Flurry Of Events

Oh finally!!! The opportunity to blog is here! And because I've not blogged in a long time, there's just too much to say without knocking you out. It started out with my birthday on M6 Saturday, which I conveniently spent watching Roland contestants trying very hard to not screw their pieces up. I would've wanted to watch to gala as well, but decided not to in the end, thanks to some circumstances. We went to Hakka at night and had a great dinner. Of course, all these mean that I just wasted one whole day by not studying and cramming stuff up my head.

Ok, I admit it.....so I DO feel like protesting against exams now. I guess I flunked History, but it's the first term anyway. And the accursed Moral paper!! Ever since that Wednesday, all our Batai papers after recess have been coming extremely late, no thanks to teachers who keep forgetting our poor class. We started our Moral paper 10 minutes late, but ended it without adding 10 more minutes. History repeats itself for the next 2 days.

On M13 Saturday, we were at the ABRSM convocation. The event just happened too fast for my senses. Of course, there were very few Malaysians in the sea of SEA people. Heh. For all I know, there were many SMART people from Raffles Institution (from Singapore, in case you're very blur).

I hope you're happy with this vague account of what happened in the past week. I know I'm not.

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The Best Week Of My Life

I thought I was not going for IBM's IGN.I.T.E. camp, but it turns out that I was accepted later. Lucky thing, because this is THE BEST CAMP in my entire life.

Monday 19th October 09
Had a really heavy breakfast before reaching on time. I saw in the front row with one half of the DJians (they were split) and then we had the introduction to IBM and IGN.I.T.E.. I saw a few familiar faces during the break but only managed to register Rhonwyn, who turns out to be in BU's choir team. Ryan Khong was there too.

After that was a game session, in which Gheek gained recognition in. After that was an ice-breaking session where we introduced ourselves with an adjective in front of our names. We were introduced to our project of the week, which was to build a robot to perform environmentally helpful functions. We were split into 5 groups and I ended up in group 5 with Shu Wen , Soon Len, Dafinah, Chin Yang, Hariz, Ee Vonne and Rhonwyn; Soon Len being team captain. We called ourselves NanoDiversity.

There were subgroups within each team consisting of 2 persons each. We were in charge of different things:

Hardware (building the robot) : Soon Len and Hariz
Software (programming) : Chin Yang and Dafinah
Industrial (designing city) : Rhonwyn and Ee Vonne
Marketing (talking nonsense) : Shu Wen and I

Lunch was held in One World Hotel's buffet restaurant, Cinnamon. I was supposed to be very full, but the food was so good that I ate my dinner in advance as well. Lunch remained as 1-2 everyday for Shu Wen and I, the sad presenters of team 5. We created our IBM "pass" after that before exploring the IBM interfloor office tour. After a long day, we were quite tired when given a talk about how to go green and how students can contribute. I only regained enthusiasm after Shu Wen started on solar flares and I continued the nerd talk.

Overall, not much interaction with other IBMers yet.

Tuesday 20th Oct
We started with Games Session, whereby group 5's answers were epic fail. That was followed by a break. The mentors were introduced after that and we proceeded to play Power Up, an online game to save the environment.

Now, the worst thing about Power Up was that it was in 3D. And Shu Wen and I suck really badly at games like that. We were supposed to play it for 1 and a half hours and the pair with the highest points win. Shu Wen and I played this game for one hour and our points remained as ZERO. Other people had more than 2k points by this time. Then, Kendrick started walking around randomly as he had a headache. Long story short, he helped us and in 25 minutes, we had a score of 3180. Yay us! Thanks, Kendrick!

We enjoyed our glorious lunch before heading off to prepare our project (which lasted well until we went home).

Wednesday 21st Oct
I started getting to know other people today, as a result of my quirkiness. We were split into 2 big groups; one group would start with the canopy walk first (the BU and BU4 gangs), the other (Taman Tun Dr Ismail and DJ peeps) would start off with stream sampling first [which is very bad in this case, because we would get wet first]. We found that this was quite untrue, as the stream was only deep enough to cover our feet. We were further split into 4 groups to ease the job of the poor woman in charge of us. I caught an extremely big water spider which turned out to be a nuisance to my team (consisting of DJ stereotypes who were still shy of mixing around). Someone had to keep watch over the damned spider in case it escapes.

Then we started the climb to the canopy walk (which was only 150m in length; very anticlimactic). Shu Wen and I attempted to irritate our guide to make her bring us there faster. Hint : "Are we there yet?" Unfortunately, we missed our target and irritated a fellow camper instead. We spotted a centipede on the way and scared a bunch of foreigners. There was this cute English boy who kept saying "Konichiwa" at us.

There was a horrible climb to the canopy walk and I lagged behind with Sofea. In case you didn't know, both of us were enjoying the scenery while you were struggling with all your might. =)P. Anyway, we reached there to find that everyone was still lining up and wishing that they hadn't climbed up so fast. (I know, I'm mean). I was talking a lot of nonsense with the campers behind the line, who were mostly TTDI people, with the exception of Gheek, Soon Len, Naomi and Mona (the gamemaster-cum-ex-disciplinarian).

Gheek started telling Jian Min (from TTDI) and Siti the Ping Pong Ball story, which we lied was a "joke". Their anxiety level kept increasing as there were many interruptions during the storytelling (we were walking on the canopy walk that time). Gheek finished the story at a resting site. Both Siti's and Jian Min's reactions were worth watching, though not as bad as Gheek's own reaction when Sha Lynn told him the story.

On the way back the H3, our resting headquarter, I somehow ended up stuck with Sutheshan and Jian Min, both from TTDI. The jokers were debating on whether this person in front of us was male or female. "It" had long hair but was dressed like a guy. Sutheshan (somehow, more commonly called "T") guessed it was a girl while JM said it was a guy. The 3 of us then tried to make the poor soul turn behind so we can judge "it" better. Then, I got ditched when both JM and T ran away, but I guessed that it earned me the excuse of being able to walk nearer to "it". After much investigation, I came to a conclusion that it was a girl. I managed to find the nuts and reported my findings. Not believing me, they started walking really close behind the English people (could identify their accent). They found that I was right and started laughing like maniacs. Sutheshan crapped about the air being "too fresh" that we must "breathe all we can". Oh goodness, what an impression we must have left on the 2 Englishwomen.

There was a treasure hunt after lunch (more like Answer hunt). We were somehow split into 4 different groups again. My group was *ahem* the BEST group ever! Considering how much we've done during the treasure hunt (we didn't do anything, actually), it's still a miracle we managed to get points. Our team's name? Awesome Laziness! (courtesy of yours truly!). We didn't came up with a name until the last few seconds before we were supposed to hand in our answer sheets. What were we doing when other teams were scourging for answers? Walking backwards to make ourselves taller and trying to slide down a steep slope. Yay us.

It started raining drizzling at the end of our discussion, so we couldn't present our findings of the stream sampling. It is quite ironic that while we remained completely dry throughout the day (except our feet), we got drenched the moment we reached the hotel. To put it literally, we were all wet at the end of the day.

Thursday 22nd Oct
Started with a talk about careers in IBM which lasted up until 10. Break. Project preparation and lunch, followed by a very interesting game session. We had to entangle ourselves by holding other people's hands randomly. Apparently, Gheek and Chin Yang didn't know the rules of the game. Both of them held each others hands and formed a circle of their own. Another time, 3 people had another mini circle and detached themselves from the bigger picture. We kept restarting again and unfortunately, due to unknown reasons, I had to keep squeezing in between other people's hands. Very smart planning, people! (Spot the sarcasm). Surprisingly, we won 2nd place. Considering how sucky we were, it's considered a great achievement.

The day ended with project preparation again.

Friday 23rd Oct
Doomsday. Long story cut short, NanoDiversity won!! Our prize? a Sony Walkman for each person in the team. *Jaws detach* Kendrick from team 1 went back early to fly off to Turkey.

There were many photography sessions after that. I won't elaborate much on this, except that this is the best camp I've ever been to. Not only were the activities fruitful and fun, the people were highly interactive and we established many new friendships. Aaaaaand, to prove Chin Yang wrong, we're all still keeping in touch on Facebook!

Since I'm eating up a lot of space on blogger (thanks a lot, pictures), I will just give the link to the IBM pics. Click HERE.

But amusingly, this was not the end. I just earned a new title called DipABRSM on Saturday morning. *Grins*

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Scrabble Scrambled My Head

Let's see, choir was just over on Wednesday, the 3rd of June, right? Just yesterday and today, my brain has been fried into bits. Thank goodness I'm still functional (although I don't think I'll survive the frying from Madam Tan when I get back to school). The abscissa question would probably be the last of me.

Anyway, getting back to the MSA Nationals......

I didn't die or anything, so it must have went fine, right? Wrong.

Yes, I exceeded my own expectations to get 9 points out of 15 games and end up in the top 25. And yes, I am the only person in the entire tournament to get NINE points and have a spread of NEGATIVE 671. Six hundred. Negative.

If you weren't fast enough to catch it, it means that I lost more than what I won. I'm the only person in the top 25 to get a negative spread that low. The other negative (which was -17 only) was Stephanie Mary Anne. Seventeen. Only. Mine? Holy crap. Hold on, my crappy score isn't even HOLY!! Pht pht pht.

Let me reveal the disturbing facts, shall I?

Saturday, 6th June 2009

It started off well. Sailed through Mohamad Ehsan, Vinnith Zahanif. It was very well, actually. Up to my 3rd game, that is. Then, I moved up. All the way up. To rank number 9. To table number 5. Against Shu Wen's *ahem* friend, Wong Han Wey.

That game started off well too, with me starting with a bingo, INDUSTRY. That was my first rack. From my second rack right to the end of the game, I was somewhat "doomed" with horrible-terrible-like-vegetable tiles. Every rack, and I repeat, EVERY rack I had was either ALL vowels or ALL consonants. I spent more than 3 turns changing tiles and still ended up with the whole rack full of the same species of alphabets. If I were in a competition whereby the tiles I get must be of the same kind (vowels or consonants), I'd be the grand champion. I might sound like I'm trying to put the blame on something else rather than bear responsibility to my loss, but it's really true for this game. The longest word I made here was EUOI. Notice that it's only FOUR letters long and that it's made purely from vowels. And guess my last rack. FFGGCRA. ONE vowel. And the rest? I got rid of the vowel and Han Wey stole 28 points from my the rest of my last rack. I lost by nearly 250 points and don't wish to remember this game.

The loss got my spread in the negatives.

I had the whole lunch to mope over that matter before I faced Chear Tze Xian. Here, I start to realise that everytime I put out a bingo, my opponent would surely put out ANOTHER bingo to catch up with my score. It didn't just start off here, it started off since my first game. At this point, I just started wishing that my opponents never ever have to get a bingo when matched with me. I won Tze Xian by 10 points no thanks to me not being able to play a bingo. I had one....but...there was no place to put it. Damn.

In my 6th game, I was up against Irfan. this game got my spread back in the positives (I would soon regret this). Just like I've mentioned, right after I play my bingo, he plays his. Geez, that made me not have a convincing win. Oh well, at least I'm in the positives again. *Grins happily*.

For my 7th game...ahem...We were waiting for our names to be announced, and I was with the DJ and Sultan Abdul Samad bunch. We were talking about our games when Ramaraj's father called out, "Table 5, Yeow Liiyung, Scott Chung." Then the crowd around me went "Oooooooh", as in "Goodbye to you, my friend. My deepest condolences". I overtook Han Wey by rank (miracle) and he was laughing at my ill luck. By some freak misfortune, I was back at table 5 (oh, screw you, table 5!!), this time, with (oh no) Scott Chung. Apparently, I was one rank above him. I shouldn't be. I shouldn't have been. Because this game with him threw my spread back into the negatives again.

Unlike the last time, I didn't completely die and lose by 300+ points, but the pressure was there. He did say "Hi", but he's still Scott. I realised then that the organizers were "looking out" for me and my games since I was "performing" and they started crowding round the table. Parents too. Parents of the elite scrabble players. [The truth is, I'm not that good. It just so happens that I have bingoes for every game so far. Every time I play the bingoes or some high-scoring words, Henry, Jocelyn or Dr Adele just so happen to walk by. Lucky? NOT.]

My tiles were unusually great, but my head went blank. People are staring, they are judging my moves, it's unusually hot in this elite part of the tournament and the guy sitting opposite me is Scott Chung. What do I do?

Go blank and die.

Which is exactly what I did. And I shouldn't have done so.

Scott must be thinking, "Why am I matched against someone so pathetic like her?". I don't blame anyone who was thinking like that.

My spread dwelled in the negatives. I resented my position and points because that made me susceptible to meet the elite players. And I wasn't ready. Like the game against Scott. Stupid me. Well, at least he said something unrelated to scrabble. It's nice to know that a human still exists in him.

My 7th game was against Looi Yih Feng on table 8 (crap!! I'm STILL in the top 10 tables?). When we saw each other, we were like "Not you again......". He had a miserable loss to me last year when my last word was a bingo. And I had a miserable loss too when I lost to him by around 13 points. This year, he was surely out to kill me. True enough, he was. He played 2 bingos and I had none. But I caught up miraculously in the long-winded game. We were the last to finish in the 7th (last game) of the day and the pressure was building up. He's score was 403. Mine was 402. I held 2 tiles and he, 3. It was my turn. Basically, that put me in the superior. I had to finish my two tiles NOW. I held U and N. So, I put out TUN, with the impression that he would surely challenge it. He did. 4 points inflated to 9. His tiles I,I and D were added to my score. I won by 16 marks (he must be cursing) and I would regret it (again) the next day.

Sunday, 7th June 2009

We arrived late. No thanks to the nutty driver of the monorail who was too kind to squash all those who didn't make it onto the monorail in time. We waited more than 15 minutes in KL Sentral and ran inside the Berjaya Times Square. Even Pn Loo was running! The guards thought we were mad.

When we reached the tenth floor, I screamed "Hallelujah, we made it!!" thank goodness it was only the scrabble players who were present. I don't want to end up in Hospital Bahagia to meet the legendary Mahyun.

We ran up to the paper which stated the playing positions. After reading Hui Jan's blog, it wouldn't be very sensible of you to not be afraid of William Kang. Now, which table was I on? Table 6. Crap. The elite place again.

I was leading initially, until he put out XU. I was still within the recovery range until he put BAIZA. I thought I could fish up an "S" to grab BAIZAS as well as steal the triple-word score. Unfortunately, he reached the "S" first, grabbed a "Q" and got a blank tile as well. So, he played QUOTERS to get the triple-word and BAIZAS. That was 115 points itself. I heard Jen Ho's father assuring William's father that his son already had the winning edge. Now, I feel miserable. Pressure built its foundation in my heart and I just let everything slide downhill. It's over, I lost. No use fighting anymore. I didn't bother getting rid of the high-point tiles and William got 26 points from them alone (nearly as bad as Han Wey's game).

To you, my past self.....If I were there beside you at that time, I would've slapped you to your senses. Even if you didn't win, you could've at the very least TRIED to save your doomed spread!!

Ever since my game with William, my spread never saw the light of optimism again.

I was talking to Leong Yan Mei after that game. It so happened that she was standing next to me while waiting for our tables. It was also coincidential that we were matched against each other for round 10. She had 2 bingoes and considering the fact that I had none, it was still miraculous to know that I only lost by 60 points.

I dropped to table 15 after that, the lowest I could go. I beat Amirul to go against Yan Mei again.

I beat Yan Mei more than she beat me in round 10. This isn't good.

In round 13, guess what? I was up against Yih Feng. Again. Table 8. Again. This time, due to horrible luck, he had FOUR bingoes. That isn't even counting the ones I managed to block. I lost.....very miserably. Ah well, at least my score was above 300.

I dropped to table 12 with Rachel Decruz. Gheek warned me that she was good. I won in the end (and would regret it too).

The final match!!! And look who I'm against! Alvin Lau, last year's number 5! Hooray, I believe I can fall. This is probably the dumbest game I have ever played in my entire life!! Every rack I had was a bingo!!! But you know what? There was no place to put the damn word. I passed one turn, hoping that Alvin would put out a tile to my favour. "First time I've seen someone pass". You can say that again. I'm the first person I know to pass too. Luckily I made EXCUSINGS, thanks to E hook. Next time, I know better than to wait for my opponent to play a tile to my benefit. I'll just sacrifice the idiotic bingo and play. I can't believe I wasted a whole game of bingoes. I lost this round and cursed it. If I won, I could've made it to top 15. It was a total screw-up. FUMINGS doesn't exist??!! Geez.

I must say that I'm still dissatisfied with the overall tournament.

Firstly, I wasn't aiming for top 25. I just wanted to have a postitive spread. Unfortunately, thanks to "high" points, I was sent to the elite and they destroyed my spread. Way to go.

Secondly, I realised that I give up easily. Next time, I'll at least fight for my spread.

Thirdly, I should've won at least one more game to get into top 15.

Fourthly, I'm just four positions away from top 20.

Fifth, I could've taken care of my spread a bit more to slide into top 20.

Sixth, I need to be more consistent.

Seventh, I actually regret winning(?!).

Last but not least, DJ scrabblers need a revamp.

A few other things that I didn't mention in the above might amuse you. In each monorail station, they put a different kind of animal up for show. KL Sentral had an Iguana, which spurred Gheek and I to talk about Cassandra's sister, who promptly scared Gheek on MSN.

"Hi, I'm Iggy the Iguana. My back is "scaly" like the keys on a piano. Wanna stroke me? ABCDEFGABCCCCCC!!!!!"

Among the other things Cassie's sis says are :

"You know, the teachers at school are always going on about how bad our batch is compared to other batches so I tell them they are old fashioned and I think that's fair because I'm only returning their compliment. But they always misunderstand me and ask me to stand outside class. I feel this is unfair so I start screaming names at the teacher. Other teachers from other classes come out to see what the commotion is all about and they see me and they start screaming at me. To silence me, my teacher comes out and puts his hand over my mouth but I bite it hard and he starts cursing and saying, "I can't take this crap anymore", and I'm like : "Who is crapping?You is crapping?". So he takes his bag and swings it at me in an attempt to hit me but I grab it and swing it hard onto his face and so he leaves school with a swollen hand, bleeding gums and a foul mouth.This has happened to 6 or 7 teachers but they don't expel me 'cos I tell them I know where they live and I'll go to their house and be not so nice...."

"Ooooo!!Cat!!I wanna stroke it and create friction on its fur 'til all its fur drops off and then maybe the flesh will drop off too or giant blisters will start appearing and by this point the cat in my hands will probably go "Meow" in a scared tone but I'll hold on tighter and when I stroke it harder it'll be even more friction-ny and if I'm lucky it'll just fade away.....Friction!!"

Morbid kid. Gheek's morbid too.

On the second day, we loitered in Borders. Shu Wen accidentally misplaced her dad's phone and....it was lost and never found.

After reading Hui Jan's latest post about how her version of the MSA went (and what William Kang said), I would like to say Hi to all of you out there who are currently reading my lame experience. Nice to meet you in the internet world. I would appreciate it if you said Hi too, so at least I know who discovered my elusive blog and in case you try to take revenge on me next year. =/

Happy holidays. Don't forget to pray for me in case my maths teacher kills me for my answer.

PS : No, seriously, say Hi.

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Malaysian Choral Eisteddfod

MCE was considered quite interesting, although last year's one offered more lovable songs choices. However, people were more friendly this year. Or maybe it's because I took more photos of the other choirs.

My nametag was really off the planet and thanks to Zi Ying and her grand ideas, my identity has been revealed to human technology. Zi Ying was supposed to "carry me" in front of a Seafield guy's camcorder. Due to lack of guts, we ended up just showing our nametags to Justin's camcorder. They were weird enough to compensate the circus show. Species : Harmonix A. I probably can't get weirder than this.

The 2 weirdos Samuel and Wei Le weren't there, so apparently I couldn't fool around as much (these people talk nonsense as much as I do). At least, Samuel Tee wasn't here. There were other Samuels involved in the web, though. Our pianist was Samuel Tan (Roland Open Category 2009 champ). A guy who played the viola looked like Wee Shien's classmate, Samuel. He also resembled Wee Shien's cousin's cousin, another Samuel. So, there are 4 Samuels involved plus a guy who look like 2 of the Samuels. Confusing? My head hurts now.

Anyway, we sang Handel's coronation songs for the kings in the olden days. Very long songs, and very baroque. The lyrics doesn't suit us well and we cut out a lot of parts since we had trouble singing them. Handel must be squirming in his grave. What are they doing to my compositions?

As Zi Ying put it, Handel must be "de-composing" in his grave (pun intended).

In a nutshell, we sang sarcastic songs and all the people rejoiced. Alleluia. [Inside joke, only for MCE participants].

Other achievements : After some debating, I've convinced Zi Ying that violence is not the way out for things.........

PS : Pictures will be out soon
PPS : "Soon" is not defined

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"Just Like Adam Lambert"

(Quoted by either Keefe or Calvin)

When you start saying things like that, you know you're too much into American Idol, not to mention being too sentimental over Adam Lambert's unbelievable loss.

(Let's make this quick)
There were 9 schools involved in the competition.
Captivating images by Zi Ying:

This is SMK Seafield. Trained under Susanna Saw. Sang Tanah Pusaka and One Voice. Didn't see Wei Le. Samuel disappeared to Singapore (for some jazz festival thingy....). No special weirdos were detected. Became 4th in the state.





School: Unidentified
Placing: Unidentified
Wanted: Information on this school
Reward: ...Baskin Robins, anyone?






School: Unidentified
Placing: 7th
Species: Humans







Details of the school is not known as we were on standby outside.








*I am trying to upload the video of us*

This is SMK Kepong. They danced a lot and ended like a musical. Unfortunately, due to the human inability to sing well while dancing, they went slightly flat once vigorous action took place. They won anyway, which puts a gigantic question mark on top of most people's heads.




We wouldn't have minded so much if these guys girls from Convent Klang won. They grabbed 3rd spot after us.




Aha!! My favourite! These guys had PUPPETS!!! And Zi Ying, who says my camera couldn't focus well? =P. Take a look for yourself. You'll find that you have succeeded in photography here.





The picture directly above is the coolest. It looks somewhat "Photoshopped". Only the puppets show. =)And the highest picture is the clearest. Admire your masterpieces, Zi Ying.

I lost concentration here and couldn't really remember their performance.



At the end of everything, random people came out to perform on the piano while waiting for the results to be out. Everyone's positions except the top 3 were announced and Harmonix was ecstatic when we weren't called yet as Seafield was announced 4th.

After all the hype about getting top 3, some of us thought we had a chance to champion the state and made our way to SMK Seafield for the Malaysian Choral Eisteddfod competition (SouthEastAsia level). According to Tracy, both Catholic High School and Seafield would even things out with us there, especially if we screw our songs up.

Unfortunately for her, we DID screw up our 3 songs and thought we would emerge champions from the bottom. After our crappy performance, we watched the other competitors do their part. We secretly started feeling bored--that was, until Rachel whispered our state level results to us.

Number 2.

Holy.

So near.

Yet so far.

Rachel was utterly disappointed. Some others were greatful we actually made it this far. Others like Mel and I morbidly plotted on how to enter the nationals through the back door.

Wide speculation suggested that Kepong won just because of their "showmanship". Dancing? Unfortunately, most people recorded that they went flat once the dancing came in. True or false, you decide.

There was a friendship concert the same night.

Taman Megah!
KL Children's Choir
Seafield B
Harmonix B
Catholic High School
STC Cherubim
Fantastic Fourions
Seafield A
SMK Batu Lintang Choir

Harmonix A
SMK Batu Lintang Choir
SMK Methodist Sibu
Crescendo Voices



I officially declare my camera an artifact. Time to get a new (digital) one.

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Abscissa Whurd?

We stared at the paper and it stared back at us.

Determine the abscissa of point X.

It is quite humiliating to know that our year never learnt this simple vocabulary. Abscissa. That small, taunting word which takes up so little space in our lives, yet still haunts us till today. Abscissa. Echoing. Killing us softly from within. Abscissa. Intimidating our intelligence, reducing our brains to nothing more than a faulty, mushy substance. Abscissa. Lighting our emotions ablaze, cracking our heads like raw eggs, just to come up with an answer, an escape from the loss of depression. Abscissa. That one mark which separates us from a perfect score. The death of a student's confidence, admitting defeat to the mere existence of a three-syllable word.

Humble humiliation.

There was a dark void over that question, seemingly preventing students from interfering with the unnatural disaster taking place. Many left it as it is, deciding not to mess with the course of their ill fate of twisted misinterpretation. But one student presented the magnitude of the situation best, with a twinge of exasperated honesty in it:

"To the horror of both examiner and candidate, the abscissa could not be identified due to lack of comprehension." -Yours truly-

Ahem. Couldn't help it!

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American Idol 8

American Idol Season 8 has come and gone.

Now, I can finally take pride in my "special ability" to predict wrong American Idols, seeing that I have done so for 4 consecutive seasons. From Chris Daughtry (season 5) to Blake Lewis (6), from David Archuleta (7) to Adam Lambert. They were succeeded by Taylor Hicks (5), Jordin Sparks (6), David Cook (The Epic Battle of the Davids) and now, Kris Allen. Either I have a knack for choosing the "wrong" Idol, or it's America. (Don't throw eggs at me, okay?!!)

I'm not a die-hard fan of the show, but the difference this year is Adam Lambert. There's just no telling what's he going to do next. Everything's a surprise. He's the most consistent singer throughout the whole season and is probably the strongest contestant in Idol history. Yes, I know he screeches, if that's what you Kris Allen fans are going to say, but the screeching does not affect his performance (it just adds more colour) nor does it overshadow his musical talents.


I do admit that the top 4 contestants (Kris Allen [1], Adam Lambert [2], Danny Gokey [3], Allison Iraheta [4]) were really good, but Adam was one notch above them all (make that two notches). I acknowledge that Kris is good, but Adam is better. He is musically talented, but not as talented as his fellow finalist. Kris's singing and his version of "No Boundaries" was good, but Adam's was milestones ahead, so there's no excuse that Kris's ending song made him get the votes. Really, who said this song only fitted Kris? I thought Adam was way better. (I'm aware that some prefer Kris's voice to Adam's, but it's the singing, the music and the talent that's supposed to determine the winner.)

To me, Adam deserved the title more than anyone else.

On the other side of the camp, Kris really rose to the occassion. He just kept getting better and better. I especially liked Apologize and Heartless. Maybe the votes swung halfway......?

But anyway, it's over. Yeah, I can probably accept Kris as the next American Idol. (I told you I'm not that much of an A.I. fanatic). But I can also rest assured that Adam Lambert is the real idol in the eyes of the world.

I know that there are some people enjoying/fuming over the results.

Let's hear what you have to say........

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Cataclysm

It starts with accidents.

Accidents happen.

When a virus spreads quickly and is speculated to become the next global pandemic equivalent to the Spanish Flu or "La Grippe", that's an accident not contained.

When an idiot suddenly swerves in front of your car and you have no time to hit the brakes, that's an accident.

When you forgot you are the sole reporter for a dull and boring event, say the Ikrar PMR and SPM, that's a mental accident. (Considering yourself a responsible reporter, it is your duty to lie that all the students were holy angels who paid their full attention). However, if you get to see your school's legend (John Lee Si Ang), at least you got something out of it.

Other accidents happen when your alarm clock stops dead one hour before its supposed to blow its head off. Then, you can't wake up, go to school, and witness your friends suffering from the sadistic punishments you created for them in a game where they are supposed to memorize stupid moral definitions for our exam-oriented school. You can't see your friends making that sarcastic speech of your "beloved" form teacher, or reciting the "sajak", or dancing around the class with a broom.

When people from your choir forgot to wear the required uniforms for the Choral Eidsteddfod ("Choral Festival" in Welsh) group photos, you're forced to skip your chemistry lesson when your other friends get to see how acidified potassium manganate (VII) solution loses its purple tint to the reaction between lead sulphide and oxygen and heat. Then, your mentally challenged form teacher tells you, the treasurer, to return everyone's money back to them since the workbook she wanted to order for your class was out of stock. Yes, screw her.

Finally, on the last day of the week, things start to look up and go your way. You don't have to change in the rotten school toilets and you didn't miss your science lesson. You managed to see how calcium and sodium react with water (and even noticed a rare spark in the reaction between sodium and water when everyone else missed it), and you witnessed how magnesium reacted to oxygen and heat.

You managed to memorize 5 stupid moral definitions, word for word, a few minutes before Moral period started. You get called up and said everything with a distinction. You managed to pick your forgetful class monitor out and watched her succumb to your punishment to recite a malay poem when she miraculously fished out your punishment. You clarify what sort of recitation you are looking for and set the parameters on how to read it "correctly", just as how your mad teacher did. Apart from getting a satisfactory recitation from her, your row has achieved the impossible when all 5 people in your row was picked (fished out randomly from a box). You discovered a classmate's interesting habit of yelling at people, "Why can't I do that? Sue me-lah!", "Cannot-ah? Sue me-lah!" and one thousand other things about sueing him.

The newspaper was great too. The politicians in Perak have gained world recognition by acted like zoo animals. If Jessica knew about this, she would have suggested that they came from the bird parks. From the Democracy Tree incident on square root day (3/3/09) to policemen dragging the Speaker out (V. Sivakumar), from Hee Yit Foong crossing over to Barisan and being the first DAP politician to cause the downfall of a state government to the politician throwing money around. Pakatan politician Thomas Su threw a RM50 note at Hee Yit Foong since he said she was so desperate for money. Apparently, she was alleged to have crossed sides for a new car and more money, which she wasn't eligible to get in Pakatan, which was a more honest political party. The bonus came when a picture of Thomas Su standing on the table came out in the news. Next to him was someone who truly enjoyed the argument : a politician using his camera!! Haha. Wonderful. As Cassandra puts it, "These guys-ah, too much already...".

As you think about your odd experiences, you start to appreciate all that has happened this week. Things are slowly starting to look up.

Then, things move on to tragedy.

When your morally flawed classmate sitting behind you suddenly goes aggressive for no apparent reason and pushes the notorious pranker down from his chair, in turn causing you and your best friend to fall from your chairs, you've got yourself a tragedy. Of course, your fall only took place because the other boys in class had to swarm all over him and this resulted in lots of pushing--in your direction, unfortunately.

[And the fight started because Wan Jyn kept throwing Delon's book back at him].

Attention-seeker or tree-lover gone overboard?

Either way, you wonder when the black hole grew in his head, sucking away all his rationality and wreaking havoc with his emotions.

Fortunately for your school, there were no Batai-an casualties. Batai-ans are an expensive lot. =D

And then, there's cataclysm.

The enigmatic Atlantis, was it real?

All races share the story of a great flood that destroyed an entire civilization. The name Atlantis appears in various forms throughout the world. The Canary Islands have a legend involving Atalaya. The Basques of Northern Spain have Atlaintica. The Vikings told the tale of Atli. Northern Africa called it Attala. The Aztecs have Aztlán, and the North American Indians called theirs Azatlán.

According to the continental drift theory, all the continents fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle. If you look at a map, you will see that the continents really do fit together- with the exception of the USA in North America and Western Europe. Could Atlantis be the missing piece?

Well, there are some who speculate that the Bermuda Triangle may the resting spot for Atlantis, since there have been very mysterious occurences there. Many planes and ships have gone missing and no evidence of them were found. Gasp. There are also underwater pyramids. Read more if interested. It supposedly ended with a bang. Something like the end of the world--which only happened to them.

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, there's the apocalypse, which is nearing. Modern-day scientists have identified the asteroid Apophis coming straight at Earth and calculated that it might hit us on (Friday) the 13th of April 2029. If that scared you, listen to this. The ancient Mayans predicted that the world would end on the 21st of December 2012. If we survive that period, then we've come to "a new era", as that day marks the genesis of a new beginning and a new world. Or it could also be the beginning of an end.

But really, does it need to be that far? Honestly, the apocalypse is arriving in a week's time as the tides of exams wait for no puny student.

Students, if we all survive this, we can do anything.

[Enough epic crap. Good luck to you!]

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The Entertainer

If I were to blog about this week, it would be about how I managed to juggle my time as The Entertainer for MAC, the "highlight" of the year, as well as managing to conquer Mount Homework (after many failed attempts to do so). That would make my post seem lifeless because, as you can guess, what other things does it involve other than skipping lessons?

The only interesting incident (which I missed out on) was seeing the "masterpiece" of the 4 Belian madmen, who constantly invade our classroom, since they are one of the "floating classes". Poor Sha Lynn and gang.

Apparently, their boys played a belated April Fool's prank on our class monitor's (and gang's) books by interlocking a pair of textbooks together (and applying glue on "strategic pages" to make sure both books never come off). I wonder why I never thought of that as a prank to play on others.

Anyway, today was the special day for all the nerds of the school, who took the limelight in the hall. The day I perform for those nerds like some maniac. The same goes for Yean Yi and Rachel, but I think I was the worst nut of all.

The violin performance wasn't well coordinated and I don't think everyone heard us. Geez, both of us violinists were supposed to get our own mic. But because Pn Cecilia thought we overpowered the singers, we were reduced to one mic for both, and ended up being so soft that no one could hear us.

We changed like crazy after our violin performance. Thanks to Mel's long-sleeved shirt, I could cheat my time and I ended up changing the fastest (eventhough I took my own sweet time to walk to the toilet), with an extra 5 minutes to spare before the choir's next performance. (Zi Ying pointed out that I could run with heels on. Never really noticed that myself since my heels are "quite short"). No sarcasm intended.

The choir went well, but Timothy said our diction for the English song was terrible. (Choir members, this is feedback from the audience......).

For those who weren't there to perform or receive any prizes.....hmmm, that's odd. Why would they want to turn up in school at all?

Let's review the statistics. All the classes only have 2-15-studens present. What about 3 Batai? 26 pupils. Now, this really forces us to reconsider placing this (weird) class as "the smartest class". Especially when oddballs like Timothy, Shafiq and Cassandra are about. (Oh, and me too....)

Eventhough we didn't do much in school because the teachers are eating..........I felt really amused and even glad that I turned up. Why? All thanks to the weird nuts.

It all started during recess. The performers and the oustanding students got to eat free food. And because I don't eat chicken (yes, I'm a pescetarian), I had to cajole Timothy to eat my chicken (and the rest of my rice) for me. Then all of a sudden, he became crazy and accused me of "trying to take over the world by forcing everyone to become fat". According to him, once everyone gets fat, they can't chase me otherwise they'll die of a heart attack. And he alleged me of trying to "make him fat". Goodness, Timothy exercises for more than 2 hours a day and he says he'll get fat??

Then, he went on talking about lots of illusionary crap and eventually ended up with stories of his old school. He kept saying his old school was "so stupid". There was this malay guy who actually came up to him and asked: "Timothy, kamu Portugis, kan?" (Timothy, you're a Portugese, aren't you?). Holy crap! His surname is SIM! TIMOTHY SIM. Not some long, english-like name. It's extremely obvious that Tim's a CHINESE.

And after that, the same guy asked: "Timothy, "Sim" tu maksud apa?" (Timothy, what does "Sim" mean?). *Bangs head*.

And for another time, the same guy got a 20-something mark for his maths exam. Do you know what he asked his teacher?

"Am I the highest?"
Teacher: From the bottom, or from the top?

Man, he really got Shu Wen and I howling with laughter. The people around us must have thought we were out of our minds. Well, that was probably what Calvin and Kelvin thought. XP. They were both sitting opposite us (at different times) and were tracking our conversation from Scrabble to those nonsensical topics. (Kelvin plays scrabble too! Yay!). I must say poor Timothy has finally lost it.

It was Cassandra and Shafiq's turn when we went back to class (in 3 Belian). We combined with Belian and Semarak. Shafiq was initially showing us stupid/amusing card tricks which had something to do with heartbeats. I'm really terrible at card tricks and so, I found his trick highly interesting. Unfortunately, he wouldn't say a thing about his secret trick as it was "using his own heartbeat".

Cassandra finally made a breakthrough by changing the topic into "dares". She dared Shafiq to "confess his love" for the teacher in front of the class. He brushed it off as an easy stunt. Obviously easier than what he was about to dare Cas.

In the end, Cas had to do star-jumps from Pn Lam's class all the way up to the end of the coridor, which means embarassing herself in front of the other teachers.

She didn't finish the feat anyway, but she did embarass herself a lot in front of Pn Lam's class.

The public phone in the school has also joined in the mad fun. All it said the whole time was : "Error: Failed to read card" or something along that line. As Cas and I were wandering elsewhere to look for a functional phone, Cas freaked a Form 4 guy out.

"Hi, human".

I think he was a little too freaked out as he let us use the phone first. And we found out that this phone booth was completely dead. Cas continued to freak the poor guy out and even told him he looked like a certain scrabble freak we know of.

Poor human.

I ended up using Iman's handphone. Oops. Don't say anything, okay? (Phones not allowed.....)

Oustanding moments written down. Now, I can clean my natural hard disk.

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Debate Workshop

Debate Workshop
Then, there was today. Quite an "amusing" day on my behalf. April Fools are abundant wherever you go and today seems to prove just that.

I arrived in school to find myself being surrounded by all the other English freaks of the school. I stuck by Melissa's side as she was a mosquito magnet, which made me safe from mosquito attacks. I was scaring almost everyone when I said I brought a scrabble word list along. Suddenly, everyone seemed to back away, as if the nerdy virus was contagious or something. We went to HELP college without Ghee Ken, the second scrabble freak of the school (he went for Ceng Beng).

Once there, we helped ourselves with glorious food. The sandwiches were great (No, they're not heavenly. Just ordinary). After our quick breakfast, we made our way to level 4. The debaters would be in the auditorium while the "trainees" attending the workshop would be in another sad room.

Us Form 3s, being "trainees", had to be separated from our legendary counterparts. We shedded our respectable DJ debater roles and went into full-kiddy mode (or maybe that just applied to me). Melanie (she wasn't wearing her prefect uniform) was really fooling around, hunting for "cute" guys. She obviously had nothing better to do. I borrowed Daniel's blazer (the prefects except Krystle and Melanie brought their blazers along so as to look "professional"). Oops, those 2 prefects are only Daniel and Shu Wen.

Anyway, Melanie found out that some guy's name was Christopher after amusing herself by having eye contacts with people around the room. All I did the whole time was to bore Emily, Daniel and Shu Wen about scrabble, scrabble and scrabble. Apparently, I noticed I was the noisiest person overall, losing only to Melanie. I think everyone thought I was mad, talking so animatedly about a boring topic called Scrabble. Luckily the room wasn't half full yet. Yet.

All of a sudden, the whole room turned into a carnival, with people walking and running everywhere. Then, us DJians were saying something about a black-shirted guy who was Daniel's cousin being present. After a few seconds of topsy-turviness, we made new friends when Melanie introduced yet another guy (sigh) to us named Kar Jin.

Since no one was sitting on my left, some guy had to squeeze in (geez, of all spots). Then, he introduced himself as Kai Hung and said he was from Methodist Boys School (MBS) a.k.a. Monkey Boys School. Amusing. After figuring he should be intelligent enough, I started to strike an intellectual conversation regarding scrabble in his school, but failed to get any results except lots of groaning and moaning from my schoolmates.

Then, we met another girl named Juliana from some school. (Melanie makes friends fast).

After a while, a few people called all the Form 4 students over to the auditorium. Thinking it would be better there, Natasha, Zi Ying and I ran over to check out what's up. Actually, Form 3's weren't allowed there, but being DJians (proud smirk), Pn Tan gave us the unauthorized permission to masquerade as Form 4 students for the day and sit there in the auditorium. So, the 3 of us ran around like kids here and there to call our fellow friends. The MBS people weren't convinced and said that the smaller room was better (we had to watch the workshope from the other room through a small screen). I won't pick that option.

And so, we went to the auditorium and I ended up sitting behind a guy with extremely spiky hair. After a while, the MBS came to join us in the auditorium and sat behind us. I managed to squash most of the major points in one A4 page while Natasha had to go and waste paper.

I noticed I couldn't see the screen that clearly from the beginning. The spiky hair in front of me didn't make matters any better. If the guy sat up straight, his hair looked as if it were eating up the speaker who was busy pointing out important winning factors. When he tilted his head to the right, his hair would completely pulverize the speaker. His hair also ate up part of the screen, which caused more problems. At one point, I just wanted to act uncivilized, lick my 2 palms, and just push all his hair down flat on his head. Sadly, I didn't have the guts to do that. I was sitting next to a teacher.

During one point Mr Latif, the workshop speaker, said that adding statistical analysis in your argument doesn't necessarily determine the outcome of the debate. At that point, I got so frustrated with out loss I actually said out loud, "Screw that debate round......". The guy in front of me and his friend turned behind to see a cartoon agonizing over some funny problem. Our adjudicator was in the toilet and didn't hear that!!! AAAAAAhhhhhhh. Pn Tan!!! Why? Why? Why?

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm being kiasu.

After that moment, the guy in front kept looking behind at me, as if I was some serial killer or something, waiting to pounce and lash at him (okay, maybe that was what I planned to do anyway).

At the end of the 1st session, we had a break. Out of nowhere, the guy in front of me asked me what school we (bunch of freaks) were from. Natasha and I were like, "DJ, Damansara Jaya!" And I think the guy is some sort of psychic because he asked me after that, "Was my hair blocking you?"

Gosh, that was amusing. I didn't even say that to anyone. And then, he called Zi Ying and Natasha and I were surprised. Zi Ying and him were from the same class last time (meaning he was same age as us, get it?) and apparently, HE was Daniel's cousin. I think he changed his shirt or something (or maybe my ears need changing). Big whoops. Fortunately I didn't have the guts to be mean to him, otherwise I would end up as DJ's prefectorial target of harassment. Oh, he was quite good-looking too, anyway. (I'm sorry, Daniel. Don't tell your cousin what I said about the fingers one......oops....).

We were further interrogated by Daniel's cousin (I'm even more sorry here, since I did not find out what his name was) about what form we were in. [I'll just call this guy DC until he gets a name from either Zi Ying or Daniel himself].

To be very sure of our circumstances, Zi Ying and I went down to question Latif personally. While waiting, we heard some pretty amusing questions being asked as well. When it finally came to our turn, he asked which school we came from. When we answered "DJ for Damansara Jaya," you should have seen everyone's reactions. All those students from other schools gasped as though they just saw ghosts. Oh, this is what you get for being in the top debating school. It was awesome when the Form 4 students stared at us with awe and respect. Even the college kids were staring at us like heroes. That was, until we mentioned we were "trainees".

The atmosphere wasn't that serious, actually. The debaters preparing for the mock debate were quite funny. The opposition leader kept mentioning loudly that the microphone makes him sound weird. The opposition's second speaker was smiling everywhere the whole time. The prime minister was saying random things like:
1. The government's stand is that the guy over there should change his hairstyle......
2. The government believes that the chicken crossed the road......

After that, Zi Ying and I went to toilet and I followed her to the other room to get her long lost bottle. Finally.......after an eternity, we went back to our seats in peace.

All our places were reshuffled except the Mels, Zi Ying, Natasha and I. The rest of the DJ Form 3s were in the middle of the auditorium. At first, I wanted to asked the lot of us to move further in front, but it seems that everyone was doing that at the same time. Even the spiky hair dude was moving forward, although I think they wanted to squash between the 2 DJ gangs at first. I saw them coming in our row at first (Aww, I think the DC fellow missed Zi Ying and wanted to be near her or something). Or maybe the moving forward thought occurred on everyone's minds at the same time.

Darn. And I thought aliens' minds were supposed to be more advanced than puny humans.

Speaking of humans, Melanie just found out a rather disturbing fact about the MBS guy. He actually asked her if *ahemiahem* was single. Be nice to nerds, man. Shudders. And Natasha asked to say "I have a boyfriend"? Humans, humans. Sad....and he did sit next to *cough* and Nat dared to point he was flirting. Earthlings these days....Forgive them.

Aaaaaaaaaand......the mock debate started. The motion was something that went along the lines of "The Government would pay for cosmetic surgery" or something like that. The Prime Minister wasn't that strong after all. My favourite speakers were....very different in manner, so I liked all 3 OPPOSITION speakers. The first speaker was very precise and liked to make fun of the proposition's ideas and call the ideas crazy (oh, did I mention he started off his speech by asking the members on the floor whether we could hear him without the mic because it made him sound weird). The 2nd opposition speaker was very sarcastic and finds pleasure in insults. At one point, he even insulted the Prime Minister (of the debate, not of the country). Overall, he was good as he didn't stammer at all. The 3rd Oppo speaker was so calm and amusingly funny.

To quote a few lines from them:
You would rather pay for people who need cosmetic surgery than for those who are dying. That's crazy. [1]
Cosmetic surgery is not allowed in Muslim. So, you are not benefiting the 60% of Muslims in the country, equivalent to neglecting them. [1]
Have you heard of exercise, sir? [2]
How many fat, poor people have you seen? (After he mentioned that these people got fat after eating a lot. Eating a lot requires money, so these people aren't poor at all). [2]
The speaker could do with liposuction, yet he seems confident enough. (Whoa!) [2]
It's your turn to warm your seats. [3]

There are more, but these are the more memorable ones I've stored.

Many people found the 3rd Proposition speaker quite irritating. Apart from her squeaky voice, she was quite short-tempered and kept asking the poor Oppositions to "continue warming their seats as they were not warm enough" whenever they wanted to POI. At some point when they couldn't take it anymore, all 3 Opposition speakers stood up at once, which was a pretty cool sight.

The reply speech was weird. Everyone was expecting the Proposition's 2nd speaker to be doing the reply, but it was their first speaker doing it. That was like some mistake or something. Anticlimax.

After the mock debate, Zi Ying helped me look for the mechanical pencil I dropped as I was cheering for the cool 2nd Oppo speaker. Then, both of us went for lunch.

The queue for food was crazy. There were, however, 2 lines. Very long lines. Well, one was actually shorter than the other. And people were weird because no one wanted to go to the shorter line. We saw DC there and 3 of us started talking animatedly about the mock debate. Somehow, Zi Ying and I were so animated, we followed DC who took the longer lane. Everyone who came after us followed suit and no one else took the short lane anymore.

When we were nearing the food (at last!), the shorter lane was already nearly empty. DC offered to go check out what difference there was in that line. He quickly came back and said that the other line was for vegetarians. After a while, the place was completely empty and there was a kind school who told us to line up there. I explained why no one was there and they said all the food was the same.

The truth was simple. I'm hungry. So I don't really care whether it's vegetarian or not, it's still edible. In my final attempt to get food, I rushed over and Natasha followed me. It was only then that DC swapped lines and followed us (geez, was he dreaming before this?? Vegetarian food.....?) [And Zi Ying, if he was following someone, it'll be Natasha. I just provide laughter]. And all those pesky followers behind the long line started to shift. Zi Ying refused to move because "once a guy comes up with a plan, he sticks to the plan".

Firstly, Zi Ying isn't a guy. And the whole plan is to get food. Fast.

The food was great. And somehow, I just started talking nonsense from lunch onwards. Abhilaash thought I was weird, since I was trying to debate the "fact" that aliens breath nitrogen gas.

When we were waiting ouside the auditorium after lunch (for the competition balloting, which we didn't join), I was nearly screaming : Aliens have invaded our brains. Therefore, our brains absorb nitrogen. Daniel and Shu Wen were taking pictures of me screaming so that they can send my picture to the world's leading scientists for further studies to be carried out. Not quite the smartest thing to do after all.

"Brains don't absorb nitrogen! Listen to us! Who's the real alien here?!?........Oh yeah, you are."
-Daniel Ong-

Very amusing.

DJ is against Sri Aman.

That pretty much wraps up my whole week.

I'm looking forward to more workshops in colleges. The food is great. (Minus the distractions).

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April Fools

As the title suggests, there have been many April fools (for all I know, they could be whole-year fools) I've met for this week. When I mean fools, I really really mean it.

For the first half of the week, I've prolonged my life for a few years by laughing so hard my voice couldn't come out. All thanks to Yean Yi and our tangled mess out of the violin performance. Yean Yi was making funny noises in her attempt to imitate Pn Norita, the teacher in charge of the whole MAC (Majlis Anugerah Cemerlang), in a squeaky voice. In English, MAC basically means the nerds go to the stage to take prizes while Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812 plays on in the background. Yes, it is very grand indeed, minus the Overture. Instead, expect monotonous lullabies from the school's principal along with her 45-minute speech. Her speeches are so empty, slow and irrelevant that even the smart people fall asleep. I've got living proof, by the way.

Right, so we're playing for a rather grand event here. Apparently, we find ourselves preparing to look like total dimwits onstage, and I plan to wear a clown's suit along to match that. Our timing was really out during our practices (except when I stamp my foot to the beats, out of frustration or mere patience, I don't really know myself). Clown's shoes would do a good job either way.

I was supposed to do my aural on the same day as violin practice. I inititally decided to kill 2 birds with one stone (or one violin, in this case). Unfortunately, due to several changes in circumstances, I ended up not being able to complete my aural.

That was pretty much Monday for you, thank you very much.

Tuesday was quite an annoying day. This day so happens to be the day when Sha Lynn turns a year older. Almost all the teachers teaching my class didn't turn up and the only serious lesson we had was English lesson. Pity Sha Lynn, who had to do a lot of donkey work albeit the day being her special day. The class really got mean when no one volunteered to "bersajak". It's reading a malay poem with a tuneful voice. So, Sha Lynn ended up really irritated and started screaming at the class.

During yet another free period, when Sha Lynn and Angeline were sleeping, the principal's right-hand lady, Pn Ruth, appeared at our door and called both of them out for a lecture on what they've done. Cassandra miraculously escaped eventhough she was sleeping right under Pn Ruth's nose, while Sha and Angeline who were strategically located in the middle of the class, had to get all the scolding.

During art period, whereby our teacher didn't turn up, the prefects intruded. They came in with shotguns along with picnic baskets and started yelling at us to freeze and make our way out of the classroom while they conduct a search for the class treasury. Having failed to detect the obvious 'X' mark on my table (not to mention other profitable devices from other students such as handphones), they left, clearly disappointed. They expected more from the wrong class. Sigh.

Wednesay. April the 1st.
What does this remind you of?
All those stupid things you do.

The evil side of me has remained dormant ever since I was 10 and I have this urgent need to start being mean to people. My last victim was my mother, who successfully fell into my trap when I told her there was a lizard in the house which needed to be exterminated. After 5 years of dormancy, I have decided.....to awaken! (I sound almost like Frankenstein).

Before my evil side had the chance to show itself, my house has already played 3 jokes on the family to usher in the new day. One clock was 1 hour slow. The plumbers who fixed our piping barely a few days ago killed our torchlight. And the 3rd......

I was busy nerdifying myself when the electricity failed.

Mind you, the torchlight was spoilt.

"SCREW YOU, TNB!!!! WHAT KIND OF APRIL FOOL'S JOKE IS THIS????"
TNB is Tenaga Nasional Berhad, the company in charge of the nation's power plants.

Luckily, I was listening to my iPod. So in the end, it was "Don't worry. I've got my iPod with me. iPod to the rescue!!!"

The house blacked out for another 2 more times after that (thanks to our computer and all the problematic USB ports, not TNB). It was just minutes to midnight. Minutes to April Fool's day.

Then, at 12.15 midnight, I started strategizing my "master plan". I informed my parents about my "joke" in case they wake up and run over to beat the "unidentified noise-maker". My mother was staying awake to see what happens and was kind enough to suggest where to stand to make the best out of my plans.

When I told her I was going to laugh like my Daffy-laugh, she said that the neighbours would think it was her instead of me that was making the sound, since all the neighbours see was her. They never see me because I have evolved into an invisible creature, only appearing in front of certain people. So, according to my mum, my neighbours would think: "What happened to this crazy lady? Now she's really going nuts. Eh, when did she start getting into her laughing fit......?"

The strategic place to scare people with my laughing had to be done, of all places, in my toilet. Thankfully, it was accessible to all the houses behind mine. I took a deep breath and......

"Hoo-hoo-haa-haa.........." (lasting about 10 minutes or so).

"What was that sound?" was all I heard from someone far away. Muffled.

Thinking no one else heard me, I went down again.


"Mummy, did you hear me?"
"Of course. You were very clear."
"Really?"
"Yes. You sounded like a bird, so no one would be afraid of you."

Darn.

In school, my form teacher thought it was an April Fool's joke when I turned up at the top of the class behind Melissa. She just couldn't believe it. I don't blame her. No one believes my marks anyway. Maybe I cheated during exam and managed to bribe all the teachers to shut their mouths up. No one knows for sure. (Hahahahaha).

I mean, I take the shortcuts out of things, I don't look as if I study, nor do I look like the type who really cares about memorizing stupid, arbitrary things. Such trivial matters can be laid to rest in my head, which leaves many teachers puzzling over how I managed to jump over all the other students who somehow just seem more harworking than I am. Furthermore, I've been spending a whole block of hours at the piano (screw you, piano....). [At least I made up for that crystal star]. All I do in class is provide the nonsense and laughing material. Yes, I talk a lot. My mother's explanation to every teacher who says I wasn't like that in Form One: "Oh, she wasn't used to her braces yet."

Splendid answer. It's true. I talked a lot ever since I was 6.

Anyway......

......My mean prank after all that was to glue the BPP book (to prevent truancy). My History teacher was supposed to sign the book, but being as quick as lightning, I managed to glue the pages together so that she wouldn't be able to sign it. [Credits for providing the glue goes to Zi Ying]. And Pn Noor had a hard time trying to tear open the pages. Wow. How mean of me. *Diabolical laughter* (although all I can produce is a daffy-laugh).

Unfortunately, Shafiq outdid my prank by tying all of Pn Noor's stuff together on her pencil box's ring when she wasn't looking. So, when she lifted up her pencil box, everything flew up with it. I did the same thing to Sha Lynn's pencil box and her bottle when she was busy playing Bingo. Apart from that, I also [proudly] tied Yi Cai's bag in a knot when he wasn't looking.

There was a Nostalgia meeting after school and the whole editorial board was supposed to be there. Apparently, the Datin rendered the rest of us useless as she was just talking about the Photography and Production department. What a terrible April Fool's joke that wasted my whole afternoon. The English department was redundant during the meeting. Asjndkfjbskjfb.

During Maths tuition, Shafiq was acting really blur. Melissa and I thought he was pranking Mrs Tan for the fun of it, and kept laughing like nuts (well, actually I was the nut). We found out the next day that he really meant what he was asking and that it wasn't a prank.

Thursday was quite dull. Shafiq brightened it a little by trying to get either Melissa or me to lend him our maths books. Oh, of course I agreed. As long as I get *cough* paid.

During the violin practice, Timothy made fun of the afternoon session folks when a prefect couldn't chase 2 students out of the hall. Tim suddenly stopped playing the piano, walked up to the pesky 2 people, and pointed at the door. Worst of all, he was wearing his backbone brace (scoliosis) and he was grinning the whole time, which made him look like he was about to kill them. Of course they ran out without hesitation.

On Friday, I made a new Form 1 friend, some guy named Darien Liew from 1 Cengal. The prefect who was trying to chase the 2 students on the previous day finally had the guts to talk to us while we were practicing (Oh, the nerve! Kidding....). According to what he claims, he started swearing since 4. That's......amazing. Wow. Congratulations on your feat!

Debate workshop on Saturday.

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The Missing Month

Left a gigantic hole in my heart.

It was this very month that the year's final exams were held, when I learnt more than my head could cope with, and saw the bigger picture in life.

Early in October (1st October), there was this 7-year boy who went on a killing spree in a zoo somewhere in Australia (was it?). Then, we celebrated my mother's birthday on the 3rd October.

After that, I learnt many things about Egypt's lost pyramid and the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

Egypt's Lost Pyramid
There was this funny site on a hilltop that was covered in ruins. Egyptologists found out that once upon a time, on this very site, a great pyramid stood tall, a well 60 feet higher than the Pyramid of Giza we marvel at today. Rumours went about that the 3rd king of the 4th dynasty was a cruel king and therefore, people have tried to smear his name and torture his soul by breaking his statues. Back then, the statues were to be the body of those who passed on to the next world. By breaking them, you condemn their spirits and put them in unrest. The king, Djedefre, was thought to have killed his older brother and have since been shunned by his family. Just recently, Egyptologists found out that ALL the rumours were untrue. Djedefre was actually a good son. He made a ship (Egyptians thought them as holy) to his father, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Even the sphinx was dedicated to his father. It used the face of his father. Once thought to be torn down by the unsatisfied citizens of Egypt, the GreatER pyramid of Giza was actually torn down by the Romans, who, being from a different place in the world, saw the pyramid as a mass of junk. Blame Octavian (or is it Octavius?) and Julius Caesar for this. We could have very well had something better to admire today....

China

Qin Shi Huang Ti wasn't the one who created the Forbidden City. It was in fact, also a paranoid Zhu Di, who used the name King Yongle. He was so frightened about prophecies that should say that he wasn't the rightful king or something like that. He extended the Great Wall of China by 1400km. He also wanted a great city specially for good fengshui and instructed a eunich, Ruan An, to carry out this task. The whole thing was to "establish himself as the rightful king". King Yongle himself was quite fussy about the design for the Forbidden City. He wanted something unique. Then one day, he couldn't take the wait anymore and gave Ruan An one more day to get a design which he liked, otherwise it's off with the head. Ruan An actually gave up the designs and spent his whole night designing a new cage for his pet cicada instead. The next day, the king saw him in his room and pretty ironically, liked the design for the cicada's cage. And so, Ruan An lived and the city is what we see as today.

Then there was the Chinese armada Dragons of the Sea. This was ALSO under king Yongle in an effort to broaden China's knowledge.

Monday 6th Oct
The funniest day and probably the last day I would ever enjoy myself in the science lab. Firstly, GheeK flipped a pencil on top of Ishwin's head. By chance or with accurate calculations, it was an amazing thing to see. Apart from that, everyone in the first table cracked and started to pretend to be each other. Everyone who played Emily was "Oh, I'm so emo...", those playing GheeK was "Scrabble, scrabble, scribble scrabble!", those playing me had some trouble with my Daffy-laughing, and those playing Cas was "No....hungry...I. NEED. FOOOOOOOODDD!!!". Then this time, things got too out of hand and almost half the class was standing up. The first table, albeit being the noisiest (we think), only had the ghost standing up. You got that right. The teacher doesn't pick on us nerds. I initially got called up to stand when I tried to teach the table how to laugh like me. Unfortunately, I got called to stand. But I WAS eager to study.....so I sat down and no one noticed. Haha.

Tuesday 7th Oct
There was this form one guy who came to school with gravity-defying pants. They were so low that none of us could find an explanation as to why his pants don't fall off. As he came in, all 4 prefects standing at the gate bombarded him to pull up his pants. Before anyone finished their sentence, the boy did an extraordinary thing. He has developed a special reflex to retaliate any prefect order to readjust his pants. Before we knew it, he pulled his pants chest high. Yes, you read right. You can't find this special breed of humans anywhere else in the country.

During class, Sha Lynn and I came up with this hypothesis that Encik Rosdi, our BM teacher, doesn't notice our behaviour, especially when he's engrossed in the school magazine. The only way to test the hypothesis was to try it out. Sha Lynn started waving frantically in his direction. Just as we had suspected, there was no reaction whatsoever. So, I said "Hi" in his direction. And it was still safe!! Ishwin tried next and waved the highest, thanks to her long hands. Nothing happened. Thus, our hypothesis has been proven acceptable.

Thurs 9th Oct
DJ was invaded by bees!! I gigantic beehive was discovered in the Canteen Garden. Bees were flying everywhere. When I reached school, I was surprised to see the firemen there. There just locked the front gate and I was asked to enter through the small Gate C. I couldn't make out what the problem was at that time (sad...). Xie Wen and I didn't know and walked straight to the Garden. Then the firemen laughed at us. Okay...After that, I followed Xie Wen to take care of Gate C. I almost tricked Delon and Justin Ooi into using the canteen way....but Xie Wen was too honest. Many funny people walked through the gate, especially some of the morning session students who were cursing at the prospect of having to use the small crummy gate. There were some students who still used the dangerous front gate since it was half-opened that time. The firemen and Uncle Bala were quite mad at that. There was this boy who yelled loudly, "I can't believe I came all the way here JUST to find out that EVERYONE is still using the front gate!!!!!". Yea...odd. Then Rui Sheng passed by and was laughing like mad at something....pre-exam stress, I guess.

In class (or more like the science lab), a bee made it's way from the canteen to Cassandra's shirt. Our table freaked out and the bee continued buzzing on to Jhia Yim's fringe. It soon buzzed off though.

Tuesday 21 Oct
The prefect interview was today. I was in the last group with Kean Lynn and Syn Yee. And gosh, we all thought Daniel was supposed to be the last one to finish the interview. But no....3 of us were...and while we were waiting, the form 4 debating team came into the waiting room. It was actually their practice room. Keefe said Kean Lynn and I looked alike....and after that, everyone broke into singing a cake song. Entertaining. DJ debators....they're like that?

Wednesday 22 Oct
I actually dreamt that exam would start on this day and that I flunked everything because I forgot.....

Thursday 23 Oct
The first time in the whole form 2 year when I did not enjoy myself in the science lab or engage myself in nutty conversations. I was sending out negative vibes almost the whole day and people thought I was sick. What happened, you ask? Go and ask New South Wales. I flunked the English paper to get a Distinction. Wow, that's pretty good, isn't it? No, it's not. Ghee Ken had 4 mistakes and was top ONE PER CENT in the country. How about Gary Yeo? 8 mistakes. ME? 10 freaking mistakes!!!!! What was your standing in the country? Top 5%. But that's still good, isn't it....seeing how some from Balau even got a certificate for participating only? No, that's not good. I could have got less mistakes if it weren't for my terrible understanding of symbols. I couldn't understand why "summer night" was chosen for the setting.

Saturday 25 Oct
I can't believe it!!! Ker Jen Ho goes to the same piano teacher as I do!!! And he's going for the coming Chopin competition. Scrabble AND piano....

Wednesday29 Oct
KH. It was okay and no mistakes found so far. SO FAR. Seems that there were too many ambiguous questions to be sure of. Maths was alright, although I suffered from calculator madness. I just couldn't trust the calculator. There was even this question when I counted over 20 times just to make sure the calculator wasn't out of whack. Geography was nuts. We were told to focus on the Canada map but all teachers are liars. Only one question came out for it....and you know what? It was just asking us about the name of the Trans-Canada road. Smart. The common sense questions were crazy because they were ALL ambiguous.

Thurs 30th Oct
Moral, the most unbearable and stupidest subject that all sad souls who do not worship the same lord as our Education Minister have to study. The worthless subject which requires all your brainpower to be drained just by memorizing so-called "categorized moral values" does not even help students to apply moral into their daily lives, what more improve morality??? There are 36 Moral values to be hammered into your head along with definitions solely created to kill students. Worst of all, each definition of the moral value has to be memorized word for word, leaving behind no grammatical errors nor even allowing word synonyms to be used. This is how faulty our education system is.

No doubt I only memorized the values and left out the definitions. After all, the questions leaked and the rumour was that only one question on definition was coming out. So I didn't bother to study 24 definitions just to prepare myself for one teeny question. Instead, I came to school early to get clues on the One Question and my search boiled down to 2 possibilities. Good enough. So I memorized the 2 definitions and VOILA!! ONE of them DID come out!! Hallelujah! If that wasn't crazy enough, I actually started out my exam by writing all the values on my paper so that I could refer to them as I did the exam. That was 10 minutes wasted from my exam time, but the trouble saved me and helped me think straight!!

Melindungi Hak Pengguna
= Membela dan memelihara hak individu supaya menjadi pengguna yang bijak, mendapat perkhidmatan serta barangan yang berkualiti dan tidak mudah dieksploitasi.

Yup. THAT long.

I can't believe who was dumb enough to categorize all moral values when some of them could even be considered as one similar value or even INVENT definitions for them.

I had 2 mistakes so far, thanks to the stupid values with close meanings.

BM paper 2 was ......rather terrible. The summary was quite irritating as the points were hard to spot. I also just realised after the exam that I forgot to write which question I chose in Question C.

Friday 31 Oct
The first thing I thought today was BASKIN ROBBINS!!! English paper 2 went well, though I think I could've ended better.

Original excerpt
Should have been written
".....Let's nip the problem in the bud, or very literally, nip the problem in the butt...."

I was also tempted to give my title "The Garfield Disease". But then that would be an insult to my favourite cartoon comic strip. Everyone stuck to the same old "The Causes of Obesity Yadayadayada....". It was supposed to be an article for the school magazine anyway....Science was out of whack. I forgot to apply the principle of moments....and I wrote "wax" instead of "plasticine". Crap.

Monday 3 Nov
Maths went smoothly.

The guy with the great reflex Han Nian is back again with more funny issues. He didn't wear socks to school and kept changing his mind as to which gate he should enter from. He chose to avoid us prefects, the ones that irritated his sad soul. Unfortunately, we were too mean and kept "stalking" his moves. I mean, really, who avoids prefects??? In the end, he gave in to us. When Rodney checked his socks, he wasn't wearing any. Gosh. Such people. Close to extinction.

Then there was this whole thingy about science paper 2 whereby some people complained about the credibility of pH 8 being purple in colour as the teacher says so. Well, after looking up in the Internet, pH 8 is GREEN. Okay, so green is the actual colour for pH 8. And that means blue and purple is out. So is light purple, my dear brain. So, is this all for the sake of education or exam marks? I stand for education. So here is the table. From the Internet, mind you. And yes, it's UNIVERSAL INDICATORS. Mind you it questions the credibility of the information given to us. Everything is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

1= red
2= orange-red
3= orange
4= pale orange
5= orange-yellow
6= pale yellow
7= green-yellow
8= green
9= dark green
10= light blue
11= blue / mauve
12= blue / mauve
13= blue / mauve
14= blue / mauve

Yes, I'm a nerd. If you don't believe what you see, click HERE. I hope that you know you were looking for UNIVERSAL INDICATOR. This puts the teachers in an awkward position. Now, no student can argue. We all get wrong!! YAY. The government got it wrong too. So, we're all learning the wrong universal indicators. When we grow up, they'll be communication problems.

Tues 4 Nov
Exam stress starting to sink in, especially one day away from History exam. Point proven when a sea of true blue prefects swarmed all over 2 gates to make sure nobody goes out of school to see some dumb handphone promotion thingy. Then it started raining and all the prefects got stranded in the rain. A few funny souls like Shu Wen and Rodney voluntarily stranded themselves together with another 5 prefects under the guard house......and they started posing there. Wow. Then, Rodney started "cleaning" the pavement by using his shoes to push the water into the drain. Shu Wen and I followed suit.

I got 99 for Maths. The one mark....FLUNKED!!!!!! Looks like I misundertsood an objective question. Crap. CRAP!!!

BM was alright....until I figured I had 2 mistakes. Crap. 2 and counting. Physical Education: Just finish the damn paper. Not bad since everything was learnt via the newspaper and fervently studying science. Science Paper 1......it was alright....until...there was no such thing as carbon dioxide in liquid form in our year apart from Air Pressure chapter. Nuts.

Wednesday 5th November 2008
An epoch-making moment in the world. The day that changes the world. Obama is the NEWLY ELECTED AMERICAN PRESIDENT!!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was listening to John McCain's speech....then I had to go to school....ladflasjdfhasjf. History was terrible and made my brain all mushy. This made matters worse since I couldn't concentrate during English.

Timothy, Zhong-Yuen, Hui Yi and I were discussing History answers during recess. Hui Yi left after working out that she had roughly 5 mistakes. The rest of us continued killing our minds. I joked with Zhong-Yuen that if he got higher marks than me, I'll trade marks with him. They thought I was cracked. Sooner or later, due to reasons unknown, Zhong-Yuen and Tim had some violent spasm, which scared Cas as Zhong pushed Tim in her direction, hitting her.

Thurs 5 Nov
Art...was really really crazy. Out of 30 questions, 19 were unsure of. Nothing from quesiton 11 onwards were from our books. Terrible. Everyone was really turning nuts thanks to this. For Section B, I got creeped out by the guy we were supposed to colour. So, I coloured his background greyish-black and made him seem to have the devil's horns and tails. Very amusing....I even DARED to do this during an exam.....Wow. Hey, but at least I think it's nice. I think....

After Art, prefects all went to a meeting. The final outcome to whether we would pass our prefect interview was nearing. We all sat in the meeting room. Praying. Everyone got their certificates. Tension rising. Suddenly, Overture 1812 started playing in my head. I just couldn't help it. Then, they finally announced that only 17 prefects out of 28 who went for the interview got through. Big number? Wrong. There are 13 AJKs. 2 AJKs didn't get through. One AJK resigned. The 17 names were read out and they left the room. Pn Mary-Anne, the school counsellor had a talk with the other 11 who didn't make it. It was so touching that some even cried.

So, come on, tell me. Are you wondering whether I got through the interview? You are? Well, aren't all of us? Let's put it this way: Learning piano and playing scrabble isn't projecting enough leadership qualities.

The verdict: You all have not been chosen because you do not show enough leadership qualities.

Yea. Just say that the ancient scrabble case is still against me. If you don't know, there was this once when I missed an official assembly while practising scrabble. Apart from that, I missed roughly 2-3 prefect meetings due to attending my piano class. So, as Cas said, the message sent across is : Representing the school for scrabble is bad. Playing piano and missing a few meetings where the teachers only condemn the bad prefect's behaviours is also bad. Looks like the 2 things I aspire to be good in has come back to haunt me.

Maybe it's a blessing in diguise in preparation for next year. Maybe it's saving me my time. But it doesn't matter. I consulted them after the meeting to "pinpoint my weaknesses in carrying out my duties". The shocking thing? They showed me the paper with "complaints" and I saw just those 2 haunting reasons. No "Bad hair style", no "Statue of Liberty" label (it means just standing somewhere and not telling the students to abide by the rules), no "Eating in class", no disciplinary action taken except the Scrabble Case.

Just those 2. So THAT's leadership, huh?

I mean, some of those who were chosen had attitude problems, eat in class and there was even one who rarely told students off. But just because she was such a great apple polisher, or should I say, suck up person, that she managed to impress many teachers by appearing diligent. But when it came to prefectorial duties, did she tell the students off? No. But she got through. Leadership qualities? Missing in the eye of the students.

It really is a shock that such things should occur. My days as a prefect is numbered.

Luckily, Pn Choong said I could get in next year when they open up again. Thanks to my clean record apart from Scrabble Case, she says she can recommend me (Then why not in the first place?). I'm definitely reapplying. Such horrible reasons. Ah well, there's time to polish up on several things only a normal student can do.

When you feel the world needs changing, change yourself first.

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