Wednesday, August 30, 2006
the land of moo moos
nice!
shopping is FUN!
Saturday, July 29, 2006
trust me!
for the past week or so, the four of us had been going on a shopping spree, getting stuff ranging from laptop accessories like laptop sleeves and ethernet cables to miscellaneous things like torch lights. lol i have burnt a big hole in my pocket already:( and i have yet to finish buying everything that i need.
and guess what. if you inspect the things that we have bought so far, you will find at least a 50% similarity. what we call - shopping 'communist' style
i want a hedgehog
Thursday, July 13, 2006
thanks to huiling, who has successfully converted me into a hedgehog lover...
Now, what exactly is a hedgehog? To put it simply, and to quote my dad, a hedgehog is just a small little animal that lives in a hedge.
And as huiling has explained, a hedgehog does not equal to a porcupine!
Hedgehogs have modified hairs on their neck and back called quills. These quills are not barbed like a porcupine, as many people assume. Hedgehogs cannot "throw" their quills, either. Their quills feel somewhat like a rough scrub brush.
A baby hedgehog = hoglet
And remember i used to have a virtual pet, pokey? Yes! pokey!
I want a domesticated african hedgehog, which has a nice white belly:)
african hedgehog
And guess what? Hedgehogs help to control insect and vermin populations. They show a high tolerance to toxins, both natural and human-made. They have been known to consume many animals whose toxins could be fatal to humans including certain beetles, wasps, bees, and venomous snakes.
wow! they actually eat venomous snakes? Cool! i going to bring it along for trekking and camping!
sentosa!
Sunday, July 02, 2006
wow! haven't been to sentosa for a long time, probably for around 3 years to date, and when i went there with hui jun on 30 June, I was in for a nice surprise:)
it's really nice now:) clean beaches and waters, modern facilities which gave the place a 'sleek' look, and loads of things to try out.
Most thrilling of course would be the luge ride! It is part go-cart, part-toboggan, basically a fun-filled gravity ride that cleverly exploits physics.
lol. I couldn't help but think about the formula for centripetal acceleration as i approached bends. When I was too fast, and the luge 'skidded', i knew why. And the course was banked! cool. lol... imagine if i hadn't taken physics, i wouldn't even have noticed that it was banked!
[digress: during my driving lesson, the instructor pointed out to me that the bends on the roads were mostly banked. I did not notice this, probably because of the scale. Then he went on to explain, and trust me, this is a good explanation. He said the banking, or slope as he called it, was to allow the rainwater to run quickly into the drainage system. It sounds logical, and I am sure that it is one of the spin-off benefits of having a banked road, but i had a hard time trying to control my laughter]
picture of a luge
yup, and the beach was really nice:)
nice sand
muah haha!! look at how we ruin the sand!
The sunset was really beautiful! And Hui Jun managed to capture very nice pictures:)
pre-departure
Saturday, July 01, 2006
haha:D right after obs was a week's worth of pre-departure programme. And it was fun:)
The highlight was of course cooking lessons at Shatec. It was a really nicce session - at least it helped assure me that cooking is not such a daunting task afterall. However, the hands-on session proved that, perhaps, I am not meant to step into the kitchen.
First mistake: I boiled the spaghetti, but i forgot to add oil to the water... so when we drained the water, the spaghetti clumped together:( Luckily Yunqin knew how to salvage the situation - she placed the spaghtti back into water. Smart girl:)
I had to fry rice to... At first, I put just enough oil to line the pan, and I thought it was a lot. But an assistant came around, shook her head, and asked me to add a lot more oil. Wow! (they say its ard 11 tablespoons of oil)
Moral of the story: Fried rice is really oily - you put a lot of oil, and the rice still comes out looking dry:(
Anyway, I started out well enough, until I had to fry the egg. Guess what? Here comes mistake 2: I did not know we had to control the fire as we fry the egg... so the egg was stuck to the pan:( and it became cao4 ta1.
But i told myself nevermind, and continued to fry the rice. I happily stirred fry the rice, and third mistake: I forgot all about adding soy sauce! oh man! by the time i realise it, it was too late. The rice was too dry to add anything. Sigh. Had to salvage it by adding pepper instead. So the rice turned out bland.
The stewed chicken turned out good! because Yunqin was in charge of it. Hee.
But i guess i'll not cook when I'm in US, unless
1. it's a group thing, and i'll offer to prepare the ingredients. They can handle anything to do with the stove.
2. it is deep in winter, and going out for food is not an option, and I have no rations.
3. it's baking:)
yup! after that, our watch decided to have a Raja KTV outing. We made our way to Youth Park, sat down and started eating the food we ate. Then its off to orchard party world. I must say we have really good singers amongst us!
@ youth park!
On friday, we also had a sharing session with our seniors, and it was really insightful! For example, I have decided to take my driving test in the US, although I'll still continue with lessons in Singapore. Firstly, it's the time factor. I'll not be able to get a test date before I leave for US. Secondly, and the more important reason, is that it is MUCH MUCH easier to pass in the US. The test is only 5 minutes! You just drive around a block, and wah la! You get your license. 
group photo of us (departing batch) n seniors from wisconsin-madison
pictures courtesy of kangyi and khian hong
OBS
was a wonderful experience!
Kayaking was fun! besides the fact the wAter off pulau ubin leaves much to be desired (lol:o i had nowhere to look but at the sea. I shall describe it briefly - you can see brown foam - most probably diesel from motorboats that ply the channel. You can also spot bits of styrofoam with algae growing on it, food wrappers etc. If you're lucky, you'll catch the remnants of a dead fish). i'm so glad we kayaked cross island (not to Sembawang sea sports centre), partly because of the distance, and the other part because we got to kayak though the river and mangrove systems of pulau ubin - which was really beautiful. lol. it was easy to get caught in the branches of some of the mangrove plants though. and to add to the experience, we had to navigate ourselves! cool! my partner was the navigator, and i must say it wasn't an easy job at all. The map that they gave us was completely outdated (various elements had caused new features to be formed, previous ones to be eroded). We had a hard time deciding which inlet to enter, which turn to make etc. A few times, we had to rackie (is this how you spell the word?) to confirm a route. One thing about this route is that we had to beach-up and carry our kayaks over land 2 times before we finally reached camp. It was completely exhausting, and the kayaks were heavy... (ok. i'm useless) We kayaked for around 6 hours before we finally reached an ulu camp site on the north of pulau ubin.
We had to construct a raft there - given 4 empty barrels and 8 pipes. Seemed easy enough. We constructed the 'tried and tested' model of a raft that had the 4 barrels as the base, overlaying the pipes on top to form a square base. We proudly named our raft the fantastic float - and boy, it was 'fantastic'!
the fantastic float!
the ulu camp was nature. nothing more. nothing less. we had toilets with a sea view. we rinsed ourselves, complete with our life jackets, in the quarry. supposed to be clean because it is rainwater. But i guess with batches of OBS participants using it, the water wasn't going to be as clean. lol. i developed rashes after the quarry dip... And how do we get into the quarry? Correct! we plunge in. It was quite traumatising, considering that I had slight hydrophobia, and I did not know how to swim. During the interval between jumping in and finally emerging from the depths of the water (thanks to the life jacket), I panicked slightly, and hyper-ventilated. But this time, it wasn't as bad as when we did the capsize drill for the kayak.
During the 2 nights we camped out, we had to cook ourselves. The first night, we decided that we had more time, so we decided to cook rice. And we learnt a valuable lesson - never attempt to cook rice without a rice cooker, or a proper stove at least where you can control the fire. Haha:D It was one of a kind, and the taste is something that you'll never forget. Soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside. With this distinct, slightly charred flavor to it.
cooking lessons
cooking rice! hee
We had instant noodles for the second night, and it was good! complete with chicken curry:) yummy.
Oh yes! sentry duty was nice! pity it was short... i got up at ard 2.20am to do a 20 min shift together with Melissa. and besides looking out for strangers, we had to look out for hogs. They will ruffle through our bags to find food. Smart aren't they? Throughout the night, we had life entertainment from the fishing villages out at sea. There was music blasting, and we tried to provide explanations for this - Mambo night? Or probably to keep the morale of the fishermen out of sea high. lol
The sea expedition was good. But we had to endure land ex too.. complete with our barang barang which weighed around 8 - 10kg. We trekked to the highest peak on pulau ubin - puaka hill (75m high). It was a 4km trek, and we drank loads of water to lighten our load. And it was worth it! The view of the largest quarry on ubin was superb.
view from puaka hill
raja @ the summit:)
A lot of other things - like scaling the inverse tower, trust fall, going through a tunnel alone in complete darkness in the middle of the night - made this OBS really memorable as i faced some of my deepest fears, and pushed myself to the limit. And most importantly, the friendships forged:)
Raja rocks!:)
A memory is what is left when something happens and doesn't completely unhappen. And I'm glad that OBS did not unhappen.
pictures courtesy of kangyi
we won!!
Saturday, July 30, 2005
it was an eventful day of ups and downs.
But the first team guys still trashed hwa chong in the end!!
by a score of 172 to 105. A remarkable feat, i must say:) All their efforts paid off! and rj brought back the challenge trophy.
Yes!! sweet victory:)
life..
Friday, July 29, 2005
i have been complaining a lot about my life and the things around me recently.
Every little thing seems to irritate me.
Like how irregular buses come -- have you ever noticed that you can wait a whole 20 minutes, and the bus just doesn't come. When it finally comes, you see 2 buses.
And how some people just like blasting the music from their walkmans or mp3 players. I pity their ear drums.
and my mom is sick and tired of me ranting and raving
最初的梦想
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Fan Wei Qi
如果骄傲没被现实大海冷冷拍下
又怎会懂得要多努力才走得到远方
如果梦想不曾坠落悬崖千钧一发
又怎会晓得执着的人拥有隐形翅牓
把眼泪装在心上,会开出勇敢的花
可以在疲惫的时光闭上眼睛闻到一种芬芳
就像好好睡了一夜直到天亮
又能边走着边哼着歌用轻快的步伐
沮丧时总会明显感到孤独的重量
多渴望懂得的人给些温暖借个肩膀
很高兴一路上我们的默契那么长
穿过风又绕个弯心还连着像往常一样
最初的梦想紧握在手上
最想要去的地方
怎么能在半路就返航
最初的梦想绝对会到达
实现了真的渴望
才能够算到过了天堂
Friday, July 01, 2005
I was just looking at the subjects that I am currently taking, and I realised how science has now become such a major part of my life. How could this be possible, considering the fact that when I was in primary school, my science was really lousy, always bordering 70-80. And science then was supposed to be considered easy. Sigh. I guess my mind was not very coherent then.
Well anyway, I particularly remembered one question from one of the continual assessments. It goes something like this: Mrs. Lim went to buy fishballs. The fishball seller told her that the fishballs were made purely from fish meat, and no flour was added. How does Mrs. Lim test if what he was saying is true?
Haha, it seems like an easy question right? But at that point in time, I was really stumped. I was thinking along the line of tasting the fishball. But unless she is a real connoisseur, how would she be able to taste that 0.1% of flour added? Haha.. The solution is to add iodine.
Sigh... But I guess somehow, somewhere, I got better:) which was a good thing:) I cannot imagine myself mugging some humanities subject for A levels, because I just don't have the flair for it.
my june holidays and what is left of it...
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Common tests are really drawing near now, and I am starting to hyperventilate. looking back at my june holidays, I realise that I have been slacking through it, indulging in television, and doing anything but studying for cts ( e.g cross stitch) which was a waste of time. But surprisingly I haven't been surfing the net for a while, thanks to my internet connection, which screwed up of all times...
Went to Kbox on Tuesday with Jiaqi, Vic, Peifen and Bernice. Had a good time singing our hearts out for some 4 hours. And thanks to you guys for putting up with my substandard singing -_- heh. But Jiaqi was really impressive, singing music of the night and phantom of the opera. Haha… Probably brought back some fond memories for her:D
Had mediquiz training today. No prizes for guessing how many people turned up for training today. Haha. 2 – me and chin wern. A new record. Everyone mugging for cts... And to make things worse, the room was locked when we got there. Sigh. I really cannot stand it already. I made the booking through the general office, and they don't open the room for us. Then why have the stupid student's booking system in place? We should just go through teachers…
Enough of complaining for now. I guess its time to start mugging. Real hard.
Sunny Side Up!
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Sunny side up! Was a wonderful experience. But I was really exhausted by the end of the day. Mentally exhausted, I guess.
The kids were really hyper. It was difficult to keep up with them. But they were really fun and adorable:) wanted to pinch their cheeks and ruffle their hair. Haha. Jiaqi called me a pedophile because I kept commenting about how cute the kids were. Nevermind. Lol.
Hmm… the most memorable was the charades. The kids were really "shen" at it. They guessed every single word that the facilitators had. We had to rack our brains to come up with more words, like "Casper". That was really funny. Lol. The facilitator acted like a ghost. Then he gave a silly smile. And the amazing thing was that the kids actually guessed it correctly. Then we decided to give them killer questions like "Draco Malfoy". Haha. They took a while before getting it. But they are good! Credit must also be given to Brian, who gamely agreed to act out the terms like powerpuff girls. He was good at it, and I guess he really had that connection with the kids.
During our lunch break, Jun Xu gave an animated description about the illustrations in his storybook. He was so cute. He was enthusiastically describing the pictures in the book, which were really illustrated to the most intricate detail. He even topped it up with sound effects like "whoosh", "bang", "bong", plus his star laughter:D It was so entertaining to listen as the whole scene was vivdly painted out in front of us. Cool.
It was heartening to see most of the kids open up over the course of the day. And I guess all of them, even the few who were quite unenthusiastic about the whole thing at first, were happy at the end of the day. Yeah! :D
idiosyncrasy
Thursday, May 12, 2005
hmm... i tend to 'join' 2 words together if the last and first letters of the 2 consecutive words are the same e.g "so odd" becomes "so dd" haha:D u get the idea.
this is bad. Must be the effects of Newater.
dialect names...
Thursday, April 28, 2005
today was unexpectedly a nice day (despite it being a long one)
I had a good laugh listening to how Jiaxin was trying to translate jiaqi's and her own name into hokkien. she would be "chua kah sin" and jiaqi would be "kok kah kee". lol
It just sounds very funny, especially for a girl's name... Haha.. maybe it is just me.
We started to trying to translate other names and had a certain sense of achievement and a real good laugh when we managed to stumble upon a suitable hokkien name for a certain someone, making jiaqi go red in the face...
lost
Friday, April 22, 2005
first of all, if you haven't already realised, the tagboard is down. And I cannot be bothered to download another one for now. bear with it for now:)
hmm. I don't understand anything that is going on during physics s lectures.
Somehow, I feel i should not be there at all.
Sigh.
I don't think my physics is half as good as most of the people there.
And I am not putting in the effort to do the tutorials properly, getting even the most basic of concepts wrong.
Sometimes, I really wonder if I should continue with Mediquiz.
Why I am still investing so much time and effort in it?
And sacrificing a whole lot of other things.
I think I am stupid.
It was a mistake right from the very start to join Medquiz.
Seriously.
I was indecisive as to whether I should drop it or not.
Then came a whole turn of events.
That seemed to seal my fate.
Or did it?
I guess I could have still dropped out.
But I chose not to.
Nonetheless, I am very tempted to do so.
I am torn apart within.
And why must there be unofficial and official match support events?!
And to think that we weren't even informed of such a policy.
Aren't they ALL match support?
Supporting your fellow peers?
me vic peifen and cheryl went down for rugby match support at RI.
And we stayed there long enough to realise that there were no councilor's ard.
we went to ask ard, and it was only then we found out that no match support points will be given for this match.
whatever man
term 1...
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
one term has passed.
already.
i don't really know what i have been doing.
Just being pushed with the tide of time.
Mediquiz trainings have started to intensify.
i am lost in lectures, and falling behind my tutorials.
I guess this is because I don't prioritise and plan my time properly - like updating this blog when i haven't started studying for common tests...
SSEF is finally over.
and the results were quite predictable actually...
Went home empty-handed.
Wasn't expecting to win anything in the first place
Since my results were not conclusive.
And there were flaws in the procedure, which I realised only 1 day before the judging.
But it was quite sad that people like Joshua, who came up with the project all by himself did not win anything.
Nonetheless, I guess the experience was a good one.
At least now I know how 'pro' other projects are.
And I met up with classmates from 6H'99 NHPS.
And I got to know people better and made new friends:)
choices
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Too many things are just happening.
Simultaneously.
There are so many alternatives.
I have to make choices.
But I don't know how.
Think win-win is what we learn.
But I don't see how.
I hate decision making.
But the first step in living life to the fullest is knowing and deciding what you want.
Do I know what I want?
Will decision making be so tough then?
There are so many things to do.
But there is so little time
Should I give up some of my commitments?
Victoria and jiaqi gave me some invaluable advice. [Thanks:)]
And I think I know the direction I should be headed to now.
cny celebrations..
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
was quite nice... except towards the end when we all became quite stoned.
It started off with Lion dance.. which started off well enough. As we were all sitting in front (in anticipation of Jiaqi's performance), we had a very nice view of the lion dance performance. the movements of the lion were very cute... with the shaking of the tail etc. then the performers wanted to jump onto 2 benches... but they missed and... ouch... it must have been painful, especially for the guy in front. But they got onto their feet again, and tried the stunt again.. and succeeded eventually:) Nice!
Sad to say.. because of the 4 permanent bands at the parade square, there wasn't enough time for Jiaqi's performance:( sigh... we all wanted to see her perform... i think the organising committee should have screened out some performances that CMI, instead of accepting everything... it was torture...
anyway.. things ended well enough.
