no a

Term results look like shit.

GP: C --> B in the report :D
Maths: B :(((((
Econs: B --> C in the report :((((((((
Physics: VR -.- (don't ask me what this means, I mean I saw it on the class scoresheet)
Chemistry: VR -.-

Where the hell is the A?!?! I hate this shit results. So I need to work harder this term. So like I go and revise the whole J1 work within this term and freaking keep the GP resource file updated and finish up the right word and read up near-impossible to understand physics for the damn H3. That is a lot of work. -.- I swear prelims I'm making sure I'm gonna own.

So ac band concert's coming up on 24 march. Practices are going on overdrive recently and will continue on. I'm tired. And I hate to say this, but I have to say that the J1s are seriously laggggggggggging. So I suggest that all of them should go back to the basics and do technical stuff right after the concert and do this stuff on their own. Hopefully, their tone and running notes and tuning can improve.

Blue horizon's tuning today was real bad. And if I say tuning is bad, it is really bad cos my ear sucks at hearing this kind of thing. Must be the change of environment to the VG... or is it everyone is damn tired?

the real one at HSGP in vietnam

orientation couple dance in vietnam

That is me dancing with Han on the far right. Zaneth the boss says I'm ownage cos I danced with the goddess. Ok, whatever man.

long day

today was a long long long day. Finally, it's over. yay.

H3 test was kind of bad and horrible.
Presentation rehearsal for the ACJC science symposium went horribly.
Dr Lee had this sarcastic look on his face when he looked at me.
Yucks, there's band on monday. And then band camp from Thursday to Saturday and the timetable look shitty. Looking at it makes me want to puke because there's so much sectionals and combined! ARGH!

BUT:
Alumni concert was nice! yay.
My frisbee catching skills leveled up!

chinese and a levels

Chinese A level results: C.

Retake: No. Never ever, not after that O level disaster of C5 for both tries, which possibly cost me my A1 for combined humanities and hence, my valedictorian and OBA gold medal. Furthermore, my Chinese is cmi type, and has gone worse after not using it often enough for months.

Future A level: Imagine next year. Yel expects me to go up the stage as one of the top people, with the band cheering me on. Ok, I will try my best.

Present A level: Congrats to some of my J3 band seniors like ming xuan, bize, zhenrong.
Anyway, I dunno whether to say it's bad or not. It's just that relatively fewer people are actually up on the stage this year. They say that it's because of the new syllabus, but I still think otherwise, that the college's standard dropped a little.

That's enough for today. I have to study for that H3 physics test tomorrow. Counted for A levels man. Must be serious!

ssef day of results

ACJC medal tally: 2 silver. 2 bronze.

Shaun Sim: 2 silvers. So happy for him.
Lam and Tamojoy: 1 bronze each.
Me: Nothing. COP as usual. So no personal achievements so far in JC life. D:

So after the thing, the rest of us who got nothing were damn demoralised (especially that Shaun Ng, who was laying his head on the table the whole time) and simply see that Shaun Sim being happy. He must have been the happiest guy out there, having won a lot in a recent spate. He just won the material science quiz with Shaun Ng, Adi and Annabel. Now, 2 silvers. Congrats man. You are the man, Shaun.

Now, he's talking about joining other competitions and doing another project. Big deal but I don't even recommend that. He's simply killing himself off. What he needs is a real paper qualification called the A levels. He should get down to work on his real studies. Seriously, he's collected enough stuff to get all the top universities to want him. And someone needs to stop him from depriving the rest of Singapore their trophies.

Whatever. We had to expect it. No point talking about why none of us (the rest) won anything. We tried our best to convince the judges. Including me. We had to blame the system. From there, we thought out a hypothesis.

There is a correlation between the amount of research funding you receive and the awards you attain. So, the more money you receive, the higher your chances of bagging an award.

You see, most of the prize winners are that of A*star related projects and that MIT projects. In case you don't know, a*star is freaking rich, in fact overly funded by the garment. Ah, and MIT, is world famous. So you will get well-known professors if you were to be attached to these places. And you get the super cheem looking projects that bag prizes.

On the other hand, NTU and NUS are worse off. Less money means less wonderful and original projects to do. Maybe something like mine is in this category.

Obviously, deviations do happen. Like the RJC guy who figured out some "new" mathematical formula which he calls the 'wong tong bi-circular something something'. The whole poster was nothing but a mathematical proof. Neat. No big research plan required. All he needed was a Sec 4 A maths book and his brains. And according to him, he stumbled across this.

The strange case that tried to kill off our hypothesis was that of an MIT project that failed to bag a prize. Shaun Ng says something like "Does that mean that MIT projects are at the same level as ours?" Ironic. Because many Singapore projects actually beat it. haha.

Then you will realise. SSEF is all about luck. Not effort (for this, you get the judges' praise, but not the material thing that you need from them). Not the presentation of your poster or how attractive your poster is (The fact is: they mostly choose projects with horribly wordy posters that no person can read without concentrating hard enough on the words). If you happen to have a bout of creativity like the guy two paragraphs ago, yes, you will win something, provided that you got avenues that allow you to search for professors who can mentor you. However, the fact is, I think, most of the good and well-funded projects are projects that the professors thought about and are not of the student's ideas (unless they are so well-read that they actually can make hypotheses in that research field, which is like how rare). Those projects so happens to be the projects which only the selected few will ever make it.

So if I say that SSEF is all about luck, it will be wise to choose your project wisely. Don't be like me to go and choose one that has more or less reached the full bloom of its research potential. Choose one that may as well give you a chance to use your creativity to come up with something new. Again, this choosing part is all about luck, as you may never get what you desire as the chances of getting into a programme like SRP which allows you to have the freedom of choice is rare. The main idea is that getting the right project to start with is the key to winning something.

SSEF should also introduce more awards like something like the most popular poster award. Seriously, the guys beside my booth were having the time of their lives entertaining interested students from Hwa Chong, Dunman, NUS High and everywhere else. I seriously feel damn bad for them as they won nothing in the end. Unfair right? Ok, their poster title was "Headlines: Muggles invent invisibility cloak". Aren't you interested to hear it? Sounds magical. A sure crowd-puller, but not an award-puller, sadly.

So, to end off, here are some final hints to choosing wisely: Aim for biotechnology projects and never for electronics. After all, the person in charge of ssef is a biology professor.

ssef day of judgement

All is well. Well is all.

SSEF day of judgement turned out just fine. No serious hiccups from me, except for the unusual worrying at the last judge. So I expect something good tomorrow unless my project is CMI as compared to other projects.

Was it all really that good?

The food was wtf. wtf. wtf. They give you a packet of rice with a thin slice of fish cake, a small scoop of omelette and effed up chicken drumstick doused with curry. After that, I wasn't even full so I went to get Macs. Then I realised, I've been eating Macs 1 million times this week. gg. Next term PE is gg. napfa is gg. go army early liao.

My black leather shoes were as usual horrible to wear. It's so tight all over. Now, my feet just feels sore. My blazer smells like shit too.

So anyway, today at the fair I was feeling damn high. So had a lot of fun socialising and also stoning at the same time cos had to wait damn damn long for the judges to come to judge the booth. Boring lah. But all the 3 judges are the friendly kind, not the super sarcastic and skeptical and all the s words. To have them, you have to be damn lucky.

So Zan has been right all along, it's all about luck. haha.

maths D:

Horror of horrors! Stupid maths term exam paper can go and die. Freaking tedious working. Unusual mind blanks at vectors and question 2. blah. you know it. I shan't go on. annabel says she lost 15 marks. hello, she's the winner of the founder's day top science student award. I'm not too close, at 18 marks.

I go study for econs and look forward to preparing for SSEF after it. work work work.

And happy birthday aunty. aka. qi en. eh, don't grow up lah.

founder's day

Morning was spent going for piano lessons, reading research papers and researching on more shit. Half past noon, I left home for Macs at funan to settle the presentation for the freaking poster presentation on Wednesday.

That rv guy was late - again. Always late one. Idiot. Freaking irresponsible. He was the one who said meet at 1pm and he came like 20 minutes late. Yesterday too, about 25 minutes late. All the time late. Wah lao, waste time. Say sorry also still late. That's why eugene said must scold him. I will scold him if he comes late on Tuesday. He will be sorry if it really happens!

Meeting went smoothly. Many stuff settled. :D Nothing interesting.

Yup, all these crap even when term exams starts on Monday. Luckily I don't need to take the papers on Wednesday - physics and chemistry, otherwise gg.

Oh, later I'm going to receive the ACS OBA silver medal at the founder's day dinner. So happy, not because of the medal, but because there's free $100 dinner for 3 people. Yay! Dabid Loo is getting gold cos I didn't beat him, according to the barker road school, at O levels. Damn stupid, but this is history. A levels is more important, so, who cares?

I'm so going to study liao. No time already.