Monday, April 18, 2005

Brevity in writing is not my strong point

It's amazing how much blogging material accumulates over a period of two days. Saturday and Sunday were pretty eventful days that I should probably blog something about, but I haven't had the time and now it's all going to go into one humongous blogpost. Brace yourselves.

Let's see, Saturday. The day of Linus and Lester's birthday party at some bungalow chalets at Changi, which is near to my house, but not that near. Considering I actually had to travel to Toa Payoh for tuition before going for the chalet, the perk of having the chalet in the East was only present on the return trip :P Anyway tuition went pretty well, I'm quite happy to say. I think I've forgotten too much of Organic Chem to teach it, because Org Chem requires knowledge of every component which is difficult to crash-mug in an hour before tuition classes, whereas Electrochem is completely crash-mug friendly even though it is more complicated.

I met up with Hope after tuition so we could take a bus to the chalet together, and I was quite overjoyed to have good company on the long journey there. We were just yakking a lot all the way, it's amazing how much we have to talk about. We reached the chalet after nearly two hours but that included a short food-hunt at Tampines, and Hope was quite miffed at me because I made us get off one bus stop before the chalet and we had to walk in the drizzle. I'm really quite paranoid about missing the proper bus stops so I tend to get off earlier than I should. And then walk.

Anyway to get to the main point, after two paragraphs of rambling, the chalet was really fun, because there were so many familiar faces there and a bunch of us were just sitting around in the room playing this fun card game from Settler's and being anti-social while everyone else was milling around outside talking. One of the "highlights" of my evening was finding a whole insect plastered to the surface of a pineapple chunk as I was having dinner, which was really quite gut-turning because all six of its legs were pointing outwards at me and it looked really disgusting. I think the most disgusting parts of most insects are their legs and antenna: spindly feely things that look like they've been in every filthy place on Earth.

Ok the real highlight was the games section, where Linus and Lester came up with this "How well do you know the twins?" trivia quiz that was really fun, because even if you didn't know all that much about them, you would have by the end of the quiz XD And then there were more trivia questions in a True/False session that had all the medical students asking "Is there negative marking? Can we leave blanks?" Haha we must seem quite freaky to non-medicine people. At the end there was a song item by the twins, of a wonderful song "Friends" that I knew the lyrics to but wasn't sure when I learnt them, strangely.

Makes me wonder if I should do something for my birthday. Not a party, because I don't like large social gatherings. But maybe just invite a handful of people over for lunch or dinner or something, and play some games. My house isn't exactly huge anyway. Will think about it. And don't worry, Hope, if I do have something like this, I'll be sure to invite you.

Phew, now Sunday. I was really pleasantly surprised to find lots of comments in my comments box between aestalitz and plhu about GSD stuff and what they bought at KKnM on Saturday. Makes me wish I was at KKnM on Saturday too, but I had tuition. The thought of not having pencil boards was really distressing, so I called KKnM and found out that they've run out of stock for the Athrun board only (which is to be expected, because the entire SEED fandom loves Athrun) so I zipped down to Sunshine Plaza with my mom and got the Shinn and Rey boards. Aestalitz, I totally agree, Youichi Fukano's artwork is gorgeous! Rey looks so to-die-for even though I don't really love him that much XD

Having satiated my daily craving for SEED-related crack, I walked over to Raffles City SC with my mom and looked around in G2000 for pants, because I think I have enough shirts but no pants (the distress!) and found that the pants aren't really suitable for me because the pants that fit my waist don't fit my hips and vice versa. I have big hips so it's always a problem getting suitable pants. Now I wonder why I'm telling the world that I have big hips. The endless mortification.

Met up with ZF for dinner at Subway and then went to Victoria Concert Hall for the RJ Chorale concert. For the first time in many years of concert-watching I was sitting in the stalls rather than the circle, which was not all that bad, but a totally different experience. I didn't see any familiar teachers (probably because the teachers all get circle seats) but I did see Victor and Geraldine, and Zhengyu performed in the alumni choir (Go Zhengyu! You're a fantastic bass!). It's quite different to be in the stalls and be surrounded by girls that giggle and chatter all the time (like, for goodness' sake, haven't you heard a boy's choir [the RI choir was the guest choir] sing soprano and alto before? There's nothing to giggle about >E)

The concert, on the other hand, was amazing. I'm not good at rating choral performances because I don't have the experience to tell between a good and a mediocre performance, but I could see the drastic difference between the performance last night and those I watched some years ago. I think, like what ZF said, the conductor makes a lot of difference. A highlight of every RJ Chorale concert is the small-group performance by Punch, because they're really funny every year.

When the college anthem came on, it was really quite a wave of nostalgia for me. There I was surrounded by people I didn't know, and yet something linked us because we were all from the same school. And for all the cynicism I expressed in my days in RI and RJC, and refusing to support rugby matches because I thought they were stupid (I still think they are), I feel a deep sense of pride at having come from not just one of the best schools in Singapore, but the premier institution and college, and being part of that long heritage and legacy. It's an amazing feeling, and I do feel the same for the medical school, which is why I find the name change quite unpleasant. A hundred-year-old institution that has produced numerous doctors, and you simply rename it without batting an eyelid. How many doctors out there will always remember the school as the NUS Faculty of Medicine, and not Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine? Why build a wall between the school and these doctors, why make it seem like we are no longer the same school that we've been for the last hundred years?

Sigh. It's quite unlike me to be the patriotic ra-ra kind of person but some things just shouldn't be accepted silently even if nothing can be done to change the situation.

The headlines of yesterday's papers made me burst out laughing: "PSC scholar's racist blog: Family says sorry" But it's quite a serious matter if you think about it. A password-protected blog, and still people can break in and see what you write and talk about it on forums. Even compile an entire dossier about you and send it to the PSC. I had originally wanted to write down what I feel about racial stereotypes in Singapore and how it's not possible to get rid of them completely, even though they are admittedly unpleasant views to hold, but now I'm a little bit wary. All the anti-government stuff I write here may someday become a hot topic of discussion, in a bad way, and I certainly don't want that to happen.

Hmm I uploaded a new song file yesterday but the first note is somewhat shocking; I opened my blog without knowing how loud my speakers were set to and got quite the nasty shock. That probably indicates that I should change the file.

Avaris / 4/18/2005 11:18:00 AM

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