What happened recently

Hmm... I have not really been updating my blog. Think the last update was one month ago - this is what happen when schools start.

So, just an update on a few major happenings recently:

1. Group proposal consider in SMU competition (yay!! was a close shave)
2. Applied for Student Council - went for the SC boot camp
3. Got rejected for SC
4. Applied for OSAC
5. Got rejected for OSAC

Basically, what happened was that I think I got rejected a lot of times. D: But don't worry, I am not actually feeling that sad over all the rejections. 

I guess I wasn't that keen/enthusiastic over SC as some other people, so I thought that they deserved it better than me. I did go in being prepared to face rejection after all. However, it does make me feel a little depressed; this was my second time trying for SC after all. Being rejected twice is not something very nice :( Sometimes, I truly wonder what is lacking in me.

Hmm, mainly right now, I am just hoping that I can get into the pre-u seminar, maybe OCIP, and hopefully smu competition (tough luck to self though). 

Anyway, there was this recent hoo-ha over the Population White Paper.

Hmm, my truthful feelings about it?

7 million doesn't sound good. 

It's already such a squeeze at 5.5 million people, what more 7 million. Although the government promises that they will upgrade facilities, and ensure that there will be 'sufficient space' for everyone, we know that on this island, there is only so much you can fit.

I just read this article by Robin Chan talking about population stability rather than 'indefinite growth'. I agree with him on this point, because the government has always been talking about increasing our population and getting more people in, but they have never actually considered the idea of "when do we stop?"

I think that that is a very important question. The least the government can do is to give us a rough estimate of where the population of Singapore will stop at? Everyone's got to admit that it's got to stop at SOME point. I think that that is very important in crafting our future. This way, we know that our common goal is to achieve this certain amount of population, which we deem as sufficient and sustainable for Singapore's growth. There will be this common consensus.

Although the government say that 7 million is not a target that we will work towards - it's just an estimate, the fact that it's been published kinds of seals it as a 'target'. 

With regards to the building of more homes etc on Singapore, I hope that they will consider the idea of decentralisation seriously. The main reason why it gets so crowded on trains during peak hours is because everyone heads towards the same direction. The business hub is located at the centre of Singapore - so obviously, everyone will go there for work. The residential areas are also located near each other, making all the commuters travel from home to work, and then work to home, of which the direction of travel are mostly the same for everyone.

With decentralisation, it would ease the peak hour 'squeeze' since everyone would be going in different directions. Not everyone will have to squeeze onto one train line that goes in a certain direction.

Having more train lines is not going work when no one WANTS or NEEDS to use them. What we should do is build something along the train line that makes it a need for the people to take the trains. 

Assuming you have a new train line, but there are no offices located along the train line. Who will actually take the train during peak hours? How does that alleviate the issue of overcrowded trains on other lines? Only when you have an office built there, with people working there, then will it alleviate the issue of overcrowded trains, because it would have then DIVERTED traffic away from that train line.

So, more train lines is NOT THE SOLUTION. Stop saying that 'we plan to build more train lines to solve the overcrowding issue... blah' because it won't solve the issue. What will solve it is to spread out the areas for business 'hubs' to achieve a more uniform spread of traffic during peak hours.

Also, (as my parents mentioned to me), why is the government asking some middle-aged men what they think about the 7 million population? Their target audience, and hence the people they should be interviewing, should be US - THE YOUTHS. 

HEY, we are the ones that are going to be MOST AFFECTED by your Population White Paper. (We will be in our thirties in 2030) Why aren't you asking us for our opinions? It need not be done through televisions/very troublesome events. It can be done through simple channels such as the school. Simply have the school allow us maybe say, 1 hour to examine the White Paper, then have us answer a survey that reflects our level of satisfaction with the White Paper being proposed.

Such activities can be easily organised since a survey is already the very bare minimum. As the beneficiaries of the government's future policies, I believe we have a right to have a say in this as well.

It also increases the political awareness of the youths (and perhaps helps in our GP haha).

~

Anyway, Singapore is going to have a new line of COINS. 

The new set of coins are UGLY D:

Our current set looks nicer, and classier!! I will save some of the old coins as keepsake! :)

SH orientation

This post is one week late haha, but anyway, so heres the rough outline of my SH orientation Unitas:

Day One:
So, I was just feeling pretty grumpy on Day 1 because I have not changed my class yet and the prospect of having to interact with them made me feel miserable, I gotta be honest. I cannot remember much from Day 1 actually; all that I remember was that Day 1 was SUPER AWKWARD. I thought that maybe Xiyu would talk to me, but she didn't, which made me feel worse hahah. Attended lectures and mainly stayed with my ex-class.

Day Two;
Day 2 felt much more worse than Day 1 for me, mainly because there were so many free periods and I didn't know where to go since I couldn't exactly hang out with my 24 class. So, I just hung out with some of my ex-classmates (meaning desperately trying to find them every time I am free).
We did have some house ceremony where we were 'officially' welcomed into our various houses. Mine was Homa then. We did have this ice-breaking session where we literally had to break ice by melting a frozen shirt. I laughed a lot watching the 24 guys trying to melt/break the shirt by hitting it on the floor. LOL. It worked... to a little extent. HAHAH, it was mainly funny seeing them so anxious since the losing class had to do a forfeit which, I JUST remembered, they DID NOT DO. LOL. The house ceremony was kinda fun too, since we learnt Homa cheers which were pretty catchy :)

Day Three:
Things got better on Day 3, MUCH BETTER in fact. Since the whole day was filled with activities, it was pretty much a good chance to bond with our classes. It did feel a bit awkward at first, but I would say it got better. We had this class bonding time at first where we were at the auditorium. My class went to this 'secret place' (which I can't say haha). Anyway, the place is FREAKING cool, which made it a nice and special memory to have hahah. We took a picture! We were supposed to play bonding games there but the place proved too small/cram. So, we went out to the audi again lol.
Sprayed our hair and coloured our faces orange.
We then went to the hall for this mass dancing session which was actually pretty fun I guess. It was nice to see everyone actually trying to dance :D This doesnt usually happen because I remembered that during a mass dance session in y2, everyone was so shy! But this time, most people danced seriously :DD
After that was class lunch :) That was actually the first time where I actually PROPERLY got to talk to some guys, which was a nice opportunity :) I am more of the kind of person whom you have to sit properly in front of me for me to speak to you. I like to talk while sitting/walking side by side, but not while doing random stuff cuz it just seems uncomfortable to me haha.
After that was the games at Katong park! It rained at first, but it stopped so we managed to go out. yay! We went there and played at only one station LOL when it started to rain again, hahaha. Most of us got pretty wet cuz the rain was pretty heavy (I shared an umbrella with jingying so I wasn't that wet hee). While waiting for the rain to stop, we did this intro game where everyone had to sit opposite someone in one row. We'll talk for a while, then one person in one of the two rows would have to shift up, so you will get to talk to the next person. I talked to some of the guys, which was nice cuz like I said, I am more of the 'sit down and talk' type, so I got to know some of them slightly better.
After the rain stopped, we resumed our games :)) We actually won all of them LOL. And after that game, it was easier to talk to Xi Yu YAY hhahahha.
We were actually in a pretty high Homa mood (at least for me - amazing what one day can do). I think it was cuz our OGL taught us the homa cheers again so we knew how to cheer = cheer more = high homa mood.
In my opinion, Day 3 was very fun and I actually went home in a happy mood :)

Day Four:
I was actually looking forward to Day 4 with 24 since there was DOTA, meaning that the guys would probably wreck the other houses hahaha. But... when I went to school, someone told me that she heard I transferred classes. I was like huh??? I took out my phone to check my email using sch wifi and found out that I had like 3 smses congratulating me on my class change, and I was like WADDDD. I didn't even know about it, HOW DID YOU. LOL. So I checked and the email was sent last night, and I didnt know LOL. Can impt email not be sent at night, pls.
My new class was 21, the class which is very hyper (at least from what I saw). I went into my new class and kinda said goodbye to my old class (awkwarddd).
My new house was Drakon, which was kind of sad for me because I actually started liking Homa!!!! (aka started being loyal already). hahah. But anyway, I missed Homa but still wanted Drakon to win, since it's my house after all.
We had mass dance session, where I partnered Ying Xuan.
After that was Siege of the Empire. It was really fun! I stole 2 gold balls LOL, and killed a person HAHAHHAAH. Sounds damn violent but it wasn't really. hahaha. Anyway, we won for our game, but I heard we lost for the other (we had 2 ongoing games, divided by levels).
Then it was lunch. I played some games with my new class and got to know them better. They (specifically Joshua) were very funny hahah.
After that was our A-level Chinese results - such a spoiler! I got B3 LOL despite all the studying HAIZ.
Then, it was DOTA. DOTA was pretty fun, but VERY VIOLENT. I didn't actually participate in much action, which I regretted. But at that point of time, it seemed really scary to go over to the other side, seeing as what we were doing to those who were attacking us LOL. It was kinda like TACKLE WHOEVER COMES OVER. Scary ahhahaha. Anyway, my aim for next year is to go into the mud pool. LOL. Think I should at least try it once, hahahha.
Drakon got attacked a lot of times. Like around 6?? Thats a lot.

Day Five:
Last day of orientation. I forced myself to learn Drakon cheers on the way to school :D 21 wanted to meet up first to play captain's ball. It was pretty fun! :D Got a nasty scratch though. We then ate lunch, and went back to playing ball. But we played against some Homa people though, so it was like 21/Drakon vs Homa hahaha. Great game.
Then, we took class photos.
We then learnt our mass dance first, then played some mass games.
After that was dinner. We were in this DAMN HIGH MOOD. We kept cheering and cheering. The feeling was actually pretty awesome and cool! At the canteen, you could see this whole bunch of y5 drakon people cheering damn loud. We kept cheering until we got to our designated seating area LOL. I didn't actually know Drakon cheers were so addictive til then. There were some cheers where you could just get high and go wild! It was a good thing I learnt the cheers, because I was screaming my lungs out then! XD After we ate, some of my classmates starting teasing me, saying I was a betrayer of Homa and told me to go back LOL. Then they started chanting the homa go home cheer at me (telling me to go home), and THIS kinda sparked off the whole cheering war LOL. Cuz everyone started cheering homa go home along with them HAHAHAHA, for different reasons from them. The cheering war was easily the highlight of Day 5. Because you see people standing on chairs and tables, facing each other and cheering like crazy! FRIGGIN COOL. I heard someone video-ed it down, I WANNA WATCH AHAHAHHAHH.
After that, we continued our high spirits and went to the hall because it was raining  = no campfire D:
We had the mass dance. Best house went to Homa, best house spirit went to Drakon!! We came in 2nd.
Then, the teachers announced that the campfire would continue, because the rain stopped. HURRAY.
We had performances at the track/field area. Towards the end, all of us started singing together and linking shoulders. Really memorable! :))

Overall, Unitas was a good memory! It didn't exactly started out as fantastic, but it ended well!

Shit

Some stupid shit.

I feel so annoyed.

And desperate.

Whoever said making mistakes are good because you learn from them probably just made that single mistake in his life only. I hate the fact that I made so many significant wrong choices in my life.

Including the one I just made, that's three. And the fact is, it's so hard to find a remedy for those wrong choices. Right now, I am just here waiting for something that never seems to come. 

I keep refreshing my window hoping to see something unread, something that I actually WANT and NEED to read.

Grr. Hate myself for the choices I make. 

And the bad luck I face.

Lesson learnt: Don't choose controversial choices. Just stick with your gut feeling and follow the crowd. That's definitely the safest option. 

The start of something... Dreadful

School is starting soon. What a BOO. It is the thing I look forward to the LEAST every single year. Furthermore, I will be heading to my class which only 2 girls and a subject combi which I want to change. My appeal is currently be processed and I am put on the waiting list for the class I want, because there are currently no vacancies for that class left. However, one of my 4k friend from that class is transferring out, so I am hoping that there will be a place for me soon. 

I reallllllyyyyy hate this endless cycle of holidays and studies. ZZZZ.

Anyway, I stayed over at my cousin's house yesterday after baking Viennese biscuits (it was a last minute decision to stay over hahah). Baking the biscuits was hard work. We had no blender/mixer so we had to mix everything by ourselves. Stirring close to 1kg worth of ingredient was no easy feat. 

We replaced the milk needed with honey. When I asked my cousin why honey, she told me that she just thought of it, with no particular reason, thinking that milk was linked with it being sweet and sweet with honey LOL. We make wonderful bakers haha. Furthermore, we wanted to make heart shapes out of it which had to be shaped by ourselves. Weird ideas of trying to get the heart shapes done more quickly resulted in a lot of laughters hahahahah. We also put strawberry jam on top, which was a really good decision hahah because it tasted pretty good. In the end, we spent around 4 hours to finish baking all the biscuits. Phew!! A job well done ahahhha.

Baking with my cousin was really fun and it provided some nice bonding time :) Wouldn't mind doing it again (with less quantity next time though)!!

Some pictures~~~

We ended up making circled shaped biscuits because it took too much time to make heart-shaped ones.

Also, I've realised that I have watched some movies:

Breaking Dawn - 3/5 Pretty entertaining.

Les Miserables - 4/5 Quite the classic. Hugh's voice did get quite annoying towards the end though. Very touching and a terk-jerker.

(This list of movies is wayyyyyy lesser than what I had expected before the start of holidays D:)

Hmm. I am pretty excited for the new school uniform though.

Wishing myself all the best~

Thoughts

So, I went to Genting with some of my relatives. It was really nice to be back in Genting. The weather was colder than we thought it would be, you know, with global warming and the fact that it didn't seem that cold at all 2 years back. I think that it was a really nice time for all of us to relax. 3 days 2 nights was definitely not enough, which was what made it so enjoyable as well. If the duration was too long, we would end up feeling bored (which was what we did felt at times). On one day, we stayed out at the plaza til 2am because we were playing the indoor rides til 1am. We ate marybrown and started praising it a lot because of some bad service we had at KFC hahaha. It felt pretty nice. The feeling of not wanting to leave, and just staying there forever. The shopping plaza when there was almost no one there. Such a weirdly creepy but calming scene.

I shopped there too. Bought a dress from CottonOn for only S$18 when the original price here would have been around $40!! Of course, there was a sale hahah. Basically, the things there was almost the same price as it would have been in SG, except that it was probably a few dollars cheaper.

Genting is still a pretty nice place to be in. I wouldn't mind going there again (not next year though) with a few years span in between. I would then just take the indoor rides all day (and hopefully get to ride my Flying Dragon - the ride closed when I wanted to take it!!!! D< ) and eat, slack, shop :)

--

Celebrated Christmas and New Year with my maternal family relatives. We had Secret Santa and my aunt bought my slippers hahaha thanks. We also played Kinect and realised how awesomely fun it was. Great exercise too!!! :D We also had potluck where delicious food was provided for by everyone :)) Anyway, it was really fun celebrating these kind of events with families, so I'm hoping to do it again next year~

--

I just attended a 4K dinner. It was nice to reunite with the class. It makes me pretty sad that I won't be seeing their faces when I walk into my class next year :( Dinner was at Fish and Co. Afterwards, we gathered at pasir ris park and chatted, play games, talked about ghost stories (which were only slightly frightening/shocking hahah). Some of them are going for night cycling like... NOW. hahaha.

Attending the dinner made me realise that I WAS going to miss them to some extent. No matter what, I think that we are better now than we were 2 years ago. I did think that whatever we did, all of us improved in some way or another, and have at least talked to everyone in the class (no matter the amount of words). This class has been a great learning experience, and I am happy to say that I am walking out of it with newfound friends :))

--

I am going to change my subject combi by submitting the application form to school tmrw. Pretty exciting HAHAHA. Truthfully, I am dreading my current (with my subject combi unchanged) class. I am only one of the 2 girls in the whole class which is my worst nightmare because I am actually rather socially awkward with guys. So being in that class is just probably going to result in me being detached from my SH class T_T So, I REALLLLYYYY hope that my subject combi application will be approved. That being said, it is not for this silly reason that I am changing my subject combi. I have already made up my mind to change my combi before even knowing about my class. So the class actually just acts as an incentive for me to change my combi LOL. I wouldn't mind not changing classes as long as I can change my combi!!!! PLEASSSSSEEEEEE APPROVEEEEEE.

--

Okay, many random topics here at once, so I shall stop for now.
Anyway, I am SO NOT looking forward to school (schoolwork, projects, new class, unknown people, long school hours, more schoolwork...). I am currently relishing my last few days of freedom. Also, I am supposed to go er hum, start reading up on my SH topics, so I shall.... try starting.