Painted joys, hidden sorrows.

Why were there no tears?

There were ear-to-ear smiles on everyone’s faces. The joys and laughters reverberated through the corridors and inside the classrooms as if it was actually the first day of school. There were jokes. There were people who attempted to defy school rules by making impromptu pranks here and there, albeit executed with extreme care and subtlety, as if they were administering a last-resort placebo drug on a patient suffering from an impossible disease. Everything seemed so happy. Everything seemed so ordinary.

But it is, of course, a painted facade for everyone to see. While it was a fact that nobody within the confines of the school campus expressed grief through the shedding of a tear or two,  everyone knew very well that those smiles, those laughters, those jokes, were all nothing but lies.

Countdown lockdown.

He was staring at it for the first time. Had it not been for the cold air-con breeze circulating in his room, the undecipherable words and equations embedded on the yellowing pages of his textbook would have turned into ashes under his scorching gaze. He knew that it was too late. Nevertheless, convinced that it would be better to start late than to not start anything at all – like flipping the white pages of a telephone directory trying for particular phone numbers – he scanned the rest of book, highlighting words here and there and everywhere. He had to believe in the power of highlighting. He had to believe that his expensive, magical yellow pen would photocopy the contents of the textbook and transmit them into his system. He had to believe that he had chosen the right things to keep in mind. Nonetheless, as in a telephone call, he knew that one wrong dial is all that it takes to end up calling the wrong number.

He closed the book. He stared at the window. He stood up, and sat down again. He tapped his fingers on the table, and then skimpily ran them over the surface like wriggly little feet, collecting a minute amount of house dust. He looked at the mirror and checked his hair. He raised his arms, stretching as if he was on a roller coaster ride, submitting himself to the power of the wind. He folded his legs, his arms wrapped around them like a blanket, his unshaved chin resting on his knees, his hands tightly clenched together, forming a protruding ball of yellow-stained fingers. He looked at his feet, dangling at the edges of the chair. And then he closed his eyes, and fell asleep, forgetting everything that he had memorized on that day.

Fifty-eight days. Cinquante-huit jours. Limampu’t walong araw.

I <3 my bike.

SIX brave young men, SIX bicycles, SEVENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY metres (78.78 kilometres), in EIGHT hours and FORTY-EIGHT minutes.

ONE minor injury, NO casualty, and NO damaged bikes

********

There is no good thing about me being the most indecisive human being that ever walked on Earth.

But the good thing is, whenever I submit myself to peer pressure, I always end up having a good time. HAHAHA

So! What happened was that Nalaka, Niko, Savy, Weijie, Yin To, and I went cycling around Singapore.

We just finished our mock exams last week and this week is a holiday so we decided to.. you know.. release all the stress we’ve accumulated over the two-week exam period.

We, like, literally, cycled around the whole island:

We started off at ECP. Rented six bikes for $12 for the whole, with no overnight charge! How cool is that?

Anyway, here’s a chronological order of our journey in the form of photographs:

Trust me, cycling for 78.78km in not-so-good bicycles with not-so-good bicycle seats is not a good idea if you’re not willing to bear the excruciating pain on your ass, balls (for guys), legs, knees, and back. And cycling using the the most difficult gear was a bit of an… unplanned and unwanted suicide attempt. Like teenage pregnancy. My leg muscles were crying with so much lactic acid, so much that I felt my leg muscles were being dissolved into fragments of organic molecules.

Jurong Point, gas stations, convenience stores, MRT Stations, and other sources of heavenly toilet urinals and refreshments were green-less oases erected across the unforgiving cemented desert. We had to stop here and there to take a leak or to refuel ourselves. Our frequent stopovers made me come into a realization that our bicycles were amazingly strong and sturdy and amazingly difficult to ride on (no pun intended).. and our bodies, although as agile as the wind, are as fragile as toilet paper.

It was also a good moment to explore Singapore. I mean, I’ve been around Singapore for the past four years, but I was always travelling behind the smudged windows of the bus or the MRT, sitting down on a more-or-less more comfortable seat, listening to my MP3 player. but this time it was different. No smudged windows; just my spectacles smudged by condensing water vapour. No aircon; just the cool breeze of wind coming from the miniature Singapore rainforests. No comfy seats; just that small piece of rubber seat squeezing my balls who are carrying the brunt of my weight. And no MP3 music; just the noise of people, cars, buses, trains, trucks, traffic signals, birds, dogs, rain, the sound dissipated by the breaks, the rustling of leaves, the splashing of water, the trickling of rain, the breaking of twigs lying on the ground, the heavy breathing, and many other random things.

There were exhilarating moments, such as the downhill slopes along Mandai Avenue. It was like an amazing roller coaster ride, the only difference being the leaves and twigs and soft tree branches hitting your face, splashing cool mountain (or hill) dew on my face as I passed by them, and since I was excruciatingly tired and exhausted and perspiring excessively – but still gasping for a little bit of cooling, hydrating water on my skin – the violent whips of green flora became so refreshing to the point that it felt orgasmic, giving me an unimaginable tingling sensation rushing throughout my whole body.  There were also times where we felt like lying down in the middle of the road, where we felt like we died as we cycled against gravity (especially along Mandai Road), but we kept on cycling and cycling and cycling.. and well… guess what? we eventually spanned 78.78 kilometres of Singapore soil (mostly cement). Actually, it kinda reminded me of Forrest Gump!

“Run, Forrest, Run!!!”

This was like…

“Cycle, Rowland, Cycle!!!”

And trust me too, it was (AWESOME FUN)^infinity.

And a very important moral lesson: Do not wear boxers when cycling.

RECAP.

8 MORE PAPERS NEXT WEEK.

One degree of separation.

I have been contemplating on the idea of… accepting my close friend’s mum’s facebook invitation.

My initial reaction: o.O

Haha. She’s like a family friend, so yeah, I wouldn’t want her to be gossiping about my facebook activities to my parents.

Maybe I shouldn’t accept the invitation. I’ve already ignored hundreds of facebook invitations anyway. Yes, I’m EVIL.

****

Anyway, it’s funny how small the world is.

Today was the Assisi Hospice Charity Fun Day, and guess what. I just met a gazillion faces who all looked familiar in one way or another, like I’ve seen them before, I just couldn’t remember where or when or how or on what occasion – they all just looked so damn familiar.

And it’s funny how you can’t seem to find those people whom you know more than your chemistry textbook and those people whom you would want to know more about, since you find them more interesting than gossiping about students and writing ToK essays and doing Physics homework.

*******

Sometimes you do get the most unexpected and random questions at the most unusual times of the day.

Ricky asked me, “So where do you intend to go after this?”

“House?” I replied.

He was referring to my impending post-IB life.

I started blabbering about me not minding spending another 4-8 years in Singapore studying in a university… but not interested in settling down in this little island… talking about applying for a PR status (but of course I would never do so)… etc. etc.

But I still don’t know where I’m actually going.

Maybe I’ll end up studying in DLSU.

Who knows.

Or maybe I’ll end up staying here because of …

NEVER MIND (:

*******

Happy Labor Day.

Wednesday is Acer Crystal Eye Webcamwhoring day.

tutor group:

ASc is the best!!!

english standard level.

No photo. But Ernest was playing with his condom the whole time.

economics higher level.

No photo. Had a short test on BoP.

higher level chemistry:

We are free radicals. So free it makes us so radical.

 

french ab initio

You can consider this as a higher level subject too. In fact, it’s a [HIGHER]^2 subject.

How ironic that the background is all in spanish.

Three things.

Nalaka is so cool. He is now my IB Guru.

To be an IB Guru, you really need to have a good sense of what IB does to you.

I think my Guru has turned into an insane being, but he still does make a lot of sense after all.

According to my Guru, there are three key things in your life:

SLEEP, SOCIAL LIFE, and GRADES.

But in IB, you can only have two out of three things.

To put it more simply,

if IB were to be a container, it means that it can only hold two out of three things inside.

You can choose to have:

a. good sleep and good grades but NO social life

b. good social life and good grades but NO sleep

(most people choose to do this. don’t you think so? LOL.)

c. good sleep and good social life but NO grades

hahaha

*********

more Guru insights soon. (:

Windows Live Writer is awesome.

Damn. I’m actually typing this post using

Windows Live Writer.

I can actually see how it’s gonna look like on my blog while typing this awesome post!

SEE WHAT I MEAN??

This is so fahkeng AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!!!!!! oooooooooohhh!!!

MWHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

********

This school term is finally coming to an end – whew – after 20 weeks or so of non-stop IB madness. By right, everyone in Grade 12 should have died already, but since we’re so cool people we’re still alive. Nevertheless, we somehow have acquired unique – whatchamacallit? – zombie-like attributes now, given the fact that we have not slept much for 20 consecutive weeks. Well, I absolutely have no idea why the school decided to merge two terms together. It was like twenty weeks of non-stop schooling. The grade 12s have been running to and fro almost everyday, like some insanely busy workaholic apparitions carrying stacks of research papers and internal assessments, chasing teachers who appear to be sadistically enjoying seeing them with gargantuan charcoal-coloured panda eyes, half-asleep, half-awake, no one really knows, desperately trying to catch up with a million deadlines. It was basically capital punishment at its most beguiling and dissimulating level, masked under what is conceivably the most humane form of torture possible, school. IB!

Although I love the IB (and the school! )

sense the masochistic aura oozing MWAHAHAHAHAHA

somehow, the long school term has made me sick and tired of doing work. It was simply too draggy. Tsk.

Now, everyone feels like

“NAH DUN WANT TO DO ANY MORE WORK LAH TOO TIRED ALREADY”

“SCREW IT LAH”

“CAN DO TOMORROW, I GOT FREE PERIOD”

“HEY CAN I BORROW YOUR HOMEWORK?!”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO FOR FRENCH…”

“WTH, I NEED 2 SKIP LUNCH, GTG DO MY HW. BRB. TTYL!”

“I’M SORRY… UMMM… MRS HAMMOND CAN I SUBMIT MY ENGLISH HOMEWORK AFTER SCHOOL?”

 

And because of that the quality of my IB work is starting to plummet in a similar fashion to an old man who’s beginning to lose his libido as he gets older. SAD! ):

On a happy note,

GAWAD KALINGA IN SEVEN MORE DAYS!

see you Bacolod!

Lapit na lang gid… magkinitaay na gid kita! Kung pwede lang ko maglakat subong, subong na gid ko naglakat!  

ROFLMAO!

IB vs WWII.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2009

***

2 + 9 = 11

2 X 9 = 18

9 / 2 = 4.5

9 – 2 = 7

11 + 18+ 4.5 + 7 = 40.5

***

Round it off and you get

41

***

FORTY-ONE!

QUARANTE-ET-UN!

***

41 points for IB meehhhhhnnn!!!

WHOOOOHOOOOO!!!

***

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

A letter of request.

before anything else, I would like to say a few words.

I think I have been too mean to myself and to the person I like (although you don’t know it’s you I’m talking about) or shall I say, liked, and so I would like to apologize to the two of us – if you FEEL your heart throbbing, and you BELIEVE it’s really you, I’m really sorry. If you THINK that you feel  your heart is throbbing and believe it’s really you, then you are thinking wrongly, but I’m still sorry anyway for giving you the wrong impression. And I’m apologizing to myself because I’ve basically made my life miserable even though there wasn’t a need to do so. So yeah..

I shall be careful next time. Such emotional rages are sometimes uncontrollable. Once you let them off, and then you go back to your normal self, you tend to think how insensitive you have become to yourself and to the people around you.

My sincerest apologies.

************

NOW FOR MY POST!

************

14344

Diversion Road,

Philippines 9500

Dear Hardworking Rowland,

The IB workload has ballooned exponentially at the end of the school year, but it is no surprise that almost everyone is still not serious about doing any work. Obviously (too bad if it may not be that obvious to you), that horrifying assumption is under the impression that Rowland’s batch mates continue to give me. Of course, there are people whom I  can taxonomize as closet muggers who, in their dynamic exo-skeletal personality pretend to be just as lazy and procrastinatious as me, but hidden beneath their deceptive shells, they have already finished 90% of their EE shit. Or maybe they have completed all their holiday homework.

I have written this letter in the hopes that you would decide to return as soon as possible. There are rumors flying around the town like sex videos, nude pictures, flu viruses and lame jokes, all saying that you may not return anymore, due to some personal reasons that you have failed to properly explain. It may had been a tremendous ordeal, that month of November – I have seen how much you had suffered and toiled, albeit the fact that at the end of the day you unwaveringly admitted to yourself how satisfying it was for you to be able to comply with all the tasks that you had committed yourself to. Sometimes I think that you’re so full of yourself, but worry not, for I have already learned to overlook your distasteful flaw.

Nevertheless, such an achievement has meant something for you, that I am pretty sure of. If you have successfully traversed through the once deemed insurmountable ordeal last month, then the following litany of school work should not be seen as a hindrance to your life. I wouldn’t deny the fact that the next year will be the most challenging yet, but do you realize? Every succeeding year has always been your most challenging year. Some things in life – most of them unimportant and trivial matters such as physics and literature – just get more and more difficult year after year.

Therefore, I am confident, that you will be able to surpass the forthcoming challenges in life next year – after all, you’re not alone.  You have your family, friends, and teachers to help you through. I may be of no use to you, that is a fact that will forever remain unchanged, but remember that I am always lying down somewhere thinking of you while  sipping a glass of apple juice with Aloe Vera bits, and hoping for your success in life.

Ever present is the veracity of life; but ever constantly changing it is, too.  How ironic, constant change. The truths we may hold for now may change as we walk along the pathway of our lives – you may think that through consistency of work and determination one can lead to the fulfillment of  his or her own dreams and aspirations – and I may believe that we simply have to be happy-go-lucky, to wait for things to happen, because the future has already been predetermined at the first place, encrypted deep inside the curvatures of the lines on the palms of our hands. Do you believe in palmistry?

Anyway, our friend, Rowland, who happens to have unknowingly committed himself to a detrimental curriculum, needs more of your help than mine – for now. So please, pack your things and get  your ass back here. So that I may laze around somewhere more ambient and exciting. Perhaps I should take a trip Down Under? It would be a delight if you and Rowland could come along. But he has work to do. And you have to help him. Shit.

Anyway, thank you.

Yours truly,

Lazy Rowland

the workaholic’s nightmare.

I finally got all my end-of-year results back.

trente-huit. More than I expected so I am really thankful to God for allowing my efforts to pay off.

Now that my mental acquisitiveness has been satisfied as soon as the last subject grade was given out, I am trying to divert my short-lived attention span to the looming suicidal month ahead of me. I have been anticipating for a month like this to come, because like DUH, I’m in IB, but yeah. But I didn’t anticipate that it would be NOVEMBER this year. Actually, I have been anticipating this kind of moment in my life wherein I would have to choose between (a) committing suicide and going straight to hell, and (b) committing myself to one more year of hell in the IB and then (hopefully) finishing the course with  flying colours. After much contemplation, consultation and divine intervention, and a bit of cost-benefit analysis, I have decided to stick with the latter plan.

I love doing work, but with this sudden exponential increase in workload, I feel like  my sanity is going down the drain. I feel like bumping my head on a durian shell and going on a naked rampage on the streets. Watch me.

IB work + school stuff = November.

OK BREAK IT DOWN!

NOVEMBER IS THE MONTH THAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.

Next month’s menu!

1. CAS Reflections, Meeting with your respective CAS supervisor by 7 November 2008

2. Theory of Knowledge Essay about the future of History as a Science

3. Submission and consultation of the second Economics commentary (for IB assessment)

4. DEADLINE OF THE EXTENDED ESSAY OUTLINE ON NOVEMBER THREE! and I bet 90% of my batchmates don’t even know this!

5. Memorize lines and songs for Act 1 Scenes 9 and 11, and Act 2 Scenes 1, 5 and 6 for the Sound of Music school musical

6. more DREADED and DREADFUL REHEARSALS for the month

7. Grade 11 Camp, 21-23 November (WTF #$%$#^%^!!)

7. SOUND OF MUSIC, 24-25 November

8. Music concert on 26 November? (to be confirmed)

9. French Student Idol, 29 November (oui bébé, nous allons chanter des chansons françaises!!!)

see I can’t even count properly!

GIMME MORE, GIMME GIMME MORE!

This coming month is so fucked up.

Waiting for my dinner to arrive.

I swear, I’m really, really excited now.

Ok this may sound really nerdy and horrifying to normal human beings who might be reading this, but i’m like an electron excited by this weird wavelength of joy and euphoria and hope – and perhaps a little bit of delusion and disillusionment – but, yeah. As uncertain of its own position and existence, and as repulsive towards its own species, I feel like I’m this electron being excited from some awkward transition between two Day-orbitals (pun intended) which split into two different Day-levels by some wavelength which I have already described in the first few lines of this note. It seems like today and tomorrow were originally intertwined as one, but somehow it was split by a phenomena no one knows or will ever know, and now I’m in this electronic transition from here to there, from mugging to sitting for exams, from Today to Tomorrow. It is a good feeling, knowing that this litany of exams is finally coming to an end. I’m sure that not everyone feels the same way but who cares.

I have gotten the hang of circling around this gargantuan nucleus I call IB for almost a year now. But to be excited a bit further from it is quite cool. Anyway, I don’t know if electrons do feel happy about jumping around from one energy level to another, but from this presumed analogy, I think they do. 

Anyway, dinner’s here and I’m going to stop blabbering now. 

And it’s maths paper 2 tomorrow. Not chemistry. Yeeehaaa

 

*********

Anyway, here are some random pictures taken at some random morning

 

 

Aftershocks.

Hi. I’ve been getting bored updating this blog – perhaps oversimplified wordpress templates can’t really wholly please dirty, perverted, muddled and imaginative human minds for so long. Anyway, these past few weeks have been relatively more stressful than any other week I’ve had so far this year. Firstly, I had to extract the essence of 500 pages of my maths textbook and drink it like chicken essence – you know, when you position your index finger and thumb in the shape of a clothespin, and squeeze the nostrils tight to prevent the olfactory nerves from working along with your taste buds as you swallow liquified cock (male chicken), or hen (female chicken),  - in ten days, in order to do my IB Maths Internal Assessment. Okay, I know typical human beings should not be doing these kinds of things, but I guess being atypical is typical within the IB world. And then secondly, EXAMS. End-of-year exams. The good thing about these examinations, is that they’re not a dreadful as the JCs’ promotional exams (since the shit inside you won’t be scared out of you by the prospect of being retained in JC1) or as hyperventilating and exhilarating as the counterpart IB school’s – you know which school I’m talking about.

Anyway, to summarize my oh-so-enjoyable week:

Sunday – Tuesday: STUDY STUDY STUDY!

Wednesday: English SL paper 1. Wrote two pages of literary crap. I think I did quite well. Essay wasn’t so much well-organized, though.

Thursday: Mathematics HL paper 1. Disaster. A cataclysm of undecipherable questions. As expected.

Friday: Chemistry HL paper in the morning. Chemistry rocks. Economics HL paper in the afternoon. Comme ci comme ça.

More exam papers next week.

Anyway,

there comes a point in time when everything you have written inside an exam hall seems convincingly worthy of getting the allocated marks. And then, at the moment you grab that precious time to meditate about the swift chain of events, where a year’s worth of learning had been mercilessly compressed into a 2-hour 20-page examination paper, you begin to think, “Oh. Damn. Oh well.”

Generally, I think I did way better for Chemistry and Economics than for Mathematics, which is like, umm, expected, since Mathematics was written in Greek. or Latin. Maybe French?? I wasn’t really sure. There is something about this subject which frustrates me so much. No matter how much similar the math questions you practice are with the exam questions themselves, when the paper is set in such a way that the questions are twisted in a slightly different way, your brain refuses to twist along the same degree of insanity. And to think that I practised maths every single day for the past two or three weeks…

Well, perhaps the best possible explanation was that I sat on the tenth chair of the second column from the left. Whatever that signified.

 

 

Hallucinations.

In the late afternoon, upon glancing outside the window, I thought I had gone bonkers.

I thought I saw a dinosaur.

Stupid Mathematics IA.

It’s a beautiful day.

It’s a beautiful day, and another term has begun on this very beautiful day. o.o

Do you know that feeling, that feeling when you can’t seem to give a shit about waking up and taking a bath and eating your petit-dejeuner? I doubt anyone does anyway. But do you know that feeling? That you just can’t stand the fact that you’re waking up early in the morning to go to school. Why do you even need to go to school anyway.

But once you reach school… do you ever get that feeling, that feeling when you see everyone’s smiling at the sight of everybody else; at the uniformity we achieve by wearing the same, horrible uniform, knowing that no one is alone in that very awkward and unglamorous fashion crisis.

I am sad and happy at the same time. Sad that challenge week has come to an end, sad that I haven’t gotten the chance to unwind, relax, and enjoy the beaches of Phuket, but happy to be back in the company of the people that I have left for a week.

“And yes, Jose, you look glamorous – like, totally” is what’s running on Jessica’s mind. d:

Headband courtesy of Danusha.

Physics test tomorrow on simple harmonic motion. DIE.

Overhaul.

I was walking down the road going to Plaza Singapura and there was a bunch of young Chinese lads, who looked like students from THE rich boys’ school, or perhaps who CAME from THE rich boys’ school, looking at me with somewhat impulsively satirical and repugnant faces, faces that suggested the possibility of them bursting into laughter, or regurgitating their shit out in public. I was astonished, seemingly amused and petrified by the mockery in their eyes, the ridiculous body language, the sinister smiles, the deafening silence emanating from their mouths. But from their boastful aura dissipated the thought that I was exactly thinking about: my uniform.

I continued walking past. I tried to imagine that I was a model unlucky enough to be victimized by a fashion designer’s occasional outlandish fashion concepts, that I had to carry what I was wearing since I was obliged to do so. Well, in a way, I am indeed obliged to wear the unform, but hey, looks count as well. If people deem the uniform as a joke, then there’s something wrong with it. The rich boys’ gang was supposed to appreciate the uniform, not to make a jolly mockery out of it.

Sometimes it takes simple fashion sense to understand what the laugh was all about. The uniform does suck, in a way, since the shirt just tucks itself out from the pants, ever so willingly, since its one size smaller than the usual shirt I wear. Sometimes the pants just skyrockets up to my high waist that I tend to look like Mandark without the wavy hair shine. And the way the uniform embraces itself on my body makes me look like a flagpole on a diving suit. And sometimes – No – all the time, the seams on the pants just seem to be unable to hold themselves together, they almost look like they’re going to tear apart with one simple wide stretching of the legs. And since my uniform is really tight on me, sometimes when I get the occasional innocent bulges it gets really embarrassing – well for me it is.

Or is it that the problem lies not on the uniform, but on the person who carries it? They always say, it’s not what you wear, it’s how you wear it. Yeah, right. Talk about wearing a bunny rabbit costume along orchard road, or going for a swim in Sentosa with a tuxedo.

HAHA. I intended to wear it that way for this photo.

Nevertheless, it’s time to do some changes!

I’m all for the uniform overhaul: new pant cut and colour, a tie, and long sleeves. That will make us look way cooler, smarter, and less nerdy, and even more less weird.

Choices.

One famous person said that there is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life’s point of no return.

I don’t believe him.

***

A few months ago, the foreign students in school, including me, attended a pot luck in school with our foster parents here in Singapore, and I happened to stumble upon one Indian mother who said this: “I don’t think time management was a big deal back for me then. What I found difficult about the IB was that I had to do subjects which I didn’t really like.”

Well, good for her, I thought. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with such a problem, a nuisance, a conundrum. I thought, at that very moment, that I would be satisfied, happy, delighted. I thought that I would be happy with my textbooks, my notes, my timetable . I thought I would only needed to fight time, to keep up with time, to chase time. I thought, at that very moment, that the choices I made were right, manageable, appropriate. But now it seems that I, like the flowing river, have no choice but to flow downstream. I, like the fighting salmon, have no choice but to fight the undercurrents. I, like the carried away pebbles, have no choice but to be carried away by the gushing water.

Superheroes. They are the cliché-st of all clichés. They always have choices. They always do. They always will. Comic writers always give them a choice: to be or not to be? They always go around emo-ing, contemplating, self-reflecting, upon their roles in the society, in the world, in their inner selves: should I save them? Should I use my powers for the good? Or should I stay around doing nothing?

I may not be spider-man who’s gone emo, but actually, I did have a choice. I once had the opportunity to flow upstream, to embrace the undercurrents, to resist the gushing water. But I chose not to. Because I was afraid. Ironically, not choosing the things I wanted to choose was itself a choice that I consciously made.

And now, there’s no turning back. As one famous person said, “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

PHUK ET.

Phuket.

We were discussing about joey’s rantings over challenge week.

rowland. BUSY ;] says:
ah. now, je comprends.
.rowland. BUSY ;] says:
it is ok, my deer.
[Lin³] joey says:
DER
.rowland. BUSY ;] says:
oh sorry
[Lin³] joey says:
DEER
.rowland. BUSY ;] says:
my dear
[Lin³] joey says:
HAHAHA
[Lin³] joey says:
Deer.
[Lin³] joey says:
You are my COW!

See what challenge week does to people.

If challenge week is a challenge, then the challenge week proposal would be more or so in the ranks of what we can aptly describe as insane. A few months have already gone into waste and my group is still merely on the verge of typing our title page. Add to the fact that we had people coming in and out of our group, Celine’s embassy problems, Tanya’s dilemma, the Nalaka-John-Rowland financial crisis, and Amanda’s last-minute inclusion into the NLK fraternity.

We have encountered so many problems along the way, while the rest of the other groups have started dialing agencies, typing itineraries, pressing calculators, booking airline tickets, reserving rooms in orphanages, twittering about orangutan sanctuaries, dreaming about mountain climbing, thinking of the dangers of Cambodian landmines, rejecting my lovely country – the Philippines – because of a capsized ship vessel. No, I’m not criticizing them. When it comes to traveling, I also value safety above all else. Although I would say that whichever place you go, if you’re meant to be in danger, you will be in danger, if you’re meant to be kidnapped, you will be kidnapped, no matter where you are. If you are in a dangerous place, let’s say Iraq, if you’re not meant to get shot by some terrorist, or some uncanny extremist, or some drunk American soldier, you won’t get shot. Even places like Singapore, where danger and crime are as ubiquitous as chewing gums, these places are not 100% safe. But, don’t get me wrong – I’m not being a lunatic, crime-freak patriot who worships the idea of people getting hurt. I don’t even play GTA or any other violent computer games. I love war movies though. haha. Like I said earlier, when it comes to traveling, I value safety above all else. Let’s all stay in Singapore for Challenge Week then. (:

And I’m not going to say that my country is a better destination. I’m not going to say that it has more beautiful coastlines than Thailand, or more talented people and prettier faces than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, (too bad the Pinoy government is just as bad as Nalaka trying to keep himself awake during Sunday masses) or jungles as marvelous as Borneo, or mountains as prestigious as Kota Kinabalu, or food that spells VERY DELICIOUS (with the absence of intolerable spiciness) – No, I’m not going to say them – haha – I’m just.. um… being biassedly patronizing?

See? This is just as nice as Phuket.

Ok, never mind.

Anyway, our group -FINALLY- without my presence, made up its mind. When I was told that we’re going Phuket, Thailand, I was initially o.k. with it. But as soon as I heard of the estimated budget, my eyes exponentially enlarged, shivering, shocked. I enlarged my eyes some more in the hopes of getting a clearer picture of the current situation. I resigned to the proposal because I had no choice. After a discombobulating litany of probable destinations,

from Bali, Indonesia

to Miri, East Malaysia

to Bali again,

then to Sabah, East Malaysia

to Cambodia

to Vietnam

to Laos

to Sabah again

we finally fnally finally agreed on Phuket, Thailand.

Yes, we’re going to Phuket.

And the trip will be outrageously extravagant and expensive.

We have no choice. Time is running out.

I just really hope it’s worth the money.

I so badly wanted to go to Laos though.

The plane ride was smoooooooooth sailing.

nothing special.

I’m just back in Singapore. (:

School shooter? I’m too fucking busy to be a school shooter!

Ok I’m not vulgar by nature. I promise. Hahaha. The title is actually Quote #515 from this website!

Gaaaahhh. IB is eating my year 2008 really really fast. IB’s like this discombobulating Pac-Man dude in this time labyrinth of mine, voraciously eating up all the seconds, minutes, days, weeks and months. And I’m really getting nervous. My heart palpitates everytime I remember my unfinished English essay which has been collecting dust under my study table. My brain freezes everytime I see a French word in the internet. There have been occasions where I suddenly hear a stream of undecipherable French words inside my head, as if someone is talking to me in French. Creepy. And I haven’t revised my French yet. It seems that I have forgotten almost all the French stuff I’ve learnt for the past five months. And I can’t decide on what proposal to submit to Monsieur Heusdens in order to improve our French lessons every Mondays and Tuesdays. Maybe he has realised that the lessons have stagnated and have become quite boring at times. I even caught myself on the verge of drooling over my foolscap paper at one time. Yuck!! Good thing Amanda is such a busybody.

And the title of this blog entry does not really fit into my current life; I have been incessantly stoning inside the house; in fact, I have been sleeping 12-13 hours a day. You can actually imagine that if I counted the number of days that I have been here in the Philippines, I have spent half of that duration sleeping, let alone those moments when the sun is up and shining brightly, and there I am sitting by the window daydreaming about weird stuff. Talk about being a lazy bum in the house.

Not like the other schoolmates of mine who have been lavishly spending their holidays in faraway places around the world, like the USA, Japan, Spain, Iceland, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Malaysia (well HK and M’sia are not really considered far away). Argh, I really wish I could have a holiday getaway to some ulu place!! Me and me alone.

I’ve been wanting – dying – to visit some places in the world, places that people usually hardly know or, in case they know a lot, hardly give a shit about it. There’s one place which calls itself Ushuaia. Sounds pretty gay, actually, *Ushuaia* but I actually discovered this name when I was watching Discovery Channel a few years back. It was a given title of a show, if I’m not mistaken, and I never knew that it’s also a name of a town smacked right the tip of South America, until I have learnt how to search stuff in the Internet in Primary six.

Ushuaia is actually the sothernmost town in the world, the capital of Tierra del Fuego Province in Argentina. If you ask me, I think it would really be interesting to find out how it feels to live in the “southernmost town”. Singapore actually brags one of its microscopic Sentosa islands as the southernmost point in continental Asia, when in fact, it’s merely connected to mainland Sentosa by a little bridge; Sentosa to mainland Singapore by that Sentosa bridge (you can count the cable car and the monorail as well); mainland Singapore to mainland Asia by the Causeway. Hmph. So if I connect a bridge from that little island in Sentosa to Batam, then Batam would be the southernmost point in continental Asia. -.-

You must be kidding me.

There’s another interesting place in the world which sometimes appears in my dreams. Mongolia.

I don’t know. After watching some documentaries about this country, I just felt that this should be worth visiting. With a landlocked area of about 1.6 million sq. km., there’s plenty of land to explore. With a population density of two people per sq. km, there’s a lot of room for yourself to do some tomfoolery around. Imagine, if the Mongolian population would actually be evenly distributed, a family of six would occupy three square kilometers of Mongolia and they can have it all to themselves. Cool. And I want to experience how it feels to be a nomad in the rural areas of Mongolia. I think it’s a wonderful diversion from the stagnant and busy urban life in the Philippines and in Singapore.

Of course, if you ask the nationalistic fragment of my existence, I would want to go in an all-out expedition in Palawan, Philippines.

Regraded by renowned underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau as the most beautiful place he had ever explored. Oooh.. It think it’s actually true! Although I haven’t been there yet. It is home to one of the world’s most diverse flora and fauna, breathtaking mountains and rain forests, the world’s longest subterranean river, and some of the best beaches in the world, scattered in this vast expanse of 1768 islands that comprise the entire province.

Okay, this would be the last one, since I believe this entry’s going really boring.

I want to go to Spain.

I want to see how much this country has progressed after it has left this impoverished country of mine with a SPAIN without the S.

Hahaha this entry seemed like a travel blog.

Work, work, work.

I realized that I have a lot of things so worry about.

Firstly, it was so stupid of me to forget to collect from Mrs. Hammond the three English texts that we have to do for our coursework next term. I was so ecstatic to go home last last Thursday that I totally forgot to meet her at the end of school day to get the textbooks from her. The big problem is that when I go back to Singapore, I have to read all of those three texts FAST. Really fast. And I don’t think I would be able to efficiently do that, knowing that there are loads of work awaiting for me, especially that stupid challenge week thing and TOK presentation that I have to do.

Secondly, I have to finish up my English presentation by the end of this holiday. I can’t seem to find that motivation to start mulling over it, considering that I have to re-read “This Earth of Mankind” over and over again to jump start my presentation work. I also have my Economics commentary collecting dust with the other homeworks I brought back home.

Thirdly, my French. I have told myself that I am going to do intensive studying for French, but it seems that my mind, body, and soul are in full holiday mode, I can’t even afford listening to French news or music over the radio for a few minutes. Monsieur Heusdens was even asking me to e-mail him about my future plans in his French classes, because he thinks I am ‘good enough’ and should be doing more work during his classes. Well I honestly think I still suck at French.

Fourthly, Mr. Rainone. I have a strange feeling that he has a very very very bad impression of me now. I don’t know why, but I really don’t think he likes me because number one, I failed his Maths test so miserably, and number two, I failed to submit that Probability and Statistics homework which I was supposed to submit through Quang. I totally forgot to give it to Quang before I left Singapore. Now the question paper is a three-hour flight away from me, and I don’t know what to do about.

Fifthly, the Challenge Week. I am pretty scared about the way things are going about for my group’s Challenge Week. There has been ZERO progress so far, and I am scared that my group might actually run out of plane seats to Miri for September, or might fail to book hotel reservations, or fail to find any suitable and available charitable society that we can visit and provide assistance when we get there. At the first place, we haven’t even planned anything at all, aside from that dummy proposal I made overnight which we needed to show Mr. Wong the next day to, at least, show him that we aare doing ’something’ for the Chellenge Week plan.

Sixthly, my first Economics portfolio is due on August. On the same month will I be having my first TOK presentation. And all of them are assessed for the final IB grade.

The amount of workload has been increasing exponentially. This is insane.

I’m a workaholic. But as they say, anything in excess is never good.

********

Anyway, if you are familiar with The Temptations, here’s one of their famous songs.