See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

So, on my study table there's this poster of three young monks, first guy has his hands clapped over his eyes, the second, hands over his ears, third, hands over his mouth. My dad brought it back from overseas. In all honesty the title of this post has nothing to do with what I'm going to write, but I couldn't think of a better one. Anyway, after gazing at the poster for days, it prompted me to think: which of the three senses would I keep if I had to forgo the other two?

So I sat down for some time and began to think. Let's examine each one individually first.

Starting with the least likely one to keep: speech. Sure, I value my voice-don't we all? And I must say I consider myself one of the more vocal people in class, or at least not one of the silent ones. I love to talk, I love telling jokes. But in this era of technology, that's no barrier to communication. Emails, facebook, forums...the list of what I could use to talk to others is endless! PErsonally I feel that this would be the least popular choice to keep, among the three, unless the person's life centres around his voice, for example, if he is an orator or singer.

Next, the sense of hearing. Music is awesome, granted, but besides that I can't really think of much else that would require me to use my ears, besides communication. In any case, I would prefer to read what the other party is trying to communicate to me, instead of hearing it. The one practical concern of being unable to hear is that I would be unable to hear warnings others shout at me in cases of danger, or announcemnts over the intercom system.

Finally, sight. There are so many things which require one to see to fully enjoy, far too many for me to list down. Just to name a few: Telivision, computer games, Gunpla-ing, drawing...the list goes on. Also, from a practical viewpoint, sight is the sense which is the most useful in everyday life. I'm honestly unsure of what I would do if I suddenly became blind. Everything I've learned will be useless.

Therefore, I arrived at a conclusion. If I did have to choose, the sense I'd keep is sight. Obviously it'd be a horrible thing to have neither the ability to talk or hear, but it would be worse if I couldn't see. Life without sight is unimaginable for me.

Well, others may have differing opinions from me. This is just my take on which of these three senses is the most important, make of it what you will. Thinking about this makes me appreciate the fact that, in most ways, I am a healthy boy with no major problems. We really do take things for granted sometimes.

Now, moving on from such melancholy topics.

Newer...old new phone. Meh.

So, three days ago I changed my new old phone to my newer older new phone. *sigh* I can see you shaking your head in confusion. Fine, let me try to clear things up a little. It's a long, convoluted story.

During P5 or 6, I upgraded my really old LG phone (with no features at all, unless you consider a colour screen as a feature) to a far better Walkman phone. AFter barely half a year of usage my dad took it away from me to backup his phone contacts in his old phone since his new phone had some sort of contact limit, meaning that the contacts in his SIM card could not be fully transferred over. Due to the nature of his profession (insurance agent), my dad has thousands of contacts in his phone. So anyway, he used my new phone to backup his contacts from his old phone instead of his new phone. He let me use his older phone (a Cybershot) for the time being, while he got the mess sorted out. Now, his older phone was actually one of the revolutionary, groundbreaking phones in it's time. Which was roughly seven years ago, in 2003.

Fast forward about two years, into 2009. My parents get awesome touchscreen phones, in my dad's case, an iPhone, which had no problem backing up his contacts. I persistently begged for my Walkman Phone to be returned, since
a) My Cybershot phone had serious battery issues. It ran out of juice after 10 minutes of talktime.
b) It had 64 Megabytes of memory space. Most of which was filled up by whoknowswhat, so that only 30 megabytes remained, which was enough for roughly 7 songs. Compare that to the Walkman, with 1000Mb of space, or roughly 15 times that of the old Cybershot.

In any case, it was one of those things which one alwats wants to do, but never has the time, or when he has the time, forgets about it.

Which was why I only got my newer-old-new walkman phone three days ago. I exchanged the new-old cybershot for it and immediately flooded it with a little over a hundred songs. The new-old cybershot remains, thoguh, in case one day my Walkman dies suddenly and I need a backup phone. Just imagine the scenarios! My dad's iPhone screws up and he needs to back his contacts up in my old Cybershot, and he gives me his new-older other LG phone to use, but that screws up as well and I'm forced to use my new-old-older Cybershot phone and...!



Sorry, I didn't confuse you, did I? :P

What Motivates People?

Sometime ago I did rather badly for a Chemistry test. I felt horrible after that, because it was the only test I ever did really badly in, excluding a chinese test in primary school, and anyway that was because I only found out about the test on the day itself. Okay, I'll admit that this wasn't my first time doing Chemistry, I even had some introduction to it in Secondary 1. I can't say I didn't revise either, I started mugging days before the test, and especially hard on the day before the actual thing. Still, that didn't stop me from getting a miserable C6. As said earlier, I really felt like crap after the results were released. While I was dissapointed in myself for not getting a high mark, I was honestly more worried about the reaction opf my parents towards my bad result.

This led me to wonder: do people fear failing a task simply because they truly care about it and do not want to do badly, or is the main reason fear of the repercusions that will inevitably occur when one fails at that task?

The most obvious way to demonstrate this is by using an example based on a test. Lets call our characters 'Tom' and'Henry'.Tom is neglected by his parents, while Henry comes from a family where his parents are very protective and concerned about him. Lets say Tom and Henry both fail a test. If he truly cared about the result and not the consequences that getting the bad grade, he would punish himself and become all gloomy and depressed, and resolve to work extra hard to correct this mistake and do better in the next test. The scenario would be the same for Henry as well, provided that his character fits the description of the former. However if their persanalities are of the latter, which is to fear failing for the possible repercusions, then the two scenarios will be vastly differnt. Tom will be unaffected by the result and life will go on as usual, since his parents neglect him so much that they do not even bother about his results. Henry on the other hand will be scared of the dissapointment his parents will feel towards him, or the punishments they will mete out.

That said, I believe that no one can possibly be happy after doing badly at a test or examination. While some may put on a facade of nonchalance and act as if they do not care, in their hearts they will be at least a tiny bit dissapointed in themselves. Even if the person in question does not care in the least towards the subject, for whatever reason (say, me toward a malay test, since I don't give a fig about the subject itself, and also because it is not a graded subject), he will feel a little...disapointed? Sad? I repeat: No one can possibly feel good about doing badly in anything, even if it does not affect him and he does not care about it at all.

Anyway, back to the original topic at hand. My personal opinion is that most people are motivated by a combination of both extremes manifested above in the cases of Tom and Henry.

Class Fads

Class fads. Not that I disapprove, but I was just daydreaming one day when I wondered: What is tje reason and fascination with all these class fads?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably not a member of class 2i2. Thats fine. A class fad is basically something an outgoing member of our class randomly shoutsout, during lessons, and activities. Some people even use it to start a conversation.

SOme of our class fads are derived from internet memes, which is a huge topic by itself, so just google it. (On a side note, I have no idea how memes are formed and why they are so popolar) An example of this would be "Its OVARR 9000!"

Someone in class would shout out a class fad when a teacher asks a question like "Who was Hitler's minister of Propoganda?" and the answer would be a random class fad. People like Tsun Lok would say something like "Graherm" when the topic relates to money, or "Wang Fan" when the topic relates to general stupidity. Myself, even though I'm not the fattest one in class, I'm associated with food, for many complex reasons which would take far too long to explain.

Anyway, back to the main topic at hand, the reason why class fads are so popular. After reflecting on the issue for a while, I came to the conclusion that the only reason our class fads are so insanely popular (at least in 2i2) is that there is simply nothing to replace them. When one dies, another takes it's place because if something didn't fil the void, something would just be ... missing. Fads are one of the things that makes 2i2 what it is, besides the people. I'd say that everyone in our class has used at least a few fads in speech before.

I guess there's a reason they're called fads. Long live 2i2!

Recap of Racial Harmony Day

Well, this post is MANY days late, but I came back late on RHD due to CCA, and the days after that I kind off...forgot. So, sorry. Anyway:

I was actually quite excited about this, as I was looking forward to going to the various stalls set up by the various classes. The morning passed without major event, and soon it was time for the Secondary 2 batch to go down to the stalls.

The bazaar only got in full swing after about 30 minutes, since most of the stalls were still getting the food items ready and whatnot. I helped my class set up our stall and gave them the idea for the name. Credit to me~

Anyway, I went off to explore the bazaar and the first item I bought was some 7-up lime cordial mixture from the 2i1 stall. Then I saw many people walking around with packets of Nasi Lemak which got me HUNGRY. So I walked around a little more and found the Nasi Lemak stall. $2 a packet, which was a preety good deal compared to the total RIP-OFFs from some other stalls.

I walked past the "Operation Rainbow" booth and that was when the fun started. One of my friends was manning it along with some of his classmates, and we had to pay to shoot at targets which they were wearing with Nerf guns.

There may have been prizes for actually hitting the targets, but I aimed for the face.

I had a decent (in my opinion) accuracy rating of 3/6 shots hit, especially since it was my first time handling the gun.

The irony? I paid two bucks to shoot at the friend of mine, when I got to fire unlimited shots FREE OF CHARGE before my CCA started. The best thing was that there were 3 guns in total so some of my batchmates (and myself of course) had a shootout in the privacy of the dojo.

Oops, digression.

Back to the recap. So then I basically walked around a few other stalls, bought some food, and then it was time for the RHD concert.

Didn't really mind the bazaar being disrupted as one of my CCA mates was performing, and I was hoping for him to do something stupid so that I could have a good laugh. Despicable me. Sadly, all the performances went off without a hitch and my friend, although he smiled a little, did not do anything TOO stupid, denying me a chance to chuckle. *sigh*

So the concert ended, and it was back to the cultural bazaar for me. I bought some other assorted snacks, some were a scam, some were not. An example of a scam: 3 rice dumplings for two bucks. A non-scam: 2 rice dumplings for one buck. Two stalls, selling the exact same thing. Guess who won?

At this time, I realised that I was running dangerously low on coupons. I headed to Operation Rainbow, borrowed one of the guns, and played Russian Roulette with a friend. For those who don't know how it's played, you load a bullet (in our case a rubber bullet ;D) into a six-chamber gun, then spin the chamber and fire the gun at your head. Pass the gun to the other guy and the cycle ges on until somebody 'dies'. Then it restarts, sometimes with an additional bullets.

Then it was time for the Indian Mass Dance, which half the Secondary 2 level skipped out on. Heh. I proceded to waste another 1 1/2 hours playing Russian Roulette and messing around with the guns.

Then it was time for lunch, yada yada. Racial Harmony Day celebrations officially came to a close.

Well, that was fruitful.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the same program next year. :)

Online Mindmap $econd Edit!on

"From the novels or movies that you read or watched, do an online mindmap where you can identify the similarities about war and the short-term and long-term effects on the soldiers and civilians."

Didn't watch or read much though. Some sources are some war stories from the BBC website, as well as one book and one movie.

Well, here the mindmap is, anyway.

Bubbl Mindmap on plot of Merchant of Venice

"Do an online mindmap on the plot of the Merchant of Venice and embed on your blog."

Here it is, then.

Interview With Atticus Finch (TKAM)

So, Mr Finch, what's your view on racism and prejudice?

A: Well, everyone is definitely entitled to their own opinion. However, I myself try not to be prejudiced against other people just because of their skin colour or background. For example, I wouldn't judge the son of an infamous murderer by his father.

That's the thing all people should do. But more specifically, what do you think about the way people are racist here in Maycomb?

A: Like I said earlier, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I hope that my children will adopt their own attitude towards life, and not be influenced by everyone else to become racist. Racism is a horrible thing. The blacks are not that much different from us, we are all human after all.

Well said. What do you hope your children will become when they grow up?

A: They can be anything they want. I won't try to force them to become, say, lawyer, but as long as it is a respectable profession and that they enjoy it, I won't disaprove.

What do you think you can do to change the mindset of the people of Maycomb?

A: It;s up to them to change themselves. If they want to continue to think like that, it's their own loss.

Why is your character so different from that of other people in Maycomb?

A: It was probably my upbringing, coupled with studying law at Montgomery. I had experienced interaction with blacks and found out that they are not as bad as everyone makes them out to be.

Civil Rights Movement Poster (TKAM)

This is my poster for the Maycomb Civil Rights Movement. Click to enlarge.

+rolleys and stuff.

Today, there was an article on the front page of Straits Times (home) that talkied about how more and more cases of trolley theft are occuring, up to more than 200 a month. The article listed some ways that supermarkets have tried to prevent such thefts, and so far none have been effective. Apparently, now NTUC Fairprice is going to change tactics, focusing on public education which aims to deter people from such thefts rather than try to prevent the people from stealing the trolleys.

I feel that this is actually a smarter way than outright forcing people not to take the trolleys. After all, if you really want to steal a trolley, no one can stop you. Whether it is remotely locking the wheels of the trolley, or making people deposit money in for the trolley, if a person has intent to take the trolley...he'll just take it, deposit or no deposit. The new method to be addopted actually makes the people not want to steal the trolley in the first place.

The difference between the two ways of reducing trolley loss can be likened to, say, a man with a knife who wants to kill another man. If you take his knife away and bind him in chains to prevent him from doing so, he will simply find a way to break free of the chains and buy another knife, than proceed to exterminate his target. However, if you somehow make him think taht killing another man is the wrong thing to do, he will simply put down his knife and walk away, never to even entertain thoughts of doing such a thing again.

Obviously, binding the man in chains and taking away his knife is akin to remote wheel locking, etc, but changing his mindset is the same as...changing the mindset of the inconsiderate shoppers.

While this new move by NTUC is to be applauded, I feel that there are some other measures that can be taken to reduce trolley theft as well. For example, since one of th emain causes of people not returning trolleys is laziness, NTUC could put more trolley stations further away from the main store itself, or station some employees a distance from the store to collect the trolleys from customers as well as to help out in carrying their groceries.

...

Yup.

Blog about blogs

So, blogs.

What makes a successful and interesting blog? It's not really as to how skillful the blogger is at weaving words together to create a coherent post, but more on what he has to blog about, the range of experiences he...experiences.

That said, my blog would be preety much horrible, since I'm after all only a student and don't really go through all that much every day, and haven't lived as long as some prominet bloggers, like Mr Brown. It's preety much routine: go to school, go home/go for CCa, homework, sleep. Rinse and repeat. The only variation to this pattern would be during the weekends, where one can engage in a large variety of activities and outings. It's usually things that are out of the ordinary that give me inspiration for my posts.

Anyway, blogs can also become famous by others linking to a particularly interesting or controversial post of theirs on a web forum, such as STOMP. The news of the blog will spread and people will follow it, checking it from time to time whenever there has been a new post.

Another easier way, besides having good quality posts, is to blog about popular things, such as hobbies or games. People interested in that particular subject (example, Gunpla) will do searches online, and the blog may come up. Of course, you either have to be really good in that area or frequently post updates and pictures on the news on that topic to get readers, and to ensure that they continue to follow your blog.


Thus concludes my forth ever post on this (fail) blog of mine.

Judo Competition

Okay, so I'm in the CCA judo. Judo is basically a martial art where you try to throw someone who you're fighting, then armlock/choke/pin him on the floor.

From an untrained observer's perspective, judo seems easy. There are two parts to judo-tachiwaza and newaza. Tachiwaza is the main part of judo, where you stand up and grapple with the opponent and try to throw him. when (if) you succeed,and then you enter into newaza, where you try to pin the guy. Chokes and armlocks are also allowed, but only from 15 years old and above. :(

Anyway, I took part in a judo competition just yesterday. My current belt in judo is yellow, which is the 2nd lowest. My first opponent was a white belt, the absolute lowest rank you can go. However, he was also about two heads taller than me and 10 years older. I'll give you one guess as to who won.

It was me!

...

Nah, just kidding. I lost the first round, and also the repecharge. Unsurprising really, given that I'm one of the worst in our whole judo club. Seriously. I'm not trying to demean myself or anything (well, fine, actually I am, but what I say is the truth).

Now, to describe my fight in simple language. He grabbed me. He threw me. he pinned me. I escaped. He threw me again. The time ended. He won.

If you couldn't understand that, then...you're either really young, or really dense.

Anyway, I was actually expecting at least a bronze since there were only six people in my category, Junior Middle (weight). That means out of 6 people, only two would not get a medal. 2/6 chance of not getting amedal, and I took it. Swell. Just goes to show...something. I'm not sure what, but hey.

Goodnight.

ZY

Gunpla, teachers and a whole lot of off-topic-ness.

For those of you who don't know me that well, you'll probably be surprised at the fact that I've spent some thousand dollars on Gunpla. What is Gunpla, you ask? I honestly don't know how to explain to you without sounding like an idiot, so I'll shamelessly give you the 'official' definition from Wikipedia.

"Gundam Models refers to plastic and non-plastic model kits depicting the mechas, vehicles and characters of the fictional Mobile Suit Gundam universe. These kits have become popular among anime fans and model-lovers, especially in Japan and in other nearby Asian countries since 1980s. The popularity of Gundam models increased in the 1990s with North America and Europe being exposed to Gundam through television, video and manga. These Gundam Models may also be called Gunpla (ガンプラ, Ganpura?), a portmanteau of "Gundam plastic model". "Gunpla" more commonly refers to the practice of building Gundam models, rather than the models themselves."

Sounds much more impressive than saying:"It's building small models of robots which are ridiculously expensive", isn't it?

Anyway, during Christmas, I netted about five such models from various people. Last time, I used to just break the parts off the runners, and just snap em' together. Now I actually use clippers to cut the parts off, and paint the models so that they look more like their animated counterparts. I (used to) fix about one body part everyday, so I estimated that I would finish building everything by the end of January.

Well, it's the end of January, and all I've built so far is a model with half it's body missing. It's all because of the HOMEWORK. It's increased by about 100% at least, compared with what we got in Secondary 1. Especially maths.

Thanks to my homewrok, I've got almost zero time left to concentrate on Gunpla. Some might think it's a waste of money, and some, like my mum, think that they all look the same.

To all those people, I have one thing to say: at least it's more healthy than computer gaming.



After a whole day spent at Orchard road shopping for New Year clothes with my mum, my writer's block hasn't gotten much better.However, I did see a decent bit of recently released new Gunpla's at Ngee Ann City, such as PG 00 Raiser (this REALLY AWESOME model that costs like 530 bucks), Nebula Blitz and some others.

After writing all this, I realize that all I've really done is copy an article from wikipedia, and rant about homework and not having enough time for Gunpla. It's actually kind of hard to teach something to someone who practically knows nothing about it at all, and still try to make it interesting. If there's something that's come out of writing this admittedly pointless post, it's learning that teachers have a much harder time teaching than most think. Hopefully this rather late resolution will help me appreciate teachers more.

...this post has gone off topic in ways I never imagined. Honestly, how did I get from talking about scale models to talking about teachers?

Since I can't think of a poetic and eloquent way to end off this post, I'll just
end.

To start the day...

Yes, I understand that it is already 4.30 in the afternoon and not a start of the day by any measures.But I couldn't think of a better title, so live with it.

Well, for lack of a better or indeed more interesting topic to talk about, I'm going to reflect on the start of the school year, or any significant events that happened since then. The first day of school went as I expected, with plenty of talks, briefings, etc. But it was when lessons started that I got a really rude shock. Yes, I did expect some homework, but not the torrential cascade of Chinese and Math. Most of the teachers seem nice enough, but I s'pose it's only a matter of time to get used to the others.

Oh, and I suppose I should give some introduction to those reading this who don't already know me. (Unlikely.) Oh well. I'm called XXX XXXXX XXXX from XXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX,( don't know if we're allowed to reveal the school name yet, or indeed our own.) from the CCA judo. 4 days of training a week. Tough, but it could be worse...or so I'm told.

THe two good things that did happen is that I managed to get in a project group for our annual Project Competition, and I'm not the leader, so I won't get blamed if anything goes horribly wrong. The other great thing is that I finally got myself a very cool HP Mini netbook, which I'm using to work on this blog post. I'm quite satisfied with how it's performed so far. However, I'm looking to upgrade the OS, which is quite limited. For example, you can't even change the wallpaper. I recieved mu netbook only yesterday, and this is only my second time using it, so you'll forgive me if there're any typos.

Oh, and in addition to all that, my tooth just broke off on Friday. More on that later. I hope.

Well, that's my very first blog post(on this one, at least.) Hope you didn't fall asleep. Hopefully future entries will be at least marginally more interesting.

~XXXXX XXXX(What, you didn't think I was going to fall for that, did you?)