most ppl were in school today, oddly enough, considering it was a thursday. 

that meant that the >2hour break after SL3 was pretty lively, as was the second break before PC. 

PC, too, was different since there was no talk to attend or anything, so we were all in class, where we apparently cajoled our CT into joining the staff race at tomorrow's cross country. 

english prior to PC was spent crafting and writing a Paper 2 essay, and i tried to be versatile with my choice of texts, and my fingers are now tightly crossed. 

post-PC, daryl and i stayed in class to help mel to manually count each and every word in her EE at the request of her mentor, adding up to 3969. 

we then met gerald in b3-02 where we discussed King Lear extract 1, and though we only did 1 passage instead of 2 like yesterday, we did decide that we'd be meeting tomorrow to go through more stuff, time and place subject to mel and my decision regarding our attendance at the cross country run. 

and that leads me on to the final point of today's post - having to decide whether i should just skip it completely, since it is my last year in school and i made the dreadful decision of going last year and not running and just whiling my time away in the Emcee's tent half-commandeering the iPod which was playing the music for the event, and subsequently celebrating paul's birthday and going out with deon/sean to estivo for some gelato and a browse of the gossip rags. 

come to think of it, i've actually attended all the cross country events during my years in AC, running with ron/mervyn in 2006, controlling the who-wins-who-loses list on the laptop at the officials' tent in 2004 (i had quite a good understanding with my PE teacher that year, it made for a relatively easy breeze through the entire year of PE), and actually running competitively for my house in 2003. 

none of those possibilities appear to be on the agenda tomorrow, which means there is quite literally no reason for me to drag myself down to West Coast Part at an unearthly hour and trudge through 3.2km. 

the one and only motivation that might get me to go is if i find enough ppl in class who will be going, and if we go and actually run and try to get accustomed to it for the purposes of the 

Nike+10 Human Race.

PS. FOP begins tomorrow evening, and i'm more disinclined to attend this year mainly 'cos i'm not entirely familiar with either Reuben Morgan and the newly formed Parachute Band (i did review their earlier album for Amplified!'s last issue when they were still made up of the old line-up). gerald's going tomorrow after we meet for IOC, and i was reminded of the second night of last year's event when i went with sher/rachh/guonian, and i bumped into gerald in the queue and totally made the mistake of not asking if he was there with anyone and he wasn't and i didn't ask him if he wanted to join me/us, which i still feel marginally bad for a year later. 

random note for the day: 

Question 5(a) of the May 2008 English A1 HL Paper 2 was based on this quote: 

"Art is a lie that shows us the truth"

pretty difficult, though it screams Huck Finn like no other question i've seen. 

i attended the second half of school today, primarily because i had thought that the first half would not have any lessons in it, and i was mostly right, though i could not have foreseen that mr.quek would have decided to come in during the strand 1 lesson in the morning since he didn't yesterday. 

oddly enough, the 3 lessons i had hoped to attend turned out to be of little use. 

first, i had finished all the math worksheets so far save for one vector question, and i cleared up my doubt in the first 10 minutes. 

second, econs was merely 40minutes long, and apart from being called upon, quite uncharacteristically by my tutor, to contribute an answer and repeating it for the benefit of justin who asked and being asked to turn around since i was sitting in front and speak the second time round (ignore this sentence if it makes no sense, it really is just my stream of consciousness), i headed for history. 

there, the lesson was abruptly halted about 10 minutes in because of an announcement to head to the auditorium prematurely for the emergency exercise debrief, though i did finish typing the last part of my answer to the activity we had begun in the lab yesterday. 

said debrief (for an emergency exercise i had missed since i wasn't around earlier in the day) was more sleep-inducing that an off-point chapel service, if that's even possible. 

studying for IOC in B3-07 with Mel and Gerald was extremely engaging, and these sessions remind me why it is i like staying back to study rather than doing it alone at home - company and variety are the bright sparks in what is otherwise a monotonous mugging maelstrom. 

gradually working my way up to Noon on Friday, August the 15th.

today was the longest day i've had in school in a very long while. 

not only did i have a full day of lessons without anything extra from an 80minute break two-thirds of the way through the day, but every teacher was around to teach save for the strand 1 of english, but even then i was discussing the all-important IOC stuff with my english classmates. 

after math ended at 440, i stayed around to study with Mel/Gerald/Patrick/ChunWui/Elliot. 

i left at around 7 feeling not entirely satisfied primarily because i had been unable to do any substantial IOC preparations because in the end no one was doing IOC stuff but other work, apart from Chun Wui and i who were reading the Angelou HL text. instead i managed to finish my math worksheets up to whatever he's given us, slaving away at one horrible vectors question and still not getting the right answer (i think). 

i left soon after we had discussed the themes of The Color Purple a little, though i realized how little i knew because whatever i (attempted to) contribute(d) to the conversation seemed somehow detached, and even as i was saying those things i felt myself castigating my lack of depth. perhaps partially due to my brain shutting down after more than 10 hours in school, i took my positively unsophisticated literary speak as a sign that my capacity for work for the day had been exhausted, and humbly made my exit. 

i hope tomorrow's studying after school picks my spirits up, 'cos heaven knows i need an academic burst to get through my IOC preparations and plan my Paper 2 essay which i'll be writing on Thursday in class.

speaking of that, it is also my chance to redeem my pathetic mark from the common test. 

having had time to think it through, that mark is with little doubt the biggest disappointment of the entire block of tests, and i've got to get the confidence which i had before the test after i had a good run of 4 good-grade essays back. 

English A1 HL, my most loved yet most loathed part of my IB course. 

PS. history was spent in the comp lab, which explains Mel's post on my Facebook wall, which also reminds me of my need to brush up my arguments on the Korean War since i didn't absorb much during lesson time (maybe get the notes Daryl duplicated today?)

PPS. 5 of my seniors from ACS(I)'s first IB batch have been awarded PSC scholarships, 2 of whom have perfect scores. i wonder if any of them (all guys) will be awarded the President's Scholarship. i'm interested only because it's the first time ACIB will have such statistics. 

i've successfully survived today despite the feelings of dread i had harboured last night while whiling my time away online talking to the ppl who were due to hand in their world lit stuff to mr. paul tan today. 

PE was spent in the LT (we changed out for nothing) being briefed about friday's xcountry. 

the second history period was an absolute waste of time, and i was in no mood to listen much and was instead reading Lear. 

i do, however, have a test on the Korean War tomorrow. 

for some strange reason a feeling of dread as descended upon me at the prospect of going to school this week. 

i'd really like to just take time off and revise for my IOC, but even i know i can't take an entire week off, or too many days before the exam for that matter. 

i've got to be judicious. 

since not many of my classmates were coming for Drama Night, and of those who were going, most had plans prior, Mel and i met for dinner at Olio Dome, Holland Village, before heading to school for the plays. 

there, we met Joash, Jim, Cheryl, Song Yeong and and Patrick, and us 7 were the only people from our class who had come to watch those who were already part of the Drama, namely Chun Wui, Cielo, John.Chris, Mai, Mong (all cast) and Gerald (crew). 

although i had attended the SYF preview, it did not take away from the brilliance of Competition Piece, the last and best of the evening's play's. 

it certainly rescued a night in which the two earlier plays did not quite match up, in particular the second which left many of us equal parts confused and unsatisfied. 

that said, i don't think many of us had come for any other reason than to watch our year mates' final drama performance, and it deserved every bit of the rapturous reception. 

before leaving, i got to congratulate my classmates' and some others whom i knew in the cast, while also waiting with Mel while we were deciding whether or not to accept Sam's invitation to go out. 

in the end we did, joining Rekha, Pravween, Andrew, Deborah and Mel at NYDC, Holland Village. 

i do feel that it would have been more significant if more of our class had been there, especially since proportionately, we were most represented on stage by a mile. 

also, i feel kinda bad for not having brought anything (ie. flowers) for the cast members, 'cos for some reason it completely slipped my mind that that was the appropriate thing to do, especially on closing night. 

nevertheless, i extend my heartiest congratulations to my 5 classmates for a brilliant performance that is truly worthy of the Gold With Honours they've been awarded. =)

week 5 has ended, and we're halfway through the second last term of school.

i only had history and chemistry today, owing to a free period and a survey we had to take. 

spent the middle portion of the day playing Munchkins in class.

chatted with elendrus and jillian (mostly about et's world lit essay) while they were waiting to go for the Warwick talk before heading back. 

drama tomorrow, and if the preview i went for earlier this year is any indication, it should be a hilarious evening. 

stuff to do from now till my IOC at noon on 15th August:

1) IOC prep. 

2) Testimonial stuff screw that, it's IOC dammit. 

having the Charity Cafe on today meant that my whole level was downstairs for most of the day, selling anything from the most delicious apple crumble to Xbox/Wii time.

i attended econs (not particularly useful) and english (the final strand 1 lesson of the year), but most of the time was spent at our little corner of the SAC, punctuated by a visit to the com labs for a national education survey (initially administered by a lady who looked like she had put on her makeup in the midst of a typhoon)

i ended up in class after the day ended playing more Rayman's Raving Rabbits on Elliot's Wii, which was a fun way to finish a rather tiring day. 

TGIF tomorrow, with a few lessons and another survey to take.

i forgot to mention that another motivation for going for the Nike Human Race is watching Boys Like Girls!

wednesday was short, and i feel especially free-spirited because i handed in my EE, World Lit 2 and CAS portfolio today, ending my long quest to free myself of these burdens so i can study uninhibited.

sadly, after searching for my tutor for the whole day, i only mentioned to get him at the PTM after adjudicating interclass debates, and i was told i need to go sign some form tomorrow, so shucks.

before that, i was in class talking to gen/mel/gerald/nic about future uni possibilities and stuff, after which i gave the UCAS talk a miss since i've heard it twice this year alone.

met mel (and steph) after to discuss her World Lit 1 -- hope it was helpful! :) -- and had some food before heading back.
during the mid-day break, i happened to bump into ronald and elendrus, and we started talking about going back to Bintan with the four.eleven ppl, for old times' sake.
they wanted to do it right after the Prelim exams, and it got me thinking about what exactly my plan for the next few months are.
i had always envisioned keeping up a steady pace of content, but i wonder if i would be able to be completely ready for the IB papers by the time the prelims come.
that would be ideal, but i think i will fall victim to the joys of question spotting once more.

i should be starting on the two DRQ questions we were assigned during econs, but i'm kinda putting that off.

Charity Cafe tomorrow, and i think i should try to bring something just so i contribute.

i sometimes miss out stuff i wanna muse about when blogging, so here's to make up for that. 

yesterday during the racial harmony day thingum we had after chapel, there was this item involving a commemorative jingle in which the chorus was simply a recitation of the ASEAN member countries, preceded by alliterative adjectives. 

what made it really funny was how the row i was sitting in had cielo/lex, our resident filipino scholars, and so it was little surprise that we loudly joined in during the final repetition of the appropriate line, "Fun Philippines", drawing curious stares from the rest of the level. 

and on sunday, someone mentioned that the week had been particularly strenuous because sleep wasn't as abundant as usual, and that late nights had been draining.

i can't quite remember who said it or the details, but all i know is that i had thought to myself - that's an unusual week? 

if you're in IB, that's like any other day. getting 5 hours of sleep is the exception, more than it is the rule, and anything above that is a luxury reserved for those post-assignment deliriums. 

that's perhaps part of what makes it a far more challenging course than anything offered to pre-university students here, something the news article about RJ planning to offer the IB in yesterday's papers pointed out. 

today passed pretty quickly, and i left school at the gloriously early hour of 2, basking in my lack of lessons a little too outwardly that my math tutor noticed while i was about to leave school (i would have been staying back for his lesson on normal circumstances)

those 3 extra un-schooling hours simply meant i could proceed with my task of EE/World Lit 2 printing at a less rushed pace. 

with these two assignments (a total of more than 80 pages in an afternoon) printed, i have officially arrived at the end of my non-year-end-paper assessments, IOC notwithstanding. 

for that, i've been dutifully toting my copy of King Lear around the entire day, getting the chronology and important scenes memorized so i can start on the arduous process of script-writing (hopefully) before the 15th of August. 

and on a kindaof happy note, i end at 2 tomorrow as well.  

i ended the day at the oxford talk with gen/mel, each of us keen on 3 different but competitively popular courses (law, history politics, ppe)

it concluded a day in which the usual drone of school life was in full swing, though having PE and math were welcome changes, the latter allowing me to shorten my day tomorrow.

there was a little mix up with the class photos which i will have to get rectified tomorrow, along with handing in my CAS file which i bound today.

finally, i was equal parts prodded (literally by jim during pe) and persuaded to sign up for the Nike run in support of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, UN Refugee Agency and World Wildlife Fund, something which is turning out to be a bit of a class thing since more than 10 of us have signed up so far. 

after service, i headed over to Suntec City for the US University Fair, bumping into Deon while i was on the way to lunch.

At the fair itself, i met Gerald, Justin, Andre Kuah, Alessa, Rachel Auyong and John Cheo, and these were the ones i took some time to chat to, though there were many more whom i know to some degree who were browsing the booths. 

most of the good university's (ie. Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkley, Brown, aka the Ivy Leagues that were exhibiting) had already run out of prospectuses, as had many of the other well known colleges like UPenn, UCLA, Boston and NWU (which reminded me of Josh).

the British colleges were kind of relegated to a far corner of the concourse, though understandably so since none of the big names were exhibiting, though i've probably heard representatives from those colleges speak far too many times already. 

i've got to check on the rest of the available uni talks which are being held in school since i only signed up for Harvard, although apparently there's an Oxford one which i wasn't aware of. 

there's a showcase English lesson tomorrow morning, followed by the first PE period in 3 months, and i'll be attending SL3 math tomorrow in place of Tuesday's class. 

interesting revelation - there are many more ppl than i realize who have double blogs. 

it's kinda cool, knowing i'm not the only one, or even one in a few. 

lunch at Sun With Moon, Wheelock Place was delicious, and we ended with coffee, tea, cake and photos.

i had to leave prematurely because of the EDB seminar at the Swissotel Merchant Court Hotel, where i spent a large part of the time making snide remarks with Gen/IanLim about a particular character at our table. 

the EDB Host for our table, Alex Teo, looked very familiar, and i think he was a debater who adjudicated one of my debates before, though i didn't ask him. 

i met up with YewJin/Deon/Javier at Starbucks, Centrepoint, where we laughed and chatted like only we know how. 

Javier and i were reminded of our earlier years when we would shop there every year, buying things we would never use. 

today's seminar got me thinking more about scholarship prospects, especially after i've finished my last assessment before the real papers (other than IOC, which might as well be a paper all to itself), and there's a US university fair at Suntec tomorrow which i might visit. 

The Dark Knight is without a doubt the best movie of 2008.

all at once thrilling, controlled and purposeful, it leaves the audience with a sense of exhilaration, satisfaction and resolution.

stayed in to finish my world lit assignment 2.

now that that's done, it's IOC all the way.

so i did make it to school today, and i did hand in my World Lit 1 essay for the final time.

that was after a scare in the morning when an error i thought i had banished earlier in my draft stages decided to return to haunt me, but after some meticulous effacement with Blanco during the free SL3 period, i managed to appease my most OCD self and submit it. 

with that out of my hair, i can breathe an easy sigh and not go to school tomorrow and get the second essay done. 

today's usefulness was struck down a notch by 2 things:

that we had no Math because out tutor decided to use the time to arrange remedial schedules instead, so i've not been able to go through the test paper.

and that our history class has been tasked with yet another activity of limited academic value, contrary to our feedback yesterday. 

today began with the usual "you're-so-screwed" session in the morning, and more so than before because there were literally lists of ppl who whose names were flashed for the world to gawk at and wonder what they were doing before the common tests. 

finished the last chem pract of my life, as well as the Cultural Revolution Movie, To Live, which was hedging on artsy glam, but not quite.

i've just printed out my World Lit Assignment 1 duplicates which i will submit for the last time tomorrow, so i can work on my Assignment 2. 

i think i'll go to school tomorrow and skip thursday instead, or at least the first half of the day before english, so i can finish that up instead of skipping tomorrow. 

results took up the larger part of my day, and i dropped 3 points from last year, languishing uneasily at 39.

i'm thankful for the mark though, especially after a number of teachers were out to scare me into believing i had descended faster that i could have blinked.

39/42 renews my supposed rivalry with justin, though we are not even close to some of the perfect scorers and others who got 40 and above in the level. 

the two lessons that followed the release of results were met with equal parts disdain and distraction, especially for me as i was trying to talk myself back into a suitable state of mind while looking through some of the most disastrous marks i've gotten in a while. 

for English Paper 2, i have a long journey ahead of me to regain the respect of my tutor who very bluntly told me that he was as stunned as i was to have seen my rather dismal mark. 

and as for econs, the new dogmatic style of this year's tutor doesn't quite seem to have done the wonders for my grades as the more flexible style of last year's tutor, and i might just revert back to that sort of studying to see if i can achieve the kind of scores i got last year. 

and finally, meeting my World Literature tutor after school kind of fired me up to redo a far better Assignment 2, boosted by the confidence of having completed a good Assignment 1. 

this, sadly, won't happen today as i have to prepare for a final Chemistry Planning Practical for tomorrow, involving Electroplating if i'm not mistaken. 

so ends round 1, time to gear up for the next two, along with IOC come August 11th. 

after chatting a little about school this afternoon and realizing how out of touch i am from the other 99% of JC students who are taking the A Levels (i had no idea there was a comprehension portion of the GP paper), allow me to muse a little about school and IB, the latter especially because the results are out tomorrow, and i may not be as forthcoming with my comments if i am in the throes of absolute depression. 

first, i've mentioned this to a number of people before, most recently to Mel/Jim after the lunch after the softball finals - there is no denying that being in a brand-name school, and having been all my life, the people i'm exposed to are, generally, very similar to me.

by similar i mean we have pretty lofty aspirations that we take for granted, we hang out at one in a number of regular places, and our view of the world is, in some sense, limited to this context that has been built around us since our childhood. 

this is particularly true for AC ppl, simply because there are AC primary schools (say, unlike Raffles, which gets its students from all over) and SC/MG primary schools as well, and so when the guys and gals come to ACIB, we have been in the same environment around the same sort of ppl for more than 10 years. 

for a long while, it never occurred to me that this 12-year schooling i receive is in fact not the most "regular", since only a very very small proportion of my cohort would ever have had this unique, insular experience. 

there are both benefits and drawbacks of this, but one thing that hit me about 2 years back is that i'm part of a very limited minority - there are so many secondary schools in singapore whose names i would never recognize. 

even having been out of the school for a year in NJ, while expanding the circle of ppl i knew wider than at any other point in my life, i was still kept in the same sphere and hung out at the same places (KAP/Holland/6th Ave)- there were probably only a handful of non-brand-name ppl in my IP level, but i did get to know lots of others in the mainstream JC side who came from everywhere.

now onto IB.

if being in AC was limiting, being in IB practically makes you one in 500 (i'm really pulling this figure from nowhere, on the assumption that there are about 25000 18-year-olds around). 

the closest ppl to us if academic gusto, sheer competitiveness and concentration of talent (this may sound exaggerated and prideful, and no offense to my many friends from any number of other JCs) are anything to go by, would be RJ. 

that being said, from my severely limited knowledge of what the A Levels are like, it is a course best suited to the Singaporean psyche - willed memory of insurmountable volumes of content within 22 months and a final exam that determines one's university future. 

that there is a final exam for IB kids is perhaps as far as the similarities end. 

the approach towards academia that i've adopted since entering IB is miles different from the above description - there is much more active, conscious thinking and awareness of the demands of me in each subject. 

our 6 subjects, while already separating us from A Level students, mean that being adept at interdisciplinarity isn't so much a choice as it is a requirement to do well.

of these, the English A1 course stands out as a hallmark of all that the IB stands for - original thought, depth of knowledge and a general frowning at unthinking memory work. 

its label is a misnomer - there is no literature course outside the good language faculties of the world''s universities that will prove more comprehensive. 

but this comprehensiveness only extends to those who take the course when it is raised to its highest potential - not just scrapping by with a 4 or 5, but ceaselessly attempting to break the 7 barrier (because 6 is possible without too much effort, but the leap to 7 requires innumerable amounts of time that may sometimes be proportionately gargantuan when compared to that extra 1% that lifts you fron 79 to the magical 80)

so ends my musings of the past 19 months of the IB course. 

i'm definitely glad i'm doing it, and trying to do it well, and that's a good thing as seeing there're another 4 months of this to get through =)

singing and reading scripture for the 2 earlier services this Youth Sunday went well, and i'm quite glad i had the chance to head out for lunch with a whole group of church people after that (according to SiQi, this is my second time with them, though i don't seem to have any recollection of the first) at Popeye's, Terminal 3. 

and by whole group i mean at least 15 other people, though i knew only about 80% of the people around, namely SiQi/Sophie/Adriel/Colleen/JingYu/AmandaT./AmandaB./GuoNian/Louis/ZhaommingAndrew. 

it's been a more active weekend than most, and that has filled me with enough Happy Thoughts going into tomorrow's Common Test Results. 

heh.

an excellent evening out with ten of my classmates at The Mind Cafe, Boat Quay, and Starbucks, The Central.
the night ended earlier than on most gatherings, but it was pretty fun nonetheless...
Mel and I found out that we aren't, unfortunately, Telepathic, if the game of the same name was anything to go by.
however, our half of the table rocked the other group in Taboo, and that ended our time at the essential boardgame cafe...




and that last comment was uncalled for, seriously.

and with little aplomb, the first week of real school in a long while drew to a close this afternoon...
the last hour or so going through Chem Paper 2 was highly depressing, and i thus made a beeline home and then to town for some shopping, bumping into Kevin from Math Class a little later in the evening...

class dinner at The Mind Cafe, Boat Quay tomorrow, then a whole day in church for youth sunday, and finally the common test results on monday...

i'm relieved that the week is almost at it's end, especially after there weren't many lessons today, and yet having to stay in school till 5 made for a rather tiring day...
there's apparently a planning pract i have no idea about for chem tomorrow, and the history activity which i've spent the last 10 minutes bluffing my way through one full page of notes of Maoist apologetics =)
TGIF in a few minutes.

second day back, and it was a mercifully short 6 hours in school, with some useful lessons and sufficient free time in between...
and one cannot leave the SAC on a Wednesday smelling like a mixture of fried chicken and prata..

Day 1 back in school, and the timetable hasn't changed, which meant my tuesday week A was as long as arduous as the lot of them...
the fact that we weren't in our regular school uniforms didn't change the fact that many lessons just continue to steamroll over us despite us having only just recovered from the tests...
i think things will get better once the results are out, 'cos that way, there's at least something to work upwards from...
and there is a whole lot of UP for me, seeing as my chemistry paper 1 was, by any count, the single worst result i've gotten in all of the IB course so far, and i officially relinquish any hold i had on that top-in-level award for this the most technical of the subjects i offer...
pleasantly, the poems were revealed to have done better than the prose-s, so hopefully that generalization applies to my script as well...
as for economics/history/math, nothing was revealed so far...

and CAS was returned, which reminds me that i need to get my EE scripts back asap.

and so my 4-day break ends with a debate gathering at sean's house around the Wii, playing SSBB, Mario Kart, Tennis and Dance Dance Revolution...

it's wear-anything-to-school day tomorrow, heh.

it was so weird not having anything to read or revise today, nothing that had the must-get-done-before-tomorrow label, and what a welcome change it was...
although the tests that have just passed technically don't count for anything, one can't help but be anxious about what the outcome will be...
i'm never one to speculate; what i do know is that, to my relief, i did not peak yet...
and quite surprisingly, it was almost by choice - more than once i had the opportunity to do that bit more, look through something one more time, but i decided to just go at it with what i know...
i'm not sure if that's the best approach, but it definitely meant that i wasn't even close to burning out yet, and i certainly need all the energy i can muster over the next few months...

one day down from my extended weekend, and it was a day of convalescence more than anything...

and so my day ended at the National Museum, walking around the exhibits with elliot/joash/mel/nic/tedkin, and what an end it was to the last 6 weeks of studying and tests.
i'm certainly not out of that zone yet, since my mind just seems to turn to academic stuff whenever i have a free moment, so it'll take a good 4-day weekend of non-work stuff to revert to my normal thinking habits.
nevertheless, watching Hancock with 14 of the class.folk was a really good end to this test season, even if i found the movie to be one that really tried too hard.

i'm not sure i've spent so much time voluntarily in school over the past month and a half.
but this is merely the start -
for maximum results, repeat regularly until November 20th.

This really cannot wait till the end of the exams:
John Mayer Live in Los Angeles - Where The Light Is
Absolutely Brilliant
he's so going to be my top-played artiste on Last.FM for a long long time.

So You Think You Can Dance 4
Chelsie & Mark
Lyrical Hip Hop
Bleeding Love