2008.

perhaps i should get started?
i don't feel like -.-

the books from top down:
1. shakespeare's King Lear. its under detailed study. i guess im quite ok with shakespearean(sp?) tragedies. so i dont think it'll be too bad. but im scared about english a1 anyway. so many books...

2. august strindberg's Miss Julie. apparently this one is supposedly unlikely to come out. and the book is so thin. well i haven't read it, but it's the unabridged version. so if they need to abridge the book to some readers, the book is probably hard. maybe it's short but difficult like barnard's persimmon tree.

3. salman rushdie's East, West. we already did Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies this year, and i suck at it (the only essay i wrote on it, i got 16/25). which means im not looking forward to doing this. i just cant seem to write very well about postcolonial literature. i also dont like writing about short stories. add together = bad.

4. Hedda Gabler. i haven't read so i won't know.

5. euripides' Medea. same as 4. interestingly, i've heard the author's name before in one of the Horrible History series...

6. The House of Bernarda Alba. See 4.

7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I'm not looking forward to analyzing this...

8. Siddhartha. i dont know why. but the title seems somewhat interesting. i havent looked inside the book yet, but the name seems to remind me of Buddhism (the Buddha's name was Siddhartha Gautama, right?)

9. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Weird title. I guess I'll have to read it before I form much of an impression of a book like this, though admittedly I have a starting negative impression.

10. Mother Courage and Her Children. Something tells me I've read part of this before; the name is very familiar. as again, haven't read. much like 4.

11. Selected Stories of Lu Xun. I'm actually sort of looking forward to this one, cause a few of the stories match the ones in the book Mdm Loo gave the hcl students; furthermore i did a book report for yr4hcl on 'yi jian xiao shi'.

12. No Other City: the Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry. I generally prefer poetry to prose, but generally I have trouble appreciating local literature for some reason. This is Singaporean poetry; I won't have much of an idea of what to expect.

13. Computer Science, Java Enabled. I'm not even sure if I'm taking the subject next year... hopefully I am allowed to take seven. Then, Comp Science serves as a block in case my Chem or Phys fails to yield a 7.

14. IB Theory of Knowledge. I've read this before in the IB reference section in the library. It's a pretty decent book and was somewhat interesting to read... but. many skills in pod and (hopefully) extending to tok need to be developed on an individual basis... it seems very hard to 'teach' tok.

15. Economics Course Companion. Not much to do; just dig in and see if I want to try HL or not.

16. Sixth Edition Physics. I already have Hewitt's Conceptual Physics but I'll see what's in this book. Hopefully I can continue to score in Physics next year; surprisingly it's the only subject which I managed to score 4-in-a-row tops (I'm not getting a math prize this year, but Mr Jason Chan told me I topped Phys).

17. English A1 Course Companion. I haven't read this but will very soon. I don't want to be getting anything worse than a six for English A1.

disturbing silence that i can't break

jk

Search

Sometimes I question my own productivity during the holidays.

I know I should be relaxing.
However, the gross unproductivity feels weird.
Yet, when I pick up my IB chem book and start reading
I don't really feel like doing Chem.
Even math or phys are boring...

I also have been thinking about several other issues;
The more I think, the worse they seem to be.
Issues of relationships, issues of faith, issues of epistemology...

I can't really write very much now. My mind seems fairly blank. I'll write a semi-essay on thinking too much and/or Shoot the Bullet the next time I post.

The lyrics below are from a song I listened to recently. I sort of like it.

where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
somewhere along in the bitterness
and I would have stayed up with you all night
had I known how to save a life

jk

Targets

Stuff I need to do during holidays:

decisions
subject combinations, HLs, taking 7?
primers??
fireAC??
math comp? other science olympiad teams?
EE topics?
relationship stuff...

academics/intellectish stuff
finish doing 2002-2006 Chinese Math Olympiads
program touhou stg-style game
figure out how to use my comp's remixer properly
gimping* stuff
world scholars cup mugging

non-academic, non relationship stuff
lose weight, sub80 as target
ddr - AA 50 9 footers, pass some 10s more consistently
restart playing guitar, play barres well
err keep this blog updated

relationship based stuff
go out more with ppl
invite ppl to my house
go to ppl's houses - at least 4-5 i can think of that dun mind...
write letters, about 5 or 6 i think
talk more, chat more...

i wrote something just wrong, so off... T.T
jk

Distant Thoughts

Looking back...

31st Oct etc: With the closure of acad year 2007 we've finished our secondary education. For us, the significance probably only dawned on us a bit late due to it well... not, at face value, being significant in the first place.

The end of this academic year naturally would make me start reflecting on what happened. The year started quite early on with LDP, which I didn't really enjoy until the end. I have faint memories of the GE Enrichment Camp and planning the Mind Games during term 2, as well as the various random events and competitions like the math olympiad and Geotrail during the holidays. Term 3 made me scramble to finish many projects on time; the holidays after that and term 4 sent me into mugging mode. And, of course, the mugging season culminated in the exams, after which we reached the post-exam period which, for this year, for me (pardon the bad English), was very stressful due to the many non-academic (relationships, other activities) concerns then.

I, probably much like you, have done much both right and wrong. Mistakes have been made; chances wasted, friends lost, exams failed. Somehow, at least to me, the wrong stands out much more brightly than the right. Perhaps, I need to become more contented with myself or more contented with life...? Or perhaps I really have done so much wrong and really need to change myself.

I can't really say very much. I'm so confused and scared.

5 - 7 Nov: The class chalet. Honestly, this time I didn't enjoy the chalet as much as I remember enjoying the one at the end of last year. Still, this year definitely had its very high points, although most of these were near the end.

6 Nov, evening: I had the opportunity to take a nice walk by the seaside with you to watch the sunset. Of course I won't go into the details too much (this is public domain), but I really enjoyed it, and it was... refreshing? I'm not sure how to pick the right adjective. Thanks for that opportunity though =)

6 Nov, night: Touhou 9 - 東方花映塚, or Phantasmagoria of Flower View, is quite an interesting game. Essentially, it's much like the rest of the Touhou series in that you fire shots at enemies, have a small hitbox and manipulate your character's motions to dodge utter swarms of bullets that are fired off at you. I tried my hand at Sikieiki's Extra Stage, which was nuts... I only managed to get to round 7 furthest. I'm not sure how far Sheu Zhi got, but he couldn't clear it, so seeing as there are 9 stages I didn't do too badly. Playing at home, however, the regular Story Mode on Hard features a ridiculous Final battle; the difficulty seemed to soar against Sikieiki in Round 9 vs Komachi in Round 8, whom I beat with like 6 or 7 out of 10 units of health left. Personally, for PoFV I think Medicine, Komachi, Lunasa and Sikieiki are cheap in match mode... Medicine's slow fields really mess around with game play, Komachi's EX attack is a particularly nasty spread of coins, Lunasa's spells are... like Youmu's, except from the bottom of the screen (VERY confusing) and Sikieiki's vortices spawn loads of unremovable bullets.

Touhou 10, Mountain of Faith, which I tried proved very difficult on Lunatic, though quite ok on Normal. I managed to capture 1 card on Lunatic though - the first Stage 1 spellcard. I generally have fewer problems with big clouds of slow bullets (to a limit. Lyrica's Hard spellcard is still way too difficult for me) than fewer fast bullets. I seem to have preference for Reimu B - I prefer the high damage attacks.

7 Nov, early morning: Fatal Frame III. I remember watching this last year - it was one of the higher points of the chalet. I read the guide carefully enough to remind Sheu Zhi to get Measure by phototaking one old lady in one of the corridors of the dreamworld. He played for about 5, maybe 6 hours and fought his way through to Hour XII, but then the projector started screwing up so we decided to end there and let the projector rest...

I'll post more later. The time is so weird now...

i don't know if i made a mistake or not
but i had to do it. otherwise i wouldn't have stayed true to myself.

jk