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Friday, November 12, 2010

Music Of The Night

Composition of this essay has been complicated. 898 words in 30 minutes. Please don't ask how this is possible, I was placed in a stressful situation. =) [47/50 marks]

The other essay for my English paper is even more mind-boggling. That 10-minute-worth essay was worth 32/35 marks. Not bad, for 2 full pages of 10-minute rush. =D

It looks as if the world was about to come to a complete standstill. Nobody knows that at this very moment, we are hurtling through space at an amazing speed. Hard to believe, since the stars don't look like they are moving. The Hunter hovers just over the horizon yonder, ready to shoot aimlessly at the vast number of bright gems studded on the black sheet of infinite depth. The moon was full tonight, instead of hiding elusively as it was wont to do. This is my favourite time of the day, the time when the Earth revolves quietly and cradles its people to sleep. This is the time where fantastical creatures of myth and magic in the sky look down upon us and say their greetings, though not often do we answer their calls.

Unlike most self-professed "nocturnal creatures", I do not stay indoors during such calming times. No, I am not a blood-sucking vampire who kills people in their dreams, neither am I a scientist who can tell you everything that exists in the sky. I am but a humble Earthling, who finds awe and inspiration in the sybilline structures of the universe, of which I can only be a part of by gazing into the sky. I see the stars coming out to play when civilization least cares about them. Most people choose to watch television, surf the internet or amuse themselves with mindless games, but I - I choose to see the subtle movements in the heavens, count the uncountable number of distant suns that paint our night sky. When I look at Orion, I don't see a lifeless constellation of a man with his signature belt that could put designer belts to shame, I see a man made of fiery flowers of hydrogen lost in a faraway world, scintillating ornately with piercing red Betelgeuse and young, blue Rigel (both are names of stars). By submitting myself to the wonders of the sky at night, I am able to travel to a place between fact and fiction, which really is a sanctuary for restive thoughts.

Inspiration is the other key as to why I enjoy the silent lure of the night. Of course, to appreciate the real wonders at night, one might need to bring along some tools. These are mainly the camera, a notepad, and same empty music sheets. When I'm out there under the mercy of the lords of the sky, I am not deafened by a silence which might haunt many. Instead, I am washed with the eternal music of the universe. Ideas pop out of thin air and before I know it, I would have experienced several 'eureka' moments out there alone. What better way to capture these thoughts before they are gone forever? Some of these ideas or thoughts would probably never have the chance to surface in my head in the hectic humdrum of life during the daytime, which is why I am very thankful to the peace and quiet the night offers.

Apart from that, I am able to indulge myself in an uninterrupted stream of thoughts. When it is raining and I can't go out, I lock myself up in my room and think. I think of the happy moments in my life and reminisce about those times I screwed up. It is via this contemplative session I provide myself that I am able to find out where I have gone wrong at certain critical times in life. It is during this time that I can finally take a step back from my consciousness and analyze situations without taking emotions into consideration. From this exercise, appreciating life as it is has become easier, and I feel that I don't flare up too easily. Almost all of my life-changing decisions were made during this time of the day, most of which I have yet to regret.

Undeniably, the most important reason why I like nights are because I can finish up undone schoolwork (heh!). Normally, I become more lucid at night, and am more able to soak up information and become more productive. People say it is good to study hard, but I prefer to study smart at night. One can almost say that I do not put in a 100% effort on this matter, because as I have pointed out earlier, I like to "nightdream". Then again, what else can I do? It is important that I grab the chance to do some real work when I am at my most attentive, as taking in ideas without putting them through much grinding is useless (to me, at least). This is when my creativity is at its peak.

Night. It is that time of the day when heaven comes a-knocking. It is the only time in the day when the Gods lend their creative spark to me. The darkness, the mystery, the ghastly shadows cast by the moon; these are exactly the things that arouse my conscience and hold the secrets to unlock my sometimes quixotic world. Not many will understand the deep affinity I reserve for the night, but nevertheless, it doesn't deter me from answering the call of the full moon. Night is when dreams awaken, and at times when I really lose it, I would dream of aliens visiting, and they would take me to a place no one has ever dreamed of before.

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Thursday, November 4, 2010

Thief Of Time

Time is accelerating...


I am a recidivist. A resipiscent one, maybe, but nevertheless, a recidivist. I am not one who pilfers the chattels of another. Neither am I one to conform to pernicious activities capable of eroding my sanity. No, I commit another form of crime. I steal the one thing belongs to everyone, calling it my own and throwing it into the recesses of my past. I am responsible for stashing away what has been presented to me by spacetime, thinking that its full potential has been unleashed in the present moment. I am undetectable, conducting my operations when one least expects me too. I am a thief of time.

It is a wonder that cops have yet to catch me and put me in jail, for I have, over the years, kidnapped most of the seconds that strut pass me. The minutes, the hours, the days - they march by slowly, hesitant of going my way. They crawl, they slide, they hide. Yet, I always manage to catch them. During my younger days, I'd stop them in their tracks by pouncing on them, jumping, shooting them with powerful water guns and even paralyze them with shrieks that could break any glass. As the years pass by, I start opening books to suck time in, proving this method nearly as effective as time-killing black holes itself.

To my utmost horror, Darwin's law of evolution also holds true for this thing we call time. It has now become the predator to my existence, moving with such velocity and vigour which could put any cheetah or race car to shame. I did not give in. I tried to capture the flying moments, translating events into words, creating meaning from an obfuscated flurry of a continuum of memories that form after each second. What I call "Now" quickly transforms itself into the previous frame of time. Everything I once deemed as "Future" is coming at me faster than the speed of light without the slightest pause.

Still, I tried to catch this monster.

I couldn't accept the truth soon enough. My stupidity remains unmatched to this moment. Time is now an untamed creature running amok, racing itself against light to reach a finish line that humans wish we couldn't see from where we are now. Time is pressing against me, punishing me for what I've done in my younger days. Time is not to be wasted, not to be caught; it is meant to be experienced to its fullest potential, allowing an individual to live life more than it ought to be. It can only be recorded as but a mere fragment of our fading moments and memories, most of which do not match up to the experience itself. Even then, penning down these precious times are wasting the present time itself, which could be used to save the world or something less exaggerating. Actions speak louder than words.

It is obvious that I have not been properly immortalizing events in my life this year, indicating either overproductivity or the other end of that spectrum. I have not been successfully capturing this elusive thing called time, instead, utilizing it in ways only a procrastinator could understand. Now, I would no longer remain a thief of time. I'm going to race it until I can race no more.

And hopefully, win.

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Monday, November 1, 2010

Freedom "emBRACEd"

After 45 months of integrating metal with the strong mountains of calcium carbonate in my buccal cavity, I am finally no longer a transhuman. Oh yes, I am freed from the monthly agony, freed from phantom aches in the mouth, freed from antagonistic clutches of braces!! I am pure; I am now human!! Of course, that means I can indulge in nuts now (although that might make me more nuts than I ought to be). Ah, who cares? =D Woohoo!

*Braces removed on Monday, 011110. Notice the awesome date.

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Friday, August 20, 2010

GK : Fascinating World History

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

WARNING : General understanding of history MUST be inculcated before treading on the following minefield of mistakes. I've given you my warning. Take heed, or you'll lose your entire life believing in historical nonsense. I've only identified certain obscure bloopers you might not have heard of. Other than that, there's a mistake in every sentence. Smart nuts, have fun laughing your heads off.

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Desert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns. . .Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a feminine moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in the Illiad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity (it's supposed to be The ODYSSEY), in which Penelope was the last hardship (she's supposed to be Ulysses's goal, not obstacle) that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands,. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold musterded his troops before the Battle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free men should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the times was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter, Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Guttenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumsised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo (ARMADA).

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies, and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed along with their capooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the war, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Marth Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. The Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clu Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1855, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. (A moving picture show is an animation, like cartoons. In order to kill Lincoln, this insane actor would have to jump out of the screen to do so, thus defying the very principles of science itself).

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish Gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

I didn't highlight everything that was wrong, because doing so would make the entire post colourful and reading would be made almost impossible. I'ts more rewarding if you've found out the mistakes yourself. If you don't even bother doing that, then I really don't hold myself responsible for any severe cases of misinformation.

See, guys, it's alright to screw up History. You're a contributing factor to the world of life-saving comedians. =)



LazyBones

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Sunday, August 15, 2010

We're On News!


They had to outwit their rivals in four rounds – an MCQ quiz, a hands-on challenge, an oral presentation and a buzzer quiz – before being crowned the ‘mightiest minds’ of their state. The RHB-The Star Mighty Minds upper and lower secondary champions can expect an intense battle at the national finals.

Participants from Malay College Kuala Kangsar showing the judges (from right) Oun Sui Leng, A. Alagesan and Loh Soon On their answer to the final question of the buzzer quiz, in which they were asked to match coloured balls to numbered tins based on clues given. Looking on is quizmaster S. Sivakumar (second from left).

Perak
THERE is always something new to be learnt from a stimulating competition such as the RHB-The Star Mighty Minds challenge. For example, the students in this state picked up the fact that China is the biggest rice producing country in the world, and that the most famous racquet sport is table tennis. In fact, those were the questions that got the students and quizmaster K. Sivashankar most boggled as almost none of the teams managed to get the anwers right!

Nevertheless, the team from Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) showed that cool heads give mighty leverage when they were crowned the champions in the upper secondary category. MCKK teacher, Les Suzina Jamil said the competition was a good exposure for her students as it is a platform for them to practise public speaking. “My students may be good in their studies but they are not as good in public speaking. The oral presentation challenge was a good test for them,” she said.

Lower secondary winners:
SMJK Sam Tet, SMK Anderson, SM Raja Dr Nazrin Shah

Upper secondary winners:
Malay College Kuala Kangsar, SMK St Michael, SMK Sam Tet

Sabah
St Francis Convent students Kirane Anne Tangau (right), Charlene Chee and Georgina (left) with their wheelchair model for their hands-on challenge. They traversed the hills and streams to come to battle it out at the state capital. Indeed, students from schools in remotes areas such as SMK Nabawan and SMK Pitas at the Pensianan district endured journeys as long as seven hours before they reached Kota Kinabalu to participate in the competition.

For others, it was a challenge of a different kind when a group of Form Four students, who just formed the team five days before the competition had to battle against their older contenders. Lady luck was smilling on them when Adam Abdul Rahman, Jerry Mclean Jonis and Rifhan Irdina Jupri from SM Sains Sabah came out as champions in the upper secondary category.    [Edit : I know we were pitted against 100+ teams instead of 60, but this news is a bit depressing =(  ]

“The idea was for this team to gain experience so we had no expectations of them winning,” said teacher Mohd Sham Sidek, adding that the school also sent its team of fifth formers who had been preparing for the competion for several months. Jerry attributed their win to the indispensable resources available on the Internet. “We surfed the Internet to read up on the the RHB-The Star Mighty Minds challenge events that have been held in other states so far this year,” he said. He said his team focused on the questions that were posed to the participants previously as a strategy to help them win.

Meanwhile, students from SM St Francis Convent emerged victorious in the lower secondary category. They exceeded the achievement of their predecessor team which took the second spot in the competition last year.
“Initially, we were hoping to get through the first and second rounds,” said Georgina Tai. “After making it to the top five, we then realised that we might have a shot for the top spot,” she added.

Lower secondary winners:
SM St Francis Convent, Maktab Rendah Sains Mara Kota Kinabalu, SM St Michael Penampang

Upper secondary winners:
SM Sains Sabah, SM La Salle, SMK Limbanak

Kedah
Lower secondary winners (from left) Tan Wei Wen, Yeo Mi Xia, Chew Khai Yi and upper secondary winners (from right) Ooi Ting Qian, Ng Yu Yang, Choy Wang Lynn, jumping with glee.

Lower secondary winners:
SMKJ Keat Hwa 1, SMK Agama Yan, SMK Sultan Badlishah

Upper secondary winners:
SMJK Keat Hwa, SM Sains Sultan Mohd Jiwa, SMJK Sin Min

Penang
Lower secondary winners:
Penang Chinese Girls High School, Chung Ling High School, Chung Ling High School

Upper secondary winners:
Penang Free School, SMK Tinggi Bikit Mertajam, Chung Ling Butterworth

Selangor
IF THEIR counterparts in the 13 other states had it tough, Selangor contenders of the RHB-The Star Mighty Minds challenge had it doubly hard. The reason: entry was open to 120 teams per category in Selangor instead of the 60 teams in the other states. Which meant that there were two big groups of students who sat with nail-biting tension as they witnessed the first batch get slaughtered in the MCQ quiz. It was the survival of the fittest, and students who could think quick and act fast qualified for the subsequent three rounds of the competition. Students who were well read breezed through the MCQ quiz as some questions on general knowledge, such as the number of Harry Potter books which have been released as films certainly did not faze them.

“I read up on general knowledge and browsed through a few IQ books to prepare for the competition,” said Yeow Liiyung, 16, from SMK Damansara Jaya.

Oh really? Heh.  XP

However, some of the teams fumbled when the judges upped the ante during the buzzer quiz challenge. There were a few aspiring doctors among the finalists in the lower secondary cagetory, but alas, none of them knew that doctors have to take the Hippocratic oath before they begin medical practice.

This question stumped the finalists during the final buzzer quiz: Sammy comes from a poor family. He works as a mahout to make ends meet. What does Sammy do? When the buzzers stayed silent, the quizmaster offered the following clue: You can find mahouts in Thailand and Sri Lanka. A participant’s answer of “male gigolo” [edit : this was Yew Leung's answer]  had the audience in stitches!
It was not all about the battle of wits either when the students had a practical task during the hands-on challenge. The lower secondary students constructed a waterfall using rainwater as a water source while those from the upper secondary built an electromagnetic bird cage.

Lower secondary winners:
SMK Taman SEA, SMK Seksyen 3 Bandar Kinrara, SMK Seksyen 1 Bandar Kinrara

Upper secondary winners (the awesome survivors =D) :
SMK Taman Melawati, SMK Damansara Jaya (T2), SMK Damansara Jaya (T1) 

All champion teams from both categories won RM3,000 and a desktop computer for their school. Prizes for the first and second runners-up were RM2,000 and a digital camera (school prize) and RM1,000 and a colour printer (school prize) respectively while the third and fourth runners-up won RM500 and RM300 respectively. The nationwide competition, where teams of three compete in two categories — lower and upper secondary — is jointly organised by Star Publications and RHB Banking Group. The food and beverage sponsor is McDonald’s Malaysia. All 14 state champions from both categories will now come together at Berjaya Times Square on Oct 16 and 17 for the national finals to battle for the grand prize of RM6,000 and the right to be called the country’s “mightiest minds”.

Catch the students in action by tuning in to ntv7 at 7.30pm on Wednesdays.

LazyBones

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