struck down

Apparently, a dreadful disease has struck my class and a teacher who teaches my class in the last 2 months. Why is it so depressing? Well, everyone out there affected has been hospitalized. Nah, disease doesn't mean some weird infection. It means a coincidence of unfortunate events.

First came SLow. She was hospitalized twice already this year. Both times were real ordeals. The first one was something lah during the term exam period. Then the doctor gave her a medicine or antibiotic that she was allergic to and she went into a really bad situation. x.x The second one, she had a gastric problem or something like that and she went missing from school for like damn long. Well, anyway, she's alive and well now so that everyone can continue to make fun of her. :D

Then Yap the teacher got struck down weeks ago by an auto-immune disease. omg. Needless to say, he almost died. When he was gone, dk took over his lectures and my class was treated to a dk style tutorial (really sucks, but at least you learn) and we also had combined tutorials with sb4 :D . Back to Yap; let's go on to his story. Well, he started feeling unwell one day and he went to the hospital A&E. The doctors thought it was some normal disease (wrong diagnosis!!!) and gave him antibiotics and he went home. His condition became worst and he went to the A&E a second time and they gave him more treatment. His condition got worst. Apparently, I think it's something dealing with the skin and he went to see his friend dermatologist at the National Skin Centre. Somehow, his friend knew that it was a rare autoimmune disease. Thank God, if not, I dunno what could have happened to him. His actions said he felt so weak that he was like collapsing throughout that time. So he was warded again and put on steroids (to pump muscles! NOT!). So 1 week later, he was back in school and I heard all these from him. Shaun and I were like shocked and amused at the same time. There he was, standing alive and talking to us, a complete difference from a week ago at that time. Totally unbelievable but a really tough ordeal. He was still on steroids then. So Shaun told him to head to the gym. But that's another story. lol.

Shawn got struck down recently. Anyway, he went to hospital over something probably to do with his leg getting hurt and him needing surgery, so he's carrying some crutches now. It isn't that serious though, with him crapping around in class as usual. haha.

Now, rmd. Where is he? He didn't come to school since Tuesday this week. Certainly, he was struck down too.

Someone tell me what's happening to 2SA1? And who will be next? Certainly not me! I still got a Swiss trip and my H3 exam soon! Anyway, tune in next ____ (fill in yourself) to find out.

nodame

Great. This place became a cemetery. Whatever lah. I'm back.

Yesterday, I watched the nodame drama special at night like after school. 4 hours of non-stop nodame! Nice. Chiaki and Nodame is a nice couple, and exactly like opposites... so they attract. So there are 2 specials. The first one concentrates on Chiaki winning a conducting competition. After having to see him conduct, I must say that he can conduct well, even though he's really acting and he's not a conductor in real life. One nice part is the part where the conductor has to spot mistakes deliberately made in the orchestra, which is exactly like what dr lee says in band. In another part, the chiaki realises the orchestra slipping away from him and also not looking at him. I think this draws similarities in band where we only sometimes look at dr lee even though he's giving a lot of visual cues to help us express our musicality. The second one concentrates on Nodame and why does she play the piano. In the end, everyone went to some church in Europe and Nodame gave a recital. She was lol cute in the Mozart costume. When she played Mozart's twinkle twinkle little star, I knew I had to get my hands on the score cos it sounds nice. Then, at some salon party later on, Chiaki and Nodame finally... kissed haha. Like so shocking.

By the way, the Nodame in the show does not really play the piano. But they happened to cheorograph it so well that Nodame actually lifts her hands at the right places after hitting a loud chord (they keep her hands hidden behind the piano). I think Son Rui also can't actually play too, and she played one of Lizst's Transcendental Etudes, which is like one of the most insane stuff in piano music. I'm suprised Nodame's ear is so darn good that with just several hearings, she can master that insane piece. If only I could do that... haha.

Then today in band, we played all the japanese arranged stuff. Lol my rhapsody in blue solo screwed up big time and in kenneth's version, everyone laughed at at weird trill he made. I think I should take out all my recordings of the solo and let everyone listen because everyone isn't playing properly at all (me included), and I think dr lee went darn fast for the solo (which means less enjoyment of it). Hmm... for people playing the ad libitum parts, gg man, cos like no one today played a pro-ed version of swing style improvisation.

What dr lee said after my "audition" really stuck me cos it reminded me of chiaki's part of the nodame special. Adding on to what he said about conducting in which everyone can make sushi, not everyone makes good ones, he said something like that one must be different from the rest and input some sort of invidual characteristics in his music. He also said that the conductor moulds the music, which really gave me the the impression that conductors really differentiate what different bands sound like and how important they really are.

That's it. I'm tired. Now all I want is to perhaps learn the piano part of the real rhapsody in blue for fun (could take millions of years) and twinkle twinkle little star.

sleeping at a later time

Perhaps I do need to sleep more.. or less. Man, I'm gonna get retarded here.

The Effects of Sleeping at a Later Time
(applies to Ian only)
Lee Kang Qi Ian ACJC
Lee Kang Qi Ian ACJC

Abstract
Many assume that sleeping later than usual is bad for health and for social life. In this paper, we present our findings of sleeping later than usual. Our findings show that sleeping later than usual confirms the assumption that it is bad for health and for social life. We also find that there are 2 equilibriums in the amount of sleep required to wake up fresh after sleeping.

1. INTRODUCTION
Many assume that sleeping later than usual is bad for health and for social life. Thus, our primary hypothesis is to confirm this assumption. Our secondary hypothesis is that the optimum amount of sleep is 8 hours. We define health as performance during PE and the amount of tiredness, and social life as the ability to socialize with others and the enjoyment of being with people.

In our research, we could not find any more willing subjects other than the subject named Ian. Thus, we have assumed that this research only applies to Ian. This assumption is well-justified because we have already stated explicitly in the heading that this ONLY applies to Ian.

In Chapter 2, we shall present related work. In Chapter 3, we present our methodology. In Chapter 4, we present our results and discussion. Finally, we shall conclude and state possible future work in Chapter 5.

2. RELATED WORK (screw this part... :D)

3. METHODOLOGY
Every day, for many many days, we subject Ian to random different sleeping times and a fixed waking time so that the amount of hours of sleep varies. For example, on Monday, he may sleep at 9pm, and on Tuesday, he may sleep at 3am, and on Wednesday, he may sleep at 11pm. But every morning, he wakes up at 6am. This was done to ensure that the subject does not get accustomed to a particular sleeping time after a period of time as in the case in which we give the subject a fixed sleeping time for a period of time.

Upon an hour of waking up, the subject is asked to judge his level of tiredness on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most tired. On PE days, we judge his performance during PE by timing his runs and the intensity of his workout, again judging the performance on a scale of 1-10. We also take into the account the amount of sleeping time that the subject has during tutorials/lectures and rate it, using a complicated process on a scale of 1-10. With these 3 indicators, we can obtain a very accurate indicator of the health of the subject on a particular day via a summation of the 3 indicators.

To obtain an indicator of the social life of the subject on a particular day, the subject is subjected to 3 tests. The subject is asked at a random time during the day to judge whether he is comfortable socializing with others on a scale of 1-10. Then he is asked whether he enjoys being with people on a scale of 1-10. We also observe the social behaviour of the subject carefully and judge it on a scale of 1-10, with being extremely sociable at 10. Thus, we can obtain an accurate indicator via a summation of the 3 indicators.

Using the 2 indicators, and comparing each indicator to the amount of sleep in hours of the night before, we can construct two graphs that correspond to the health and the social life of the subject.

4.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The graph of the level of health against sleeping time is shown in Figure 1. We can see that the level of health when sleeping at 8-9 hours at day is optimal. After 9 hours, the level of health decreases, in which we suspect that is because the body is not used to because of over-resting. We observe that persistent tiredness is highly present does not sleep at all, while sleeping for 1 hour drastically improves the level of health by 100%. Unusually, sleeping 3 hours a day gives a level of health that is comparable to sleeping at 7 hours a day.
Figure 1: The graph of the level of health against sleeping time.

The graph of the level of social life against sleeping time is shown in Figure 2. We can see that the level of social life when sleeping at 8-9 hours at day is optimal. After 9 hours, we see that the level of social life drastically decreases. Unusually, sleeping 3 hours a day gives a sudden rise in the level of social life.

Figure 2: The graph of the level of social life against sleeping time.

We can see a correlation between the level of health and the level of social life with the sleeping time from the 2 graphs. Combining both results, we can say that the level of health affects the social life of Ian and we could possibly account tiredness for the lack of social life.

As sufficient experimental results for statistically reliability was taken into constructing the graphs, we cannot treat the sudden rise in the combined level of health and the level of social life at 3 hours of sleeping time as an anomaly.

We conclude that sleeping 8 hours a day for Ian is optimal for the best level of health and the best level of social life. We also conclude that sleeping 3 hours a day is plausible in the case where there is no other options for Ian.

5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, we have presented our work to prove our hypothesis that sleeping later than usual is bad for health and for social life, and it turns out that our hypothesis is true. Our secondary hypothesis is true as we concluded from the results that sleeping 8 hours a day for Ian is optimal for the best level of health and the best level of social life.

As future work, we may work at research as to why there is sudden rise in both the level of social life and health at 3 hours of sleeping time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Ian, the subject in which we carried our sleep experiments on, for his willingness to put his studies at a perilous point due to his sacrifices in missing out on tutorials and lectures. We can never find a more dedicated subject than him.

REFERENCES Who cares about this part?!
____________________________________________________

So, yes, research has proven that sleeping is good for Ian. Ian should learn to sleep more. And Ian is me. Darn.

fitness

Oh dread the NAPFA. It's next week double period PE for everyone else in the class so I guess I'm taking it anytime soon too. I guess I'm gonna fail NAPFA this time -again. I'm the most unfit in the class. I have the slowest timing for 2.4km among the guys in my class. I can do 3 pull-ups, but that is still a fail in the eyes of the teacher. I can jump 215cm on average, but I dunno whether that is enough to make the cut. I can reach my feet but can't reach beyond that. All that I can do is a pretty good dash for the shuttle run and a sit-up session on overdrive. 2 more months of freedom in the future hangs in the balance. But does the result matter when I'm confirmed PES E with an forum example from a search result?

"lol...ask this kind of question...but anyway i got the answer:

pes E = serious permanent physical defect. i got 2 fren who are pes E, both are cos of hole in heart. they are born with the defect. so maybe, take a drill and do it?"

Here I am. Me. Physical defects plague me: my ears are deaf at high frequencies, my eyes are blind without my glasses. But I'm not dying, don't worry. Fitness... hello, I'm stricken with unfitness for life. Who cares about NAPFA?

But here I am, stuck in a world where physical defects pale in comparison to the competition in the class that I am in. I guess, it's time to get working.

hate rain

Today I had my H3 test. So like I went to NJC in the morning at 10am and took the test. So the test turns out to be retarded and very short essay kind of questions. Those kind that require understanding and memorization. So unlike what is physics. Isn't physics all about maths? They only gave one calculation, evaluate this integral kind of thing. ok, it's ironic why I'm advocating maths when I got wrong for that question. The rest of the questions were almost like describing what the notes wanted to say (but the notes did not say anyway cos the notes were like shit). For example, "How does the Scanning Tunneling Microscope works?". Ok, the external H3 notes did not state how it did work specifically. But the ACJC internal H3 notes did say, so thanks goes to TYS who like gave us the notes. Yeah, so I did pretty ok for this test, probably much much better than the previous test that was a disaster cos nobody knew what kind of questions to expect.

So after that, I went to the NJC canteen and bought a bubble tea which was passion fruit (my favourite :D) milk tea. Their bubble tea was good. ACJC should have this kind of thing, then my rating for the stall selling that drink would skyrocket all the way if the drink is good (I'm referring to the old blog post: "The State of ACJC Food", where I rated all the stalls in the canteen).

Then I realised how NJC is like really a retarded place to be cos the locked the gates that faced Dunearn Road cos it was the back of the school. So Shaun and I had to walk one big round to the front of the school (deep inside Hillcrest Road) get to the bus stop along Dunearn Road. Then, you know, at that time about after 11am, the clouds became super dark and lightning was everywhere. By the time I was in my bus to go back to Chancery Court, it was raining like shit. So I rushed into Cold Storage to grab some food and came out to see the worst kind of rain possible. Then like now, how to reach ACJC in time for band?!

After waiting unsuccessfully for the rain to stop, I obtained an umbrella somehow and went to meet Timmiie in the middle of the rain to return back his ez-link card (which I took it on Thursday and failed to capitalize on the chance to siphon some money). Then I took a bus 48 to holland village and got wet all over in spite of the umbrella. Then I offered to get extra food for the clarinets who were starving in band as they ordered damn little food. When Melvin said get oyster omelette without oyster, I'm like why call it OYSTER omelette in the first place?! When I ordered it, the auntie wasn't that surprised... -.- Then I freaking carried all the food in the heavy shitty rain back to the bus stop. My shoes became soaked like shit by this time. And then got a bus to school.

So I reached school at 1.30pm, by chance, I don't know how. Ms Sng seemed to be scolding someone so I had to go by the lift way. Then yay, the MEP people also came at the same time as me and we went to eat in the void deck. Pity lumpy and sam ho who ate like nothing much for lunch cos of the little food ordered, but they didn't want any more food so never mind. So in the end, we went for band like damn late. haha. And lucky Dr Lee wasn't there to conduct, only Ben. Was a pretty productive session, with the rhapsody on the theme of paganini.

Anyway rain spoilt the day. I had to ensure rehearsal with wet shoes, which is retarded. Even now, my shoes still smell smelly. So yeah, rain should die.

wols stuff

wols is the euphemism for well... slow.

Fun-o-rama pictures first.

I love blood. :D

Well. The last one is real blood.

So my class got 2nd for the games stall in the fun-o-rama. 2nd because of the dunking machine (which is cheating). So about $2800 for a small stall. Yeah. So from now on, I love soap. I love Lux, Dove and Sunsilk. So First prize - soap. Second prize - shampoo. Third prize - soap. That sponsor provided us with the ammo for just the weapon we needed for attracting a neverending supply of customers - sure win, or we pay your coupons back in cash. Muhahaha. So for our win, we got tickets to go to the bird park. Since my class shirt says: "we.mug", I doubt that we will ever go. D:

Second comes H3 Physics. I feel that Mr Tan or TYS is so kind in helping Shaun and I in our shitty understanding of quantum mechanics and the Schrodinger Equation, cos our external H3 course only touches the very "surface" of this topic. Shaun asked him whether we could join in on the internal H3 lessons to learn some bit. He instantly said yeah. I mean like, where else can you find such a nice physics tutor? So last Friday (not this one), we went to join the class for lessons. We came out as if we knew everything there was to know. YAY!

Third comes General Paper common test. I swear I could have done the test without reading the GP package (yes, I did read, as always... SA1 mentality again D:). This time, they gave the title of the article where you are supposed to look for the stuff (yay). Apparently, a handful of them required only reading a little and you would already see the stuff you want. Like they want you to define "social norm" and obviously it's at the top of article. But seriously, the last few parts of the test seem retarded cos there isn't any clear cut stuff you can copy. I hear my GP tutor is gonna complain against the easy peasy test cos it was seriously (no-brainer)^10000. I also hear that the J1 GP common test is like the articles/questions are in random order. That is seriously (gg)^10000000. If that really happens, I think more than 1/2 of the level would fail. Must as well don't take. Hmm... if only someone can confirm my rumour, or it had already happened...

On Friday, it was PW result day and as expected, I got A! YAY!!! Among my group members, Jia Yi and I got A, and Kok and YongYe got B. You know what? I'm not happy. YongYe should get A for his effort to be involved. And especially, Kok certainly deserves something higher than A. He was the one who single-handedly made our event a success. (Mind you, our event was actually done properly in its full glory.) He was the one who could outspeak and bullshit his way through Q & A and OP. Damn. Being the group leader, I should have at least take some time off to edit their 3 individual written components. Blah. Anyway, sometimes bad luck gets into the way even though you put in all the effort. Since the results are final, there's no point complaining for them. I still feel that our group should have got a full A grade though.

Also on Friday, Dabid, Bel, Zan, Mark, Han and I took a blue slip to collect our NRP prizes. So we went to the school of media, arts, design whatever in NTU, where the ceremony, the NRP opening for 2008 was held too. The J1s who were participating also went and I realized that almost all of them were foreigners, with like many Vietnamese, which is a surprising large contrast from my batch. So we mingled around with them (and Han mingled with her juniors in their language).

So what happened during the presentation ceremony was that the programme booklet had the name slip that had my name attached that we were supposed to pass on to the usher before going on stage to collect our prizes. When I went to the front to line up, I realized that I had not brought my programme booklet. So I went back to my seat, and to my horror, I didn't know where the hell was the damn booklet, which I knew that I left on my bag. I searched everywhere and couldn't find it. So I went back to line up and they told me I would not get onto the stage to receive my prize. I was like wtf after that and reluctantly went back to my seat, feeling out of place. Damn, missed the chance to shake the hand of the dean of the engineering school which only gold award recipients got to! I watched everyone go up stage, except me, which is damn retarded.

Unexpectedly, at the end of the entire ceremony, some idiot SAJC guy gave me back my programme booklet, with the slip of paper attached, without a word. I was too shocked to say anything to that guy, becoming instantly totally wtf. I thought, forget it, I can't be bothered tell off that ccb in front of everybody. So in the end, I still got my award, but I still can't stand the fact that I was sabotaged. I mean that guy could have noticed me searching for something and asked me whether I was searching for the programme booklet, which he never did. What a knnccb kind of guy.

The end of wols stuff. On to the tneserp.

clarinet quotes

My original compiled list of clarinet quotes! :D

Nonsense: My eyes are too big, my nose is too flat, my ears stick out, my mouth is too big and my face is too small... my body is thin as a clarinet and my ankles are so skinny that I wear two pairs of bobby socks because I don't want people to see how thin they are. - Goldie Hawn

BOOOO: Clarinet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet- two clarinets - ambrose bierce 'the devils dictionary' 1906

(BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO)^10000: I started in elementary school. I tried clarinet first since my mom had played it but I didn't like it. When I tried the violin it was like, 'Wow, this is fun.' It's like my passion. I love playing the violin. - Eric Vargas

Yay: In addition to my love of chamber music -- and the clarinet among wind instruments probably has the richest repertoire -- I also want my students to hear me in this setting. They all come to the orchestra pretty regularly. - Ron Samuels

Nice: Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones. -Gerry Mulligan

Nicer: On the new album, for example, I'm specifically thinking about the bass clarinet all the time because I love it so much. - John Grant

Wisdom: The ability to play the clarinet is the ability to overcome the imperfections of the instrument. There's no such thing as a perfect clarinet, never was and never will be. - Jack Brymer

Good: Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet. - Lee Konitz (YEAH BLUE SHADES!)

Better: I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know. - Acker Bilk

Best: Please do not shoot the clarinettist. He is doing his best. - Oscar Wilde (modified from pianist)

request

Hey, a request here. If any grammatical error or bad usage of words are found in the the story I wrote and posted, please write in the comments. At the moment, I found only one at the last paragraph. I know there are more out there so please help out. Thanks.

Sock: Please tell me the errors you found yeah? And btw, I do have one of my old stories published in the acs barker road school yearbook 2006 CD , so that kind of proves I do have something haha.

Others: Thanks for everyone's praise and support. I appreciate everyone's, especially shaun, adi and zaneth.

acknowledgements

Well, if you have read the story below, well-informed ones will know that I borrowed stuff from like anywhere and everywhere. haha. So thanks to:

The title The Blue Whale comes from the 3rd movement of Blue Horizons, the band piece. And some of the words in the first paragraph came from there haha.

The idea about airships and Sky Pirate came from Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings. Esperna comes from becoming the two terms Esper and Galbana.

The idea about the robot Elle comes from two Japanese manga/anime... Solty from Solty Rei (the blog's name came from here too) and Rave Master (you see that 3773 and the name Elle comes from here, so if you turned 3773 upside down, it looks like ELLE.)

Melvin the pilot and sky pirate is associated with yeah, the real-life pilot wanna-be. lol. Gatsby comes from The Great Gatsby. It's a great book.

Shiaran comes from Shia Islam. If you have read carefully, they broke away from Iraq. Since current affairs tells you that there is a Sunni/Shia split in Iraq at present, it seems that they could break up eventually. And since there's inter-Shia rivalry, if someone could unite the Shi'ites, it could probably be a Fascist.

The idea about the metamaterials invisibility device comes from the 2 guys beside my booth during the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2008 period. They managed to make an object invisible at microwave wavelengths though.

Thanks to Wiki, I could research on things I don't even know such as the fusion reactor and the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters.

Man, I just found a grammatical mistake in the last paragraph. argh.

Anyway, thanks to all supporters.