Finally 18. Just got back from another 6h outing, but it was not mainly to celebrate my bday, but to attend the wake of one of the 6her's father, who passed away recently. Shall decline to name tt person but I think some of the TCHS ppl already know who it is. Anyway shall start from yesterday first. On friday the 6hers met n went jiahui's hse to celebrate her bday. Shan't go into the detail, all I wanna say is... nice house! I have a weakness for nice houses. Anyway this morning went math tution... so sad bday still gotta mug... but I finished one tutorial in tt session! Then went turf city to eat the delicious dim sum for lunch with my mum. dad was overseas visiting my brother who was studying in london. After tt I went home n naped till 3 plus before heading to meet the 6hers again. This year's bday sure is diff for me. Not much celebration, and even the irony of confronting death on the day I was supposedly born. Anyway doing the same thing every year isn't exaclty very meaningful so I guess having something diff is good and helps broaden your horizons. After reachin the place where the wake was held, we handed over a sum of money tt the 6hers had contributed to and gave it to the mother. Shan't say the amount but it is pretty big and everyone contributed a same amount tt more than 20 each. Anyway just sat there and ate peanuts and talked, and talked about alot of lame stuff tt I shan't elab. Later had dinner and then attended the service which I have abit to talk about.

postnote: I edited abit of the post due to the sensitivity of the issue, but you can refer to teng's blog, http://dingz.diaryland.com for I kinda agree with him to a great extent.

The sing-song part was ok, but it is the preaching part tt puts me off. I admit it was abit boring but besides that, the preacher(or wadever u call him) started talking all sorts of irrelavent stuff. He started saying why we should belive in god, blah blah, and worse of all... started talking about his own life. Great. Who wants to hear your life story. He started talking about how he was in the gangs, how he killed ppl but was nvr convicted cuz of lack of evidence or something(then wats he doing here? arrest him!), and how he in jail n got to know christainity... I mean pls loh, this is NOT a sermon, it is a wake. We are here to remember someone else tt is not you, so cut the crap about your life story. This kind of things always happens. Alot of this Christain wakes always end up with the preacher talking about something totallly irrelavant and also pushing Christianity. It is so insensitive lah... to me it is as good as an insurance agent selling policies at a wake. I cannot stand this kind of people. Actually I have nothing against christainity, only all this people who talk as if they bear the message of god. Christianity, I believe has been so twisted and manipulated by man tt most of its original meaning is lost. Ok so anyway I listened to about nearly an hour of crap by the preacher before we toured the coffin, shaked hands with the family n left. By the time we left it was lyk, 9.30. We had been there lyk, from 4.30, so tt makes it 5 hrs. Hmm spent my bday at a wake... definately something new. I wouldn't call it a waste fo time definately. After all, tt 6her is my friend and I guess we should just be there to give him support. Hope he remains strong.

Yah happy bday to me anyway. here are ppl I know tt are born on this day:
1) Samuel Ong's younger brother... called ming zhen
2) Sheena, another 6her currently in joseph's class
3) Arnold Palmer... some fashion guy rite?
4) Kirsten Dunst... the gal from spiderman!
and ppl hu died today... Adolf Hitler! Cool... but I have seen a documentry tt suggests he might not actually have died but escaped to Argentina.

In conclusion, today was not what I would call a normal birthday... but let's hope I dun have too many more of such bdays... u noe wad I mean.

Oh no almost forgot to thank ppl. To my 04s75 classmates who got me presents... my other friends (lyk the wushu ppl esp eunice for the choker) who wished me happy bday... and in order of thosed hu smsed me(i copy jiahui) ... jiahui, teng, carine, samuel, liyu, rich(yurs was the bday cake u drew on my notes), stacy, weilin, joyce, yaqi. Also to aloyteo, jian an, matt, herbert, weidi, shiwei, elaine, serene and not forgetting 6hers! thanks to teng, jiahui(again!), xinyi, huixian, andy, yisheng, yichao, weiling, suying, xinhui, kim, shiwei and kellie! thanks alot ppl! you all made this year's birthday such a great one! And sorrie to anyone tt I might have missed out... do tell me if I happen to forget to mentioned anyone. now tt I am one year older, I wonder what this will bring... wadever it is, let's hope it's good. =)

din go sch today as I was sick so can afford abit of time to blog. just returned from seeing the doctor and getting tt all impt MC. I took the condo shuttle bus out and walked back in after tt. I realise tt walking in on such a nice morning realli has some kind of a therapeautic effect. It is so peaceful and enjoyable to walk home and enjoy the cool morning weather and hear the occasional bird chirping. mornings at sunset way, where I live, are always beautiful except when the skies are grey, i.e, raining. walking home in the afternoons are usually not as enjoyable due to the hot weather, unless it just rained before that. anyway its just great tt my parents had the hindsight of choosing such a nice place to live in. the condo is juz next to this large patch of forest and hence a symphony of birds calling are pretty much a norm. here I have managed to identify at least 10 species of not-so-common bird species tt u dun see tt often. it is a great place to live in and mornings are always very enjoyable, and it's a pity tt most of the time and have to rush to school. so this is one of tt rare mornings tt i can get to enjoy n relax abit before having to dive back into the books later in the day. a sick mugger still has to mug. =(

here's a little info abt dreams n why dey r so weird. basically dreams are a rojak of everything in your memory, which explains why people from diff parts of your lives can somehow come together in your dream. lyk my weird dream, TCHS, SIM, NJC, my classmates, Orchard road, are all places or things I know of. As for the nuclear explosion and the radiation thingy? read abt this Cyclops System from the official website for gundam seed, one of my fav animes.

yup tt kinda explains it. of course I had have relatives who dreamt of their loved ones wave goodbye to them and walk away on the day their loved ones passed away, that's a diff story. also glendon, u sure u dreamt of gettin killed in your dream? maybe u juz nearly died izzit? cuz someone told me tt if u dream tt u die, u realli will... touch wood... =P

It seems to be a long time since the last post. Actually it isn't tt long, less than a week. But to me tt seems lyk eons ago. Competition seems to be have been over for a long time. Anyway life is realli boring so I guess there isn't any need to update anyway. Today too, but I guess I have to try to keep this place alive. I kinda fell sick again, which makes it the forth time in four months. Wow. Simply amazing. Still, played abit of bball during PE. Then later during bio lect I was freezing and having a hard time breathing. Blocked noses are juz so irritating. We were let off early from bio lect by 10 mins and I dashed to the canteen for a quick meal which I finished in 10 mins. Good practice for NS cuz u hafta eat fast. Anyway after physics lect n CT was wushu. As I was sick I couldn't realli train(my mum dun let me), so juz sat around n watch. The j1s are improving but I am still worried that they are not really bonded as a team. Some of the seniors realise this too but they dun seem to wanna care or intervene in anyway. Maybe I too should not care n juz let nature takes it course. Besides what can a single non-exco member do? pls dun say cliche stuff lyk "even the smallest of man can change things" yeah ok Hitler started WW2, does tt counts? I dun believe I have tt ability to change anything either. Anyway going on, the juniors also were made to choose what weapons or routine they wished to train in. As expected, no one choose broadsword. The routine is just too demanding and difficult unless u r willing to put in tons of effort into it. But I am glad too, cuz it means I can be slack and train my own stuff, lyk aerials! Yah tt stupid chen shao is getting more freaky by the day... today he did 3 consecutive aerials one after another. Ok I hafta admit he's good. When I recover I guess I'll train harder towards an aerial... after tt maybe I'll learn... wait let's not look so far n concentrate on this one little move first.

Anyway what realli made me blog is this dream I had last night. The dream is kinda scary. Well it seems that somehow we were having lessons at the TCHS side. Then came this loud explosion from across the bukit timah road beyond NJC. After a short while there was this shockwave of dust that came flying across the road, which made us all run out of the classrooms. Then as we were wondering what to do next, came a horrifying sound as this wave of infra-red energy or microwaves or something came towards us. The IR was suppose to heat up your body's water and cuz u to explode or something.(basically, it kills) Then some of us escaped to SIM building somewhere behind TCHS where we were somehow safe. As survivors from our school strolled in, we learnt that some nuclear explosion or something similar had occured some distance behind the NJC. Seems that half of HCJC was wiped out along with the whole of NJC(sorry to the njc ppl) and countless others. It was so horrifying. What was most scary was when we heard the energy waves heading straight for us and knew that we could die and had to run for our dear lives. After that, in SIM, the funny thing was some surviving teachers still wanted to continue the lectures, which were stopped after student declared they had no interests in it. Then I hurridly left for home. The funny things was that somehow the SIM door connected to Orchard road and I ended up waiting for a bus at Orchard. tt's when I woke up. It's the fact the this dream deals with the death of so many tt scares me. Imagine all the friends I would have lost, not to mention about half or more of my class was missing. Death is something tt till now I still fear, I feel. Maybe this will change as I get older, but now I fear dying, I fear losing my friends, I fear seeing so many people around me juz suddenly disappear in a flash. But if you realise, the recent tsunami juz did tt. And for the courage the people in those areas had to move on after such an ordeal, it is really worthy of our respect and admiration.

Oh yah todae is teng's bdae. Happy birthday tengjin!

today was wushu competition. I din really do that well. definately was one of the last few, but definately not the last. I am abit disappointed, but I should have known better. After all there was little time for preperation( abt 1 week) for this new routine. Definately could have done better if I had learnt and familiarise myself with this routine earlier. anyway what's over is over. Should try to look forward and also look on the bright side. The bright side is that now I can train anything I like and best of all return to doing my old routine which is though alot more harder, but I am very familiar and comfortable with it. In other words, freedom in training! For this comp, must really thank all the HCJC and TCHS wushu ppl, and the seniors too, hu were down there to support me, and to all my friends and family. (gee I sound like I actually won something =P) Anyway with the end of competition, my 5 yrs++ of wushu has kinda come to an end. That doesn't mean I will stop pursuing my interest in wushu though. I am not closing the door here, just closing one chapter and beginning on another one.

04s75 finally had a stayover. went liyu's house on sat for a stayover. had dinner then proceeded to play mahjong n xbox tt shiwei had brought. shan't go into the details as I am pretty busy these days. but we really have to thank liyu's mum and liyu included for their great hospitality. anyway the next morning i went straight to bedok cc from liyu's to train with my wushu coach. train till about 11++ then went for lunch at bugis with jo, yuet n eunice. met daphne n my wushu jnr yihui along the way. after tt walked arnd bugis abit before heading home. i was so tired tt by the time i reached home at around 3.30, I juz bathed n read the newspapers before sleeping till monday morning. it was fun at liyu's house. juz wished tt there were more ppl ( only 15 came but 12 stayed over!) and tt we could have more such outings together. we but exams are coming so i guess tt isn't too possible.

oh yes i finally got back all 4 of my papers. here are the grades:

AOOO
gp:C5
I dun think I need to say what the 3 O's are right? There is a reason why I regret taking triple sciences u noe...

today was napha. finally after failing napha for so many years in TCHS and being constantly tortured by the PE teachers there, I finally got a gold totally on my own! This time round all training was done on my own, and I had really put in alot of hard work from the start of last year. It's really great to know some things are achievable in you put in the effort. I only wish I could say the same for my studies. Lemme go thru all six items:

1) Shuttle run: omg this was slack! the dist was obviously less than 10m cuz I finished it in 10 secs and the slowest guy in my class ran 10.1 secs . Nuff said...
2) Situps: I always admired those ppl who did like 60++ situps in pri sch. yah so I tried to do as many as I can but alas only did 57. Still pretty good though.
3) SBJ: yes I finally jumped a C grade of 232 cm! I failed SBJ throughtout pri n sec sch cuz I had short legs and I am fat. well good thing I trained to increase the leg power and reduce my ballast to some extent.(but I am still fat)
4) Sit and reach: 45cm which is B or C grade. Alot of my friends cheat, yah well but sit and reach is stupid and is excluded in NS so I guess its ok.
5) Pull-ups!!!: yay I finally reached my goal of 15! S0 proud of myself. Used to think lyk "wah, pull-ups is only for those ppl with super thick arms and I would never be able to do one" well I guessed I proved myself wrong. =)
6) 2.4 run: hmm... the weather was a killer. so darn hot. I only ran like 11.40 which is super slow. What makes it more frustrating is that I run pretty often yet I am so slow, in fact slowest amongst the guys in my class who ran. So not fair. Muz be I dun have the running genes. ppl lyk yichao(from wushu) can run under 10 mins and dun feel tired. not fair loh. but the world's never fair so I can't really complain.

yah well overall I am quite pleased with this year's NAPHA results. I only wished I ran abit faster. But well I am glad it is done and over with. But will still train to keep fit and healthy.

Friday was both a sad n happy day. Shan't talk about what is happy but the sad thing is that as expected, my event for the wushu comp was cancelled and I have to switch events. Now I have one week to learn a new routine for the comp! Actually not only me, but about 6 ppl from HC wushu all have to learn a new routine because their events were cancelled too. This really sucks. Although I am switching a to so-called easier routine, but then 1 week is hardly enough time... stupid MOE and their new rules. I really don't feel like competing, but yet another part of me wants to compete. omg what am I thinking? Urgh. ONE WEEK. ONE WEEK TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW AND PREPARE FOR COMPETITION.

ok added dis on cuz i feel I am being too self-centered. Cannot feel so demoralised and muz work hard for the next week. All da best to those competing in this years wushu comp, esp to the HC ppl hu are learning a totally new routine like me. All da best ppl. We can do it.

Nowadays I dun realli blog or go online that much as it wastes alot of time and also my life is getting super-uninteresting. Anyway today I kind of realised that from now on, I shouldn't be that nice to people, especially to those I don't know or don't care. Why? Cause you just cannot please everyone. No matter how nice you try to be, some people just remain so hostile and unfriendly. I used to try to please or at least make everyone around me happy, but now I realise that is not very possible. I have to be more cold-hearted like Richmond says. Dun care about what others think, as long as I and most of those of my friends and family are happy. The rest of the people I really shouldn't give a damn about them. Just take this example. I am unluckily the PE rep for my class and yesterday I had to hand up the annual track and field meet form to the PE dept. As usual my class is not enthu so basically it was an empty form. I actually felt bad when I saw the disappointed faces on the PE teachers. I think from now on I shan't care if people are sad or not. As long as I am happy and so are most of my friends. Shouldn't worry so much about the rest of the world out there. I cannot be so nice or soft-hearted.

Oh this entry is directed at someone.(a guy) To that someone, whom I doubt comes here, but if you do, STOP being so goddamn petty. It's not gonna do you any good. I am pretty sick of seeing your chao bin face eveyday. It's even worse than that auntie's face from the TCHS canteen. So if you want to continue being so petty, go ahead. I don't give a damn. I am pretty sick of trying to be nice to you when you remain ever so cold. If you want to remain like that, fine by me. You probably don't see me as your friend, but I really don't need people like you as a friend either.

Oh happy birthday to my brother too, who is in UK studying. Happy birthday fp!

today wanted to go running but the rain forced me to cancel my plans. Oh well but there is a bright side to it. with the rain today is exceptionally cool, and walking home from the bus stop, which takes 15 mins, is particularly enjoyable. guess sometimes we just have to look on the bright side and slow down to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. If we blindly just hurry forward and not stop to take a moment to appreciate what is around us, I guess we will never be feeling very happy or satisfied with our lives.

Ok enough of chim theories. Yesterday I watched turn left turn right on channel u. It is a very sweet movie, but definately too far fetched. Watch it and you will know why. It really exemplifies the meaning of "so close yet so far". The movie is about 2 people who are always so close to one another but yet both do not realise each other's prescence. They had met before in their childhood and again 13 years later, but then after exchanging numbers both numbers were washed out by the rain. And they end up searching for one another. The irony is that live in adjacent flats just seperated by a brick wall. The ending was abit lame though, as the wall somehow collasped due to an earthquake and they 2 are joyfully reunited. Lame but sweet show.

hmm haven been bloggin for a while as there isn't realli anything interesting happening in my life now. but yesterday was pretty different. It allbegan after wushu training. I happened to have a exactly same bag as one of my wushu friends, and he accidentally took my bag when he left. Had to ask my parents for help in fetching me to tiong bahru plaza to find them and retrieve my bag. In the end I missed my maths tution, and ended up going to dinner with my parents. On the way to tiong bahru plaza, we witnessed an accident. The car in the next lane was rear-ended by a taxi. Heard a loud crash followed by a breaking of glass and there it was right next to me, a taxi with one corner of its front crumpled. Good thing the accident wasn't very serious and no one was injured. The only other time I saw any accident was when some car hit a policeman at marina square several years back. Anyway, the place where we had our dinner was a pretty interesting place. There was this super long yet thin park in between the row of houses, something pretty rare in Singapore. Think the area was around Kreta Ayer and People's park, where my parents used to live. The shophouses there were refurnished whole lot of the shophouses were turned into some weird shops. There were art gallerys, some art workshops, got one super posh high-class restaurant and also some ahem... well u know... cheap hotels. Anyway that area is prettin interesting and doesn't make you feel you are in Singapore. Later after dinner crossed the road to some Pearl's centre where walking outside it already made me felt as if I was in hong kong. walked around abit and finally bought the kungfu hustle vcd. watched it that night.

I must say that it is indeed a very nice movie, better than I had expected. the fight scenes, though abit exaggerated at times, were still cool. the plot was good and the music accompaniment was perfect. traditonal chinese orchestra music certainly goes very well with martial arts. very good movie that I would recommend to everyone. I just wished that 3 of the wushu heroes in the movie didn't have to die, but sometimes that's just how cruel life could be.

Today was wushu mock competition. Got lotsa people from other schools came to participate too. There were wushu ppl from NYGH, Ngee Ann sec, Pasir Ris CC, TCHS and HCJC. One or my juniors nearly killed himself. I did the same routine as him but only did a one-handed cartwheel when the routine dictated that there was to be an aerial(no hand cartwheel) near its end. He could do an aerial, but I guess he was too tired and flopped and nearly killed himself. He sort of landed on the side of his head and bit his tongue, causing it to bleed. Anyway it was a pretty good experience on the whole. The coach said I had alot of improvement, but I still feel there are many areas that can be improved on. Looking at the video of me doing my routine made me realised that there is still lots that can be improved on. That's the spirit of wushu. When one does wushu, you have to be constantly learning and improving. There is never a perfect standard. There is always that much more you can learn and its a neverending process. One must constantly put in effort to strive to reach higher standards. Only then will you acheive true greatness, which very few people have.