Found this photo on my mum's phone. It's me on the scout structure thing I posted about a few months back. The quality's not too good, sorry.
Photo
The RI boy who hawked pancakes
Read this in the paper today… First reaction: Whoa.
It was about this boy who grew up hawking pancakes, because he was really poor. Then he secured a place at RI, which at that time would have probably been very expensive. His dad wasn’t too happy when he heard about this… Still, he went to RI. His home was kind of far away from school, and he had to take a bus every morning, which meant more expenses for his family. So he had to go home after school and sell the pancakes again. But after completing his education at RI, he was unable to afford to go to university. But today, both his daughters have Masters’ degrees. He is happily retired today. The writer met him recently at an inter-school basketball game and he asked the writer if he still remembered him. You see, he was in fact, the person who inspired the writer to go to RI. Basically, what the writer is trying to say is that today, we are much more privileged than people were back then. Now, we have a lot of children on scholarships. The Public Service Commission gave out 82 scholarships and The Defence Science & Technology Agency gave out more than 100 scholarships.
For those of you guys who want to read it, the article’s title is “The RI boy who hawked pancakes”, the writer is Koo Tsai Kee, and it’s on page A28 of The Straits Times.
2K Quarantine!
Today, SEVENTEEN people were absent from 2K! That's like about 12-13 people present! So, because of the H1N1 flu scare and all, RI got damn scared, then quarantined them. Dunno what happened exactly, they either got sent home or were sent to the Raja block. So should be for about a week.
UPDATE: If I'm not wrong, 2I is now quarantined as well.
If Today Was Your Last Day
I got this song from Aru, thot lyrics really meant a lot.
If Today Was Your Last Day
by Nickelback
My best friend gave me the best advice
He said each day's a gift and not a given right
Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind
And try to take the path less traveled by
That first step you take is the longest stride
If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last
Leave old pictures in the past?
Donate every dime you had, if today was your last day?
What if, what if, if today was your last day?
Against the grain should be a way of life
What's worth the price is always worth the fight
Every second counts 'cause there's no second try
So live like you're never living twice
Don't take the free ride in your own life
If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past?
Donate every dime you had?
And would you call those friends you never see?
Reminisce old memories?
Would you forgive your enemies?
And would you find that one you're dreaming of?
Swear up and down to God above
That you'd finally fall in love if today was your last day?
If today was your last day
Would you make your mark by mending a broken heart?
You know it's never too late to shoot for the stars
Regardless of who you are
So do whatever it takes
'Cause you can't rewind a moment in this life
Let nothing stand in your way
'Cause the hands of time are never on your side
If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past?
Donate every dime you had?
And would you call those friends you never see?
Reminisce old memories?
Would you forgive your enemies?
And would you find that one you're dreaming of
Swear up and down to God above
That you'd finally fall in love if today was your last day?
Silence
I wrote a continuation to Pain, don't think it's as good, feel free to give me suggestions on how to make it better.
Silence
Silence.
Nothingness.
I feel Nothing.
I only remember a great Pain -
It stopped as abruptly as It had come.
What is this?
Death?
No, that cannot be.
I am still conscious.
I feel Something -
Hate.
I feel Hate.
Hate for this Silence,
this Nothingness.
No, I do not Hate It -
I Love It.
Love -
for this Silence,
for this Nothingness,
for this Peace.
It is what I have always wanted.
P.S. No again, I am not turning emo.
Poem!
Last night, my back was aching a lot (fever), so I tried putting on some muscle relaxant thingy, but all it did was BURN. So while I was writhing in agony (no lah, it didn't hurt that much, it subsided after a few minutes), I thought, "What is pain, exactly?" People with bullet wounds, those who are going to die due to some severe disease, they feel nothing but pain. What are those last moments like to them? Hence this poem. No, ma, I am not turning emo.
Pain
Pain.
That's all I feel
Every pore in my body -
on fire.
Hell.
A inferno withing me.
I cannot move -
I am helpless.
I can only wait for it to consume me.
Make it go away -
somebody help me!
There is NOTHING I can do!
Everything is
out of reach,
out of control,
out of comprehension.
All I can see, feel and hear -
is Pain.
A volcano.
No, a thousand volcanoes.
That's what it is.
Tens of thousands of raging volcanoes -
all here in my chest.
I am done for.
I do not remember anything -
All I know, is Pain!
Make it go away,
please.
I'll do anything -
just make it go away.
Wadya think? I was really bored, this isn't the kind of stuff I'd usually write, but it was 2.30 in the morning, I couldn't go to sleep, so I started doing random stuff - writing, listnening to music, reading, blah blah blah.
SZ reunion!
So after about 1 year, SZ is finally together again! We went to NSRCC in Changi, then went to the arcade *koffkoffgamblingkoffkoff* and played and played and played (lol I used 20 bucks so everyone had to wiat for me...). Then we went cycling and the stupid stand on my bike kept falling down, and in the ned I got so fed up I just gave up on it. Then we sat down for a long time, watching TV, playing Rubbish, etc etc. Then DC! I have got to do some more exercise... Can't even sprint without getting stitches... And then we had dinner, parents came, talked and talked and talked and talked, then went home.
P.S. Sorry so short I'm seriously in a hurry now.
Is it me, or is Twitter just dumb?
I mean, who cares what you’re doing? And the worst part is, there are people who are actually OBSESSED with tweeting. Here’s what a typical OBSESSED Tweeter’s Twitter page looks like:
| 7:04 am | Getting up |
| 7:10 am | Brushing teeth |
| 7:16 am | Making coffee |
| 7:20 am | Eating cereal |
| 7:32 am | Showering |
| 7:46 am | Getting dressed |
| 8:08 am | Driving to work |
| 8:23 am | Entering office |
| 8:38 am | Starting work |
| 9:06 am |
Wow. The guy has a waterproof laptop. Anyway, back to what I was saying. So, who really cares what you’re doing every millisecond of the day? It’s bad enough to login to Facebook and having to read through every status update, random quiz result and note of your friends. So guys, don’t join Twitter just because every person in your social circle is doing it. It’s just going to be a major waste of your time…
But I like Twitter, even though it’s dumb. Hehehe…
Special Boy With Freakishly Large Brain Wins Spelling Bee
Here’s a “funny” video about a gifted kid who won a spelling bee. I didn’t find it funny.
Comments greatly appreciated.
GoOgLe WaVe!
Yay! Google Wave is going to come out this year! What is it? Well, Google Wave is something like Facebook, except a LOT better. Ok, not really like Facebook. It's kind of like a mix of Facebook and Windows Live Messenger. Basically, it's social networking where you can be chatting with a person, and at the same time drag another person into the convo, share pictures. And best of all, it's Open Source! So you can add stuff to Google Wave like games, widgets, etc. Well, I don't know much about it yet, but to find out more, click on the title of this blog post.
Annual Camp Photos!
Ok, seeing as my description wasn't enough to actually create a mental image of the structrure, I decided to put up a few photos here. It doesn't look 4 metres, but IT IS.
YT 4 metres above the ground with no safety harness and only 2 poles to hold on to, with his feet and 2 flimsy-ish poles.
Me stoning up on the structure one evening. I was up there for an hour, John said.
Climbing up to tighten knots
Annual Camp!
On Monday, I went to RJ for 01 Scouts' Annual Camp 2009! This was supposed to be a 'fun' camp, so we could bring handphones, iPods, etc. So basically the idea was to set up a campsite, with a sleeping tent and kitchen tent for each patrol (Kestrel, Eagle, Hawk, Owl, Falcon and Kingfisher), and a structure made of poles in front of the tent (no photos, sorry). Overall, the camp was real nice except for the fact that I managed to get the structure to fall on my knee (I got totally owned after that. It kept hurting randomly), kept getting heartburn, etc, etc. The food was really good, considering the fact that we cooked it ourselves. We had black pepper chicken, fried rice, srambled eggs, french toast, and a lot more stuff. But what I'm really proud of is our structure, cos it was really tall (about 3-4m I think), and had a pulley system at the top which let you pull yourself across. Lotsa people said they were damn scared up there, and I have no idea why. Cmon, it's just 4 metres! Oh wait. No safety harness. Anyways, whenever I went up, I tied a rope to my waist, just to be sure. No, it's not stupid, cos I fell off almost twice. Then we had to climb up and tighten our knots. Very easy, you say? The problem is, we have only 2 hands. So with 1 hand holding on to the structure, the other doing the knot, the knot doesn't really get tightened. So I tied myself to the structure, leaving both my hands free to tie the knot. Then on Thursday, I started getting heartburn, so Mr Tan discussed with my mum and so I went home 1 day early. Ah well, nothing else to say.
RI Prejudice!
RI Boys (and Girls now, too) are seen by the public as the elite (Raffelitists, lol), the goody-two-shoes and the best of the best. So everyone has this image of RI students being nerds and academicky people. So if we make a mistake, everyone is shocked as though Rafflesians aren’t allowed to make mistakes. I remember Deep told me that during a Skatezone reunion, a security guard came after them while they were playing DC and told them something about them being Express students, being from good schools, yadayadayada. So now it’s a crime for Express students to play, is it? Seriously, to all the non-Express students out there, place yourselves in our shoes and think how you would have felt.
Happy Birthday to Me…
So, today, I’m 14 years old! After more than 1 decade of being alive, this, as always, leads me to appreciate the miracle of life. But what happens when I’ve passed? Will I be remembered by mankind? Will I have contributed what I should have contributed to the society? Or will I just be one of the 7 billion? What will I make of my life?
Arr, forget that. Birthdays are meant to be celebrated! So today, I’m going to Rach’s house. Lol my mum got be 2 books, turned out I’d read them already!
Blog, or not to blog?
After about 2 months of not blogging, I was forced have decided to blog again after repeated nagging from my mum and Aru. Well, first of all there’s like so much to say! For starters, I’m not in India anymore, cos I totally hated it there, you know, everyone is so… dumb-ish and beating everyone at every test is so easy! So you know, there wasn’t much of a challenge. So I told my parents. Then they got ticket back to Singapore. And they did all this without me knowing. My mum contacted my Mr Pang, who told the whole class. Then Rav told Skatezone, and HF asked me on Facebook if I really was coming back. As I didn’t know at that time, I told her something to the effect of my Leave of Absence ending, yadayadayada, you get the point. So I came back here, and now my mum is working again and Tanya is going to school again. My dad, however, will still be in India. He says that his project will be over in 6 months. So, right now, I’m really busy, but I expect the workload to get heavier as the year progresses. What do I mean by “really busy”? Well, in the 4 weeks that I’ve been in RI, I’ve been working on 2 projects, written 4 tests, and going for 01!
But still, all of the above is part of being a Rafflesian. Note that I say “Rafflesian”, not RI-er. From what I’ve heard, RGS is a lot harder. Can you believe they actually have to learn cooking!? *scoff* But anyway, back to what I was saying. Being in Raffles isn’t easy. We don’t have free time for ourselves cos we’re like so darn busy. What do I mean? Skatezone had arranged for a reunion a few weeks ago, but we couldn’t cos like EVERYONE (except Rach and Rav) was busy on every suggested date. So, to all the Primary School kids thinking about going to a Raffles School, think twice. It’s not that you’re going to regret joining a Raffles School. Contraire! You’re gonna have a hell of a time!
Medal!
On Thursday, the Academic Coordinator called me up on stage and said some stuff which was totally not true (like bringing laurels to the school, etc, etc). Then I got the medal and she made me show it to the school and all... Then they pinned another medal onto me. My teacher told me to keep it on, but I took it off anyway. Here are the medals:
Topper! again
If you look through previous posts, you will see that there is a post entitled "Topper!" Well, good news again! I just found out that I'm not just the topper for India, I'm the topper for South Asia, and most of the Arabian Peninsula!
But then again, everyone's calling me a nerd 
Survey!
OK. I know some of you may have heard of ThinkQuest, a kind of thingy which is a competition thingy which lets you make project thingies. My group decided to do one on homemade weapons. So we wanted a survey and here's the link below.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=pRX5Th3CCm9pACAu8OqXlg_3d_3d
For those of you people out there who are related to me, fergeddaboutit.
Chikkamagalur
First of all, apologies.
Recently, I had gone on a trip to this place called Chikkamagalur which is about 7 hours away from Bangalore on a school field trip. We stayed at this place called Woodway Homestay owned by someone who owned a coffee estate of about 300 acres (about 1.2 km2). We didn't do much on the first day except that I was assigned to a dormitory and not a bedroom, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. We all got double-decker beds and I got to sleep on the top, so one afternoon I was bored, so I called over a few friends and jumped from bed to bed as "The Human Mario" with one of my friends singing the theme song. We went on a tour around the owner's coffee estate the next day and guess what? You have to wait for 9 years before the coffee plant actually gives you something! And it has to be between 18 to 30 years old so that its harvest is somewhat stable. That morning, I tried a whole cup of coffee for the first time. One of my friends was like UGH but frankly, I liked it. So helped myself to bit more... and had quite a lot more at night, and then I couldn't sleep
