Files of Justin's Life

Who is more free?

2007-05-04T17:56:00.000+08:00

One day in math tutorial, the teacher says, 'yew liang, I just read your blog..' scary man!

Our school really has a lot of time. I can't type down the name of my school. will explain below

The students have a lot of time to blog.
The teachers also have a lot of time because they read what the students blog
The principal and HODS also read blogs of the students
So I better not type in the name of my school, because a simple Google search will 'expose' me already

Equilibrium

2007-04-27T20:33:00.000+08:00

My physics teacher teaches us a lot of things. He even has the ability to use physics to relate to real life. Like how humans experience new things and may find it difficult to cope or maybe feel happy about it. After a while, equilibrium will be reached and you'll be back to your base happiness. It's kind of true. I thought that I would have lots of time to slack and do many things after my season ends. But it has ended for some time already and I still find myself having a packed schedule. Surely, things are better now that I don't go home at 830 anymore. On fridays, I even get to go home at 1230!

The most irritating thing in my life now is B chinese. I have 3 hours of B chinese every week, which means that 2 days in a week, my peers get to end lessons 1.5 hours earlier than me. It's ok for now cause they have CCA but once that is over, I can just start imagine the smirks on their faces. ' bye bye justin :) ' I don't know how to describe the way lessons are conducted. 1/2 of the time, the class has only 1/2 attendance! Of course, I seldom skip lessons even though the temptation is so great. The teacher is so slack man, recently we've been watching pirated movies in his classes that are either, not in english or have subtitles in chinese! The teaching part- there's a passage. He'll read to us in chinese, and we'll translate it to english. This way, he can learn english and we can learn chinese! ahh...

I've been wondering about something for quite some time already. Whatever you train up, you'll be exceptionally good in that area. Is that true?
I've been in track since sec 1 and before that, I don't think I ran fast. After 4 years of training 4 times a week, running in macritchie, bishan park and various places, training with ankle weights on, and competing in inter-schools (without success!), I don't think 2.4km is any difficulty. I didn't know that running was something to be afraid of until I came to JC! but of course, it's scary to anyone who doesn't run at all. I always think that I'm quite slow, because I never understand how runners from hwachong can run at impossible speeds, like <16 minutes for 4.8km. Were they born with superior genes or do they just train 7 times a week and it's really cause of hard work?
I guess if you sacrifice/practise enough, you'll get what you want. Like how bob can play soccer so magically, weiying thrashing people in badminton, yewliang attracting all the girls. And that's probably the only way to do well for A levels, sacrificing time ..

Is It Good Enough?

2007-04-19T20:44:00.000+08:00

History repeats itself again, fail fail and fail!
I didn't do well for my block tests 1, but it's kind of expected cause I only thought of picking up momentum after my season ended, which is now!
GP-E
H1 Chem-S
Econs-S
Math-S
Physics-U

It's ok, I know where I went wrong. The only thing that bothers me is the parents-meet-tutors sessions. I don't need a teacher to sit there and force out reasons as to why I didn't perform well. The last session last year was useless. It didn't even make me feel guilty why I'm not scoring well. If I wanted to find this urgency to study, I'll have to find it myself!

I didn't neglect my studies for any poor reasons though. I feel as though, a new fitness level has been reached. My running has gone down, but I can swim faster now !

100m freestyle: 1 min 10 sec (not bad for a non-swimmer :) )

NAPFA
Standing broad jump : 252 (Finally learned the technique after 6 years. the only thing that stopped me from getting full marks)
Shuttle run : 9.3 sec (not that fast but it doesn't matter)
sit and reach : 56 cm (God's blessings, you either can do it or you can't. Or maybe all the warmup-stretchings in Track help me all these years)
Sit-ups : 60 (nice number)
Pull-ups : 15 (my new maximum :), achieved only after doing up to 60 pullups in training 3 weeks before this)
2.4km : 9 min17 sec (This is my lousiest timing in 4 years)

In total, 30 points! What's the big deal, why can't I just get silver, be contented that I don't go NS two months earlier and let it be? For me, it's like a record that's nice to keep. It will remind me of what I can achieve if I put my mind to it. that's why 9:17 for 2.4km is not good enough, I want to run <9mins, even if it's 8:59! It sounds crazy but it's possible I think. The fastest I ever ran on a proper track was 9:10. When I was in secondary school, all the 2.4km runs were at bishan park, so maybe it was shorter, or maybe that was the time I was still running 4 times a week??

I'll just do the napfa test again, why not? :)

It's Over

2007-04-03T22:23:00.000+08:00

The competition for polo has finally ended, and we finished at 5th place with no surprise. We played with nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Of course, we wanted to get 3rd or 4th placing, but couldn't. Who doesn't want to win anyway?

At the start, we were a team full of newbies who couldn't even swim consecutively for 2 laps. Treading water was totally foreign and almost everyone had to go to the side to relieve their cramps. A year has past since then, and now we can play the game proper, swimming up and down and putting up a fight with opponents. We're not very good definitely, compared to the other schools. I mean, most of us only trained for slightly more than 1 year. The other teams have at least half the team training for at least 5 years. RJ has at least half the team in the national youth team! So, It's ok that we lost. We gained so much camaraderie and team spirit. All the suffering together, lame jokes, and talking about the game, really bonds us together and I'm proud of my team! all right, and it's about time to get ready to study? man..

Internal Issues

2007-03-26T21:36:00.000+08:00

Someone tell me if this is just part of growing up

http://www.lahyourhead.blogspot.com/

BT1

2007-03-18T17:30:00.001+08:00

AHHH
Exams tmr
FAIL!

Depression Files

2007-03-06T22:00:00.000+08:00

We know that the general price levels will rise when there is inflation
From what I observe, the points needed to get into the junior colleges are experiencing a deflation. It only gets lower, lower and lower. All the top 5 jcs are moving into a crazy range of around 3-4 points for entry which means you need to get a perfect score with a good cca record and affiliation/higher chinese. All the mid-range Jcs are situated slightly above 10 points! Maybe the drop in entry points is for a good reason, like some schools performing exceedingly well, such as cat high with an average of 9.something. Strangely, the points needed to get into sa dropped from 11 and 9 to 10 and 8 for arts and science respectively, even though we didn't do so well for the A levels. Probably, this shows that the popularity of the school precedes it's performance. Come and play, but be careful of your grades!

Tremors- First time I felt it before. The day in the school ended with the school being dismissed at 2+ . I was in the com lab with Bob and he suddenly asked me to stop shaking the table. We stood in our stationary positions and began to feel 'something'. When Yew liang came in, we asked him to sit down and confirm this 'wobbling', but it had already stopped and he thought we were playing a prank on him from 'the look in our eyes'! Why was a central area such as potong pasir affected more than other areas? Shouldn't it be more stable here?
Maybe God has sent a warning to the 'saints' to not underperform again for A levels!

A brouhaha

2007-02-28T21:57:00.000+08:00

Indeed, everyone was in a brouhaha after the Physics SPA today. The equation given was a tough one and it really was kind of tricky. Not even the 'smartest' students in s23 could do it properly! Thank God I managed to complete it and felt rather satisfied with my answers, unlike the previous SPA which I screwed up.

I can't wait for April to come, season's going to be over! I'll be so free I'd wish I have training. Speaking of which, it's extremely insensitive of a few of my teammates to start 'praying' for the team. It's because they're not even Christians and this is just one of those stupid team-bonding things. It's no use to 'pray' that we'll win AC when you don't even believe in God. It's even worse when you 'pray', and expect a Christian to join in to listen to your 'wants'. In fact, those teammates probably don't know that God views this as an earthly, unimportant thing! Pray for your salvation guys

Legal School Skipping Files

2007-02-26T21:55:00.000+08:00

For attending a workshop on energy environment policy at NUS, I was able to 'skip' school for the whole day, to attend like 4 interesting lectures. It was really a great way to start Monday, waking up at 7 and traveling down to Clementi, without any hurry or rush. The best part, there's a 1.5hr math lecture every Monday, the monster battle to stay awake.
If not for the film 'an inconvenient truth' which the GP department made us watch, it'll be quite alarming to see how the world is being destroyed slowly, and getting hotter as well! Rising water levels of 3cm every decade is also kind of scary, especially for Singapore. I guess I won't go into the details cause I can't really regurgitate it all out again. It sort of became like background knowledge already.
The series of lectures ended at about 4.30pm and it was really a good experience + tea breaks between every lecture which sometimes include chocolate éclairs ! awesome. But we couldn't take too much éclairs in the presence of the other schools cause it would look bad, wasted man! And of course, the day doesn't end there, cause there's training straightaway. So I traveled to school for training with Aloy, and felt so sian cause we already spent the whole day out away from school but we still had to return! Interestingly, I met Sarah Tan on the bus on my way to school. Actually she didn't see me so I called her and asked her why she's wearing black. 'How you know?'. 'Cause I'm on your bus..'

The Munchkins File

2007-02-17T22:53:00.000+08:00

Munchkin is the new card game we're playing, and It's the most interesting so far, cause of the twists and hidden tactics in every game. We're really getting addicted to it!

The schedule for inter-schools are finally out with the first match beginning on 26th March. Looks like training is going to get really, really tough from now on. I don't mind, after this it'll all be over! And I'll finally get to go home at 1230 on wednesdays :) But of course, water polo has been really amusing and fun. All the nice goals and now I can attempt backshots (something that seemed really pro the first time I saw) makes trainings worthwhile.

Today was the day man. I finally understood a large chunk of vectors, now it makes a lot more sense! This it what I need to motivate me to carry on, a little understanding! Oh ya, sorry for giving you the shock today , but that was really funny! All right It's time to go to sleep and dream Munchkins!

Shag

2007-02-15T20:35:00.000+08:00

I swam 1.6km today. Made me so tired that I went home to sleep straight away, or maybe it's just the fatigue brought over since Monday. At least I completed the distance! Even though I was the only person in the pool, and the 'lifeguard' was in the air-con room slacking. So good thing I didn't drown. It's so hard to do endurance training like that. How are we ever going to beat AC since they swim so much more than us!

Schedule is out for inter-school water polo.
:)

Starting anew

2007-02-13T20:36:00.001+08:00

But not starting now :)