do. if i pretend to be gay and flirt with him, maybe he'll give me PES E. but if i do he might think i am gay and try to take it to the next level. damm my entire ns life is like depending on how i react to some guy who may or may not be gay. finally i decide to play it safe and give up my shot at two years of clerkdom.

damm when i'm lying in the mud next year, i'm really going to regret not sucking dick.

part deux

2006-07-29T03:56:00.000-07:00

From the Straits Times, 6th August 2006 (or next sunday if you will)

THE FORGOTTEN ONES

last week our correspondents brought you the first in a two part series of articles detailing recent changes to the singapore education landscape in the form of the sports school and the NUS high school. this week we turn our attention to that most famous of dumping grounds, FASS.

nestled in a neglected corner of kent ridge, the faculty of arts and social sciences is the last chance saloon for a eclectic mix of wannabe humanities scholars, washed out science fac students and people-who-filled-in-the-application-form-wrongly. as sociology undergraduate name withheld to protect dignity says, " nobody really knows what they're doing here, it's like we're already dead but we don't know it yet."

such attitudes are a constant source of concern for name withheld as he has applied for another job, dean of the faculty. he feels that many of his students are unmotivated and have no faith in their own futures when in fact, they should be overjoyed at the wide range of opportunities a degree from FASS will give them. "why only yesterday i lost my handphone and when i called singtel to cancel my SIM card, the guy from customer service told me he was from the department of history, class of 2001. and look at the number of our grads who sell credit cards or conduct surveys on orchard road, all bright young men and women."

to shake off it's image as that-place-you-go-to-if-you-screwed-up-the-law-fac-interview, the faculty has gone on an intensive publicity campaign featuring distinguished alumni. among those likely to be featured are former NMP steve chia and that guy who runs chippy british take away (the place where you get fried mars bars). before we leave the campus, the dean gives us a guided tour. on a wall in the foyer are brass plaques inscribed with important dates in the history of the social sciences. "one day if one of our graduates becomes the assistant to the assistant of one of those people, then i'll know our faculty has finally arrived on the world stage."

welcome to the matrix

2006-07-22T02:36:00.000-07:00

Dear PSG, Parents and Victorians,

Tomorrow, we will be celebrating our 130th Anniversary and the Official Opening of the school campus. This is a milestone in the history of Victoria School. Our school has come a long way since 1876. I believe that every members of the Victorian family is proud of this moment.

hmmm correct me if i'm wrong but i always thought the school campus opened way back in 2003. but i got the above info from the victoria school public website and as they say, if it's on the internet, it must be true! so what happened to all the time we spent studying for the o lvls in that building.

fuck i think we imagined it all. none of it actually happened. the entire time we thought we were studying in that building, we were probably in pods filled with a weird gooey substance and attached to buildings to provide energy. fuck no wonder there were so many weird new staff members at the new campus, they must have been the agents sent by the overmind to keep us all happy. and oh my god now i know why so many 3B people got expelled, they must have freed their minds and escaped the matrix.

the alternative explanation is that the entire time we were studying there, the campus was never certified as being structurally sound by the public works department. as such, it did not qualify for a temporary occupancy permit. which means that technically all of us were actually illegal squatters on government property. on the plus side for the school, if any of us got killed/beaten up, our parents couldn't do anything about it because you can't sue the administrators of a building that doesn't exist.

lucky i didn't go to HC

2006-07-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

''*' small cat starvation says:
and one of my non spaper frien dwent to the gic booth
''*' small cat starvation says:
lol
''*' small cat starvation says:
the frist thing the guy asked was whether my friend had s paper
''*' small cat starvation says:
when the answer was no
''*' small cat starvation says:
he said "well, your chance is not very high then. here's a goodie bag for you anyway"

thank you for failing

2006-07-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

the reason i didn't have a CMPB post before this is that it seems so repetitive. it seems like every 18 year old guy with a blog will put one up. they all invariably involve the same stupid dick joke about how size does matter. and so i concentrated on sapism and elitism. but a random convo made me take a second look at what happened that day and now i've found a way to work elitism and sapism into a post about CMPB.

the first thing you see on the letter they send you to remind you to turn up are the shiny happy Singapore Quality Class and Singapore Service Class logos. the first lie, a small one perhaps, but a sign of things to come. the quality of service there makes Abu Gharaib look like the Pan Pac.

fast forward to the actual centre. the first stop is the neoprint station, where the guy-who-failed-the-canon-photography-course-ten-times now works for minimum wage. clearly almost all of the young men he takes pics of will surpass him in social status one day and so this is his last chance to put one over them. after you endure his pathetic hate filled vitriol, you move on to pee land.

pee land is inhabited by a trio of NUS med fac students who are clearly verrrry happy about being able to avoid having to serve in a real combat unit. one looks like a typical TCHS All Singaporean model student, the kind mothers want for sons-in-law. probably played sports or something. his minions look like faggots, probably library council. which would explain why they have the envious job of reading urine stained litmus paper while he plays with some SRS machine. the common thread binding the three together is their love of chinese music, while i was there they were playing One Night in Beijing. (i kid you not)

the next few stations are forgettable. there's another room immediately after pee land where a MO-who-couldn't-make-it-in-private-practice takes a blood sample. then a dental checkup so fast you barely open your mouth. followed by an eye check where they don't even bother to prevent you from cheating and giving yourself 20/20 vision. (not that you'd want to unless you have a burning ambition to impress girls by becoming a commando). there's an X-ray thingy of course and also a hearing test.

finally we are ready to move on to the exciting world of the phyiscal examination. but the final starts in like 2 minutes, so it'll have to wait till next week.

i told you so

2006-07-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

it seems the first round of culling has begun. apparantly 2 s papers isn't enough to ingratiate yourself with your teachers anymore. today on stage the elitist in chief proclaimed that announcements with regard to US/UK uni admission would henceforth only apply to a hundred or so students.

considering the number of 2 s paper people selected for the PSC psychometric test was way in excess of a hundred, this can only mean that the air has just gotten a little thinner at the top of the singapore education system. since the bossman neglected to mention exactly who the Final 100 were or whether there was going to be a revival round, the news set off a frenzy of guessing and soul searching among the elite and soon to be formerly elite of our fine institution.

"shit i knew i should have sucked up more"

"omg what am i going to do with all the winter clothing i bought"

"i don't think he/she deserves a spot because he/she is a asshole/biatch"

"he/she only got in cos all his/her subject tutors voted for him/her"

by the time the dust clears and we know for sure who is still in with a chance at becoming the next PSC Idol, i expect that many bridges will have been burned and many friendships ruined. maybe a few of the eliminated contestants will even go a step further and take the final plunge. from six points to six feet under. before i end this post, i think it's only fair that we let one of the eliminated contestants share his/her thoughts on the experience of being a part of PSC Idol.

"you people can't do this to me. scholarships are my life. ever since i was a little girl/boy all i've ever wanted is to get one. i've been waiting a lifetime for a moment like this and you people take it away from me. i don't care what you people think, i still believe that i'm a better scholar than the other contestants. i'm disappointed that not all my tutors voted for me but this is just more motivation for me to continue working hard and i'll be back next season. you just wait. i'll get 4As and 2 distinctions and i'll get a scholarship without your help. so f*** you"

welcome to the Suck

2006-06-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

apparantly somebody has been ruffled by my post about CO people and gone "**** u vs boy". but as zengyi so quickly pointed out, in vs, we suck and we know it. we don't pretend that vs is heaven on earth because it's more like the place where hope died.

don't believe me? ask arun, or jeevan, or wen hui, or zher ming, or jabba, or any one of the hundreds of other future changi bound alumni of victoria school. this is a place where people can write "i have two moles" for the answer to a question on molar mass. where people think that the statement "some-random-compound is reduced by coke" is wrong because it should read "some-random-compound is reduced by pepsi". people don't get much dumber than that. heck even i got 0 once for some stupid maths test.

i've seen guys get escorted out of school by the cops. i've seen guys who got expelled try to sneak back into their classrooms to steal things. i've had to line up in the parade square like a common criminal and have my bag checked because some faggot claimed he saw a lower sec guy steal his wallet. yup all 400 of us were suspects. i've seen people get expelled and then celebrate by smoking at the bus stop outside school.

i could have avoided all this shit if i'd studied a tiny bit harder and gone to some shiny happy co-ed paradise. but i didn't. and now i'm permanently emotionally damaged. but for what it's worth, if i had a choice, i'd still choose gafoor and his cigarettes over chinese midi. welcome to the Suck.

the level of discourse

2006-06-21T03:47:00.000-07:00

i'm still learning more about sapist culture everyday. every smiley is like a new discovery, as the following example shows.

me: bYe ByE

zengyi: <3

me: wtf is less than three

zengyi: your knowledge of contemporary social norms is pathetic. everybody knows <3 is sapist for heart

me: that looks nothing like a heart

zengyi: tilt your head 90 degrees and witness the greatest cover up in history

me: oh my god it's like the da vinci code

zengyi: kneel in front of the screen and pray to me

damm i should have joined CO

2006-06-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

mex has informed me that my theory of evolution with regards to jc coolness have sadly been proven right. sapist girls do prefer CO guys.

damm. back in sec 1 i was trying to figure out if it was CO or scouts that was the slacker CCA. i took one look at the CO guys, saw how they read i zhou kan and listened to chinese midi and decided to join haan hui and patrick in scouts. i figured if push came to shove and someone was trying to beat me up, i would be safer with two guys who could single handedly beat an entire class in tug of war than a couple of dudes on chinese midi.

how quick the fortunes of war can change. haan hui and pat are now a distant memory. haan hui is now in the cj soccer team although apparantly the only reason he gets to play is that he threatened his coach with grievous bodily harm if he wasn't in the starting 11. pat is in poly doing god knows what.

the CO guys on the other hand, are now enjoying their pick of every jc's 100 sexiest. in a related matter, could someone lend me a copy of this year's edition. (the fhm one, not the jc one) damm if i'd known this was going to happen i wouldn't have dissed them so much back in vs. i knew that stupid "chinese high, english low" joke was going to come back and haunt me.

now my only chance to avoid eternal chastity and a role in the asian remake of the 40 year old virgin is to convert to sapism. no more franz ferdinand for me, from now on it's 5566. and screw arrested development, from now on the only show i'm watching is Superband. i've even changed my subscription from newsweek to i zhou kan. one year of watching CO guys getting laid left right and centre has done what 12 years of chinese lessons could not. i now stand corrected. the sapists were right all along. hua yu cool.

tonight tonight

2006-06-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

this is the period during the holidays when jc students make the obligatory statements which go something like "oh the mid yrs are gg already" or "shit i havent started mugging". don't believe me? look at all the MSN nicks and you'll see for yourself. most of these people are of course lying through their keyboards. even if they only studied half of what they claimed to cover, they still manage to do twice as well as me.

of course part of this could be explained by the fact that i'm quite a dumb person. (shit did you know that bacon, ham and pork all come from the same animal? i sure as hell didn't) fuck, i'm still trying to figure out the difference between flammable and inflammable. (when a gas canister is labelled inflammable, does that mean it's safe to smoke next to it?)

the only people who are really going to join me in failure are the people who provide concrete examples of why they're doomed. like this guy.

two weeks gone and the only thing i've done is to staple my differentiation notes together. ffs, at the rate i'm going, even macdonalds will scorn upon my alevel cert and give the cashier job to that 4.0GPA grad from ITE Macpherson.

i may end up selling dvds at tampines mrt. but i think they'll even pass up on me and give the job to jabaru the great. afterall he has work experience- begger aka con artist, and salesman aka vcd peddler.

and then where do i go? i will see the rafflesian 4A kids- anwar, then a senior investment equity partner at Stanley Morgan, or hazwan, regional director of the Middle East at SIA. even chuan en, will be president of fridae.com

i'll be zengyi, chief cashier of NTUC fairprice @ Blk 465 Tampines st 44.

ripped from http://suckittillitsdry.blogspot.com/

pwnage

2006-06-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

damm lying at home on your bed for the better part of a week can do wonders for your mental condition. i am now close to enjoying eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

well my prediction that i would own the SAT proved to be false. as seems to be the case with all my academic endeavours since i started jc, i got pawned instead. my score is just good enough to use for admission into SMU, which would mean i wasted my money. one day when i'm selling tissue paper at bedok bus interchange, i'm going to really regret spending that money.

when i send people messages asking them if they've watched any good movies so far, i get replies asking me if we should have a class study session because some people miss school too much. shit i think the problem with me is that i'm not getting with the program here in jc. i don't know how to play bridge or mahjong and i'm not into class mugging sessions.

my attempts to find someone to go out with have been a big hit so far. up to now i've received all the following excuses

1) i've been grounded for the whole month
2) i went out too many times last year
3) my pet hamster died
4) going out is against my religion
5) when you go out you have to come home eventually so i'm cutting down on any waste of energy by not going out in the first place
6) go out? sure, once i've finished preparing lunch for my siblings because both my parents work and after i've cleaned the house and sent my diabetic grandparents to the dialysis centre then i'll have all the time in the world to go out
7) i'm allergic to sunlight
8) orchard is like so far away can't we go to siglap centre instead
9) will there be kbox
10) my insurance only covers me when i'm in school i don't want to take that kind of risk

sad shit

2006-05-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

well at least they tried. this time they actually got to the bus stop before the outing collapsed. i guess going bowling at katong is too extreme for some people.

lucky i wasn't there. from what i heard it was painful. imagine walking to the bus stop with your friends, all excited about bowling or playing bridge or whatever it is people who don't drink do when they go out. and then suddenly they start going home one after another. shit it sounds like something out of the twilight zone.

so it seems the only outings i'm likely to have this entire month will be organised by, wait for it, my teachers. yup. so basically it's going to be watching the world cup at tommy's place and using van's chocolate fountain. when your teachers are cooler than you, that says something about how happening your life is.

and so the major event in our class social calender will take place all the way in december. that's how long ahead you have to plan if you want to get everybody on board. seriously though SDD is like for certified cool gangers only and after i've taken pictures with all of my 2 friends (give or take), i'll probably spend the rest of the evening eating leftover food from other tables. and then instead of going for the REAL post SDD party at MoS or Zouk or whatever, i'll drink 7-Up at the OFFICIAL post SDD party with the other cool people who think that the official post SDD party is an authentic clubbing experience.

and then we'll walk along Mohd. Sultan because we don't know any of the bouncers and can't get in. finally after buying snacks at 7-11 we'll play bridge at some park. yup that sounds about right. check back in december to see if my prediction came true. or maybe it'll be worse. or maybe i won't live that long.

beer me

2006-05-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

a long long time ago, before i became the cynical washed out NUS bound loser i am today, my views on drinking were essentially the ones my primary school health ed teacher taught me.

1) drinking is bad
2) it screws up your liver
3) if you drink and drive you might die
4) if you spend money on beer you won't be able to buy any more pokemon cards (remember this was pri school)

but then my life took a drastic turn for the worse and i was faced with the stark reality of the sheer shittiness of my future. i had two choices. i could join an organised religion, or i could get drunk. i chose beer, in the process dooming myself to the eternal fires of satan's furnace but at the same time ensuring that i would at least live out the rest of my sorry life in an alcohol induced haze, making it marginally more bearable.

besides, look at all these other people who drank too much. winners all!

i feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day
-Frank Sinatra, whose song My Way is the most widely mis-sung karaoke song of all time

beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy
-Benjamin Franklin, whose image graces the US$100 bill

i wish i'd drunk more champagne
-last words of John Maynard Keynes, founder of modern marcoeconomics

see what i mean? if keynes could go through life drunk on booze and still know more about economics than any teetotalling 3 s paper student, so can i. and to those who worry about getting drunk, consider this.

when we drink, we get drunk. when we get drunk, we fall asleep. when we fall asleep, we commit no sin. when we commit no sin, we go to heaven. so let's all get drunk and go to heaven!

my hero

2006-05-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

i think i've finally discovered my role model in life. allow me to present the destroyer of dreams, kevin sim. for the uninformed, kevin is the guy who gives talks to jc students on applying to US universities. me and ashish went for the vj session on thursday, expecting nothing more than the usual run of the mill "ohmigod you take s papers you're like so going to harvard" crap we get from the scholarship teachers in school.

boy were we wrong. without any regard for empathy, kevin ripped through the dreams of those present like a knife through butter. oh i would give anything to relive that 1.5 hours as the increasingly desperate smart people, so used to their teachers fawning over them, were given a reality check by the kevinator. some of them seriously looked like they were on the verge of tears. you could hear their hearts break as he dispelled myth after myth about their superiority.

s paper dude: so sir how many singaporeans went to harvard last year
kevin: 2 or 3
s paper dude: weeps softly

s paper dude: sir i'm like a bio olympiad medal winner
kevin: so are the other thousand or so people who apply from countries other than singapore
s paper dude: weeps softly

other quotable quotes from kevin-san

"no student in singapore, not even the best students in rj, can gurantee that they're going to the ivy league"

"students walk into my office and tell me that they want to go to harvard and i start laughing"

"last year i gave a talk at rj and pissed the hell out of them by telling them that none of them were going to harvard"

"less than 10 singaporeans get accepted to each of the ivy league schools and the actual number of individuals accepted is even lower because some people get offers from more than one college."

"you think you stand out? your portfolio looks exactly the same as the other hundred i read"

maybe fang xian was right and there really is a god looking out for people like me, because i can't remember the last time i saw s paper students getting the shaft that badly. looks like i'll be seeing more of my schoolmates in NUS than they thought.

Nightmare on Kent Ridge

2006-05-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

for those of you unlucky enough to not be on s papers and who are hence doomed to the hell that is kent ridge, you might not be aware that an event just as, if not more important than the recently concluded general election will be taking place at the end of the month. like the election, it will determine our children's future and the level of foreign investment in singapore.

i speak, of course, about the PSC Psychometric Evaluation Exam. the entry point for the future members of the admin service.

DO YOU TAKE S PAPERS?
DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF SUPERIOR TO THOSE WHO DON'T?
DO YOU THINK PEOPLE WHO TAKE S PAPERS DESERVE TO BE TREATED BETTER?

IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THE ABOVE, THEN HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED A CAREER IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION?
COME FOR OUR PSYCHOMETRIC EVALUATION TO SEE IF YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES
DOOR GIFTS FOR THE FIRST 50 STUDENTS

THE PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION: WHERE THE PUBLIC SERVES YOU

they live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare

OMGWTFBBQ

2006-05-04T04:05:00.000-07:00

having already messaged him earlier in the morning to ask him out for lunch, i thought it impolite to have to cancel simply because my phone ran out of batt. so i used ashish's phone to call him.

me: eh meet me at cartel later
zengyi: huh, i like just woke up, gimme till 1.45
me: whatever you do, remember i don't have a phone so don't bail on me

and so after school i rush to siglap, praying to all my gods that zengyi, in his semi-conscious state had been able to understand my instructions. i reach cartel at 1.45 and get a table inside the place. to show my appreciation to him for being able to make it, i even ask for two glasses of water. and so i wait for him to show, knowing that punctuality is not his strong suit. and i wait. and wait. and wait. by 2.10 the staff are giving me weird looks. this guy must think he has an imaginary friend or something, they must be saying to themselves, or his fugly gf must have stood him up. finally, desperate and hungry, i eat by myself.

angry but full(mmmm), i rush home to charge my phone. i sit by the charger watching the little blue bars light up one by one. once they are full, i call him to ask what the fuck happened.

me: WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU
zengyi: eh i was damm pissed lah i like waited from 1.50 to 2.10 then i went to macs to eat
me: what the fuck do you mean you waited why didn't you see me in the restaurant
zengyi: huh i was waiting outside man, since when do people wait inside the restaurant
me: IT WAS 37 DEGRESS OUTSIDE WHO THE FUCK WAITS IN THAT KIND OF WEATHER
zengyi: lol so you ate by yourself?

see you on the other side

2006-04-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

i have a choice. or so the workers party tells me. the fact that they could come up with such a idiotic slogan speaks volumes about the kind of people they have to work on their propaganda. it sounds like a freaking detergent ad or something. and they field candidates who are capable of filling in election papers wrongly not once, but twice. wow that's really the kind of guy i want to have as my MP, somebody who can't fill in a form properly.

the fact is, most of us don't have a choice. the career talk sign up sheet gets passed around today and what do i see?

students with a @ next to their name have been shortlisted to attend the GIC Fund Management Scholarship talk. students not identified may still attend the talk provided they have s papers (preferably 2)

i'm not making this up. some elitist fucktard really wrote that on the sheet. inclusive society my fat 3 sub ass. i'll be sure to recipocrate by "including" all the elitists in the concentration camps once the revolution comes.

sometimes people ask me where i get the ideas for the stuff i write about elitists. to be honest most of the time i don't need to do any thinking. the elitists give me more than enough material with their actions. in the singapore education system, truth is often stranger than fiction.

Never Mind The Sapists, Here's The Sex Pistols

2006-04-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever

we must never allow the barriers that we have put up to educational integration be taken down. the straits times should be ashamed that they have published such a blatantly egalitarian article. "why segregate us?" asks alpphenyl ooi of rjc, a statement which immediately leads the reader to question whether or not he/she (this has to be the most androgynous name i have ever seen, everytime i read the read the article i think of organic chem) is really from rj.

"why segregate us?" you ask. the reason is simple. intermixing of the different social classes is nothing less than a dangerous marxist experiment. our continued survival as a nation depends on our government's ability to make principled, unpopular decisions that carry long term benefits instead of populist ones that only have short term value. their ability to do so stems from their detachment from the very people whom their policies affect.

do you think for one moment that if the CEO of PSA was best friends with the clerks that he laid off in 2003, he would have done so? and if he hadn't, where would we be today? PSA would still be making a loss and a few deadbeat employees would still have a job. similarly, how can the future prime minister, who is probably now a student in rj or hc, make such painful decisions in the future if he or she is burdened by emotional ties to the social underclass. imagine if we had to cut CPF contributions so our economy would be more competitive. what if the prime minister's drinking buddy was some ITE air con repairman he met at some youth avenue seminar when he was in jc? would he still have the emotional strength to go through with the cuts and tell his drinking buddy, "i think i'd better pick up the tab this week."?

why i am going to FASS

2006-04-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

fgtoday is a sad day in my life. any residual doubts i might have had about my future are gone. and i might add that i am not alone. zengyi, wei han, javier, richie, roy, asik, mexcel and vipul are all in it as well. because the nine of us took half an hour to figure out how to do the most basic of complex number questions.

how to square root -15-8i

sad as it may seem. it did really take us half an hour to do that. people like lester can continue to struggle all they want and aspire to escape NUS, but in our hearts we all know that we can never escape our destiny. for our fate was sealed the day we became victorians. more than my lousy PW results, my lack of s papers, my non-existent CCA record, my lack of any redeeming human qualities, it is my connection to the failure capital of the world that will doom me to NUS.

i can see it already.

CLASS REUNION FOR VS CLASS 4A 2004
28th Feb 2010 (we need to hold it after the annual progress package payment from the government so we can pay the rental fee)
Venue: NUS Guild House
Alternative venue: tampines street 21 kopitiam (the one where zengyi sells mee pok)
Time: 5AM (because eng kuon and zhi lei are working the night shift at the 7-11)
Attire: casual (for the bus drivers, please remember to change out of your uniforms)
Parking: please park your taxi in the guild house car park to enjoy $10 off your next diesel bill
Highlights: performances by Kbox Idol, voting for "most likely to turn to crime to support family" and "best dressed vietnamese bride"

CLASS REUNION FOR VJ CLASS 05S14/ HCI CLASS 05S31/ RJ CLASS S03A
30th June 2010 (some of us will be attending encaenia at oxford and will only be free on this date)
Venue: Rainbow Room, GE Building, Rockefeller Center, New York City
Alternative venue: Kensington Roof Gardens, 99 Derry Street, London
(depends on which one is available)
Time: 8pm (some of us will be going for elton john's annual black and white ball earlier in the day)
Attire: some of the girls have professed a liking for versace's new collection and the guys have made an appointment to see some of Jean Paul Gaultier's new pieces
Parking: please direct your driver to the valet
Highlights: performances by the arctic monkeys, voting for "most likely to become prime minister" and "best elitist"

don't look back in anger

2006-04-12T07:23:00.000-07:00

the year is 1955

a black seamstress, Rosa Parks, refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus even though she is required to do so by the law. because, frankly speaking, black people were getting a really shit deal back then and she was tired of getting pushed around by white people. her act of civil disobedience sparks the civil rights movement in america which eventually leads to the end of racial segregation.

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

the year is 2006

a non s paper student at xjc is enjoying his/her daily nap in the air-conditioned comfort of the school auditorium when he/she realises that a PSC scholarship briefing has been scheduled for the same time. as the auditorium fills with s paper students, a teacher tells him/her to get out of the auditorium because the briefing is by invitation only. he/she meekly submits and apologises profusely before leaving the auditorium like a good dog.

"oh my god that was so wrong of me, i mean, what if that teacher hadn't woken me up and told me to get the hell out of the auditorium , i might have denied an s paper student a chance to listen to some guy from PSC talk about career options the likes of which i can only dream of. i just want to apologise again to any of my future members of parliament if i caused them any inconvenience or trouble."

every time we blindly accept the view that s papers are the sole arbiters of genius, we drive another nail into the coffin of egalitarianism. will there ever be a Rosa Parks of the singapore education system? will a student, be it an ITE or a Normal Tech or a non s paper student, ever have the courage to say "i'm tired of giving in" and refuse to give up his or her seat?

slaughterhouse five

2006-04-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

remember when elitism used to be nice and in your face? when people didn't pretend that you needed to be a member of the admin service to matter? when the straits times still published the secondary school rankings, thus allowing us (i mean the vs guys) to see how far we'd fallen year after year. yup, i remember those days. simple signs for simple minds. especially the school ranking thingy. i think it went something like this.

1 RI guy> 3 Dunman High guys > 7 VS guys > 11 St. Andrews guys > the whole of Jalan Ramai Ramai Vocational Institute

(i could be wrong, but my memory is a little fuzzy)

and then of course some well meaning idiot came along and tore it all down. 40 years of institutionalized elitism gone just like that. and although everybody said it was for the better, i think people secretly still craved for the days when you could tell whether a person was deserving of your respect based on what uniform he wore. good times, weren't they? i guess i'm feeling a triffle nostalgic about it all.

although one might argue that in reality nothing has changed at all. the straits times still reeks of elitism everytime they report on education. my favourite was this article about how one of the malay top scorers in the PSLE (it was probably a few years back or something) was intending to apply to vs instead of ri because the fees in vs were lower. (trust me the majority of vs guys can't barely afford lunch, let alone school fees) so once the ri advisory committee got wind that they might only get 99/100 of the top scorers in the PSLE, they pulled out the stops and offered him a scholarship so he wouldn't have to suffer in the hellhole that is geylang bahru.

and of course the ST made it seem like it was reporting on the recapture of the holy land by the crusaders. THANK YOU GOD ALMIGHTY FOR DELIVERING THIS BOY UNTO US AND IN THE PROCESS SAVING HIM FROM THE ETERNAL FIRES OF SATAN'S FURNACE or something along those lines. i'm not saying he made the wrong choice though, i'd have left in a heartbeat if i'd gotten an offer like that.

Anarchy in the VJ

2006-04-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

so i was waiting for bus no 608 outside crescendo building and it was like going to rain any moment and i was getting pissed that i'd been waiting for like 20 minutes. at this point i realised it was sunday and 608 doesn't operate on sundays. fuck

so i try to walk home as quickly as possible before i become a poster boy for some plus sized wet t shirt contest. i manage to reach fidelio street (halfway between siglap and home) when it starts to pour, fuck. by the time i reach my house i have like pneumonia or something. i've just spent one week recovering from a killer throat infection and now i get this. when i recover from this i suspect i'll get food poisoning or dengue fever.

in other news, the class struggle so brilliantly predicted by our hero Karl Marx has come to pass. no longer content to share the spotlight, the jocks and the arts fac are going one on one to decide once and for all who really constitutes the VJ cool gang. their cause celebre? apparantly it involves some fat guy getting made fun of. (well as long as it's not me)

like franz ferdinand and World War I before him, Fat Guy was the spark which ignited the long simmering dispute to the cool throne in vj. following his humiliation, a coordinated response was immediately effected through that most beloved of arts institutions in vj, cosiety. and before long it was every wannabe cool ganger for him/her self. to be honest i don't really give a fuck about who occupies the high profile limelight in vj, but i'd like to make some suggestions.

get the sapists and the s paper people involved. a fatal four way is much more fun than a boring one on one. why restrict yourselves to the differences between athletism and intellectualism? dammit i want to see elitism and racism involved. a great big melting pot of hate. if our differences can't bring us together, the least they can do is destroy us. best of all, who wins in this war to end all wars?

WE DO. THE ANARCHISTS. remember that corny sci-fi show, alien vs predator? remember it's tagline? whoever wins, we lose. this time, whoever loses, we win! or as my history teacher used to say. heads we win, tails you lose.

Missing: Where Are They Now?

2006-03-30T07:14:00.000-08:00

we all remember their names. they were our constant companions throughout our years in vs. unfortunately due to circumstances beyond their control, they were compelled to leave us before their time was up. where are they now, those great Victorians who left us so soon.

Case 1) Jabba

Last seen/heard of: either begging or selling pirated vcds at Tampines MRT station, depending on who you believe.

why he left us: stealing, defiance and numerous other crimes against the school

Case 2) Gafoor

Last seen/heard of: at siglap secondary school, where he was supposedly top student or something

claim to fame: the only "smart" criminal among the lot, gafoor once apparantly scored a high distinction in the australian maths quiz

legacy: introduced us to the coolness of buttoning your shirt all the way up to the collar without wearing a tie.

Case 3) Zul aka "bob"

Last seen/heard of: at a religious school in cairo, egypt

claim to fame: smoked and offered cigarettes to others in sec 1, ran a profitable stolen goods business

legacy: the moniker bob, which has since been adopted by many victorians

Case 4) wen hui

Last seen/ heard of: at bedok north/south/green/town/west/east/ville secondary school, nobody really remembers which bedok school exactly

claim to fame: carved the immortal phrase "pesvien the lesbian" into his desk

legacy: convincing everyone pesvien really was a lesbian

Case 5) navinkumar

Last seen/ heard of: in the army (seriously the army)

claim to fame: eats beef bowls at yoshinoya, ran a profitable bootlegging (illegal alcohol) business

legacy: taught us that beef is good

vs is not just about the people who go on to jc and get 4As and become moderately successful members of society. unconventional people like the missing ones also contributed greatly to our school.

E is for Elitism

2006-03-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

Elitist Teacher Advisor(ETA): tommy there's going to be a sharing session with warren fernandez at the electives hub later and i've nominated you to go.

tommy: but sir i'm not interested in journalism, why don't you ask johnny instead, he likes that kind of stuff.

ETA: does johnny take S papers?

tommy: well no, but i think he would be more interested in the session than i am.

ETA: how should i explain this to you tommy, interest is like demand and supply, it has to be effective. you can't just be interested in something, you have to be in a position where your interest has an effect on it.

tommy: uhhhh i think so....

ETA: even if what you say is true and johnny is interested in journalism, i don't think i'm exaggerating when i say he's going to end up selling VCDs at bedok interchange. so even if i send him for the session, it's no use because he's never going to be powerful enough so that his opinions actually matter.

tommy: so we should send someone who isn't interested instead of someone who is because the person is more likely to become powerful next time?

ETA: exactly tommy, johnny is entitled to his opinion like everybody else, but nobody says his opinion matters as much as yours or mine. fuck, everybody has an opinion about everything, but imagine if we listened to the ITE shitheads instead of the PSC scholars. we'd all be relacking one corner.

tommy: i thought all men were created equal.

ETA: bullshit, the perfect society is like an iceberg, ten percent above water and ninety percent below it. we should thank god we're in the ten percent.

i've always experienced discrimination, especially because i came from such a sucky secondary school. but at least the discrimination was always in the form of other schools being favored over us. this is the first time i've been treated like a second class student in my own fucking school. academically challenged people like me are already getting a shit enough deal without the fucking establishment crapping on us from above.

crash

2006-03-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

never in the history of CCA outings was so much lost by so many because of so few. or just one person to be precise. he who must not be named. the ursurper of power. the pretender to the throne. some people say violence doesn't solve anything. before i met him i would have believed them.

it seems that my CCAs have a tendency to start off well and then turn around and screw me. like when i joined the boy scouts in sec 1, i was reasonably happy. everybody seemed cool and although the uniform was a little more kiddyish than i would have liked, it was still wearable. until wil beng came along and let his 40 year old i-live-with-my-parents and i-have-a-beer-belly and i-wear-a boy scout uniform every saturday personality affect me.

then i joined ELDDS. and man did i have fun. the people there were about as crazy as i was, which suited me just fine. then halfway into the first term of sec 3, before the sec 4s were supposed to step down, our menopausal teacher in charge did her best donald trump imitation and fired the entire exco and brought in a new team. the new president was never around and so one of his cronies took over. watching him lead was like watching grass grow in a dark room, especially because of his habit of looking at his crotch when he spoke. and that was the end of my happy time in ELDDS.

and now the same thing has happened to photog. what began as a gathering of slackers has degenerated into an efficiently run organisation which involves (gasp) work. and people wonder why i'm apprehensive about going to NUS.

good night, and good luck

2006-03-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

the NUS open house is like the book of revelations. the moment you walk in they start playing "Knocking on Heaven's Door". which is the last song i want to hear when i'm at a uni open house.

me: uh so how are the career prospects for one of ur graduates

some FASS guy: uhhh not bad.... Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door

me: uh yeah so how many percent of graduates from FASS would be able to secure high paying jobs?

some FASS guy: uhhh i don't really know but the civil service takes a lot of our grads.... Feels like i'm knockin' on heaven's door

i was like trying to buy a bun from a delifrance outlet today and i was asking the guy behind the counter about it's nutritional value. he'd obviously never taken bio S before so it took him a long time before he could reply.

me: it says here this is the healthier choice, how so?

deli guy: uhhhh.... uhhhh lemme check with my manager first

five minutes later

deli guy: uhhhh sir regarding this product....

me: yes....

deli guy: it's uhhhhh... full of bunly goodness

damm guess the social darwinists were right all along. some people do have mee pok man hardwired into their genes while others are destined for district 10 from the day they're born.

how to tell if a person does s papers

2006-03-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

i'm sure we've all experienced those awkward moments when we're engaged in conversation with someone we don't really know very well and we say something that inadvertantly offends them. like when s paper people talk to me whom i haven't met for some time, they usually ask me questions like whether a PSC scholarship is better or an SAF one. or when i talk to ITE people, i sometimes slip up and ask them what day of the week it is. we need a foolproof method of checking if a person is really as smart or deserving of our attention as he or she appears to be. thus i present my guide on how to tell if a person does s papers.

you know a person doesn't do s papers when he or she does the following

VJC Common Test 2006, Biology
Discuss three possible hazards of genetic engineering (3)

In Star Wars Episode II Attack of The Clones, Senator Palpatine, who is really Darth Sideous in disguise, hires the Genosians to build an army of clones for him using genetic information from the bounty hunter Jango Fett. Later in Episode III Revenge of the Sith, he uses this army of clones to carry out his purge of the Jedi by ordering them to implement directive 66.

In the movie The Island, an evil scientist/entrepreneur creates clones of rich people so their organs can be harvested to prolong the lives of his clients. unfortunately he doesn't tell the clones about this and eventually a pair of them get curious and escape from his secret underground cloning lab and discover the truth. he tries to hunt them down and predictably gets killed instead.

In the movie Gattaca, most of the human population is perfect in every way due to genetic engineering of gametes during in-vitro fertilisation. the few naturally conceived individuals form an underclass banned from most occupations. one of these natural borns is forced to assume the identity of another person in order to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut. unfortunately he has to kill someone along the way to cover up his deception.

NUS HERE I COME

2006-03-02T00:56:00.000-08:00

i have taken the first step toward my eventual doom at NUS. by (barely) passing chinese AO, i have now cleared the first hurdle for application to NUS. if i had failed, i could have at least pressured my parents into paying for me to go to some third rate australian outback university.

the common tests were apparantly designed to make as many people as possible either drop a subject or drop their s papers. for those dropping a subject, it won't come as a drastic change in their lives but for those dropping s papers, it will be like going from heaven to hell in a instant. no longer will they be the great ones, the pointy tip of the spear. instead they will be no more than common rabble, no different from me.

soon to be former s paper student: sir are my results good enough to continue with my s papers

teacher mentor: let me spell it out for you since you only got C6 for GP. N-O

STBFSPS: but sir... please you have to give me another chance. i'll camp in school if i have to

TM: well maybe you should have done that before the common test

STBFSPS: but what will happen to all the free stuff i were getting, like the interview training and the tea parties

TM: well obviously you won't be getting them anymore, which reminds me, you'll need to turn over the Amex platinum card we gave you. you can use this instead

STBFSPS: but this is a.... oh god an NUS student privilege card

take him out

2006-02-28T01:11:00.000-08:00

to help increase his chances of getting laid before he turns 19, zengyi has engaged me to write a self promoting article about him. the following is all from information he has personally provided me with.

LIST OF ACHEIVEMENTS:

Member of the HCI soccer team (wow)
promo results of DODE (double wow)
once qualified for the finals of the 3000m at the National Schools Track and Field (although he finished last)
managed to get into HCI despite being ranked 98/99 in the level at the end of sec 3 (beating only the great zher ming)
was asked to dance by a random girl at a Franz Ferdinand concert

just listen to all the women who have had contact with him

if zengyi ever shows his face in my english class again i'll rip his eyes out and skull fuck him
-pesvien neo, his english teacher in sec 4

zengyi should spend more time on chemistry and less time asking me whether i was from ACJC
-felicia yeo, his chemistry teacher for sec 3/4

if he ever starts up that blog where he insulted all his teachers again he'll be sorry
-joycelene woo, his bio teacher in sec 3

mention that name to my face again and i'll kill you
-his ex girlfriend

so as you can see, he is clearly god's gift to women.

take me out

2006-02-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

it seems that the sorry subject of where non s paper students end up is never far from us. even at a franz ferdinand concert, conversation seems to centre around it. i sat next to zengyi, because he claims he has some sort of colonial hangover which prevents him from sitting next to caucasians.

me: fuck man these seats suck big time lah. the padding is like even thinner than the vs auditorium seats. i didn't know the indoor stadium was so LC.

zengyi: yeah man these seats are damm sucky lah. we should have gone to the NUS cultural centre to watch corrinne may instead, the seats there are much better.

me: i wouldn't know, i've never been to the NUS cultural centre.

zengyi: don't worry you'll have plenty of time to check it out when you're in FASS next time.

before the concert, while waiting at the bus stop outside mandarin gardens, (alot of strange shit seems to happen to me at bus stops) i saw the crazy guy who always hangs around the siglap area. you know, the guy who bangs his head against the window on buses and shouts at imaginary objects while walking around. i've always wondered what made him that way until i managed to decipher his seemingly random speech.

crazy guy: fuck ah, how can all 3 be U ah, i studied so hard ah, fuck ah, i'm going to harvard ah, fuck ah, PSC is going to call me any moment ah, fuck ah

this explains why he always wears that hands free set thingy even though he doesn't have a handphone. he must still be waiting for that call from PSC. he's probably some ex vj student who was on 3 s papers and then somehow managed to get ungraded for all 3, thus reducing him to the pathetic state you see today.

Note: i am not making this up, there really is a crazy guy who goes around siglap talking to himself.

do you want to

2006-02-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

they set up a photobooth at the concourse so the s paper people wouldn't have to make the long journey to parkway or wherever it is you get your photo taken.

underling: sir the s paper students are complaining that it's too troublesome to get their pictures taken so we can give them scholarships.

guy in charge of scholarships (GICS): well engage russel wong dammit, he should have finished shooting that cover for TIME magazine by now.

underling: uhhh he says he's got an assignment in new york sir.

GICS: well then u idiot hire a limo to take them to a studio

underling: uhhh we're low on funds right now sir. that personal grooming course at Estee Lauder really ate up alot of our budget for the year.

GICS: fine fine, just get somebody to come down and do it in the concourse then, but if the Public Service Commision hears about the way we're treating their talents it'll be the ISD for both of us

later that day at a meeting of the secret cabal that decides the budget for the school

GICS: sir the scholarship committee has put in a request for funding for a research trip to the maldives and the seychelles islands.

bossman: what kind of research?

GICS: mainly social networking stuff. the admin service is complaining that too many of the new scholars can't tell fine wine from grape juice or caviar from jelly.

bossman: disgraceful the levels to which we've sunk nowadays, in my time the scholars knew their place in society. take whatever you need, i won't have the pride of the nation living and behaving like common vermin.

underling: uhhh sir s26 has submitted a request for $50 to hire a bus to take disabled children on a trip to the zoo for their service learning venture.

bossman: fuck, isn't that the class that managed to finish bottom of the level for not one but two subjects.

underling: i'm afraid so sir

laughter sweeps through the room. the bossman accidentally spills some of his perrier on his harvard t-shirt

bossman: fuck, that was my last good t-shirt. how many of those s26 losers are on s papers?

underling: uhhh only four or five sir

bossman: in an entire class? fuck man my old pw group had more people taking s papers. what the fuck do they need the SLV for anyway, it's not as though any of them will be submitting their resumes to scholarship boards.

underling: so what should i tell them sir?

bossman: you can tell them to take their proposal and shove it up their non- s paper asses. now on to the next item. i feel that the proposal by GICS to have separate queues for s paper students in the canteen has merit. we can't run the risk of contamination any longer.

get 4As or die trying

2006-02-10T02:14:00.000-08:00

have you ever wondered what happens after the A level results are released? like whether you're friends who go overseas will still acknowledge, let alone talk to you after a few months of harvard has dulled their senses. fortunately for you, i have taken the liberty of travelling into the future to the very day next year when the results will be released. now that i have returned, i present my findings to you.

CCDD, what options do i have says:
hey man congrats on ur 4As and 2 S paper distinctions

so many scholarships, so little time, should i go to harvard or oxford? says:
oh er thanks, congrats on er, passing

CCDD, what options do i have says:
yeah so are you coming for like the class gathering next week?

so many scholarships, so little time, should i go to harvard or oxford? says:
err dont think so man, i got a briefing at PSC

CCDD, what options do i have says:
oh so maybe another time time

so many scholarships, so little time, should i go to harvard or oxford? says:
err i like gtg now man, got a tea ceremony at the istana with the PM tmr man

so many scholarships, so little time, should i go to harvard or oxford? may not reply because he/she appears to be offline

CCDD, what options do i have says:
hey man (insert name of arrogant s paper asshole here) cant make it for the class gathering

MIT here i come! says:
really... lemme ask him

CCDD, what options do i have says:
nah too late hes offline

MIT here i come! says:
huh, hes talking to me right now about meeting up at PS before we go to the istana tmr

CCDD, what options do i have says:
if what i think has happened has really happened, then humanity has just sunk to a new low

MIT here i come! says:
err yeah sure man i like gtg now too

guess who's back

2006-02-08T01:57:00.000-08:00

as mexcel has correctly noted, the last two posts were about the random events in my life. this one will be a return to my roots, the things that i feel strongest about. not that i actually feel anything nowadays, most of my days seem to pass in a drug induced haze.

finally i have concrete evidence that my school is conspiring against all the non s paper students. i received a post card in the mail a few days ago. it was from NUS. it looked something like this although this is the version on their webpage.

(i realise the pic looks like shit but how much do you expect from somebody who doesn't take s papers)

once i'd finished screaming and burnt the card to exorcise the demons within, i tried to consider how they could have found me. the only explanation is that vj must have somehow sent them a list of all the non s paper students. i once thought that they were decent enough to limit their elitism to the school compound. now i know the level to which they are willing to sink to remind us of our fate. this goes beyond merely rubbing it in, this is overkill. i'd just like to say to the elitists that

FOR THE LAST TIME WE GET IT, WE KNOW WE'RE GOING TO NUS AND YOU'RE GOING TO HARVARD

so stop your nonsense and just get us a harvard t-shirt while you're there.

zengyi i will prove to you that i am in the cool gang

2006-02-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

we were playing pool at that shitty pool place (the one which looks like it could double as a location for 15) near parkway. possibly due to the incredible noobness of the players, some shots were godlike and others were slightly less impressive. i was there to fulfill my requirement of randomness for the day, and true to form the randomness started from the moment i was invited. apparantly somebody gave chien wei the wrong number to call and she ended up messaging some random guy. when he didn't reply, she called him to ask if i was coming. at which point he passed the phone to his gf. i assume that the unlucky guy is now without a date for next week.

some of the more random moments from the pool game.

me: eh relac i will jump the ball and it will hit the solid so it won't be a foul
jason: whoa u serious ah?
me: i saw this in a movie once
chien wei: this will never work
me: for the last time, i have calculated the angle of incidence of my pool stick on the cue ball, this is foolproof, it's all just simple projectile motion
chien wei: do you even take physics...
i jump the cue ball and it predictably hits a stripe

chien wei: hey how come i always end with such lousy shots
me: relac all you have to do is somehow hit those two balls in the middle so they split and then get the angle of incidence on the side of the table exactly right.
kennie: yar that sounds easy
she splits the balls and pockets one of them

maybe i should invest in one of those poser pool gloves that ultra pro players wear

randomiser

2006-02-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

Wednesday after X-country, at my regular bus stop

me: eh where u guys going ah
bing sheng: home
me: eh go bedok and eat lar
chien wei: but we like live in tampines
bing sheng: if u come with us to tampines i'll subsidise ur bus fare home
me: i'll go if we watch a movie
chien wei: i don't mind leh
me: ok set

and that is the story of how i finally convinced somebody to watch i not stupid with me. in the end it didn't take hours of planning or begging, just a simple conversation at a bus stop. deciding to go for a movie based on a conversation at a bus stop is exactly the kind of random stuff i thought jc life would be full of. unfortunately, it hasn't, but i'll still remember the rare occasions when things seemed to start from nothing. so thanks again to bing sheng and chien wei for agreeing to do such random stuff with me.

Friday after third period PE, at my usual bus stop again

Somebody waves at me. i check to see if the bus stop is empty before waving back. (because of my poor eyesight and my reluctance to wear my specs outside class, i often wave to people when i shouldn't and ignore people when they're trying to get my attention)

mei yian: elooooooo
me: don't u live across the road
mei yian: well yes but i'm passing something to my bf at bedok
me: uh huh so ur meeting him for lunch?
mei yian: no i'm just passing him something but i can accompany you for lunch
me: u haven't had lunch?
mei yian: emmm i'll just drink coke light and watch you eat
me: well that makes sense...

and so i didn't have to eat alone. twice in three days i have been lucky enough to do random stuff. on both occasions the randomness started at my usual bus stop. perhaps this is a sign that i should spend more time there and if maybe even miss my bus so that i have more chances of random encounters.

i want to ride my bicycle

2006-02-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

Adapted from The Great Famine of 2007: A Study of Allocative Efficiency, Singapore Press Holdings

when the great famine of 2007 struck, the government was faced with the task of allocating the limited food supplies among the population. while some egalitarians were of the opinion that the resources should be equally divided and distributed, others pointed out that such a policy would lead to the gradual starvation and death of the entire country. better to save some than for all to perish together, they reasoned. fortunately for our nation, the latter view was eventually adopted as the official policy of the government. now the question was, who was to be saved?

Adapted from A History of Singapore in the Early Twenty First Century, Times Publications

Finally it was decided that since the children are our future, the vast majority of the available food was to be allocated to the education ministry. schools would then be allowed to determine how best to make use of it. in spite of statements to the contrary, almost every school immediately decided that Singapore's best chance of survival lay in ensuring the continued reproductive success of the elite. as such, food rations were measured according to one's academic ability. In the case of the junior colleges, students with 3 s papers were allowed 3 meals a day (essentially the same intake as before the Great Famine), students with 2 s papers were allowed 2 meals a day, students with 1 s paper were allowed one meal a day and students without any s papers quickly realised you could call just about anything a ham sandwich.

Adapted from "Survival of the Smartest", New York Times, 2020

No other nation has experienced as dramatic a turnaround in the wake of the Great Famine as Singapore. It's decision to allocate food supplies to students based on their academic results was widely condemmed at the time by the international community as a thinly disguised attempt at Social Darwinism but is now recognised to have been a huge success. recently, the island state topped the annual rankings of scholastic ability in mathematics and science for the fifth year in a row. such statistics are likely to be on the minds of many Singaporean Parlimentarians as they debate the equally controversial Selective Breeding Act next week. If passed, the Act will place restraints on the breeding capacities of the lower socio-economic classes in the republic.

take this quiz

2006-01-27T02:17:00.000-08:00

take this quiz to find out if you're destined for the faculty of medicine (and by extension, all the wealth and glory it entails) or if you're destined to become househelp to the members of the faculty of medicine.

1) The Heimlich Manoeuver is
a) a football set piece
b) a taekwondo move
c) a treatment for choking
d) a sex position

2) Ondine's Curse is
a) a high level spell in Dungeons and Dragons
b) a respiratory disorder
c) a feminist novel
d) another way of describing a hangover

3) The Hippocratic Oath is
a) an oath traditionally taken by physicians
b) a Greek swear word
c) an ancient order of hypocrites
d) a phrase used in Star Trek

4) A defibrillator is
a) another word for toothbrush
b) a device used to refill brillo ballpoint pens
c) a device used to treat cardiac arrest
d) a sort of vibrator

5) A perfusionist is
a) a member of the percussion section of a band
b) a person who specialises in fusion cuisine
c) a person who operates a heart-lung machine
d) the opposite of a perfectionist

answers: 1-C, 2-B, 3-A, 4-C, 5-C

if you scored 5, then congratulations, a life of unmatched decadence and debauchery awaits you.
if you scored 4, then congratulations, a life as a member of the school health service awaits you where you'll spend your days examining giggly schoolkids.
if you scored 3, then congratulations, a life as a pharmacist at guardian awaits you where you'll spend your days trying to get people to buy pimple cream.
if you scored 2, then congratulations, a life as a bio teacher at some shitty school with shitty students awaits you.
if you scored 1, then congratulations, a life as a receptionist at a clinic awaits you where you'll have to deal with shitty schoolkids faking injuries to get an MC.
if you scored 0, then congratulations, a life cleaning clinics awaits you. report to room 101 level 13 at KKH. Ask for jimmy.

hello and goodbye

2006-01-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

there's going to be a briefing on the procedures for scholarship application next week in some LT. i would attend except you need at least 1 s paper. which pretty much confirms my initial assessment of my future. bleak and full of shit. if i'd known that my entire future hinged on a single exam, i might have studied harder. or maybe i still wouldn't have bothered. i really don't know. i don't want to invest so much time and hope into a far fetched dream of an overseas education only for it to come crashing down on me.

like this guy.

vj guy: err hello, is this the public service commission
psc guy: yes
vj guy: i was wondering if i could check the status of my scholarship application
psc guy: i'm afraid the scholarship you applied for has already been taken
vj guy: but that's impossible, i've got like 4As and 2 S paper distinctions
psc guy: so do the entire student population of HCI and rj
vj guy: but i thought i really impressed in the interview
psc guy: and you wonder why you didn't get the scholarship, did you even stop to think which schools every single member of the scholarship pannel attended
vj guy: but, but, i spent 12 years of my life working towards this
psc guy: oh i'm sorry, you must be confusing me with somebody who gives a shit
vj guy: you people can't do this to me! if i go to NUS all the people i laughed at last time will kill me
psc guy: and your point is?

for now though, most of the s paper people are on the top of the world, thumbing their noses down at the rest of us and happily filling in scholarship applications that they believe will actually be read. the rest of us can only grit our teeth and soldier on while enduring bullshit like the following example.

me: hey what's that going on at the LT
another non-s paper guy (ANSPG): dunno some talk thingy man
me: let's take a look man
ANSPG: dude you really don't want to go over there
me: why not?
ANSPG: try it yourself and you'll find out
me: i will dammit

i walk towards the LT

security guard: identification please
me: i'm in uniform you dick
security guard: i mean your confirmation slip for s papers
me: i don't take any s papers
security guard: didn't you read the sign
me: what sign? oh fuck...

NO DOGS AND NON-S PAPER STUDENTS ALLOWED

s paper guy: hey mr guard is it okay if i bring my cute puppy inside to show it to my friends
security guard: of course All Highest, please accept my humble body as a shoe mat
me: omgwtfbbq

snafu

2006-01-17T05:50:00.000-08:00

apparantly i am in charge of compiling a powerpoint presentation detailing everything that happened while we were in taiwan. exactly how i seem to always get saddled with such shitty duties while others get jobs like waterboy or clerk remains a mystery to me. especially since the presentation has to be in chinese.

asking me to come up with a powerpoint presentation in chinese is like trying to make lemonade without lemons. the last time i did anything remotely connected to chinese on my com was when i accidentally clicked on the link to some chinese site that supposedly offered free mp3s. (turns out it was a website for the communist party)

welcome to maths remedial

2006-01-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

apparantly somebody had the bright idea to schedule the maths R lesson immediately after the maths S lesson. in the same LT no less. what this means is that at 3.40 every thursday, the pride of our nation, whom you will one day read about in Scholars Choice (a supplement of the Straits Times), are replaced in LT1 by the scum of the nation, whom you will one day read about in those little boxes at the bottom of the Home section, the part where they report snatch thefts.

it went something like this.

the doors open and we are greeted by the scent of Obsession (available for men and women from calvin klein). obviously these are people who can afford something more than deodorant.

fierce s paper dude: damm that part on quantum mechanics nearly stumped me.
fierce s paper gal: yeah thank god i managed to use heisenberg's uncertainty principle to find planck's constant
fierce s paper dude: really? i used the schrodinger picture method to do it...
fierce s paper gal: nah it's okay, both methods can be used. i'm more worried about next week when we do Game theory and hilbert spaces
fierce s paper dude: yeah those will be tough, what the fuck are these losers doing here...

we are greeted by the sight of well, me. along with a few of my fellow bottom feeding lowlifes who are taking up a disproportionate amount of water and oxygen given our single digit maths grades

me: wait, refresh my memory, in partial fractions is it the denominator or the numerator that has to have a lower power.
some other maths R guy: one or the other, either way you got a 50% chance.
me: yeah guess so (i notice the s paper guy and say hi)

me: yo man how was maths S?
fierce s paper dude: oh it was fine, you know, we did some stuff on fourier expansion, it's all a bit complicated, i won't bore you with the details. (not that you'd understand it anyway you loser, you can't even tell what day of the week it is)
me: cool shit man, any chance you'd be interested in joining my study group
fierce s paper dude: ummm i'd have to like check my schedule. i'm working on a new solution for fermat's last theorem right now, my tutor says it's the best since the one wiles came up with in 1995.
me: oh, cool man, good luck with that, maybe next time huh
fierce s paper dude: yeah we'll see (god i feel so dirty, i could have sworn i felt my intelligence diffusing to him)

water is important

2006-01-08T22:11:00.000-08:00

in other less important news, asik is apparantly tight with ashish, to the extent that he confidently predicts ashish will crush javier in a face off. how this happened i am not sure, considering that

1) they are not in the same class
2) they are not in the same CCA
3) they are not in the same lecture group
4) they don't take the same mother tongue
5) i've never actually seen the two of them talk to one another
6) they don't have each other on MSN

it's probably due to another one of the quirks that seem to manifest themselves in vj. that social phenomenon we know as "high profilism". how this works is similar to the caste system in ancient india. at the top, instead of the brahmins, we have the ubersexuals. these gods among men have every facet and detail of their lives faithfully documented by a ever present group of hangers on that trail them everywhere they go. the hangers on, who then take on the role of the apostles, spread the gospel to the next group in the system. the hangers on would have the rank of Kshatriyas as they are in essence the warriors who protect the system.

the next group would essentially be the wannabe high profilers, the ones who aspire to be known by the entire student population but for reasons unknown are able to summon only a small group of followers. by learning the gospel from the hangers on and then repeating it to their own followers, they hope to identify themselves with the true high profilers, thus achieving coolness by association. they are the Vaishyas of the vj caste system since they are responsible for the trading and development of the myths that surround the high profilers.

finally we reach the vast majority of the student body. these are the ones on whom the entire caste system depends, since it is their thrist for knowledge about the everyday details of their idols that fuels the whole enterprise. like bees to pollen they gather around their makeshift temples (otherwise known as canteen tables) to listen to their preacher deliver the latest sermon on the Life of "insert name of some high profile guy/girl here". when they are lucky enough to be graced by the presence of one of the great ones, they become respectfully silent except for whispered mutterings of praise. at no times are they allowed to make direct eye contact with the brahmin. these are the Shudras of the caste system, labouring faithfully under the watchful eyes of the Vaishyas and Kshatriyas.

of course we can't leave out the people who don't give a fuck about the whole thing. these independent minded individuals find such idolatry offensive and prefer to restrict themselves to a circle of friends in their class and CCA. such anti-social behavior of course makes them the pariahs of the vj caste system, since they are for all purposes and intents untouched by the disease that seems to have afflicted everyone else.

air is good

2006-01-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

asik's attempt to identify himself with ashish instead of the sapists is in my opinion a smart move, considering the sapists are all going to be digging their own graves at east coast park before we shoot them execution style. however for us to spare him, he must show us that his de-sapification is for real and not a devious plot to save his anorexic ass.

basically he has to

1) stop telling us those stupid jokes that involve hand gestures and have punch lines so lame a primary school kid wouldn't laugh at them.

2) get rid of the emo personal messages on MSN (exp: i don't care if you don't i don't care if you don't i don't care if you don't care ) because they are seriously gay in addition to being sapist.

3) stop the hero worship thing. i seriously do not need to know how some random researcher at some random institute that has a complicated sounding name is related to some random malay arts fac dude in vj. nor do i need to know the names of all the house comm members and their significant others.

4) stop going to kbox. dude kbox is to sapists what mecca is to muslims. a sort of holy shrine where they can worship their gods (jay, jolin etc) and where you have to partake in various weird and vaguely moronic rituals the purpose of which i am not sure of but which probably involves subliminal messaging from the not one but two tv screens in each room.

that's it. 4 easy steps to becoming one of us again. should asik's repentence be true, then he'll be able to accomplish them in less time than it took me to think of them. if he is just faking us, let's just say that he'll soon envy the quick death his sapist comrades received at our hands.

the wave of the future

2006-01-03T23:14:00.000-08:00

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was 'civis Romanus sum'. Today in the world of freedom the proudest boast is 'I am an multiracialist.'

There are many people in Singapore who really don't understand- or say they don't- what is the great issue between the multiracialists and the sapists. Let them come to Victoria School.
There are some who say that sapism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Victoria School.
And there are some who say in VJ and elsewhere ' we can work with the sapists.' Let them come to Victoria School.
And there are even a few who say that it's true that sapism is an evil system but it permits us to make economic progress. Let them come to Victoria School.
Freedom has many difficulties and multiracialism is not perfect. But we have never had to insist that every student in our school be of the same race, or insist that we all speak the same language.

I know of no other school, no institution that has been besieged for so many years that still lives with the vitality and the force and the hope and the determination of victoria school. the east is red, as the sapists would love to have you believe, but so long as our bastion of multiracialism stands firm, all of singapore can see for itself the failures of the sapists.

we exist in a defended island of freedom, but our lives are part of the struggle for multiracialism.
Let us lift our eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of Victoria School and the east to the advance of multiracialism everywhere. When that day finally comes, as it will, the students of victoria school can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two centuries.

all multiracialists, wherever they may study, are students of victoria school. Together we will work towards the sucessful accomplishment of our cause.

time is running out

2006-01-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

it's only the second day of school and my life already feels like the music video for time is running out. soon i'll have to start playing the theme from the great escape everyday to get myself out of bed.

i realise that everybody else has like posted a list of resolutions. i would do the same except i don't usually get much stuff done every year. just staying alive is like a constant struggle for me. this year will probably be no different, considering that my record in jc maths is still 0-3 after the mid-years, promos and re-paper. the gap between me and the fierce s paper people is so great that even if i'd done twice as well as i did for my promos, i still wouldn't have done half as well as them.

how did it come to this? i remember a time not so long ago when i could actually tell people about my results without them removing all sharp objects within reach. how quickly our fortunes can change.

something about you

2005-12-31T19:15:00.000-08:00

if i'd known he was the one organising the damm thing, i wouldn't have been anywhere near it. just as i suspected, they ended up sitting in a circle at the esplanade waterfront. while everyone around us was having a good time, he seemed determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by making us play concenfuckingtration and some name game. think about it for a moment, is sitting in a circle at the esplanade waterfront on new year's eve and playing primary school games your idea of fun? if it is, all i can say is i pity you.

thank god for a few like minded people who finally tired of his attempts at conjuring some fun out of activities that were clearly devoid of any at all. our random trek through marina square to get drinks at 7-11 (i leave it to your imagination to decide what drinks we got) and then dinner at carl's jr was infinitely better than the hell we left behind.

just imagine. 50 years ago the students at the chinese middle schools nearly brought down the PAP government. even the supreme leader writes that he was impressed with their ferocity and determination. they faced down the army and the english educated elite and nearly won. today the only thing they're bringing down is the house with their asinine jokes and games.

the enemy of my enemy is my friend

2005-12-29T20:43:00.000-08:00

you're supposed to be able to tell a lot about a person from the music they listen to. for example, the US soldiers in Iraq like to listen to "The Roof is on Fire" to unleash the latent pyromaniac tendencies within them as they set fire to houses. similarly, the crazed teenage shooters at columbine were apparantly great fans of the antichrist superstar, marilyn manson, otherwise known as the most evil man in america. thus, i have compiled a list of approved songs for each of the social groups that comprise singapore's youth. the list must be strictly adhered to at all times, in other words, a member of one social group is not allowed to listen to songs representing another social group. doing so would result in various unspecified but presumably dire consequences, like becoming a social outcast.

CYNICAL ANARCHISTS listen to

1) Why Does It Always Rain On Me - Travis
2) Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
3) Keep On Rocking In The Free World - Neil Young
4) Dreamer - Ozzy Osbourne
5) The End - The Doors

SAPISTS listen to

1) Anything by Jay
2) Anything by Jolin
3) Anything by Rain
4) Anything by Stefanie
5) Anything by Cyndi

POSERS listen to

1) All The Small Things - blink 182
2) Closing Time - Semisonic
3) Welcome to My Life - Simple Plan
4) Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - Good Charlotte
5) American Idiot - Green Day

SHINY HAPPY ARTS FAC PEOPLE listen to

1) Shiny Happy People - REM
2) Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys
3) All Star - Smashmouth
4) So Happy Together - The Turtles
5) That song they used to sing on Barney

EMOCORE SNAGS listen to

1) You're Beautiful - James Blunt
2) Everlasting Love - Jamie Cullum
3) Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
4) Follow Through - Gavin Degraw
5) Superman - Five For Fighting

MAT ROCKERS/ELECTRO MINAHS listen to

1) Enter Sandman - Metallica
2) November Rain - Guns N Roses
3) Like A Stone - Audioslave
4) Am I Going Insane - Black Sabbath
5) The Trooper - Iron Maiden

HIP HOP BREAKDANCERS listen to

1) Jesus Walks - Kanye West
2) Candy Shop - 50 Cent
3) Must Be The Money - Nelly
4) Belly Dancer - Akon
5) Hey Ya - Outkast

PEOPLE LIKE RICHIE WHO SPEND THEIR DAYS DOWNLOADING ANIME listen to

1) The soundtrack from Cowboy Bebop
2) The soundtrack from Hellsing
3) The soundtrack from Samurai Champloo
4) The soundtrack from Full Metal Alchemist
5) Anything by Weird Al

In a completely unrelated matter, the default language on Asik's computer is Chinese. And his freakin google browser is in Chinese. And he even tYpEs LiKe tHeM. And his MSN nicks have become the usual dumbed down emo statements. somebody save him.

ghost in the shell

2005-12-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

although my failure in the upcoming maths R paper is a given, strangely i do not feel the same sense of panic that used to accompany my numerous (too numerous to count) failures. this could be because i have become used to failure, or it could be that i have achieved the intellectual pinacle of self actualization.

could this be true? have i gained enlightenment? at the risk of sounding modest, yes. maslow writes that self actualizing people embrace the facts and realities of the world rather than denying or avoiding them. by accepting my imminent doom i have thus fulfilled this requirement. self actualizers are also spontaneous in their actions. given the random and crazed nature of my actions, once again i fit the bill. most importantly, self actualizers need to have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority. since i never believe i'm wrong, i am clearly on the right path. unfortunately i don't correspond to any of the other qualities needed for self actualization, but even then, 3 out of 50 isn't bad.

have you self actualized recently? if you haven't, you should. it does wonders for your quality of life. be warned though, expect to see all your precious dreams and fantasies (i want to go overseas etc) go up in smoke. yes i'm referring to all the arrogant narrow minded assholes i've already insulted repeatedly in this blog. did you honestly think i would go one entire post without taking a shot at you? you know me better than that.

hua yu cool

2005-12-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

i am currently debating whether or not to join mexcel, richie and javier for an outing tomorrow. while i would normally be willing to go for such things, i'm feeling somewhat jaded at the moment. it can't be jet lag since there's no time difference between taipei and singapore. to make matters worse, i've been forced to make do without the booze that i've become so accustomed to while i was in taiwan. after you've tried absolut vodka, milo doesn't quite cut it as a before bedtime drink.

there was plenty of rampant horny-ness among the singaporeans who went to taiwan. people whom i would have never imagined as ladykillers were on fire. since i wish to stay in the world of the living, the exact details of who did what will not be published here but i am more than willing to share them with you if you ask me nicely once school reopens. extra charge if you want pictures.

i have realised that some girls are extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion. all yipeng and i had to do was start craping to each other about how some girl was trying to stalk us while we were trying to pass the time and before i knew it chien wei was asking me if i was dating the said girl. even more incredible is the time mei yian believed i was attached to marie, considering she based her assumption entirely on an occasion where she apparantly saw me talk to marie in the library. i'm considering carrying around a picture of jessica alba or something since if my theory holds true, that will make people think i'm screwing her.

back in black

2005-12-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. in spite of the best efforts of my enemies to discredit and eliminate me, i have returned from taipei.

richie has in his moment of inspiration found the essence of what i have been trying to preach. which is simply that the key to a harmonious class spirit is to not have one at all. after all, in a class of say 20 people, it is impossible to find a spirit that will suit everyone's taste. some will want to go sapist, others will want to pose and do the stupid hipper than thou thing and there will always be a few stoners like myself content to live life as it is. under such circumstances sooner or later a conflict of interest will arise and everybody will get pissed, as the following example shows.

sapist: guys lets do a whoosh
me: a what?
sapist: a whoosh
me: wtf is a whoosh
sapist: all of us put our hands together and then say whoosh
me: what purpose does this serve
sapist: it builds spirit
me: putting your hand on someone else's builds spirit?
sapist: yeah didn't you do it in vs
me: no in vs we gave each other the finger
sapist: what's that
me: here let me show you
sapist: omgwtfbbq

another example

sapist: what song do you want to sing for the teacher's day performance
me: dunno... how about angels
sapist: huh what's that
me: you've never heard of the song angels?
sapist: no... i was thinking we could do "insert name of chinese song"
me: i don't know how to sing in chinese
sapist: why not?
me: what the fuck does that have to do with you
sapist: chinese people should speak chinese
me: hua yu cool

thus the optimal solution is to not have a class spirit at all. everybody is free to do whatever he or she pleases and nobody has to do a whoosh. classes would become like that beach boys song they used for the cadbury commercial. wouldn't it be nice or something like that.

shiny happy people

2005-12-17T06:13:00.000-08:00

apparantly tomorrow we are going to the taiwanese version of kbox. the only time i went to kbox in singapore, i left after half an hour and went to the tampines regional library. even if what i'm told is true and the taiwanese kbox has a free buffet, it's still not enough to make me spend six hours in the company of a bunch of wannabe jays and jolins.

especially after what happened today. we went to an amusement park that makes escape look like a children's playground. best of all, i didn't have to follow the sapists around because almost all the singaporeans turned up. so i was able to spend an afternoon with people who actually use the english language for communication and not to pass exams. although the group i went around with consisted mostly of people i have never met, i still felt much more at ease with them than the sapists who have infested vj.

in a completely unrelated matter, zengyi has in typical fashion accused me of betraying the revolution by taking part in the immersion program because it is only offered to students who have acced their O levels. this is a totally baseless claim. although i am part of the program, i am not actually participating in it because i have not converted. moreover, simply by doing well i am not elitist. i can only be considered an elitist when i believe that my doing better in school makes the opinions and values i hold superior to someone who has not done as well.

pray for me

2005-12-16T00:42:00.000-08:00

i type this entry for the sole purpose of being able to use the english language. some sapist fucker had the bright idea to sing some chinese national day song and i had to join in at the risk of being labelled anti social or something. i still feel emotionally drained. apparantly in taiwan it is considered normal to sing KTV on a tour bus on the ride home after a day long tour. fortunately i was able to use my stoning skills (thank you vs) to block out the lyircs, thus ensuring that the only chinese song i know how to sing remains one night in beijing.

this tour has made me wonder if 4A really was such an abnormality. why are the those who have chosen to remain true to our original class spirit now outcasts no matter what jc we are in? surely there must be others like us out there, people who view life as a cosmic joke and who don't act like they were put on this earth for the sole purpose of accomplishing some herculean task which if not done will result in the end of civilization as we know it.

fierce taiwanese dudes

2005-12-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

i'm not sure when it dawned on me that taiwan is more liberal than singapore. perhaps it was when my buddy's grandma asked me to help finish the cans of heineken in the fridge. or perhaps it was when a few of us started drinking tsing tao beer in the macdonald's above taiwan's busiest pedestrian mall in our school uniforms. or it could be when his classmates asked me to go smoke with them.

thus it would seem that the students in what would logically be considered a cheena country, don't act anything like the cheena people in singapore. in fact, it's what vs would be like if everyone spoke chinese and there were no malays or indians. hence i conclude that the sapist behavior so prevalent in singapore is nothing more than the twisted product of some warped chinese chauvinist mind. if the fierce taiwanese students met the sapists, they would probably beat them up and take their cash. honestly, the chinese people in chinese countries don't act like they're hosting an episode of some fucked up variety show.

fucking A

2005-12-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

whoa i'm at some fierce taiwanese version of a lan shop.

it's just like what you'd find in singapore except everything is in chinese and to access the games you have to go through a series of steps, each more difficult that the last. i couldn't really follow them but according to my limited com knowledge it involved cracking the game twice and then rebooting the com.

we went to the taiwanese version of escape theme park today after the museum with the free internet terminals. it felt like the place where fun goes to die.

whoa

2005-12-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

i am currently typing this entry from a free computer terminal in an arts museum in taipei.
the keys are in chinese so i have to hope it turns out correct.

it has to be like the shittiest museum i have ever been to. the entire tour was in chinese so i fell asleep.

nothing much has happened yet so i'll blog again as soon as i find another free terminal

this is the end my brand new friend

2005-12-06T05:39:00.000-08:00

Many months ago i made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when i shall redeem my pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. as i might have told you, i depart tomorrow morning for the land of jay chou.

many people have asked me why i bothered to join the program in the first place, since i represent everything the others in it are not. to be honest, i don't know the answer myself. did i really believe that joining it would enable me to participate more fully in vj? perhaps i did, although i know now that it is too late for me.

i cannot deny what i am. to do so would be an insult to my comrades. i must say that i bear no malice towards those who have sold out. i'm sure they have their own reasons for doing so. but for me, the agony and the sweat of my years among my brethren have left me with an understanding of my deep moral dependence upon the principles that i have lived my life by. i know that many question my choices but i have no desire to force them upon others, all i demand is my right to follow them.

the temptation to convert is always there. the benefits alone make it seem worthwhile. why should i continue to follow a path that sets me apart from others? my answer is simple. friends and relationships can be gained or lost in a single moment, but principles, once compromised, are lost forever.

when i come around

2005-12-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

according to such reputable sources as mexcel (the guy who had to apologise to kenn and chuan en for flaming them in his blog) and asik (the guy who tried to lie to pesvien and got screamed at in front of the whole class while we sniggered), my blog is gaining "heat". this is apparantly cool speak for reputation.

this could have both good and bad consequences. good in that my party's message is getting across to the huddled masses yearning to be liberated from the tyrannical yoke of elitism. bad in that my detention, followed by torture and then execution by the ISD is imminent.

however any sacrifice i might have to make will be worthwhile for our cause. if only the proletariat of our schools (EM3, Normal Stream, non s paper students) dared to speak up with one voice, nothing could stop us. yet they do not, because they have been beaten down so many times they no longer believe they are capable of anything. i say now that one day we will be free, that no matter how long it takes, we will fight, fight and fight again. the future doesn't belong to the fainthearted, we all know that the road to victory will be long and hard but because our cause is just, we shall overcome any obstacle in our path and the dream will never die.

let freedom reign. the sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement.

stupid aeon flux movie

2005-12-03T05:23:00.000-08:00

i have thus far resisted the temptation to blog about the stupid inane series of events that make up my loser life. to do so would result in me being no better than the posers and hangers-on i so despise.

however, i must break with tradition to ensure that no more harm is done to the general populace. if you have not yet seen aeon flux, keep it that way. if you've already booked the tickets, sell them to some unsuspecting dickheads who think anything with charlize theron in it has to be good. trust me, unless you want your faith in hollywood to be destroyed, you will avoid this movie the way my so called friends seem to avoid me. the only good thing about the piece of crap is that since it's only 1.5 hours long, the pain is over before it becomes unbearable and you have to walk out.

since this post has already touched (albeit briefly) on my life, it would be appropriate to end off the post in the same vein. yesterday was a good outing, apart from the hell that was aeon flux. we all had fun telling asik how he has betrayed the twin pillars of cynicism and laid back-ness that every vs guy should treasure and how if he wasn't indian he could probably pass as a hard core SAPist from chung cheng or dunman. of course he isn't the only one to have converted, so many of our former stalwarts are now content to live a shiny happy life that they know is a lie. gafoor, jabba, arun, haan hui and tom must be turning in their graves.

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR VS CLASSMATES HAVE CONVERTED TO SAPISM

Step 1) Ask them to do the star sign thingy. (maybe they just like stars)

Step 2) Ask them to do a whoosh. (they probably saw it in a movie)

Step 3) Tell a joke so incredibly lame no self respecting vs guy would laugh at and see whether they laugh. (they're just trying to be polite)

Step 4) Ask them to let you copy their work and see if they tell you that copying isn't learning(he probably doesn't want you to do well) or if they tell you to pass it around the class before the teacher comes. (whoa thank god he's still one of us)

Step 5) Give them the finger and see if they think it's fierce. (uh on bad sign)

Step 6) Start playing mass dance music and see whether they dance like they're on drugs (it has to be the girls) or if they stand to one side and pass sardonic comments about the sexual orientation of the people dancing. (heng ah)

Step 7) Ask them to name one malay or indian person they still talk to (could be racist)

Step 8) Check if they have given their teachers cute fuzzy nicknames (shit this does not look good) or simply call them by their first names. (whoa that was close)

Step 9) Ask them to watch a chinese movie (dude are you sure you went to vs)

Step 10) Ask them to go to kbox and see whether they actually want to go (start praying for his converted soul) or tell you to shut the fuck up or they'll rip your eyes out and skull fuck you if you ever mention that place again. (saved by the bell)

voice inside my head

2005-12-01T05:40:00.000-08:00

non violence is the first article of my faith. it is also the last article of my faith. my quarrel is not with those who take s papers, it is with those who become arrogant as a result of taking s papers. after all, it is not a crime to be intelligent. it is however, a crime to think that being so entitles one to set themselves above others. those who commit such a crime, are as low and mean a group of people as i can picture.

for the rest of us, now is a time for choosing. no longer can we stand by silently and allow ourselves to be belittled by others. if we do not stand up for ourselves, then we will have proven ourselves unworthy of deciding our own fate. that the struggle will be difficult is beyond doubt, but we do not want a society that costs us nothing. to those who now reside smugly in their ivory towers, know now that the time has come for you to be consigned to the dustbin of history. the once silent majority of the mainstream has spoken, as the recent articles on the GEP will attest. where once there was only blind acceptance of the self proclaimed superiority of a few, now exist voices of dissent.

the voices might now only be whispers, but each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

make or break

2005-11-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

some have asked me why i have yet to post about everybody's favourite GEP student, michelle qiu. i would point out that the post "how could this happen to me" does make referrence to the issue, albeit a veiled one. apparantly it was not thinly veiled enough for some to see through it, thus i will now present a more complete explanation of my thoughts.

in her moment of paralysing stupidity, michelle has forever shattered the myth of equality that has clouded the judgement of so many of my otherwise level headed friends. no longer can they claim that the self proclaimed elite of our nation do not look down on the less academically well endowed like myself.

her blatantly elitist statements constitute the final nail in the coffin of whatever egalitarian sentiments i might have been inclined to hold. why the fuck should i hang around s paper students when for all i know, they probably think i'm not mature enough to be studying the same things as them or that i'm just a "mainstream" student not worthy of their attention. they probably cherish the hour a week they spend in the company of their brethren more than an entire week with a mainstreamer because as michelle so eloquently put it, " Nobody except us, the GEPers, could know how much fun we have being in the GEP."

of course you have to substitute s paper students in place of GEPers, but if you weren't able to figure that out without me telling you, you probably aren't smart enough to take s papers, so welcome to the mainstream world. you might as well pick up that shovel and start shovelling, cos life aint getting any better for you.

all students are equal, but some are more equal than others.

and i present....

2005-11-28T06:27:00.000-08:00

i was going to put up my magnum opus post, but i'm too tired.

instead i have a very important announcement to make. as those of you who have tried the link might know, zengyi has closed down his blog again. (this happens to have been his third one in a month) while his lack of commitment to our cause is lamentable, nevertheless i have given him another chance to serve the revolution that will surely come soon. (i hope it comes before i get called up)

thus, zengyi has now joined poultryrice as editor emeritus. when a particularly seditious issue presents itself, he will occasionally pen his thoughts on the subject and i will post them on this blog. since we are both of the same party, his thoughts may be taken as a fairly accurate representation of my own.

always remember, extremism in defence of liberty is no vice.
and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue

wake me up when november ends

2005-11-27T01:28:00.000-08:00

i fear that i'm slipping into the same sorry state as zengyi. everyday brings me close to the moment when i run out of subjects to blog on and end up posting lyrics from poser bands or putting up pictures from some outing. to make a bad situation worse, my mugging for the maths R paper has been going nowhere. it appears that i might have to take up ashish on his offer to study together to salvage something from the last few days i have left before i leave on a jet plane.

i'm at a loss as to explain why i've lost my seditious touch. looking through our old blogs (from the sec 3 days), i'm amazed at the things zengyi, mexcel and myself used to post. back then, our complete lack of empathy allowed us to blatantly flame anybody and anything without fear of retaliation. i must return to my roots, if only not to betray the spirit of the original bloggers, who intended that blogs be online outposts of sedition and not the warm fuzzy online diaries of today. my next post will determine if i am still the same angry young person i once was, or if i have become soft and pudgy like the love handles which still plague me in spite of my exercise regime.

watch this space.

posing for dummies

2005-11-26T02:47:00.000-08:00

many of my previously uncool friends have decided to convert to poser-ism (is that even a real word?) since entering jc. while some of them have been able to pull it off, many have sadly been unable to throw off the shackles of their past and thus look like nothing more than wannabes. since technically all posers are wannabes, this would make them wannabe wannabes. to save them any further humiliation, i present a basic DIY guide to posing.

posers must

1) never refer to their friends as such, but must call them "homies"

2) visit far east or peninsular at least twice a week

3) join a poser band (note: ability to play musical instrument not essential)

4) memorise the names of at least 5 people in other jcs that they have no connection with but who are known to be cool

5) never be seen outside without their groupies (note: groupies are essentially posers-in-training who follow established posers around to gain experience)

6) post song lyrics from a poser band on their blogs (only if they have one)

7) take glamour shots of themselves and use them as their display pictures on MSN and Friendster

8) keep up to date on the latest poser gear (chokers etc)

9) be a member of an organised religion (note: actual devotion to religion not required)

10) adopt a cool poser name if your real name isn't cool enough

i like nuggets

2005-11-25T07:54:00.000-08:00

before i leave for taiwan, i need to compile a list of things to do. i do this not because i actually have things to do, but because months of watching discovery travel and adventure has taught me to never go on holiday without one. and so i present my list.

1) find out whether the coriolis effect actually works by draining a bathtub and seeing if the water drains in an opposite direction compared to the bathtubs in the southern hemisphere

2) shout "long live the people's republic of china" in front of the presidential palace

3) distribute copies of the little red book to the loyal KMT students

4) attend a session of the taiwanese parliament and find out if they really throw chairs at one another

5) finish studying for my maths R paper because i have been putting if off until now

how could this happen to me

2005-11-24T03:26:00.000-08:00

zengyi's claim that i've been filling his mind with thoughts of NUS and not getting laid has led me to question myself. why exactly do we seem to all be such degenerate creatures, taking pleasure in the misfortune of others and jealously guarding our own success. are we really living in such a contaminated moral environment? in a word, yes.

when newspapers can print letters from people purportedly smarter and more mature then the rest of us that are in reality little more than thinly veiled insults to the general population, you know something is seriously wrong with the system as it is.

what's my age again

2005-11-23T04:33:00.000-08:00

sometimes people ask me why i'm so fatalistic or why my posts seem to be so negative. they question my view of the world as a sad and cruel place by pointing out all the happy things that have happened to them. well, if you'd seen the things i've seen, you wouldn't be jumping up and down on a couch declaring your love for Katie Holmes.
it all came to a head in sec 4, when a few of us went down to swensens for lunch.

me: (some unrelated comment)
mexcel: eh isn't that azad? (azad was the head prefect of vs for the year 2002/03)
me: oh shit is he going to like make us get into pumping position
jie kai: huh... shouldn't he be in jc or something?
me: oh shit he's coming this way
mexcel: dude that's definately him in the waiter's uniform
me: shit... i thought head prefects were like supposed to like go on to jc and get worshipped by innocent impressionable girls
mexcel: dunno man but i think our's is serving us chicken baked rice

this encounter taught me a very important lesson. that for most of us, glory lasts for but a fleeting moment. the fierce ncc dude everybody looked up to because he could do 20 pull-ups and had an eight pack could end up selling pirated vcds at night markets. this is why hero worship has never held much appeal for me. i admit that in vj, there are probably many people destined for big things but even then, a single look at the straits times whenever they print the list of president or SAF or PSC overseas scholars will tell you that most of them come from two colleges. no prizes for guessing which. my point is not to discourage or belittle those who have big dreams, but to get them to face reality. until i see your name in the straits times beneath a picture of nathan giving you your ticket to the Ivy League, shut the fuck up about how the food in america will taste like and stop beginning every conversation with the phrase, "well i'm not sure i can explain it in a simple enough way so you'll understand"

why does it always rain on me

2005-11-21T21:34:00.000-08:00

i have come to realise that for the first time in my life, i have been unhappy more often than happy this year. the magnitude of this cannot be underestimated. even in the dark days of sec 1, which involved absymal grades, getting expelled from scouts and run-ins with my higher chinese teacher, i could still say that i wasn't really unhappy, merely jaded. perhaps this has to do with my increased expectations for vj.

when i went to vs, i had no expectations at all. if i didn't drop out and sell pirated vcds, i considered it a bonus. strangely enough, this complete lack of faith in my own school was one of the main causes of the self deprecating sense of humour that characterised my upper sec days, when practically every joke and comment we passed had to do with the state of vs. as can be seen from the following (true) examples.

me: eh look the prelim paper booklet finally arrived.
another 4A guy: woah all the top schools man
me: eh wait it's got a vs paper
another 4A guy: damm why do they always have to spoil things for us

me: eh so where did u go just now man
mexcel: some peer leader thing at RGS
me: woah
mexcel: when i walked into RGS the security guard like gave me this strange look
me: damm people should know that not all vs guys are thieves, only half of us are.

when it came to vj, my expectations were so high that anything less than heaven on earth would have fallen short. as a result, every failing and shortcoming of the school was magnified tenfold in my mind. whereas previously i would have laughed it off as more evidence of our inevitable decline, now all i see is another piece of my perfect illusion shattered. i could technically lower my expectations, but since most vj people are convinced that they are in the garden of eden, i lack the crucial ingredient necessary to my success. a bunch of misfits as cynical and jaded as myself. with zengyi, mexcel, jie kai, anwar and javier all gone, i've got nobody left to join me in my customary rants.

still not getting any

2005-11-20T04:35:00.000-08:00

i remember reading a week or so ago in the new paper (or was it the straits times) that teenage pregnancies, abortions and the rate of fucking among teens in general has been on the rise. this came as something of a surprise to me since to the best of my knowledge the people i know are not screwing each other in ever orifice. more importantly, i am still not getting any.

the latter can probably be explained both through my boorish behavior and the impression that people seem to have of me being gay. the former, however, requires more thought. it could be that my friends really are engaging in clandestine orgies that they do not tell me about and that i am the only 17 year old virgin left in vjc. given the way most people tend to react to me, finding out if this is true could prove difficult as the following simulated conversation shows.

me: eh hello (to a girl who i consider a friend but whom probably despises and hates me)
girl: oh... errrhhh hi(tries and fails to remember my name)... dude
me: eh you have a boyfriend right? (at this point i am trying to keep the conversation alive)
girl: uhhh yeah (wonders why i don't go and bother somebody else)
me: so do you like use protection with him? (shit i should have been less direct)
girl: WTF (where's a large heavy object when you need it)

the other possibility is that the survey failed to take into account social factors and my friends really are just normal healthy under-sexed individuals. this seems to be the more plausible explanation, given the innocent nature of much of the student population in vj which can be seen in the following simulated conversation.

me: wassup man (to a guy who i recently converted from speaking chinese)
guy: hello (is grateful for the chance to practise his english)
me: dude you wanna go check out sexpo i heard they have the world's largest dildo on display (let's see just how much i can corrupt this kind soul)
guy: what's a dildo? is it some sort of food that contains dill? or is a exhibition of dilbert comics?
(is genuinely interested in learning more about english culture)
me: WTF (dude haven't you ever heard of FHM or Maxim)

welcome to hell

2005-11-19T04:53:00.000-08:00

if the singapore education system followed a caste system, i believe i would be a pariah. just as the brahmins were not allowed to even touch the pariahs or breath the same air or eat or drink from the same cups or plates as them, i find myself isolated from the people who are more academically inclined than i am. since this includes the entire student population of vj (apart from my class), it's going to be a very lonely and long year for me come january.

while people around me speak of registering for the SATs and the differences in application procedure between harvard and oxford, i spend my time registering for R papers and collect application forms for remedial classes. while others rush off to their attachments at NUS and NTU or to some big time law firm, i'm asking people whether they want ketchup or chilli with their fries.

what worries me is that i'm only in jc now. what happens when my erstwhile schoolmates graduate magna cum laude from yale and buy that apartment in grange road while i graduate from Infomatics and buy that 3 room hdb flat in jurong west. will they even acknowledge me when they pass me at the bus stop in their BMWs? given the way some of them already treat me, i'm not optimistic.

very tired

2005-11-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

incredible as it may sound, i believe that yesterday was actually the first time i spent an entire day out with my friends. before you start sniggering to yourself about my lack of a social life, let me explain that i did go out when i was in vs, except that i always tended to get tired after the movie and pool session and i don't like to take the mrt home after it gets dark.

you might have noticed that my blog now contains links to other blogs. yes i am proud to say that i have finally figured out how to do that. my next quest is to find out how to put pictures in my posts. given that there appears to be an option to add images, this should not prove difficult.

and so i present my first ever picture

THE FUTURE IS FLUX

i realise that this post is completely devoid of any real content and i assure all of you that i will be making a real post in the near future. this purpose of this post is to see if i am capable of inserting an image into a post.

worst nightmare of an s paper student

2005-11-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

(insert name of any arrogant conceited person taking s papers you know here) tossed and turned in his/her bed. he/she could feel himself/herself breaking into a cold sweat as the images flooded his/her mind. a lion on a white background. hundreds, no thousands of people who looked singaporean around him/her. and then the worst part of the nightmare, himself/herself waiting for a bus at a bus stop with that horrible address. KENT RIDGE

(insert name again) screamed at the top of his/her voice even as he/she snapped upright in his/her bed. still hyperventilating and in shock, he/she reached out for the stack of paper on the table next to the bed. he/she began to calm down as his/her eyes made out the heading on the first page of the stack. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: NOTES FOR SPECIAL PAPER STUDENTS. thank god/allah/buddha/nobody, he/she thought to himself/herself, it was all just a nightmare. then the door opened and his/her mother/father/stepfather/stepmother walked in. "was it the NUS nightmare again?" asked the mother/father/stepfather/stepmother. he/she nodded sliently, still griping the stack of notes for moral support. "well, you don't need to worry about that any more, because this just came in the mail for you" and with that he/she handed a letter to the still shaking s paper student.

even as he/she opened the folded letter, an inexplicable feeling of dread had already come over him/her. and then he/she saw what the single paragraph in it said. WE ARE PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT A PLACE HAS BEEN ALLOCATED TO YOU AT THE FACULTY OF SCIENCE IN NUS. even before the letter had fallen to the blanket, the screams had already started again. in that moment, (insert name for the last time here) knew that hell/purgatory existed, and he/she was trapped in it.

pw

2005-11-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

close examination of other blogs has led me to realise that everybody regards it as mandatory to have a post about the end of pw. as a devout conformist, i am obliged to do the same.

since so many other people have posted on the subject, i will not insult your pathetic intelligence by trying to come up with an original post. thus i will merely present the compiled thoughts of every jc blogger in singapore.

1) screw PW
2) PW was dumb
3) i am happy it is over
4) i hate my examiners
5) but frankly i don't give a damm about my score because it's only used for admission to local universities and i'm quite certain my place in harvard/oxford/cambridge/yale is secure. (only for s paper students)
6) oral presentation is a lot less erotic than it sounds
7) my group members were brainless slugs and their paralysing stupidity was the main obstacle in my quest for an EE. (if you didn't like your group)
8) my group members were wonderful shiny happy people who helped me through one of the most trying periods of my jc life (if you liked your group)
9) i will cut myself if i do not get a band 1
10) i will cut someone else if i do not get a band 1

hate tag

2005-11-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

i am pleased to announce that my blog has received it's first ever hate tag. this clearly shows that not only people who consider me a friend are visitng this blog. to have my enemies visit it as well and leave anonymous hate tags is clearly a sign of my growing fame. i therefore wish to thank whomever it was who posted the hate tag for helping to elevate my blog to the company of such great sites such as xiaxue and mr brown which are worthy of receiving hate tags from anonymous visitors.

this calls for a celebration. i'll probably open a can of beer and borrow Harold and Kumar Go to Whitle Castle from VideoEzy.

taiwan

2005-11-12T06:44:00.000-08:00

as some of you (my small but ever loyal fan base) may know, i will be departing our sunny island on the 7th of December to complete my participation in the annual Singapore-Taiwan Immersion program. those of you in my class (s26, not 4A) would still remember the problems i had trying and failing to overcome the language barrier and engage in meaningful conversation with my buddy that went beyond the weather.

i would love to say that i'm going over there with an open mind ready to be immersed into the culture of the nation that brought us such great products as 5566 and F4. however, i've recently begun slipping back into my old habits, to be precise, my self destructive anarchist tendencies. i find myself thinking of ways of showing the chinese speaking people the clear superiority of the english language.

thus far my plan is as such. when we're at changi, i plan to round up the other dissatisfied english speakers like pamela. next, we'll somehow obtain a guitar and then for the grand finale, we'll start singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" when the chinese speakers start singing their stupid fucked up jay chou farewell song. i know it doesn't sound impressive now but believe me, it will be like playing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" at a church service. just think of the stunned looks on the chinese speakers' faces when they see the other normal people at the airport join in our heartfelt rendition of the greatest ever english language farewell song.

cause i'm leaving on a jet plane (cue shocked looks on chinese speakers' faces when they realised i've hijacked their farewell)
i don't know when i'll be back again (other people in departure lounge start singing along)
oh, babe, i hate to go (chinese speakers start singing along awkwardly to the song)

First they came

2005-11-10T04:42:00.000-08:00

First they came for the the EM3 students, and i didn't speak up
because i wasn't an EM3 student

Then they came for the Normal Tech students, and i didn't speak up
because i wasn't a Normal Tech student

Then they came for the retainees, and i didn't speak up
because i wasn't a retainee

Then they came for the 3 sub students, and i didn't speak up
because i wasn't a 3 sub student

Then they came for the 2 s paper students,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately

jagged little pills

2005-11-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

i am currently heavily medicated due to some sort of throat infection. i seem to have a history of throat problems during important times. i still shudder at the memory of my tonsilitis during the prelims last year when i could barely swallow.

thus i have been mostly incapacitated the past few days, giving me time to visit my competition. if by now you can't figure out that this means other blogs and not other students, you are clinically retarded. most of them are stupid and crappy. sort of "greatest hits of my loser life so far" collection of pics and entries. occasionally though i came across good stuff and like the good person that my 16 pf says i am, i will share them with you.

a little bird told me about the following gem. (iamapokemonfan.blogspot.com) cool random shit in the anarchist style from a guy clearly sickened by his life. good for when you're feeling too good about yourself

results don't matter?

2005-11-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

throughout the course of one's life we often encounter people who tell us that academic results are not the true measure of a person. in fact, come to think of it, everybody tells us that. let's face it, most of these people are either lying through their teeth or on drugs and they can usually be divided into three distinct groups.

1) the people who got where they are today based entirely on their academic results and whose plans for the future are pinned solely on their continued excellence in the academic arena. for the age group 16-18 this essentially covers everybody in the top 5 jcs apart from s26 of vj.
these are the people who have the most to lose if the bullshit they talk about was actually true since their results are the only thing separating them from the huddled masses of "normal" people. their main motive in spreading their lies is essentially to convince the peasants (us) to stop studying now so they'll face less competition in the future.

2)the people who are CMI as far as academic results are concerned. these are the people who have the most to gain if their far fetched dreams of student equality were true. their main objective in spreading the word is to essentially convince everybody else that inspite of their inability to score double digits in any exam, they are still worthy of our respect and friendship. needless to say, their pathetic attempts at emancipating themselves from the hell that is poor academic performance will fail and they'll end up in some shitty low level sales job a monkey could do. still, we can all agree, it's nice to dream.

3)finally there are the people who genuinely believe and live by this twisted reasoning. this group is made of either the radical hippy sort(usually also on drugs) or the ones who have lived abroad for a while before returning to our sunny island and have experienced an education system where your worth is not determined by the number of subjects that you take. however, these people seldom come into contact with ordinary students, since they are either high(for the radical hippy sort) or studying at the United World College(for the overseas types).

The Litany Against Fear

2005-11-04T06:03:00.000-08:00

I must not fear
Fear is the mind-killer
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration
I will face my fear
I will permit it to pass over me and through me
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing
Only I will remain

me and my class

2005-11-03T05:03:00.000-08:00

the main reason behind s26's less than stellar class spirit has to do with our willingness to accept the friendship of those from other classes who would sooner see us dead and buried. while outwardly they might seem to be all warm and cuddly, in reality their friendship is nothing more than a passing phase that will fade once they get their S paper distinctions and go overseas. of course there exists the occasional decent soul like dan the man who don't turn their back on their friends in NUS even after returning from harvard but these are the exception rather than the rule.

we need to adopt a "you're either with us or against us" mindset. a fortress mentality is a great way to build bonds with your classmates since in a fortress, nobody gets in and nobody gets out, which means you had damm well get to know everybody else inside. those who dismiss me as a raving lunatic living on the fringes of society would do well to remember a few points. it was only a year ago that we (s26) were all in the best classes in our respective secondary schools and so quickly have we forgotten the way we treated the people taking F&N instead of bio. the s paper students will treat us no different. they'll make it a point to discuss s paper content in front of you just for the look on your face and then they'll ask stupid questions like "oh are you guys going for maths s later" or "tell me again, what s papers are you taking". when you mumble incoherantly that you don't take s papers they'll pretend to be embarrassed and look away while secretly laughing to themselves at your paralysing stupidity.

it is no coincidence that pride is the greatest of the seven deadly sins. we looked down on those less capable than ourselves in the past and now, we are reaping the whirlwind of all our yesterdays.

my options in life

2005-11-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

i've checked my promo results against the entry scores for the courses at the local universities and come to the devastating yet not unexpected conclusion that i do not qualify for a single one. in the interests of long term planning, i have listed down my options in life after i graduate/get expelled from vj

1) go to SIM. although every fibre of my being tells me that going to a private school filled with rich CMI losers pretending to be undergraduates is the worst possible career choice for me, it might be worth putting up with for the chance to tell people i have a degree

2) work as a film censor. this would fulfill both my lifelong dream of watching free movies while at the same time providing me with a stable and semi-respectable job

3) join the army. the promotional videos make it seem like killing people is the last thing the army actually does and that all soldiers do in the army is learn how to shoot promotional videos and give promotional talks. it sounds good to me except that a) i'm not physically fit and b) i do not fancy retiring at 45 and becoming an OM in some screwed up primary school

as far as i can see my life is filled with limitless opportunities just waiting to be seized

stupid chinese a level exam

2005-10-30T22:54:00.000-08:00

scary moment at the chinese AO exam today when i wrote my compo in the wrong section. i mean, how was i supposed to know that space was for the comprehension and the compo was to be written at the back. i always thought they would give separate answer booklets for the two sections. anyway lucky i realised my mistake early on and asked for another answer booklet to do paper 2 otherwise i would be typing this entry from a cybercafe in a tall building with convienient roof access.

i always seem to make stupid mistakes in big exams, like the time during the O levels when i actually managed to leave out an entire page of the E maths paper or during the bio paper when i was probably the only student in the whole country not to realise the eye question was wrong. which would probably explain why i got an A2 for bio...

angry me

2005-10-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

after reading a friend of mine's venom filled tirade against practically everthing that has ever happened in his life, i have come to realise that spite is an excellent motivating factor in life. come to think of it, it was my desire to show my arrogant conceited ex primary school classmates that i could do as well as them that motivated me throughout my years in vs.

thus, i've decided to come up with an enemies list of people whom i have to prove wrong before i leave jc

1) everybody who takes s papers, apart from those i know personally. i hope you understand it's not that i hate you or anything, but more that you people are a convienient avenue for me to vent my frustration. so yeah, peace.

2) all the people who gave me funny looks or said, "cmon man did u REALLY get BDEO" for these people it is personal and i look forward to the day i stand victorious over your lifeless corpse, although i will settle for the stunned look on your face when i get my 4As

3) the people who are going on work attachment in hospitals and assume the only holiday work the rest of us "normal" people will be doing is taking your order at KFC. well all i can say is that i look forward to the day you try to get me to sign up for a credit card while i walk to my car or you call me at home in my condo to persuade me to sign up for the latest unit trust from DBS or something

so there you have it. my list of people to prove wrong before i leave vj. i am aware that it covers practically the entire college apart from the people i know but that simply means my triumph will be all the more sweet when i achieve it

really random shit

2005-10-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

if this was the honeymoon year, then i want a divorce
i seriously do not want myself to be in the same position all the CMI people in VS were in last year after the prelims, having spent 4 years in secondary school and with nowhere to go.
the scary NUS dude who said that we needed ABB or something like that to get into business has really put things into perspective for me...
unless i want to end up at some private school with rich losers who spend their parents' money on beer and think they're cool, i need a massive improvement next year. exactly how i am going to achieve this i still do not know but i've got a feeling it involves injections of adrenaline straight into my bloodstream and an IV stand filled with glucose next to my table

looking back on yesterday

2005-10-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

i never thought i would say this, but i miss vs. to be exact, i don't miss the school itself or the stupid cheers or the enthu dicks who go crazy with face paint at x-country, i miss all the 4A guys.
all of them, except maybe he who must not be named. we all know who i'm referring to.
i miss the things we used to do. we never went out as much as other classes i'll never forget all the outings we had. like the time we went to watch the odd couple just because pesvien offered to get the tickets for us, or the time we kept eating at swensen's because they were selling 5 scoops of ice cream at 1.99, or even the time i went to watch revolutions with zengyi and ashwin and zengyi delibrately got us the first row of seats so he could study chinese everytime keanu reeves had a dialogue scene.
s26 is a great class in it's own way but i guess because JC classes are smaller you don't get the same feeling as in secondary school. back then i could spend one period talking cock with ah foo, ali, jj and wen hao and then move to the other side of the class during another period to talk to zaka, ahmad, ash, zengyi and wang da and then if i still had time i could move to the other side of class and hang out with les or mex. the stuff we talked about rarely made any sense, i remember how i spent hours talking to wang da about the picture of a girl i found in his wallet or hearing zengyi talk about some random girl he saw on some random channel 5 show the night before.

no more chinese

2005-10-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

i passed the chinese mock exam which means next monday will be the last time i ever set eyes on a piece of paper in a language other than english. the last time i felt so relieved to give up a subject was when i dropped geog in sec 3.

i think i've finally pinpointed the reason for my less than stellar performance this year: a lack of a goal. Before you say duh and never visit my blog again, let me explain. back in 4A we all had a target,it was the land of milk and honey, the promised land, the place where manna falls from heaven, where forty virgins await us and so on and so forth. others called it RJ. although only a few of us made it to the promised land, the idea still consumed us and gave even the most CMI loser a reason to live. if we had all accepted fate and gone to ITE like we were supposed to, none of us would have done as well as we did.

stupid blog

2005-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

i managed to allow anon. comments and get a tagboard but i accidentally deleted the colour at the same time... damm

i'm still deciding whether or not to drop a sub, part of me thinks that my grades clearly show that i'm not cut out for four subs but another part of me thinks that without PW and chinese next year things could be different...

in the end i'll probably used some sort of warped reasoning to decide, the same way i convinced myself to study for the O levels by arranging the stupid "in the end there can only be one" death pact thingy with lester
for the A levels i'll probably tell myself i have to show all the arrogant trip sc people who gave me funny looks when i told them my results that i'm just as smart as they are...
just for the record the death pact thingy actually worked

fierce uni dude

2005-10-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

today's university admission thingy was going fine until the question and answer part when the dude from SMU started flaming anyone who was considering an overseas education. something about how SMU was bringing American style education to us at local prices.

i was always of the opinion that one didn go overseas for the actual content thought in the university but rather the chance to live and study in another culture. after all, 1+1=2 whether you're studying at NUS or Cambridge. going overseas was never about the professors or the textbooks, it was always about the exposure. no matter how much the local unis try ramming it down our throats that they're just as good as anything available overseas, the fact remains that the best students will never choose to study here.

promos

2005-10-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

i'm still getting used to being one of the worst students in vj.... not that it was unexpected but it's still an unpleasant sensation when everybody you ask has at least CCDD or something.
if i had any medical knowledge whatsoever i would suspect i'm suffering from a form of Tay-Sachs disease which would explain how i seem to get dumber as i grow older
i suppose the 16pf thing was correct, maybe i am doomed to work in construction or farming or manual/skilled trade or clerical duties.
on an even more unpleasant note, class relations have taken a further blow. i won't degrade myself by trying to flame other people or push the blame to anyone else. i just think it's sad that this had to happen just when my class was finally starting to look like a cohesive unit.

apologies

2005-10-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

i still have not figured out how to let people comment without signing into blogger so i guess i'll ask one of my friends to help me do it soon...
and i still can't get my stupid tag board to appear
i guess this means i'm not PC literate, which effectively rules me out of any work attachments, not that i qualify anyway given my absymal results

me

2005-10-18T03:58:00.000-07:00

if i was twice as smart as i am, i would be half as smart as people think i am

villa

2005-10-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

aston villa have finally beaten birmingham city at st andrews after god knows how many attempts...
is this a sign that my fortunes are about to change?

bad stuff

2005-10-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

people say i'm a bit of a pessimist. i guess i am. i usually see the glass as being half empty instead of half full.
and the glass is dirty
and it has a crack
and i've just cut myself on the crack
and the cut is infected
and i'm going to die in pain

correction

2005-10-13T04:45:00.000-07:00

it appears i was wrong about the maths results. my class has actually deproved from 9 passes in the mid years to 7 this time. if we continue deproving at this rate, only 3 of us will pass the prelims...

promos

2005-10-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

i have just learned that 7 out of 23 people in my class have passed maths. i believe this represents an improvement from our mid-year results when only 3 of us made it. so if we continue to inprove by 4 passes every half a year, it will only be 2 more years before all of us pass!!!!!! oh wait that did not sound right

first real post

2005-10-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

i have to explain about my blog address
i got it from this canteen stall in chung cheng high school (no i'm not from cchs )
i was like stunned the first time i saw it... i mean what's the point of calling a chicken rice stall poultry rice. later i realised i was'nt really in a position to complain, considering i come from a school that calls the drinks stall the watering hole
oh wth

random stuff

2005-10-12T05:31:00.000-07:00

this is my new blog... well duh
dont really know what to write about... i've been sitting at home for the past four days and decided to get this blog to pass the time so i'll probably post something that's not completely worthless soon

peace out