we had a good floorball session today. first time we banged in such a resounding victory. RJC 14, NJC 0. 14 plus or minus. landslide, moral boosting win, and i felt kind of sad for them cos their whole girl's team came down to support and never gave up cheering for their school. and sorry for myself because i fluffed some easy balls and didn't score (latter is of course). but overall it was ok i guess...dunno if i can make it for the team that will be going to competition in July but i'll sure as hell give my best.

was eating lunch with XR, Belinda (Khong) and their classmate at mosburger today. actually i was the only one eating lunch; the rest were watching me. and one among us was just sharing his experiences in dance night. and the same one among us said something profound. "Some of the J1s are really screwed up. No actually, all of them are screwed up."

armed with my new-found established and cockily self-assured prejudice against the J1s, i came close to a conflict with a little J1 in during floorball training. little metaphorically; he was two heads taller than me. i was trying to get his attention to inform him of some vital instructions but he refused to turn. "Terence!" I called. "Terence!" I half-shouted. "Terence!" I shouted. all to no avail as he did not turn to look at me, and i gave up, grumbling and bemoaning the J1s lack of respect for their seniors (in general). i was not amused. it was only a few minutes later that i received the dawning realisation that the guy's name was Nelson. (who's the petty little chinaman now)
my point? we all have our prejudices. only some of them are true.

in a lesson that shall not be named to protect its identity and promote ambiguity, we had a fantastic breakthrough for today; we learned something. it was a pretty new experience and i hope it will continue. i love lessons in which i learn stuff.

PS: Heroes 122 is coming out tmr: Landslide. yay

Watch Deal or No Deal, 13th May, 8:30pm on Channel 5. Why? It rocks. at least the french version did. i spent half an hour typing up a long description of how the game works and its technicalities but unfortunately lost in accidentally pressing the "Back" button. Smart. So too bad, you'll have to figure out how it works yourself. But of course you can still ask me.

I spent the large part of my day at a church conference today. The speaker was Jackie Pullinger; if you've never heard of her, she's a great woman of God who's spent the past 40 years of her life among the destitute and delinquent of Hong Kong, giving shelter to drug addicts and street criminals, taking care of them and helping them to reform their lives. It was a very meaningful conference for me; one of the most that i've seated at in recent times. She spoke frankly about the pains and hardships of ministering to the poor (as was her life's calling), and yet she shared joyfully about the miracles and the power of God's in her all experiences, telling of drug addicts who were instanteously set free from their addiction to heroin and illiterate, uneducated street criminals prophesying Scripture after she prayed for them. She told of the extreme poverty and desolation in the poorest of Hong Kong, of a family of six all living on a bed that they called their house, of young orphans that called opium dens home. She was thoroughly honest about the sufferings and difficulties she underwent in her ministry; the deep wrinkles on her face spoke volumes of insurmountable fatigue, and she almost winced each time she shared a particular painful experience. "I haven't slept much these years, I'm sad to say, " she shared with a wistful smile. "It's pretty hard to, when you have three drug addicts in your home who constantly try to sneak out 3am in the morning every night to get their fix."
 
And yet, after all her painful stories, she shared something that was touching and inspirational. Her face lit up, eyes joyfully glittering as she leaned forward and softly spoke in a manner of a child sharing a secret. She said, "My heart has been crushed and hurt over and over again. But it's ok. My heart aches so much that it's all used up. But it's ok. Because when you use up your heart, you get His."
It put many things in new perspectives, like my weekly-saturday duties, and even there i'm hardly having many heart-aches.

She spoke about the need to have an attitude of brokenness, neediness and self-insufficiency, so that complete dependance and reliance on God can be manifested. That's what grace is about, she said, it's more than about a sinless Man dying on the cross to save an sinful world; it's about knowing how much, much, much more we need Him than He needs us. And that's why, she said, ministering to the poor should not a be specialised department in the church, but a life-style. Christians are only those who truly follow Christ's ways and mirror his character, and I suspect, she said smiling thoughtfully, that there are few of such people.

 As people raised their hands as she prayed for those who wanted to receive His compassion, I  almost scoffed, sad to say, at their ignorance. I wondered if those people who wanted to 'receive Christ's compassion and 'take up His Cross would throw it down instantly the moment they got back to life on Monday, forgetting everything in the stirring message they had heard, back to their ordinary life of chasing dreams of wealth and riches, comfort and luxury, satisfying their own wants and desires. I know sadly that many will not change, that Saturday would be just an emotional moment etched in a barrage of memories, left to be only to be momentarily contemplated and not applied in life. As I painted in my mind the sad caricature of the double-minded man that cries for God's compassion to fall upon them at one moment and then calls for life to harden their hearts so they can go about fulfilling their own wants at another, I inwardly wept at such hypocritical spirituality and such inner-poverty as I realised that such a person was me. it was only after a while that i realised and understood what Jackie had been talking about all along: that is why we need the grace of God. and so i pray, that God's grace will be increasingly manifested in my life, for without such a showing, Jesus is but an abstract concept fashioned by religious theologians. but with it, He becomes a living and infallible Saviour.

ordinary day, ordinary happenings.
mr. ng was back to his non-demanding self in lit as he bulldozed through the whole lesson with his own teaching, not checking if we had prepared the outline like he did for last lesson. which i hadn't. so that was all good and nice. Gp was like normal, we spent the class ranking sample Introductions and rating the desirability of certain jobs. and econs lecture was quite different from normal. i didn't fall asleep. and mr. simon quek was quite amusing/amused. sitting in the front row, he turned back to check on our attentiveness about half-way through the lecture, and upon spotting the sleeping beauty directly behind him, gave himself an all-knowing, self-assured grin and cheekily took marcus' notes to read for himself. it was quite amusing.

piano was not so amusing. it was piano as normal, except that i was playing like crap, even more crap than normal. and then my piano teacher proceeded to give me another one of those "just because you've been getting Merit for past practical exams doesn't mean you can pass grade 8...it's not as easy you know...you see how easy it is for people to fail...". I nodded my head in agreement, not with new found determination and self-resolution to practise harder, but just so she would end her verbal diatribe. if my counting list is up to date, i believe it was the 7th time she was delivering this specific lecture and i was beginning to get slightly annoyed because i had long understood her point: i know far well that failure to put in hard practice for piano can lead to disastrous results for the exam. then subtle implications of my being lazy and ill-disciplined came in, and i was even more not amused, because if anything irks me more than people accusing me of being a paedophile, it's ppl accusing me of being lazy. both may be true to a slight extent, but it's not all my fault.

so after she completed her long instruction and explanation of the follies of the lack of practice, i just sighed tiredly and said, "Mam, this week I came home at 9 on Monday and Wednesday and 8 on Tuesday and Thursday. How do expect me to practise?"  it didn't exactly stop her but she kind of softened and changed tactics in suggesting ways in which i could maximise my practice time. unfortunately by that time, i felt incorrigibly bad-tempered, and i just stared stonily ahead at the piano scripts (ok fine, more stonily than normal) and the words that came out from my mouth were to the bare minimum. so as i continued playing through the scales, i got progressively worse and worse as my morale was quashed and my frustration mounting. sort of a vicious cycle, so i guess i looked even more cross. it was not so much that i was angry at my piano teacher for her unsympathetic admonishment, just more frustrated at myself and everything at the moment, like how irritatingly tired/sleepy i felt, how exhausted i was from so much running about in the week (crazy jon muk arranged 2 floorball friendlies in the space of three days), how frustrated at myself at my one sole hour of hard practice the day before amounted to nothing, how lousy i felt at being not as pro as zhaofeng and grace and co. i felt almost like exploding.

i guess she intepreted my coldness as anger directed at her because immediately after that she ceased her lecturing and instead adorned her speech with encouragements and affirmations. i just nodded stonily. as i left her house, she cautiously enquired into matters of my health and well-being, to which i merely replied monosyllabically. so it made me feel quite bad because i wasn't trying to make her feel bad, i was just frustrated at the state of things. because i knew that at the fundamental core, she was right and justified in her scolding.  it sounds totally out of this world but maybe i was just pissed off at the A-levels. for making life not easy-going and carefree. so i drowned my ill-feelings of angstiness and disillusion in a nap on the bus-ride home. now as i type this, reflecting upon the day's events, i feel a minute surge of new found desire, if not passion, to practise more, coupled with the sad realisation that at most I can merely squeeze another hour or two from this week. maybe i'll start practicing in school on monday breaks after maths again...and have sophia and sarah cast amused glances at my sad attempts at producing music :p. so that's that, there's nothing much to do but to try to practise harder.

on a cheery note, i'd like to inform you that my post's title is in fact not a reference to my state of being but to an episode of the greatest television series in the world - Heroes! yes, this is a shameless attempt to spread the cheer of Heroes, cos it toally rocks your socks off. so far, i've already converted an astounding figure of three people who started watching the series under my influence and are up to date with it. seriously i think it's well worth the time, contrary to the possibly popular opinion that it's "suicidal to watch something like this while it's A-levels year", i think it's suicidal not to because you're more likely to kill yourself over exam stress than tearing your hair out thinking about what happens in Heroes. then again, that's debatable. there are only 20 episodes released so far, 45 minutes each, so if you take out 45 minutes each day you'll finish it in 20 days. hardly time consuming. so if you are convinced by my sales-man talk, contact me and i'll tell you how to get the episodes! yay!
so back to the exploding man, do not highlight the next portion of you don't want to be spoilered:

The central story of heroes is about people endowed with supernatural abilities that find their destinies intricately linked to each other's, and find out that they have to save new york from an exploding bomb that will wipe out millions of lives. and the guy who thinks he's the one exploding is Peter Petrelli, unfortunately one of 'good guys'. despite similarities with x-men and superman, it is far from being cliched and kicks ass in its exhilirating plot-line and plot-twists. and How to Stop an Exploding Man is the season finale that comes out in three weeks, so i'm pracitcally dying to watch it. yeah so that's about it, no spoilers because i knew curiosity would get the better of you.

oh and like i've promised, i've uploaded pics of my classmates in Japan here, courtesy of facebook.com. Before, in 1999, and After, 8 years later. I still think i deserve the "Most Drastic Transformation Award". or at least get an endorsement deal with Slim10.

(PS: this is kind of weird but I think i have a power. to attract kids. yea i'm serious; on the train to piano, i was with enli and she spotted a boy in a pram (see, i'm not the one that does the baby-spotting), and as we edged closer, the boy started looking at us. and he started grinning and chuckling, if that's what babies do. guess who was making him do that? me, of course. his eyes were totally focused on me, and a slight smile from me was enough to send him into a fit of giggles. of course he laughed too when he looked at enli, but to a lesser extent :). one case study not enough? no problem. on the way home from dinner with my parents, i was downstairs near the lift at the voiddeck waiting for them to park the car, when this woman and her daughter came out of the lift. the baby girl caught sight of me and started giggling. really cutely. then she like chased up with her mom and clung on to her legs, and continously kept casting shy glances behind at me. i just smiled back.

both instances above are true stories, completely genuine facts. i always thought little kids liked my face, but i was totally overwhelmed today. i'm hardly a paedophile, i just think babies are cute. so it's sort of like...reverse paedophilia. maybe i look like a trusty, amiable and friendly gorgor. or maybe they're just laughing at me.)

still on the recent thematic line of exploration of the very wonderful site that is Facebook, i am now proud to announce that i have a grand total of 39 friends in my friends list. like 39 connected to and collected from different stages of my life...japan, turkey, uwc in singapore. the first thing i do upon adding of profiles is to check out their photos. it's pretty exciting to see how much ppl hv changed, physically, especially after so many years. To my indescrible-emotion-that-induces-shurgging, a great many of them have hardly changed, except in terms of hairstyles, fashion tastes and body accessories. I guess only a few can be said to have been severely subjected to "raging hormones", the famous term coined by a certain Mrs. Albar. cos they're really...big now? dunno how else to put it.

there are three things that disconcert me as i flip through their online photo albums- 1) being my peers yet older than me by a little bit than a year, they're all in university now. a few, i believe, are bumming out in some holiday resort. university! like different universities around the world, doing their degrees. how freaky is that! i know we're all going to be eligible for uni soon but it's still kind of intimidating. maybe i'm still a little boy at heart. 2) nearly all have the common trend of hanging out at clubs, lighting cigarettes, doing that puffing thing which u inhale or something to get high (i don't think it's illegal) and posing with their significant others in photos as if to show off the fact that there exists a member of the opposite sex that sincerely cares for them. of course, sometimes i witness multiple posings and snoggings that originate from one user. 3) i realise that, apart from their names, i know nothing else about them, especially them in-the-now. i'm as alienated from them in the physica sense as in the erm...emotional? messages are exchanged on the site but they usually halt after two or three rallies. it's sad.

i guess my 'obsession with what my peers are up to now is precisely because they were my peers. they give me a comparison bar of what our lives are like, and in essentially every area, i'm different. i don't smoke, i don't drink, studying is practically my life, and call me a chinaman but i think the notion of paying money to patronise an institution where strobing coloured lights blind your retinas and everyone bobs their head to music is cliched and daintily laughable. i'd rather stay at home and dance to my own music in the privacy of my room and flash my own room lights on-and-off. i may eat my words one day, but i don't think i'll ever become like my peers; we may have been classmates in 'middle school', but our commonalities end there; from here on, our respective genes take over; my chinean and their ang-mohrian. i really wonder what it would have been like if i had stayed on in UWC or in a foreign country instead of returning to my roots/instead of going to RI. which side of me would have developed? the americanised-let'sgowildpartydrinksmokeandslackonstudies or the chinese-studiousmeritocraticworkhardforabetterfuture side? i suspect a good mix, and now i suspect i'm in the high latter. but that's just the __________(can't think of a word). i am singaporean after all.

so it leaves me melancholically pensive; i feel as if my peers are growing up and i'm not, but unfortunately they're joining the cliched bandwagon that is the world of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol (and sex). in all likelihood they're having loads of fun, i have no doubts about that. in a sense, i long to reconnect with them, and in another, i think i'll never be like them. and so rather appropriately (or inapprorpiately), i thought of this:

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

no meaning really...just effectively brings on that warmreflectivefeeling.

PS: i'll try to post pictures of my Grade 5 class in Japan which had a grand total of 6 members, myself included. like Before and After, e.g. us in 1997 and us in 2007. 10 years. the thing is that practically everyone has stayed the same from the photos i've seen, except for two of us, a thai girl and me. i think i've metamorphised in a dramatic matter, and even that would be understatedly putting it. maybe it's just the asian genes.

just came back from a thoroughly satisfying dinner treated by our dear Raffles Rock teacher-in-charge Mr. Alvin Lim. Although i don't think we were as close as an exco as we could have been (we didn't have any |read: CCA camps, CCA outings, exco dinners..list goes on) but i think it's still been quite nice. the exco are really a great bunch of ppl: samuel's nice and friendly; eugene is sensible and witty, gabriel is big and amiable, and jia hua's just crazy. inadequate adjectives to describe them all but anw...

ok so botak jones is this random western eatery in some ulu industrial area of toa payoh...and not really random cos apparently it's quite famous-ulu. not many ppl know about it but it's close to being legendary or sth. cos the prices are good and so's the food. both in quality and quantity. i mean the smaller servings of any dish would probably make the less gourmet-inclined members of our class quiver and strike terror even in the very biggest of us (appetite-wise). Jia hua ordered the You-Crazy-Or-What burger (seriously, that's what it's called). it's like a big mac with all ingredients tripled in size. nice. accompanied by a plateload of fries. so it was nice and all that, went home with my stomach satisfied and myself a little sad...
so on the same thematic arc of friendships, i went on this cool new site that's found on www.facebook.com...it's somewhat like the concept of pokemon where instead of adding pokemon to your collection, you add friends. that includes long lost friends that you long forgot existed. and it's quite addictive, linking from friends to friends and trying to send add-me proposals to people. more for the sake of boosting your collection more than for the sake of reconnecting. so i found a lot of ppl from turkey..singapore..japan...and it's like all nostalgic reminiscence again. the long buried trove of memories in my mind were generating reminders like "Oh yeah, that's Cem, the half Turkish half Brit guy who fervently idolised William Wallace the Scottish revolutionary, and there's Altan, that nice guy who brought me around school the first day and after that just turned weird. And my best friend Robin's still the same, tall and lanky with his awkward braces [ok wait his teeth are straight now] but now in the basketball team." And it's nice just mentally finger-pointing classmates you long forgot about and remembering their quirky traits. then you see patterns in your friendships...like some of your friends resemble friends from elsewhere...like Jun Shen is so much like Moca and... ok that's about it. but Micah still looks like a clown! lol. So there's like another bout of emo-sickness...remembrance...sadness...warmfuzzyfeeling...etc etc. and wah i was just looking at some pics posted online of my pri-sch classmates in japan and i was scratching my head cos one of them really really looked familiar (as in not familiar in the sense that i know her duh), as in she really reminds me of someone else. so after like an eternity of 10 minutes i realised she looks a lot like cameron from House! yeah she's quite chiou. I think she's half british half jap if i still remember correctly. i'm sure as hell not putting the link to those pics here cos i know people like leon rajathiran sometimes come here and so it's really not a good idea to put pictures of pretty females on your blog. especially if you know them. but if i verify that you're a safe person, i'll let you see.
so today's been more of a sad day, not really disappointing, or depressing, or soul-crushing or wdv but just like..sad. going to facebook.com, plus the wave of realisation that A levels are coming and JC's gonna end soon and that will be a sad time...so i'll just be nostalgicising the night away, even though there's maths assignment and lit PC to complete, and econs and french and wdv to study for. for one night, screw the A-levels. hrrumph.

this is the part where i'd like to have added a profound friendship quote, but all the ones i found so far are fairly imbecilical. so yeah. here's to friendship.

PS: so is that a correct usage of <3?

this is really weird. but kinda fun and.. accurate :P. not really nothing to blog about now but no time; after mr. ng's tactiturn remonstration of our lack of enthusiasm for literature, i must finish my poetry analysis on leaves by tonight.

http://www.myheritage.com

so i was going home from cell grp from amk mrt at about 11pm when, guess who i saw at the mrt? Mr P2Hill. jenson asked me to go up to him and ask if he watches One3Hiill. he's actually quite good looking in person lol, but i wonder what 'stars' think of when they go around. do they expect a nudge-giggle-point routine from squealing school girls/boys? do they expect furtive glances to be shot in their direction? thus i made it a point to purposefully stare in an opposite direction, as if the MRT sign showing the fines for eating food on the train was more captivating than his oh-so-beautiful face. anw he got off at dhoby ghaut too and thereupon met up with some ang-moh girl. either his gf or sister. then they took the train in the harbour front direction. sentosa???

anw i got home about midnight, ate supper and stuff. then decided to watch one of my nice new films i had recently purchased. i chose Le Grand Voyage, set up the portable dvd player and watched it while on my bed.

Synopsis:

A few weeks before his college entrance exams, Reda, a young man who lives in the south of France, finds himself forced to drive his father to Mecca. From the start, the journey looks to be difficult. Reda and his father have nothing in common. Talk is reduced to the strict minimum. Reda wants to experience this trip in his own way. His father demands respect for himself and the meaning of this pilgrimage. As they drive through different countries and meet various people, Reda and his father observe each other warily. How can they create a relationship when communication is impossible? From the south of France, through Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Syria, Jordan to Saudi Arabia, their road is 3,000 miles long.
-moviexclusive.com

So it's one of those lit shows, heartwarming, touching the core of your soul, meaningful, therapeutic-cos-it's-supposed-to-make-you-cry, etc. it was brilliant. i loved it for many reasons.
first of all, it was in french. in addition, and this is not really a reason but a just a comment, the lead actor/main protagonist/Reda is awesome. he has like the dark, wavy hair of Michael Ballack, the intense eyes of Zinedine Zidane, the strong jawline of Francesc Fabregas...all rolled into one. easy on the eyes.and did i say how much i love french-accented english? "Do yoo speek Eeenglish? My fasserr and I are trrying zoo get zoo Mekka. Yoo know Mekka?"
and of course, cos the film passed through Turkey! When i saw the scenic pans of the Bosphorous sea, i felt heart-swelling awe and chest-thumping reverence, something i suspect the Kallang river will ever fail to evoke in me. and of course, passing through the main sights of Istanbul, like the architectural splendor that is the Hagia Sophia, and when they panned over the magnificent Bosphorous Bridge, i nearly cried. the rising cadence of the orchestral music accompanying the scene probably added to the poignance, but it just occurred to me that, there it was: the bridge i crossed everyday on the bus to and back from school.

If there's one thing to be critical of Singapore, and it is by no means fault on her part, it is that she is too modern and too artificial to invoke deep cultural and historical pride in her citizens. on a trivial note, mere a little less than 2000 years ago, Istanbul, or Constantinople back then, was the pinnacle of Western and Eastern civilisation, the jewel of Europe, and the penultimate trading port, sort of like Singapore but magnified 100 times in significance. so i dunno, not only in Turkey in the film, but the other places featured, it left me feeling quite sad and with a deep internal ache. maybe it's cos i subconsciously miss turkey, or maybe it's just that sorrow that Singapore, even with her wonderful governmental infrastructure, efficient transport system, clean water and what not, will never be able to achieve the splendor or sense of grandeur of historical and architectural legacy of almost all the cities in Europe. so that's that. anw the 'visit'' to Turkey via the film was nice, featuring some places i still recognise, one even fairly near my house, i think. brilliant stuff. oh and while they drove through Turkey, the dad and the son made acquaintance with a random Turkish nice guy who spoke French and helped them get through customs, who made built trust in the son, etc. and ended up stealing their money while they were asleep. so they left Turkey with a slightly bitter taste in their mouth. personal literary significance. hurhur.

anw there's so much of the film that's brilliant. so many themes, so many motifs, so many issues to work your mind around. i mean, yeah, house is extremely witty and intriguing, the office is quite hilarious, iwo jima is invocatively reflective, and i heard 300 was bloody awesome, but sometimes you just need a quiet, two-character film, without a 500 million bucks budget and cool digital effects and a starry Hollywood cast, to teach you the deepest lessons of life. i think all of us in singapore need a pilgrammage. maybe not in a religious sense, but really, a time to get away from the madness of singapore life and go somewhere to reflect. i think we're so caught up with building our knowledge, our reputation, our rank in society in increasing our standard of living that we've almost lost sight of life itself. when the son asked why the father could not take a plane instead of asking him to drive, the father replied, "On foot is always better than on a mule, on a mule is always better than in a car, and on a car is always better than on a boat, and a boat, better than a plane. That's what a pilgrammage is about." of course he said it with more emotive fluency, but that's the general idea. so it really left me deeply touched; the whole film, so for me, was really my Movie of the Year so far for 2007. only flaw for me was that it ended on a fairly abrupt note. but still, 4.5 /5 stars. Who's first to borrow it?

PS: i was left in such involuntary deep reflection thinking about the movie after it ended about 3am that i failed to sleep until about 5. maybe i should start *thinking in class. hurhur.

so the terrible week is finally over, and thus it life returns back to sanity again...or insanity if you consider the mounting deadlines that are rising like tidal waves...
so important lessons i've learned this week:
1) read the newspaper everyday - so you won't sound like an utter fool in your GP essay
2) never underestimate the devious ability of teachers to test topics that are taught in like the last week of school, just because you think there's an unspoken code of honour - read: complex numbers
3) never underestimate the gentility of some teachers to hand you exam answers on a platter - read: standard of living
4) always check that photocopied materials are correctly photocopied so that they don't give you a complete shock when you realise you doubled photocopied a page and are missing one of the most DUH-It'sTested sheets needed in an exam

so that was a fun week. and now while the momentum is still buzzing in my brain, i pledge to continue studying! after taking an indeterminably long break. but i do want to and have to get started on H3 lit. which is, metaphorically speaking, sort of like a big mole on a face. you want to get rid of it but you'd just rather not go to the trouble doing so. erm yeah in otherwords i haven't done anything since proposing the proposal. if i continue on this trend, i'll end up handing the proposal as the final paper. and the cambridge people will not be amused. so i'll get started on it soon. probably tmr.

wanted to watch Paris Je T'aime tonight at like the only screening in S'pore at orchard cineleisure, but thanks to a valuable tip-off from a reliable source, i made my way to Alliance Francais instead after a satisficing lunch (econs term!) and two hours of wasteful time at a lan shop. and i bought:
1) I've been waiting so long - une vie à t'attendre:            $2
2) (translation unavailable) - Le Grand Voyage:                $3
3) Hidden - Caché:                                                                  $5
4) Merry Christmas - Joyeux Noël:                                        $5
and
5) Paris I like you - Paris Je T'aime:                                   $15

if you have no idea what i'm talking about above, that's probably because they're french films. and i got these original DVDs at those ownage prices. i'm practically spasming my fingers in the midst of typing in sheer delight at my brilliant acquisitions. i'm a happy (china) man because somehow i think i've struck really great deals. anyway if you want to borrow any of the above, just ask, i'll be glad to lend.

last but not least, a highlight to not to be forgotten today is Mr. Adoofus Hitler that will long be remembered. and funnily enough when he was spitting out his speech, i bowed my head (not in guilt, of course, but in nearly uncontrollable amusement) and my eyes happened to rest on the picture of owen on the front page of the poetry booklet. which is this one or zoomed in, this one. and i was just thinking about how owen would be turning in his grave, at the futility and pointlessness of the shouting, the yelling, the telling-off, of the nice invigilator teacher, like that oblivious sergeant in The Inspection. but most of all, i think, he would be horrified at the corrupting of young innocent minds:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the mocking
Come spitting from scolding lips,
Obscenely false, bitter to take in,
Of vile, untruthful blights on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children desperate to say sorry,
The old Lie: that science students always best
their art counterparts.

ok just a sidenote, that wasn't an outburst or a vengeful hate-prose...just bored. and it was all only in the spirit of fun. so i probably have to delete it quickly to ensure i don't get caught. and i probably committed dozens of copyright infringements. but i guess that's because... i'm an arts student.

the two potentially hazardous days with mon french exchange friend has passed, and i just wanna say a big thank you to everyone who helped in err entertaining him. big big thanks especially to grace, tho she'll probably never see this, for firing rapid-rattling questions to get him to talk and enthusiastically imposing the regal language of the chinese on him ...really helped i think...thanks!
quite lame to say so but it was fun attracting non-stop stares for two days thanks to the hottie following me around. but equally laughable were the expressions on the faces of his adoring female fans when they discovered he was only 15. tsk..angmohs and their great genes. imagine the  hunk he'll become when he's my age. and i don't say this with envious covetousness of his supermodel looks, but rather... brotherly affection and admiration. serious.
anw wat was quite amusing was after we finished lit on friday and advanced into the next class, the teacher-that-was-to-be came in and totally daoed elias for a while, before letting his eyes rest on him to acknowledge his presence, and then asked, in very hesitating and broken/carefully enunciated speech, if he spoke english. what happened next was unbelievably entertaining; the teacher then proceeded to dao the rest of the class and address his new found friend in a heavily controlled, accented american english. i proceeded to exchange rolled-eyes with a classmate. it's not that i'm totally against artificial accents. i mean i do it all the time, especially with elias. when i talk with an angmoh, i can't help but slip into another vocal identity. it just come s naturally to me, having done it for so many years already. but to hear a teacher needing to do it? hilarious.

speaking of accents, if you haven't heard already, go listen to Virginie on Youtube. nope, not my french host's daughter, but a fantastic singer with an extremely cute french accent.
like for empty apartment: instead of "Can't you see something's missing, You forget where the heart is"
she sings "Can't you seee sometheeeng's meesing, You forget where the heart tis"
ok lah. mayb you dont' understand. so go find the link from jishun's blog. and join the VFC.

watched letters from iwo jima with jishun, zhaofeng and his friend. it was a great movie and all that but...really leaves me depressed. like makes you think about how stupid and tragic mankind is. most if not all the wars fought in history are so pointless and so ignoble, despite glorious epithets and patriotic trumpeting propogated by tyrannic leaders to the unknowing masses. dunno where i heard this from but it goes something like Man is to be pitied more than the most base of creatures. how apt. but that's just me. after viewing men displaying honorific intentions by blowing a grenade in their stomach, firing into their own heads at frequent intervals and driven to senseless violence of madness, comon tests seem so insignificant now. but that feeling won't last. and i wonder why i'm still here doing this.

i think we should abolish the A-levels.
after taking the lousy GP paper today (for which i wrote the most lousy and ludicrious essay in my exam life), i realised that your future will more or less hinge on the four or five papers (or eight or ten if you count prelims) that you're gonna take. or alternatively put, two years of slogging is going to be put to test in a mere few hours of examination. how depressing is that. even tho a system that keeps you consistently on your feet because everything counts is quite rotten (read: IP), i'd rather that than be faced with the monster As.
where do we go after the A levels? for me, i dunno. in an ideal and almost fantastical situation, i see myself getting a scholarship and going to paris or dijon and studying political science at the esteemed Science-Po institutions in either city, and loging with my very nice host family if at dijon. of course, there are a great number of assumptions that this is based on.
1) i can get a scholarship to france
2) i am able to receive a completely Frenchised education with my mediocre french
3) i love political science (if PS is what we've been going thru in GP then...err no)
4) my hosts don't mind hosting me for a few years
5) i don't get racially ostracised or abused in paris

honestly, i don't even know what political science is. it just sounds cool.
i think i've always wanted to go back overseas, to hit that Wah factor and that I'mSingaporeanbutI'malsoaforeignerbecausei'vegainedsomuchinsightintothecultureofanothercountry feeling everytime i return to our sunny little island. but i dunno, idealistic dreams never turn out to what we want them to be. in the end, i'll probably jolly well stay in singapore, and maybe that'll be a better option. bsides things like political science or business, i don't know what i'm going to do, and even then, i don't think i'll be really pro at either. i wonder what happened to all the ex-Rafflesians who owned the A-levels and went to a uni of their choice. are they happy now? life is about making choices. i don't wonder what choice i'll make. but i wonder what choices there'll be for me.

on a lighter note (for me), my french friend elias is coming tmr! be nice to him ok..and anw i don't know him well cos i only spent like 3 days with him (i ponned the other two). and no paedophillic behavior pls. he's two years our junior. and be helpful in his learning of chinese. don't make fun of him as he goes thru this tedious journey the way you make fun of another unnamed classmate. thnx ;).