In a Grove... and stats!

Lessons have been pretty interesting these days, I wonder why...

Let's take History for example. My teacher has given us something similar to a short story, "In a Grove" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. It is an interesting story. A samurai's corpse is found. There are three suspects for this murder: Masago (his wife), Tajomaru (a bandit) and himself (he might have committed suicide). Testimonies have been collected from the woodcutter who found the body, a travelling buddhist, a policeman who arrested Tajomaru, Tajomaru, Masago and Takehiko (the samurai). What is certain is that Masago was raped by Tajomaru; what differs is what happened afterwards and who killed Takehiko. You can read the story here.

Most of my classmates felt that it was Masago who killed Takehiko. They argued that perhaps both men loved her and wanted to protect the fact that she killed Takehiko. Others felt claimed he committed suicide to 'save face' as it was better than dying in the hands of a mere woman. Somehow, I have a feeling that my history class is very wary of woman, especially beautiful ones. HAHA.

We are supposed to determine who is the murderer and write an essay on it. This is very interesting, and different from the normal lessons that we have done. After searching it up, I found out that it was never the author's intention to have a real murderer. What he was trying to prove was that our initial guess of the murderer is shaped by our moral inclinations and biased judgements. As humans, it is very hard to see the REAL truth. This story serves to prove that. What one character says is always refuted by another. It is almost impossible to decided on a real murdered based on their testimonies. 

After reading that, I was dumbstruck. How do people ever come up with such novel methods to prove a certain point? I was very impressed by this. However, I felt stuck at the same time. How am I ever going to decide who is the real culprit? This is when the true objective of the project hit me. I was supposed to use my INVESTIGATIVE and ANALYTICAL SKILLS to help me argue for one of the character. The main point wasn't which character I chose. The objective was to see how I made use of the testimonies by the non-parties and general knowledge to prove that the character that I have chosen is the murderer. 

Perhaps I will put up my essay the next time, if I remember!

Anyway, I was interested and went to find out the statistics for my blog. Here are some:

Pageviews all time: 4,741

Pageviews last month: 153

Audience: Singapore (3,332), USA (726) - Wow, who reads my blog in the US?!, Russia (71) - I guess they google translate or something???, etc.

Post with highest views: tag (click here) Apparently someone quoted from my blog and it appeared in the straits times! HAHA. I still cannot find the newspaper article... Maybe I should do some searching now...
[updated] I FOUND THE NEWS HAHAHA!!! It's here. It was featured on The New Paper, Thursday, December 03, 2009.

"But netizen Sue Qin, writing on her blog, felt that some of the rules in the Chua household (featured on the programme) are overly-harsh, citing the ones forbidding sleepovers, boy-girl relationships and another rule which stipulates that the computer be in the living room so the parents can see what sites the kids are visiting.

She added, however, that most of the rules – like the ones against skipping school, smoking and alcohol – are “kinda expected”.

She felt that Singapore is conservative because we are made up of races which have their own strict traditions about raising children.

“While too much control is not good, too little control is also not good,” she wrote."

AHAHA, I ACTUALLY FEEL QUITE PROUD OF MYSELF. How old was I? 13? HEHE ;D

And I am going to end my blog post now! The most recent book that I've read is by Lauren Oliver. It's called Delirium. I'm giving it 4/5 stars! Overall, the story is really good, except for some sappy romantic parts which makes the book lose some of its adventurous 'feel'.

School... again!

Today is the second day of school, when lessons officially start.

Initially, the idea of lessons really put me off there. However, today was better than what I expected it to be. I thought that the lessons would be really drawn out and exhausting because it lasted until 4.15pm today. However, time passed surprisingly quickly, except for the first 2 hours which felt like forever then. 

My new chinese teacher is a female teacher called Ms Sau. She taught me CME before. I was quite disappointed when she did not recognise me when she named the students whom she knew, but then, I must admit I didn't make much of an impression when she taught me the other time. Chinese lesson was quite interesting. It was about this female author called Zhang Ai Mei. I think that's the name. Apparently, she's a prodigy, a genius. How envious! We were told her life story which was kind of sad and pitiful. She wrote so much books on love, but her life was far from blissful. However, I think the scars as well as the joys of her love inspired her to write such great short stories and novels. I wonder if I can ever be like that as well. 

Literature - Romeo and Juliet. A classic. Although I don't mind reading Romeo and Juliet, I would really like it if the school could arrange for us to study a modern play rather than a Shakespearean one. I recently watched this film "Closer" which is based on a play of the same name. It is a modern play written in 1997. The concept was pretty simple, but the way it was played out was really cool and interesting. It is about 4 people, with 2 couples who commit adultery. The play is supposed to highlight the degrading nature of love and marriage in the modern times. Really deep...

Oh yeah, I recently read a news that the new salary proposal for the Singapore government is out. Now, the president's salary will be lower than that of the prime minister, which is kind of weird as the president is thought to be the 'head of the state'. Hmm... Though I guess I welcome the new salary change (it is now lower). I mean, it means less tax money being given to them? Haha. Next, they should deal with the rising cost of... everything. I mean, I have no idea why but, if our SG dollar is getting stronger, then shouldn't the items here be sold at a lower price?? I don't really get the idea of inflation but I think I will probably learn about it in financial literary lessons next week :)) Looking forward to it!

I finally sent an email saying that I want to redraw from AEP. The teacher asked to meet me, Dion and Beatriz because we all want to quit. Ms Gao will be there (@_@). I am seriously scared that Ms Gao will interrogate us like those officers in the police station or something!

Anyway, I celebrated Christmas and my cousin, Irene's birthday recently!

Christmas was at my auntie's house. I cooked Aglio Olio!! :DD Everything was finished eventually; I was so happy!!! Previously, some of the chilli padi's juice got onto my fingers so my finger was burning all the way to my cousin's house. Though, my efforts were definitely paid off seeing how they all enjoyed the spaghetti! :) We also played several games like charades. We had a gift exchange session. My present was for Iris. It was posters of Super Junior since she loves a member in it. My present was from Ivy. It was a lovely brown bag! My friend, Shermaine, said it looked nice when I brought it to the 3K class gathering.

Irene's birthday was fun too! We watched Running Man, which was this variety show where some celebrities played a game like Police and Thief. It was very funny! My mom and I chose a dress for Irene as her present :))

There was a 3k class gathering as well to celebrate Christmas.

I planned a treasure hunt with Dion, Beatriz, Trevor and Randy initially. However, it was all for naught when some envelopes when missing and no one wanted to play D: I bought a bracelet for Shermaine and I got a photo frame from Jing Ying. Thanks! I also played bridge with Jalyn, Beatriz, Chun San, Miss Lim and Jaime. There was this really funny moment when Chun San lost and Miss Lim (who was trying to make noises to hint to him while sitting beside him watching him play) asked him why he played some cards the way he did. He answered, "I play by instinct." And then there was this funny laughing moment because we all know that you can't rely on instinct in a bridge game. Haha.

It's now 9.17pm. I should prepare for school tomorrow and go to sleep :))

I now realised that my minimum sleep hour has to be 8 hours or the exhaustion will accumulate and by Friday, I would be very worn out.

I shall do my NYAA during the weekends. Hopefully, I can complete skills and service by then!