The name is Gary. I'm a person who likes to be who I am. A 16 year old who just graduated from Montfort Secondary School. I'm now in Ngee Ann Poly studying Mass Communication.
My interests? Making music, watching dramas, blogging, shopping, and the occasional reading.
There's English lesson/remedial tomorrow from 10-11.30am. And there's the day camp at Whitley again tomorrow from 8am-5pm. Mrs. Lee says if we really can't make it for the eng lesson, we don't have to come, or something like that. In the morning, they'll be sectionals with the tutors. I want to go lah, but I'm stuck with class. Alif probably isn't going for the lesson, since he supposedly very pro liao.
Aiya, Ms. Ong asked me to come down tomorrow in the morning to distribute the rest of the band t-shirts. I'll see then whether I want to follow them or go for lessons. If not, I'll just go McDonald's or Hougang Mall to hang out for awhile before class.
Right. Today there was a combined day camp with Whitley Sec. So after classes for E1 and E2 were over, we boarded the bus for us leftovers. We arrived around 12pm, just about time for lunch. Malay food lah, don't really like. But still ate it up quickly and went up to the hall to practice Third Symphony. Alif was there already, practising his solo part for 2nd movement. For some weird reason, my embrochure seems to have changed, and I can't change it back. Probably explains my crappy playing during the recent SSW practice.
For the combined practice, we started with warm ups and a singing exercise. Then we tried out some chorale piece. Unable to move on further than 6 bars, Mr. Sukit broke us up for sectionals. The horns did sectionals on the stage. After half an hour, we came back together for to try the chorale piece again. This time we managed to finish the first part. But by then, it was time to go. So we left our instruments in the Whitley band room and went up the bus.
I had to sit with Miss Ong to do some admin thing for the band t-shirts, bleah. Back at school, the band went up to the gallery for fall-in while I went to the store room to get the shirts. Some seem to dislike the design at the back la. Myself included, haha.
I went to SSW practice yesterday after around, 2 months? The last time I went there was 2 weeks before SYF. Then we had exams, so couldn't make it. As far as I can recall, I only went there 5-7 times this year, the fault of so many band and school events taking place on Saturdays. I used the CC's H179, which I didn't quite like. It had slow and noisy keys, and it didn't feel like my own -_-. I practiced the fingering during the long exam break, so it wasn't a problem. The problem was practicing, which I couldn't do due the the absence of my horn. So, I expected a lot of 'scolding' from Mr. Ng. And he did, ranging from tonguing to not using enough air to volume. I'm sure the volume thing wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't the only hornist all the time, haha.
Attendance was bad lah. Two clarinetists (Fikri and Gerald) came down but both didn't have instruments, so they just sat around reading scores. We went through Deux Movements first. I screwed up from the first few seconds, counting the wrong time signature :D. The second movement, Caprice was better.
I nearly died in 3rd Symphony. We started with the fourth movement, Finale. At the start the horn's dynamics is fortissimo. Being the only hornist, it's either I reach that volume but cannot pitch, or pitch properly but cannot reach that volume. Die right? I had to repeat it for around 10 minutes until I finally got it correct.
Aroldo wasn't so bad lah. But instead of an orchestra-style playing, we played it like a wind band piece.
Just like any other last day before the school holiday, there was a parent-teacher meeting today. Before I went to school, Joshua told me on MSN that his level rank was 165/190. Scare me for nothing, since he passed MYEs and I supposedly failed. I thought my rank would be 180++ lah.
Was very surprised when the report card stated I passed MYEs. Apparently, they only take Math and 3 other best subjects. But the overall percentage still 47.5% lah. Mrs. Lee advised me to form 5-men study groups to go through Physics. And I better start practicing my Math during the 'holidays', cause fail E Math = ITE, shit.
1 last day till the 1-month long holiday starts. This week was bad. I assumed that there would be at least 1 post-exam activity before the holidays. Wishful thinking, hah.
This holiday ah, cramped with band, remedial, and classes. But I'm used to it la.
29 May - Biology, Physics 30 May - Physics, Day camp @ Whitley Sec 1 June - English, Day camp @ Whitley Sec 2 June - Day camp @ Whitley Sec 8 June - Band practice 9 June - Foot Drill Assessment 19 June - English
Yo, I have a not so good reason for not blogging these past few days. I was playing Ragnarok Online, an old MMORPG based on Norse Mythology. But if you still want to blame anyone, blame Kenneth and Ivan for influencing me, wahaha.
I like Tuesdays, because the typical day has only 3 lessons, 1 free period, and 1 assembly. Today wasn't an exception. CLB lesson was canceled so I went with the CL class. Luckily I brought a book to read.
As for geog, the theatrette was being used so we went down to the learning hub, again, but no boring video this time. We did an overview of rivers before watching a relatively interesting video on the Niagara Falls. Actually, the only thing that caught my interest was this interview with Micheal Daugherty. Apparently he was inspired by the massive waterfall that he composed a band piece for it. Got sample of the music also, nice leh.
Assembly started with some korean tv ads being shown on the screen which was then followed by some students presenting something on korean culture. The presentation was bad. I can criticize more, but my junior was one of those presenting, so there. The last part was fairly entertaining. Some foreign students from Korea and Thailand were called up to teach the basics of their language.
Pure history was very interesting. We started on a new topic, something about the rise of Hitler. For some reason, it felt like damn long in there, like 2 hours la. And we were released 10 minutes earlier some more. Something must be wrong with me.
It's 10.05pm now. I should be off completing my math homework now,
I went to the library for the first time in years today in an attempt to improve my English. I think that I may have forgotten about the marvelous splendor of books, haha.
Alif brought the Da Vinci Code to school today. At first, I thought he was damn outdated, until he told me this was his 17th time reading it, LOL.
My MYE results sucks la. seeee,
English - 55.8% E Math - 25.5% Pure Physics - 32.3% CS (Bio & Chem) - 57.2 CH (SS & Geog) - 54.9 Pure History - unconfirmed
I passed 3 out of 6 papers. Thank god I'm taking CLB, which I passed easy.
Meet-the-parents session is on next Friday. No school!
Woah, I got a 12/25 for English paper 2 (excluding summary), that's a first. I made the stupid mistake of being super kiasu. In actual fact, the answer was so obvious, right there in my face. Then I kept thinking, "This is Sec 3 liao, how can so easy? Must be a trick question, better don't write that.". In the end, my paper got full of crosses, haha! Luckily still have the summary and paper 1. Not confident about them though. This better not be the first time i fail English.
Then we got back chemistry paper. Good thing bio and chem are combined, so I managed to finally scrape a pass this MYE. Yeah, 1 pass this MYE. But I've still yet to get back SS and English paper 1.
During MS@M period, we discussed about school policies that can be changed, which will then be presented to Mr. Simen next week. This is what S3E2 came up with.
1) Subject combination (proposed by Daren Ng and Shawn Ng).
He claims that people who are not good at pure science, like everyone else, should not be forced to take the subject. And someone else asked for more variety of subjects like POA, D&T and F&N for E1 and E2, wth!
2) Toilet on 4th floor. Ruled out by Mrs. Lee as apparently, it is impossible, lol.
3) Homeroom system during exams (proposed by Nicholas Low).
Nicholas : "During exam time, should go other classes la, instead of our own. Cause they got air-con, we don't have. Later people sweat then very hard to concentrate you know?"
Rest of the class : "AH GUA!!! HAHAHA!"
4) Strictness of Grooming Check, Uniform Enforcement (proposed by Nicholas Low again)
Nicholas : "You see 3E1 and 3E2, our grooming checks are damn strict, compared to the rest of the classes". I totally agree with this la. But I'm saying ours should be more lax, not theirs stricter.
5) Toilet Paper in the toilets (proposed by Nicholas Low once again)
Nicholas : "The school should put toilet paper in the toilets cause the vending machine very inconvenient. Later no coins or if the shit coming out already how to put coin in and turn turn?".
Too bad Mrs. Lee didn't find any of them applicable, so we got scolded -_-.
Oh yes, we're forbidden from speaking any languages other than English in the homeroom now.
Rates are like this :
Chinese - $0.50 Hokkien, Teo Chew or whatever dialect - $1 Vulgarities - $1 Japanese, French, or anything else - $5 for trying to showing off
(Shawn had to pay up $1 for speaking so called vulgarities, "smartass") (Terence had to pay up $1 for speaking Chinese, "gu niang!") (Ke Ping had to pay up $1 for saying, "go eat shit la")
We got 3 new scores today during band. John Williams Symphonic Soundtracks, Mission Impossible Theme and Sesame Street Selections. For the sake of the juniors, we started off with Sesame Street. Sadly, we didn't manage to cover more than 10 bars before we had to go down the basketball court for foot drill, which was taken by Mr. Gavin, Daniel and Sean. 1 hour of foot drill for every practice from now on in preparation for next year's SYF, damn.
Wait, was it? CLB, E Math, Pure History (MW), Physics, and Bio. Yes, 5...
I passed CLB and Pure History, so 2/5.
Frankly, I feel very disappointed in myself, studying only the day before the exam, for 2-4 hours. And it's impossible to study in my house la. PC and TV so tempting la, cannot help it! I really really want to work hard, but doing that alone is hard -_-.
From Alif's blog;
"The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That's the essence of it." - Vince Lombardi
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Miss Tan brought us to the learning hub to watch a quite boring 40-minute video on rivers during geog. The background music was nice though, orchestral! And she asked who wanted to participate in this 'Green Spelling Bee' thing. Got S$400 to be won leh. I want, but too bad no partner.
Band practice was spent doing maintenance on our instruments and washing the band room. And I was so looking forward to playing my horn again, bleah. But I'm also glad I could maintain my horn. 2 weeks ago, I needed slide grease quite desperately but there wasn't any at hand, so I was left no choice but to just leave it in the case, hoping the slides wouldn't get stuck.
At 1.20pm yesterday, I headed down to Hougang MRT with Gerald. Next to arrive was Joshua, followed by Joseph and then Jun Ming. Down at the platform, Aaron and Benedict came.
In VivoCity, we met the rest. And since we had a good 3 hours before the movie started, we went up to the arcade to kill some time. Then we split up to go our separate ways. We had plenty of time left, so we made some lame videos. You can watch them below.
At 4.50pm, we met up again, bought our food and entered the cinema. The movie was nice. In one part, the symbiote turned Peter Parker emo. Got emo hairstyle, black clothes, and black eyeliner, damn funny la. But I won't say anymore, so I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie.
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Band resumes tomorrow. The downside, is that I have to endure getting back 7 papers first -_-''
Quite an eventful day, I must say. I went home to bathe after the pure history SEA paper before going to meet Alif at 11.30am. Well, that was the case before he decided to go straight to SCH from school. I called him at 11.30am, and he didn't answer his phone on purpose. Then I called Fikri, who said Alif was already one stop away from Tanjong Pagar. See? He lied to me, not bothering to tell me to go by myself. What if I was still waiting at the station ignorant of his scheming plan?
I'm lazy to type about the rest. So here's an extract from Fikri's blog to get a good idea of the day's events.
'Rushed to SCH after school, Gary kept calling me and Alif lied to Gary, almost got lost, kept calling/smsing me when my battery is 6%. $!%$! In the end, met up with Joshua, and Garycame later.
We had ‘lunch’. Satisfied myself with Hello Pandas, yes, Hello Pandas, shut up(not the pandas, you). Afterwards we went wandering around the building, stayed at the counter from 12.30 to 2.00pm. Had some jokes pulled here and there, being called a L-double and met a lot of SWO/SSW members there. The corridor was so packed with hordes of humanity, I can’t breathe. The temperature wasn’t at Air-con level. So many fumbles of anger here and there and the ushers were just er, how would you say, acting big? I am not going around going to be fooled by them. In the end, I didn’t go the tickets, but that’s ok, we just waited.
I just tried to control my emotions la, not going to throw my anger in a fit. Little by little it built up. You know, the ushers were in a dominant tone and not giving respect for people. And what more, people who didn’t co-operated got the tickets and they tried to fool the people there weren’t anymore tickets. They didn’t come clean btw. I could not control my anger anymore due to some bitches/jerks who told us to go to the second level and later to the first level. I went outside to calm myself down, just plainly drink some water.
It’s a Friday la, and then I realized that I don’t want to spend my Friday wasting energy over something futile. Then at least Gladys kind of cheered me up. It felt crappy, because I would only isolate myself and have mood swings on my own. Then I tried hanging around with Joshua, victor, Gary and Alif with his sarcasm (Realise these two things cannot be separated)
Did a lot of funny things. Had a lot of fun with the Fifth storey. Victor, Esther, Dax and Cheryl went to the fifth story to sneak at the back of the concert hall but they got chased out. A lot of funny occurrence. Especially when jackpot happens when we tried to buy a sandwich (Insider’s joke)
The hall was later full of people cheering. VJC’s one could really bring the whole building down and could beat Magnum force’s cheerleading squad. Went to congratulate Sean and Clement afterwards. Was so awed by majority of the JC bands getting gold.
Went to Starbucks so that Joshua could update the website. Went to Raffles City Burger King to eat. Damn funny guy, Victor who really knows how to spice things up, especially in re-telling what happen when they get caught at the Fifth Storey. Does Magic too. Went to City Link’s Gelare after that, couldn’t get enough money so ate…cookies. Couldn’t finish it because it taste worse that mud and faeces. My eyes welled up and almost vomited. You should see how they all laughed.'
Ever felt so bored that when there are some coins in front of you, you try to pile them up but they end up collapsing? It happened to me, so I tried out several ways of stacking them. By the way, I used 115 twenty-cents coins. And don't be tricked by the picture above, cause there's really no physics involved in my explantions, haha.
Attempt 1 - The paper method
1. Start by making a small stack of coins 2. Use a piece of paper for support as you place more coins on top
Result : Failure (I manged to stack everything up not nicely, but it collapsed while removing the piece of paper)
Tips : Use recycled paper (Being environmental friendly(yeah right), I used recycled paper, which is also my MW - TOV notes)
Attempt 2 : The book method (4 corners)
1. Start by making a small stack of coins 2. Use books to support at each corner 3. Stack more books as you continue to pile more coins
Result : Failure (coins fell when the support was taken away)
Tips : It would be better if you have thick books, such as Harry Potter's OoTP and HBP.
Attempt 3 : The book method (3 corners)
1. Start by making a small stack of coins 2. Use books to support at each corner 3. Stack more books as you continue to pile more coins
Result : Failure (it still collasped when I tried to remove the books)
Tips : Same as Attempt 2
Attempt 4 - The anything solid with a right-angle method (2 corners)
1. Start by making a small stack of coins against the right-angle formed by two objects 2. Add more right-angled objects as you stack up the coins 3. Remove supports
Result : Success! It seems this is the best method
Tips : None
Voila! The end result, 115 twenty-cent coins stacked up neat and proper.
It's Wednesday liao. Only one more paper left on friday, pure history (SEA). And I don't have to attend school tomorrow for exams, because I dropped A Maths, bwahahaha.
But back to today, E Math paper 2 + Biology. Today, I was praying hard that the paper would be set by Mdm Lee SK, because Rainald said whatever paper she set would be easy, and as if a gift from the gods, it was set by her. Yes, it was easier than paper 1, which was set by Mr Ang YH. But due to my inferior intellect with numbers, I can't say that I'll pass for sure.
Bio wasn't so bad at all, unlike what I expected. Those that I studied came out, and vice versa, except one question at Section C, about the digestion of starch thing.
I can't wait for next week la. Band will resume, so I can touch my horn again. If I'm not wrong, we'll receive the scores for the upcoming concert too. Didn't see Mr. Sukit for a long time too. We haven't seen him since we got down the stage on SYF day la.
Today, Microsoft just released Windows Live Hotmail to replace the current Hotmail. Even though I don't use Hotmail, I just tried it to see the new features.
Some notable features :
Address auto-complete
When composing an e-mail, users can begin to type the e-mail address in the "To:" textbox, and if the letter sequence appears in any e-mail address or contact name, all those contacts will appear in a pop-up drop down box.
Color schemes
Windows Live Hotmail allows users to change the colour of the webmail site; thus, everytime the user signs in with that particular e-mail address, this colour will be the layout. The current choice of available colours are as follows: Blue Vapor (Windows Live default colour scheme), Blue, Red, Black, Silver, Pink, Green, Purple and Orange.
Image thumbnails
Windows Live Hotmail automatically converts large image attachments into thumbnails for easier viewing. Images can be viewed at their full size with one click.
Reading pane
(Full version only) Windows Live Hotmail features a "Reading Pane" similar to that of Microsoft Outlook, allowing the user to read mail messages without leaving the inbox. Users can choose to have it at the side of messages, below the messages, or remove it completely if they wish.
Search capability
The indexed search capability of Windows Live Hotmail includes searching through the address and subject headers, and for some accounts, the message content. The search results will appear in a temporary new "folder" at the bottom of the folder list and the user can currently search both "Mail" and "Contacts" as well as "Web" (Depending which page you are on, e.g. Inbox, Contacts, etc)
Storage
Windows Live Hotmail Beta comes with 2 GB of free storage. A notification is sent to the user if they come within 50 MB of this limit. There is also a bar on the "Today" screen which notifies the user how much percent of their storage they have used, similar to Hotmail.
Overall, I still prefer Gmail over this. For one, Gmail has a much larger storage than Windows Live Hotmail. I have 2314 emails in my inbox, and I am currently using 221 MB (7%) of my 2849(and still growing) MB . See? You never have to delete your email again.
Also, Gmail already has most of those features mentioned aboved. The fact that it has the fastest speed, tagging of emails, and free POP-in and POP-out (means you can use Gmail to access your other email accounts, or access Gmail from whatever email client you use). Best of all, they continue to add new and improved features. So what are you waiting for? Switch to Gmail now.
Today is Monday, the day of the week I hate most. Well, for school days that is. There are exceptions though, like today, which is an exam day. Know why? It's because the Physics paper was damn arduous! Section A & C 30 marks. Section B 40 marks. If I counted correctly, I skipped 31 marks worth of questions. Chances of passing, I dunno. Maybe 5-10%?
History (Modern World) SBQs were quite easy. But I spent 1 hour doing them (in between questions I would doze off a little -_-), leaving me only 30 minutes left for SEQs. This section was the difficult one. Last night, I thought only Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations would be coming out for the exam. Thinking TOV was easier, I went to look for my notes, but couldn't find them. So, resorted to the internet. Thanks to Fikri for introducing me to some history sites. But that's out of the point. The point is, that I didn't know the topic about USA's involvement in worldly affairs would be tested. In the end, I only wrote one sentence; "I agree that USA was not largely involved in the inter-war affairs.". Like that got 1 mark or not?
I made a new skin for my blog, as you can see. By the way, those japanese hiragana characters are total crap, so don't bother to translate them. I just typed some totally random japanese words flowing out from my head.
Today was fairly boring. Woke up at 9, and watched some tv. Then I went to start on this blogskin. Finished at evening, and surfed the net up to now.
I'm sure you have noticed(duh), that theres a google ad right below the posts. That's the product of Google's Adsense. You display their ads on your site, and when people clicks on them, they pay you. Sure, it's a meagre pittance cause my blog traffic is low.
I did some research on earning money through the net. It's true that the idea is quite unheard of and unused in Singapore. I myself admit that I didn't know there was such a thing until I accidentally clicked the Adsense link in Blogger.
Thus, I found two sites, EmailCashPro and ClixSense. There are many others, but sadly I do not have a Paypal account, so I am only able to receive checks. Although it's a super small amount now, it will lead to big bucks sometime in the future. Actually, I doubt it. I'm just signed up on a whim, so this is just for fun. But help me anyway by signing up :D.
I don't usually do tests, but out of severe boredom, I did. The test which have been spreading around recently, the True Friend Test! Sorry la, I really was damn bored. (:
