Breaking point

The 2nd week of school just ended and all my enthusiasm for this semester has died. I had very little sleep (the average was about 5 hours daily) and that made me physically, mentally, and spiritually tired. No more smile on my face in the mornings but I am glad that I could control my mood swing better. Okay, let's see where I left off last week.

I attended the sunset Assumption Mass and that coincided with the opening of the grotto and the unveiling of some paintings at the Church of the Holy Cross. Actually I wanted to leave after the mass and skipped those events but there were only about 3 ppl who left. So I decided to stay. Lol. On my way to the overhead bridge, I stepped on XXXX!! Darn!! It was damn smelly and I could not get rid of it. So instead of risking hostile stare on the bus, I walked back to PGP. Crazy eh? Exercise :) Lol. I took the shortcut I knew from FOW and it was damn scary to go there on my own. The Temasek Life Science Lab is freaky and eerie. The minimal lighting but yet enough too see what inside the labs. I imagined if someone suddenly appeared from one of the labs... Gosh... A good spot for fright night. Haha...

On Sunday, I met with a cousin who was holidaying here. Lol. She stays in US so it has been years since I saw her. We had a nice talk. It was worth my nap time :)

On Monday, I had to sing Hallelujah!! Lab actually started on next monday. Hurray!! Lol. I really needed the time to sleep. But during the break, I met my OG who were going to swim!! Alamaks... Seriously... They were too enthu. Lol. So after my assignment was done, I went to SRC (to see of course! not to swim). Had a very sucky lunch at the very cheenah food stall next to the swimming pool and I managed to come out with half paragraph for SP. Lol. The evening Econs lecture was so embarrassing. I had promised to wait for the juniors. So basically we were late for 30mins and we still dared to sit in the most front row directly in front of the lecturer. Never mind... Thick-skin de..

I HATE CHINESE 2!! The exercise averages for 2 pages now. That means the workload is 2x of chinese 1. Wth... And as much as I am thankful for the very enthu and loud tutorial teacher (I did not fall asleep), I am very much horrified with the fact that she gives EXTRA exercises. Die de... And I hate the people... Many of the are fakes! They are already good in the language but they still take it. Haiz... Anyway... let me share something embarrassing but funny. At the beginning of the class, the teacher asked my name. I said my english name. When she asked for my chinese name, I said I did not know how to say it. Lol. So I anyhow said it. In the middle of the lesson, she asked around names again. When it came to my turn, I said "I don't know my name... I mean I do not know the tones." The whole class broke into laughter. But I WAS SERIOUSLY clueless about the pronounciation of my name. Haha...

After Chinese was my ICy AGM and exco selection. I was nominated for secretary but lost. A bit pissed (I heard that I was edge out by 1 vote) but after yesterday, I came to realise that it was God's will to not add more things into my plate. I was so down yesterday as I was tired and I felt that my workload was too much. I hate SP1203!! I loathe it!! Lucky that I finished the stupid statement in 2 hours. Haiz... I shall see how well/badly done it is next week.

Hmm... see the pics down here? A bit late to put ah? Lol... Well.. The reason I put these is because I am so free today that I visited some of my frens' blogs. Lol. Everyone is covering rag rag and rag... How about FOW? Lol... FOW was FUN too ok!!! At least I had a lot of FUN!! Lol... And I am sure those who went also had a lot of fun!

Kudos to these bunch of freshies!! Without your support and attendance, I would not have so much fun during FOW :)


Kudos to the seniors :) Especially to the FOW committee members.. Even I, as an OGL, felt very hurt and sad when my OG was halved and we could not play games, I know it must have been more painful for you all to see your programs and plans fail one by one. Thanks for the Sentosa :) The fun justified it!!


Group Photo :)



The always forgotten cheering squad (a.k.a non-raggers). Never being mentioned anywhere...
Well at least we still got this very nice photo taken. Thanks for the care and coverage for us, Mr Photographer :)



My favourite and most memorable picture.. Lol.. Thanks for the love ^o^
Someone (I cannot remember who you are) said: "Let's point at and say XXXX"
And the guy who helped us to take this said: "Do you want me to take picture of only xxxx?".
Everyone in unison said: "OF COURSE NOOOOOO..."

Well... the fun is gone... But the memory remains... And hopefully the friendship lasts too

Bowling

Haiz... my days of lethargy are not over yet. I am now very worried. Is my exhaustion the remnant of FOW? Or is it due to my very packed timetable? If it is the latter, then I am on the road to doom. Haha... The semester is not in full swing yet (labs and the stupid SP1203 assignments only start next week). Ok I am dead meat :( Just to illustrate how gross my time table is: I (will be most likely be rejected) cannot join Exxon Mobile Campus Crew as a CCA because my tuesdays end at 6 and my wednesdays end at 8. Ok myself, brace yourself to take up the study loan next year just in case my parents don't want to fund me for out of campus accommodation. How to earn enough cca points? Haiz...

Enough of the complaining and worrying, here comes the nicer news. I played bowling yesterday! Woohoo.. It was my first time and I was so excited. I was thinking not to go due to dental appointment and the problems with my Microsoft Office, but early wednesday morning, I changed my mind. I did not regret it! Yeah... The results are below :)

3 strikes for the first game? For a newbie? Lol.. The subsequent games will tell the difference between 'lucky' and 'skillful'. Lol.

So the conclusion is: I am a lucky unskilled player. Haha.. I had a great fun. Thanks for the people who went to play (one of them was having headache... I appreciate that!) and organise. Yippie... There were other 3 girls who played with me but they did not let me to capture their moments of glory so yeah... Haha... We played at Tampines SAFRA and I say 'archery'. Maybe I should try that next. It will be interesting to play since all of us never play it before. After sem 1 exam perhaps?

Just for me to remember when I play next time, my optimum ball size is 9!! I should experiment to give more force without compromising the control/direction. I have to say I have not mastered the path of the ball yet. Next time...

It's olympic season and I shall write about that in my next entry... Whenever it may be...

School again..

Today is only the second day of school and I am already feeling dead tired. Haiz... I guess it is really not easy to fulfill my target to be a good student this semester.

It was the first day of school yesterday and I have to say that vitamins did help to sustain me throughout the day. I almost fell asleep during the lecture but my consciousness was still there. The key word is ALMOST! I did not fall asleep. Haha.. And for the first time since long time, I was early for lecture :) The lecture started at 820 so yeah... of course I was early. As there was no more lesson, my clique and I decided to have a lunch at Pizza Hut Clementi (again!). Before that we were at Central Library and for the first time I joined the queue for the free diary. I will never ever do that again! I don't find the diary nice or whatsoever. I gave it away. I don't understand why people are so eager about it. Because it is free perhaps? Haha...

I was still high that I decided to attend the Econs lecture from 6-8pm. I was amazed that I did that. Thanks to a friend of mine. I had no intention to take that module but a few minutes before the close bidding was over, he asked me questions about his own bidding. And at that moment, I got the temptation to take econs also. It was even luckier that he took this module before. So I could get his notes (which is useless and totally different from the current set of notes) and he assured me that there would be no project. It was exactly 3 minutes before closure that I logged in my bid. Now that I got it, I am really at lost whether I should drop it or not. I am afraid that I cannot manage :'( But chinese is non-examinable and most likely to be S/U-ed. And the econs lecture and chinese tutorial are at night so that should not really affect my day. Less computer should be fine. Haha... I am really confused.

Yesterday I managed to sleep at 11pm. Yet, I still felt very sleepy throughout the lectures today. The vitamin did not work and my sour dried mango could not chase away my sleepiness. Oh well. The english module is quite horrible. I don't think I will be able to do well again this semester because of this one module. With that, I seriously think I do not need to drop my econs as my semester looks pretty bad already. 1 less day to think about it. I hope I won't make another wrong decision.

My Microsoft Office has some problems -_- T_T I am sure it is because a clean up programme from my friend. Darn it!!!

Pharmacy Freshmen Orientation Week 2008

I was asked to be an ogl as the committee was in difficulty to get seniors to be ogls. I actually wanted to be a game master (a slacker job) but since I stay at school anyway, I agreed to help out as ogl if really there were not enough people to help out. I seriously was worried and anxious about it as I had never been an ogl before. On top of that, I know that I am not a very enthusiastic person. I can only be enthu if the people around me are enthu also. So I was hoping so hard that I got a great people in my og. I also asked to be paired up with a very enthu ogl to be with me. I was given one of my clique friends whom I have to say is as shy as I am. Hence, I was totally worried on the few days before.

Day 1
The day I feared finally came. My og name was Haldol. I just realised that the og names were drug names after I was told so. I thought they were some superheroes/fantasy game names. The names were like zoloft, coreg, advair, relafen, etc. They did not sound like drug names to me. Anyway, after I checked out the list of people in my og, I became more worried. Nobody I knew and I saw very few English names. Oh well... Time went by and the icebreaking time came. There were moments of akward silence and I could see some of the guys were like looking at me with the 'what the heck this lousy ogl is doing' look and looking away to see some other more happening ogs. Gosh... T_T Many times I looked at my partner and both of us exchanged the look of exasperation. At one point of time, I was like running away with the excuse of taking my water bottle and let my partner handle the cheer planning session. -_-! so bad of me. But I am very thankful for her and some game masters who came to my og and helped :) Great help!!

I got saboed during whacko and it was a difficult choice between singing or dancing in public. Well I chose the former (Indon song so I could just bluff my words just in case I forgot the lyris) and thank God, there were very few seniors there at that time. I was saved from further and long term humiliation. Lol.
But I had to say my og ppl were great. They were very accomodating and cooperative and enthusiastic. The raggers were even friendlier (as compared to my own orientation week experience last year) and they mixed around pretty well with the non-raggers. Nobody was trying to be prominent or acted popular so the atmosphere was quite positive. The cheers came up pretty quick and the zest they had during cheer really made my heart swelled with the prospect of getting $1000 for the cheer competition. Haha...

I was already dead tired for the first day and it ended pretty late. I had to go back to PGP on foot to show the juniors how to go to school on the following day for Flag Day.

Day 2 - Flag Day
I was more like slagging than flagging. Haha... I was still hoping that seniors needed only to facilitate last year. So when I found out that I had to flag too, I was like wth.. I chose Toa Payoh and could only bring 6 people with me. In order not to show any favouritism, I picked the first 6 names on my list. Unfortunately, due to the way they arrange the namelist, the first few were the non-raggers. I was like "uh-oh".

At Toa Payoh, my spot was the area near the library near the bus stop. I learnt from my last year Flag Day that in order to get a lot, must quickly attack those just alighting the bus. Haha.. My 2.5 hours there were quite satisfying. Although I got very little, it was more than what I got last year for the same time duration. Lol. I was lucky to bump into my CSS senior who happened to go to the church for a meeting. So I went with him for his breakfast and waited for his meeting to start to get donations from his friends. Haha... After that, my juniors were already calling me for brunch. Lol. They gave me the olympic toy. I did not know who went to get the Kids' Meal la. Haha...

After brunch, I went back to my old spot. No more crowd. After wasting an hour to get donation from only 4 passersby, I decided to find a new spot to beg (a bit slow rite?). I was outside library for about 30 mins and it was a disappointing spot too. So I decided to go around the whole Toa Payoh Central to find where there was crowd and where there were few orange people. Lol. I thought of something brilliant at the bus stop across the road but I found all the freshies were already there. I repeated the same old mistake: to get the nice place late :( So after going round Toa Payoh Central for 2 times, the KFC area was free from from the orange people. It was during lunch time so the crowd was great!

We had lunch at about 3 at MOS and the other half of my og was calling to meet up for dinner (they already wanted to do so from the morning). I was told that I could be back at school by 6+ instead of 9+ so I let them to meet at 430. That ended the flagging session as well. Haha... This shameless senior was a bad example as I had the lightest can. At least I could encourage them "As long as yours is heavier than mine, you are safe!". Haha...

I was amazed and impressed that they met up for dinner (none of the other ogs did that) and the rag people did actually talk to the non raggers. Lol. Someone commented that during dinner it would be most likely that the 2 groups would sit separately. That did not materialise. You rocked, people!

Day 3
It was boring. As expected, many would pon as there were only talks in the morning. Haiz... Trouble and conflict were brewing in the night and I was thankful that I was not involved in the politics la. I was having fun playing bridge in the night. It was a sad case that the candlelight soccer had to be called off as too many freshees went home without permission.

Anyway, only my og had the full attendance (until the end of the FOW). So great to get these enthu bunch! Really lightened up my work! Haha... The organiser had to arrange some new groupings due to the lack of people for the telematch in the afternoon. I had to play hockey as my group was 1 person less than the opponent. I had great time! Nobody shouted me any order. We all played for fun and not to win. So I enjoyed it. And tadaaa... I scored a goal! Haha... Maybe it was my first goal in any ball games I had every played in my life!

At the evening, we started on making cheering props. Then after the drastic drop in number of people who remained at school, the freshees were allowed to leave but they had to come back on thursday and stay over! I was really touched that the 2 guys remaining in my og stayed at school to accompany me instead of camping at PGP as 1 guy stayed there.

We went to Fong Seng at late night with some of the seniors. 1 of them recommended plaster (now I know what it is) and my adventurous self made me order Bandung Dinosaur. It was not bad! I slept at 330. Oh no...

Day 4 - Sentosa
Weeeeheeee... it was another fun filled game. Only about 20 freshees left with us. New groups called "Satu" and "Dua" were formed. Haha... The weather was great. It was breezy and cloudy. Great weather to sleep. Haha... In the morning, I played frisbee as my Satu was short of a person also. Haha... But at half time, I asked another ogl to replace me. Unhealthy boy could not do sport and run for more than 30 minutes la. Haha...

In the afternoon, I chose to slack and guard bags. Haha.. wanted to go down to the beach to play but the weather was too nice to slack and I had not enough sleep so at that time I was quite moody. I was not in the mood to get dunk also. Lol. Sorry to spoil your fun guys. Haha...

At night, the stupid rain cancelled the candlelight soccer again! Sigh... My fun was gone lor... It was more sad for the freshies I supposed as I had played it last year anyway. So it was another cheering prop making session again. Hehe... Many got damn high and mad lor. The people were so obedient la. I got the queiter people to do work and they obliged. I had fun cutting and making the big "Pharm Rag" and "Rx capsule" with the year 3 seniors. Haha..

I was like so excited to see the loser forfeit game. And the Fuzzy Bunny really made my day. At one point of time, I was literally rolling on the floor laughing.

This is a super damn lame show that we watched after the games. The way they say "Charlie" is just too..... -_-!

It was another Fong Seng at night with all the juniors. We reached back at about 245 and I was like nagging to make them sleep. They still continued on making pom-poms until that late. I could only manage to make them all sleep at 330. Gosh... These crazy people really beated me! I could just have slept but as a senior, I had to show good example mah. Haha.. Must have they all sleep first before I do so =p

Day 5 - The End
I was furious in the early morning as some tuuut were being inconsiderate and making too much noise. I woke up and went to toilet. Lucky that they were gone after I returned. They missed out my scoldings!

I got real irritated in the morning as we were like so unprepared for the cheering session. Out of the 20 or so people, only about 10+ were the high ones. So I was like naggy and had to act enthu at the grand stand.

Rag day was great. My favourite was Eusoff Hall's item. Too bad that they did not win. Pharmacy's winning came as a big surprise to me. Lol. I had to be honest. Lol. At least the stuff we made the night before came into use. One senior made one with the writing "Best Rag!". A premonition huh? I screamed and cheered loudly at 1 time until some year 1s in front of me were like going deaf. Too bad that you did not do the cheer la! Haha..

In the middle of all the celebration and fun, I only regretted one thing that they really missed out the non-raggers freshies. I personally think they need to get some form of recognition and thanks too. They were the very few who enthusiastically joined in all the activities of FOW and faithfully be there throughout the week. They came up with the cheer, they cheered their lungs out, they made the props, etc. They did a lot. Yeah hopefully the $1000 and whatever was prepared for the winning og for FOW will be given to these few year 1s. They really deserved that!

The Aftermath
I am really tired now... Haha... I had been sleeping for most of the time today. Last night I lost my voice (but that loss of voice state made my voice damn sexy lol!). I met 2 PGP seniors on the way to get my dinner and both saw me at my unglam cheering moments la. I was like super paiseh lor... Not sure when they saw me or at what state I was in. Oh well...

It was a great week for me. It was my first (and most likely my last) ogling experience and I am very thankful for the opportunity. Not only my og ppl were great, some of the very enthu juniors were great too! The FOW also gave me the opportunity to know some seniors and some of my batch mates (whom perhaps I may not talk to in a normal school environment) better. I had a great chat, time, and fun with them. Thanks to everyone.

Alright... This concluded my FOW experience. I am tired now. I need to sleep early today. I need to print notes (hopefully the library is open tomorrow) and I need to get ready for school. Haha...

Bangkok

Finally, my 1 month of endless activities is over. And now I have 2 days to recover and get ready for school on Monday. Haha... I did not have much time to blog lately so I shall write about my Bangkok trip first. Maybe tonight or tomorrow then I share about my orientation week experiences.

The trip to Bangkok was a bit disappointing for me. Haha. I was hesitant to go anyway. But I have 2 friends who had been there and both say that it is nice. So I trusted them. I did not go with the intention to shop but to take photos :) They say that Bangkok has a lot of places to take nice photos. That what made me so eager to go.

I went with my dad and sister and we arrived at Bangkok on Saturday evening. I was impressed with the airport. They have so many lights. Too many lights in fact. But that gives the impression of a very nice airport. The interior is all made of steel/iron/something like that and the ceiling is so high. So basically the Suvarnabhumi Airport is bigger than Changi but Changi is still of higher standard la. Thailand's tourism is also so advanced that I saw so many people and flights from cities that I never see in Singapore before. One interesting thing at the immigration counter is that there was a camera. The people are supposed to look at the camera and I think the officer would take photo. So I kept looking at the camera and smiling. Lol.

The following day I went to Chatuchak Market. It is a weekend market so my dad was like die-die must go there. Haiz... It was like going to a wet market. It was so hot and thus I did not really enjoy it. I did not have anything to shop also. And I hate to bargain. Well, at least I experienced the train system in Bangkok. The train is colder than MRT haha... And on that day, I concluded that Bangkok is just a city like Jakarta. So I guess now onwards I won't be so eager to go to Asian cities. Ok, Bangkok is better than Jakarta because it has train system and it is cleaner. I hope my hometown can advance like that in a few years time.

For shopping, I also went to the shopping mall across my hotel (meaning the hotel at which I stayed, not the hotel which belonged to me!) and Siam Centre. Not all at the same day of course but since it had been 2 weeks plus since then, I kind of forgot the sequence already.

I shall highlight the high moments of my shopping spree. Lol. I am so glad that I found a manga 'Please Save My Earth' volume 1! Gosh... I missed out the Indon version and have been looking for it for about 10 years and here I found it! Yay! It is the US version (I don't know why it is no longer in sale in Singapore) and it cost 450 baht (quite the same as the price of US mangas in Singapore). Secondly, I bought a local manga. Thailand has so many manga publishers. I was wowed. The people are so lucky! The price is roughly the same as the indon version but the quality is lousier. Haha... And my favourite item is a shirt with the writing "Devil out to kill sombody". Haha.. Yea it is 'sombody' and not 'somebody'! I thought that would be a good opposite of my "I'm good boy" shirt. Haha.. Can wear on 2 different days.

Travelling-wise, I visited the Royal Palace, the Emerald Buddha, the Reclining Buddha, and the Temple of Dawn. Not really exciting pieces of the past of my favourite I have to say. The nice things to be captured in photos were in camera-free areas. So yeah cannot really share it. :( Some interesting facts: 1) The Emerald Buddha has 3 different attires, each for rainy, sunny, and cold season. 2) The Reclining Buddha is really gigantic! 3) The stairs at Temple of Dawn are crazily steep! The only thing worth remembering from going there was the thrill of climbing up and down the steep stairs. I did not really enjoy my photo-modelling sessions there as my photographers sucked. Lol.. I had to give instruction until I fed up and gave up of posing already.

Okay... I guess that's all. It gets quite long already. Haha... Oh 1 last thing is that the food serving is so small. No wonder the people are very thin. Yes, I am envious! While on the topic of food, I want to share about my experience of eating 'spicy chicken rice' at KFC. Local stuff I guess. I looked normal but the spiciness really made me cry T_T. Crazy. The roadside culinary looked good but I did not dare to try them although I was prepared with diarrhea medication.

Because of this Bangkok trip, I changed my phone number. Got the link? No! Haha... While I was bored waiting at the airport before going to Bangkok, I went to M1 shop at T3. Lol. They had an offer of K660i for $0. As my dad was in need of phone, I sacrificed lor. I was excited initially due to wrong information that a salesgirl gave me. She said I could just change my prepaid no to be a postpaid. But when I came back the second time, another person told me it was not possible. I loved my old number! I got my new number for $32.10. Haha... Got a 90408328 (which differed from my old number by 1 digit only!) but since it was difficult to memorise, I got a xx228328. If only I could get something with 428328 in the tail. Well.. It's alright!