Just Reflections Part 2

A few weeks ago, I had a parent-teacher meeting (ptm) that my sister attended as my guardian. And during ptm, I told my teachers that I would put in effort to study during the holidays.

BUT OOPS.

I didn't.

It's now the last week of holidays and that familiar feeling of regret has once again hit me straight in my face. I have so much work undone. And I keep telling myself that I can do this. The reason why I told myself I could do this was because I thought a had gained a back my ex-usual motivation of 'if you don't study, you gon' fail so bad'. My motivation has changed ever since sec 3. Failing A Math in the first semester kind got me accustomed to failing. It wasn't as bad as I thought.

Being comfortable with failure was what I wanted because I wanted an impact that goes like 'Failing is fine, it gives you perspective to help you do better, you will bounce back stronger than ever.' Instead, it had an impact of 'nah, I'm used to failing.'

Hopefully, I can bring back a slight fear of failure to propel my motivation and determination to do well.

It is too late for me to work hard and do well for Common Tests 2.

It's NOT TOO LATE for me to work hard and do better for Prelims and do well for A's.

This is the last shot I got at major major major examinations. And I'm not going to let it go down the drain without me trying to get it back.

The countdown begins NOW. Four Months and 1 week left.

Just Reflections

So lately I just finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie yet again.

I read it again because I had forgotten whether I had read it before and decided to simply read it.

I had found joy in reading when I was younger, but as I grew up, I was drawn away by other distractions. I had found reading to be "unpopular" /I can't find a better word to describe it/ and then stopped myself from reading in order to shed that 'nerdy' image of me. The worst part is that I even tried to stop my ex-classmate from reading.

Good thing is that she was unwavered by me and continued her reading. /Sorry Jacqueline :((((((((/

The way I thought and acted was really immature and undeniably inconsiderate. I was trying to change the actions of others that had no need to be changed. They have a choice to do what they want as long as what they do does not impact anyone or anything negatively.

-oops, sidetracked-

Okay, back to what the focus of this post is meant to be. The book I read is irrevocably enlightening and enriching. It's funny how many of us know what we know but we act as if we don't. We know we are dying, and it's expected that we do something, right? But, no. We continue to live in a bubble of ours. We don't indulge ourselves in the moment because we are too preoccupied with everything else. Sometimes I look back on my past and have that uncomfortable feeling called regret because I didn't live in that moment as much as I could. I didn't absorb all the nitty gritty details and store them in my memory. This is all because my mind was all over the place and it sucks.

Sure, we can't just simply let go of everything and end up being too narrow-minded. Therefore, we need to have a balance. And that is knowing when we should let go of certain things to bring more focus on the things that should be taking priority. Like maybe friends. I have many friends /or acquaintances. I call a lot of people friends because I love the idea of being friends. Friends friends friends./ But my time is limited, so is theirs. The fact that both sides have made an investment of their own precious time to hang out with each other shows that the interaction is valuable. And after this investment has been made, we should make conscious effort to sink ourselves into the moment. Y'know, maybe let loose of your little inhibitions and be more at ease. Ride whatever waves of emotions that comes at you, whether or not they are as little as ripples or as big as tsunami waves.

These are a small fraction of what I have interpreted and internalised from Tuesdays with Morrie. They might not be exactly what is meant to be taken away, but I am happy with what I have gained.

Many quotes and aphorisms have been constructed because of experiences as shown by the many aphorisms Morrie Schwartz had made. One aphorism from Morrie Schwartz would be "Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live." He spoke this from experience and something in me tells me that I should keep this in mind.

I have always been a fan of quotes. I love quotes so much that I know quite a lot of quotes that I end up forgetting them because there are too many that I love to read and ponder about. However, there are a few favourites of mine:

"You don't write your life with words, you write them with actions."

"Notes you spend are money, notes you keep are just pieces of paper" HAHA I like this one, but it's not good to follow this.

Okay, there are more, but I just can't recall them right now. I'll type more when I can.

Taking these baby steps to being a better human being. To be a better part of the community. And I hope starting with myself can show others that we should constantly attempt and eventually succeed to be better versions of ourselves.

U

I see U everywhere.

EVERYWHERE.

For real tho, cause I have straight Us for Common Test 1. Except for GP, I got an E for that.

I had to meet to P. THE BIG P. In her office. With my sis :)

This isn't something to be proud of. And it has really motivated to study harder. I only have 5 months left to A levels to learn everything from this year AND last year. I hope to raise my grades by at least 2 grades by Common Test 2. I hope I can.

But I'm not sure of it.

I feel like I've distanced myself from my friends to study harder. It kinda works, I don't know. I just know that I'm putting in more effort to do work. And I'm starting to put in the same amount of effort as before because I'm starting to understand schoolwork.

Previously, I was very discouraged to learn because the way I learn is kinda different from my friends. I really need to understand something before I can learn it. If I don't understand it, I can't learn. If I can't learn, I can't remember it. Only when I've truly understood can I learn.

So I always ask weird questions that people usually don't ask.

Most of the times, teachers would just go with the flow and teach me in the way that I understand.

My favourite kind of teachers are those who don't discourage me from finding out more in order to help myself understand. I really hate teachers who tell me to "just memorise". I'm not learning anything. And I reeeeeeeaaaaaally hate the teachers who tell me to "just memorise", and when I comply and just memorise, they scold me for simply memorising. Like, I did ask you how and why things work but you told me not to understand. UGH.

If you are able to teach me something, it's great. For you. Because it takes some skills to teach me how things work because I always see things another way. You would need to change my perspective.

I really thank the people /not only my teachers/ who have had the patience so far to slowly teach me even tho it's really frustrating to do so. It's some tough work. I think if I were you, I wouldn't be able to teach myself.

School of Thought

CAUTION:

 LONG-ASS POST AHEAD. DON'T JUST SIMPLY SKIM THROUGH IT. EITHER READ, OR DON'T.

I love my tuition.

Yas, I said it.

I LOVE MY TUITION.

Many people have tuition so as to bring up their grades. Okay, that is basically the main reason why students in Singapore have tuition in the first place.

But I have started to view tuition as enriching. Seriously. I have learnt so many things in my time at my GP  tuition. Not examination skills /heh, which I should have learnt simultaneously/, but thinking skills. I have been mind blown so many times at my current GP tuition. Things that I have thought about, but I have not given serious thought to, has been discussed so many times in SOT. 

Take for example, a GP question that we discussed today was "Discuss the importance of religion in today's society". Which was translated into "Is religion important in today's society?" And we talked about whether we can be religious, even when we do not have a religion. Are science & tech and religion really conflicting? I am not going into detail what I have learnt, I'm just going to put this out here for whoever may read this to ponder about.

So basically, it was mindfucking. Really. Mr Chng would always ask us some questions and we wouldn't know how to answer them. These questions, I'd say, are actually really important in shaping our views and opening our eyes to the things that we often overlook. These things have so much impact on our lives, but we just do not know it.

We need to start thinking. I know there are people out there, including me, still, who can't seem to stop ourselves from thinking so much once we have started to think. But don't let that stop you from thinking as it has stopped me.

I realised that I stopped thinking a few years ago. I started to avoid thinking. It probably stopped when I was in Sec 2. When I was trying to fit in with my friends because I was kind of ostracised in Sec 1 for being emo and hot-tempered and probably viewed as unreasonable. Overthinking, it had killed me. I hated how I was so stubborn and how I was unwavered by people's opinions. Now I actually miss those parts of me. It gave me character.

Now I'm actually literally afraid of people hating me. When I learn that someone dislikes me, I'd want to find out why and no matter what the reason that person has, I'd change that part of me that people do not like. I wouldn't think it through well enough to realise that I need to understand why that particular part of me is being disliked. And I realised this probably, last year? That's pretty late. Now I try to put serious thought to it to decide when and what I need to change.

And what frustrates me is that not everyone is as sensitive as me /though I can be really really insensitive at times/. Ever since I stopped thinking, I tried to be less sensitive. Because my sensitivity just amplified my character. The littlest of things affected me and I hated that. No one can understand why I feel a certain way and the worst part is that I do not know how to translate it into words, afraid that I would express myself wrongly and people would interpret my thoughts incorrectly.

This leads me to what happened today. So Ethel, Huimin, Halizah, Keith, Colin, and I are in this group named "Keith is the lousiest /insert poop emojis/". We had actually decided to watch a movie together. This movie is called Insurgent. I was so excited to watch it. Extremely excited. After tuition, I wrote in the group that I was hungry and asked whether they had eaten. What I did not expect was them saying that they had bought the movie tickets. For Fast and Furious 7.

That's right, I was fast to be furious in less than 7 seconds.

I was so fucking angry, and I still pretty am. Like all I wanted to say actually was, 'fuck,'what the fuck', 'the fuck?'. But I held myself back, and told myself that I needed to not lash out at them. So I spammed Pebbles. I sat in the toilet for maybe 5 to 10 minutes to text and rage. I just had to get it out of my system before I met them, so that I do not say things to them in a moment of heat.

Okay. I do not recall ever talking about watching that movie. Even if we did, I would have turned it down immediately because never have I ever had interest in watching any of the Fast and Furious movies. I interpreted this as being angry that I do not get to watch Insurgent because I had cancelled on my friends a week earlier so that I could watch it with them.

Then this anger coursed into the wtf, they changed the movie without saying anything...? Not getting my opinion and simply getting the tickets. For a movie I did not give a fuck about. Like my money and time was about to be wasted /in the end, the movie wasn't that bad/. The anger just heightened.

Afterwards, it was the "maybe I have no right to be angry in the first place!" phase. I thought through it and came to the conclusion that I do. This phase is the phase in which I often get stuck in. Because I don't want to show my anger and scare away my friends. Really. Like, legit. So I don't do anything and just remained angry and stay that way. I don't want to get stuck here because I feel like I need to really analyse just why I got angry.

So I analysed. I had plenty of time to think before reaching Jurong East. I realised the main reason why I got so upset and angry that I didn't get what I believe that I deserved was that I was disappointed.

I was disappointed in my friends for not taking me into consideration, for not being sensitive towards my feelings enough. I was disappointed that what I looked forward to was simply cancelled and changed. I was disappointed that the time and thing /in this case, watching Insurgent/ that I had set aside solely for them was just simply taken lightly. And disappointment to me is taboo. I hate it to the core. My anger is just amplified a thousand times.

But the thing is, what right do I have to be disappointed in them? They don't owe me anything at all. And neither do I.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. So I kind of showed my discontent. I didn't want to hide all of it.

I know that they felt bad. I kind of did too.

/I need more perspectives on this situation :(/

Putting so much thought into this has drained me out. I'm beginning to think again. And I will not be afraid to analyse things. I will not avoid things like this anymore cause all it does is just hold me back from growing. I'm extremely tired of being stuck and not moving forward. Everything is at a standstill and I'm ready to make changes and move forward.

CNY 2015 DAY1

Alllllll the fooooooooooood.

That's right.

My aunt was my saviour. I actually had no new clothes for cny and had pretty much planned to wear my usual clothes out. Luckily, Da Yi bought a skirt that I could wear and soooo I wore that with a spaghetti top. And I wore shoes that were bought last year but I had never worn them. Umm, so that is just for today & I'll reuse my previous cny clothes for the next few days.

The day started out good, then I kinda had a small quarrel with my mom. All was well afterwards tho. Yi Yi Pei Lee was supposed to come pick us up to go to my grandma's house, aaaaand she came an hour late. After reaching popo's house, we /Popo, Da Yi, Uncle Ambrose, Ade, Jie, Edward and I/ went to Adou's house.

It's tradition to visit the eldest in the family first. Hence, Adou.

We chilled there for roughly an hour or so...? I can't remember. I just remember hiding in the kitchen, eating bak kua and helping my grandma out with making the popiahhhhhs. I also remember feeling pretty sad about the fact that I can't communicate with Adou. She's about a hundred years old and she's pretty frail. All I said to her was "Gong yi wa sai" Which is Hainanese for gong xi fa cai. None of us will ever be able to understand what is going on inside of her head.

Then we went straight to second Ah bo po's house. Like, wow, the food is just hands down the best. My relatives on my mother's side are all good with food. Love love love eating there and chilling there. My uncles are all so friendly and funny, damn it feels good to be there. Buuuut, I'm still pretty reserved when I'm there. Tho I am starting to open up a little bit :)

Edward was cranky and kept expressing his discontent with him being outside, so after we left second Ah bo po's house, we sent Edward home and told him we'd pick him up later for dinner. Uncle Ambrose wanted to drink coffee, so we went to Dempsey Hill for tea at P.S. Cafe. Damn was the food great.

P.S. Cafe

We headed back to polo's 

-okay, so I stopped here, and I can't remember what I wanted to type.... SO THERE IT IS-

Whut.

Seriously, whut. ERHMAGERD I HAD TO RETYPE "WHUT" THREE TIMES CAUSE MY LAPTOP KEPT AUTO-CORRECTING IT TO "SHUT". It's a sign, even my laptop is telling me to stop typing and just shut it. But, nahhhhhhh.

Okay, it's been almost two months since I last posted something. I had a draft ready about CNY Day 1, then I didn't finish typing it. Since then, I've forgotten what had happened.

So many things have happened within these two months that makes me go like, whut.

The later part of February and the earlier part of March had nothing much going on actually. All that happened was that I was struggling to stay awake in school and I was really really really really really really prepared to fail my CTs. That's basically it.

Then that fateful day came when Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away, 23 March 2015. It was the first day of CTs1. I have to admit, in no way am I emotionally attached to him. /Although, I do deeply respect him for everything he has done for our lives./ So I decided not to join the lengthy queues. Flags were flown at half mast in school for the entire school week. And a minute of silence was observed everyday of that week. I did use those minutes of silence to reflect on everything related to Mr Lee Kuan Yew. I made very sure to make full use of it. Then Sunday came when he was moved from the Parliament House to the University Cultural Centre in NUS. My sister and I had listened to the eulogies written for him and were really touched by some of them.

Okay, so I did not just reflect during those minutes of silence. I did a little more reflection on my own time. And I thought: It's good and all how so many people are grateful towards Mr Lee Kuan Yew for dedicating such a huge part of his life to building modern Singapore. But what portion of these people will translate their emotions into actions and start to make Singapore better than it currently is? Isn't building Singapore what Mr LKY spent his life doing? Even though he is gone, we have to be self-sustaining and continue down this path he had so tediously laid out for us. We all play a different part in forming Singapore's community and I believe every small thing we do will have a ripple effect and eventually be part of something bigger.  So I'm just putting my hope out here that people /who have yet to realise that/ will realise that and begin to play a useful role in out society. And thus, not only can we honour Mr LKY's memory, but also to grow together.

This has fuelled my thought process of, 'If we do not demonstrate gratitude, are we really grateful?' yeah, I need to figure that one out.

That aside, nothing much has happened.

Oh, wait. There's a little more.

Dajie came to Singapore! Yayyy! She arrived on 1st April and I'm not really sure what she did on that day and the next day. We went out on the following day with Jie in which we first bought the $1 /now $1.20/ ice cream in orchard. Then we went to A&F and bought a few shirts. After that we went around Orchard Rd looking for a cereal named "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" Thooooooo, we didn't manage to find it in the end. We ate llao llao and headed to Orchard Point...?  to find that cereal. We walk towards The Cathay to eat Maki San, but we got lazy and just stopped at Plaza Singapura. We ended up........... I can't remember what we did there actually. Ugh.

We had to go home cause mom cooked dinner for us and we had already kind of eaten our dinner.... YAY TO 2 DINNERS.

Woop woop, so that's how it's been.

Orientation 2015 (Updates)

ORIENTATION IS OVER.

THIS IS SAD.

But I can see that my OG campers became pretty bonded after orientation and that makes me really happy :)

OG 14 woop woop

Okay. OG14 is a lepak OG. We are naturally lepak-ers. So we lepak together during TBG. Once we were chilling in class and they played my covers that I posted on instagram. Like, OMFG. So embarrassing when it's played in public. Go watch it at home alone, please.

They played a loooooot of charades. Like how, what. That's really good tho cause that is what made OG1 last year bond :)

A lot of things happened on the last day. Nicole slipped on a wet patch at the Netball court and scraped her knee :( That really killed me. I felt so upset for the entire day and almost cried cause I felt so damn guilty. I mean, I did cry on Camp Day 3, but I'll talk about that later. She scraping her knee means that she couldn't dance the couple dance and go crazy on JJ Night.  Althougghhhhhh, she did jump around during JJ Night in the end, but it was only for a few songs.

Speaking of JJ Night, I felt so irritated by a few people. Wth. Seriously wth. As OGLs, we were supposed to get those not jumping around to be involved. So I approached a few people and some of them did join in for at least a while. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPECTRUM OF PEOPLE, some people ignored me. I'd tap on their shoulder and say, "Hey, why aren't you joining in? Why not just clap along to the beat with me?" Then this girl looked at me like I was some freak. So I thought she couldn't really hear me so I gave it another shot, "Hey, come clap along!" This is the wtf moment. She literally ignored me. She didn't even look at me, she just looked straight ahead. I felt like punching her face so bad. But I didn't want that to ruin my whole night, so I tried to forget about it.

Something else ruined my night tho. I sprained my ankle again. AGAIN. This is how this shit happened: We were cleaning up the school after JJ Night. And I was done with the Grandstand /which I was appointed with/ So I was running towards other people asking them if they needed any help. I was running across a patch of uneven grass at night near the chin up bars. What could possibly go wrong? Oh wait, everything! My right foot stepped into a pretty deep hole and crackkkkk. That's when I sprained my ankle. Yeah. Now I was the one who needed help.

I cried a lot. I guess it was a cumulative effect. I was already so drained out. Plus the shock of spraining my ankle. Sher Hui and Colin (non-SC) helped me out but I couldn't make it to the canteen even tho they were supposed to bring me up to the LN. So I just sat on the ground while Sher Hui used the 100 plus can to 'ice' my swollen ankle and Colin drank the other can with me hahhahahaha. I really appreciate thattttt~ Aftwerwards,  Tobi, Ms Sabrina and Mr Tan came to help me. I appreciate them helping me too~

'Appreciate' has become one of my favourite words to say.

I wanted to take one last picture with Hillary before we left but they called a cab for me already and so we just had a group hug <3

                                       

First full strength Hillary photo

So much love and thanks for this special group of people who have gone through so much with me. From a pretty awkward group of people, to a less awkward group of people who made weird jokes, and guessed funny riddles. That is how we bonded. I wasn't sure how everything would be, but I'm glad about the way everything turned out to be. This bond we have is different. It's not covalent bond-ish, but neither is it as weak as van der Waal's forces. It's entirely unique. Let's continue to have lunch or dinner. Love love love, ice ice ice.

The only pic we have together /this is kinda sad/

Shout out to my OGL Partner. I don't think I would have made it without you and your stupid lame puns. I can't believe that I laugh at most of your puns. Despite that bad first impression of you, I don't think you are that bad now :) You are like, the closest person I am with in Hillary & I'm really happy that we ended up being partners! Look, our OG is pretty bonded, so many ships are sailing like Dougyee, Chongxuan, Junwal, Aric. #queenwah is EVERYWHERE. Like whaattttt. I guess it's everywhere because two great people make up a great team ;D /tho I think I make up 90% of the greatness/ Hope you weren't so irritated with the queenwah ships. If you were, it's ending on 7 march, so it'll be over soon. Thanks for being a great OGL partner and friend!

OG14 playing Murderer

Hillary!

Also, I made friends with so many people during orientation. I made friends with so many OGLs and I don't even know how. I made friends with campers who were not even in my OG. I really like making friends, it's pretty fun :)

Valentine's Day

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted something on this blog and so many things have happened. Including orientation. That's right ORIENTATION IS OVER. Now it's back to normal school days and holding up the boards for my OG in the morning. I should probably type about orientation first, but I'm gonna talk about Valentine's Day.

Nothing much happened today. I had a date with my tuition class, that's all. And I was supposed to go for a gig at my aunt's house for my uncle's birthday. But I didn't feel prepared at all. So nahhhhh. That really sucked tho, I need to have more confidence in myself.

Yesterdayyyyyyy. Yesterday we all celebrated Valentine's Day in school.  I finally gave the Jumping Clay roses to Hillary and the sweet packs to OG 14 campers <333333 Hahahaha omg Lee Wah and Joshua put the roses on their ear like what even hahahaha and the sweet packs had cotton buds in them for y'know, cleaning their ear out to listen better in lectures.

Well, I received a lot of gifts, from OG 14 and from other people <3 OG 14 gave Lee Wah and I some box with quite a few letters in them. And one of the poems was really sick. Then they gave us each a helium balloon with weird stuff written on them. There was a diss poem from Douglas, I know it's him who wrote it, I think. But I really really love the gifts HAHAHA <3

Well, Shadzee gave me a cake. She seriously gave me a cake. Stephanie gave me oreoooos. Wan Qin gave a small bag of kisses. Nicole and Yu Jie gave me a card each. Ling Yink gave the class chocolates. Candace gave us a small cupcakecup of chocolate cornflakes. Abner gave me a small Reese's cup. Hui Min gave me a big bar of Hershey's cookies n creme chocolate bar. Someone else gave me a small bar of that /I forgot who..../ and Emily gave me a paper rose :)

WOW. So many things this year. I felt the love. HAHA. Most probably getting nothing next year tho.

So upset

I am so freaking upset with myself right now. So fucking upset.

I really can't take this stupid mistake. I just cried over this, no joke.

I was supposed to email in the cheers that I have come up with last night. I thought I did. Well, at least I thought I did. Well, Maryam just sent us the list of cheers that we're gonna use. And then I saw the message "Thank you so much to those who contributed!!!" And I was like, shit. Did people not send in cheers? DID I NOT SEND IN THE CHEERS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!

Apparently, I didn't. That email was stuck in my Drafts. That just made me feel like digging a hole outside and stuff myself in it. I can't even do something so simple... Wtf. Just really, wtf.

Then I also thought, maybe I'm just overreacting. I'm just PMSing. And I think I am :(

This is just so annoying and now I have no mood to do any work. I had the mood to do work just now y'know :/

First

So the first full week of 2015 is almost over.

The first week of 2015 is passing by so fast, mostly because I've spent every single weekday night trying to chiong my holiday homework. And I'm not even done trying to complete the work. Such a good start to the year.

Last night was a "productive" night. My sister and I had a good talk last night. We told each other things that we had never told each other and I can't wait for Edward to join us in conversations like that in future.

I finally met up with Ching and Chea Shin yesterday after a year /snickers/ and we tried Yoogane. It was reaaaaaally good. I wanted to go for SP's open house to see Felicia, but............ Ugh, I didn't go in the end.

Nothing much is going on except that I bought a new calculator and that JJ Open House is on tuesday.

So basically, that's the update on my life.

Happy New Year

It's 11.48pm. Okay, now 11.49pm.

Look, it's going to be 2015 in like, 11mins and I AM SO NOT READY FOR IT. I only have 4 days left to complete all the homework that I was supposed to complete within a month and a half. That's right. Procrastionator Queenie strikes again.

I've only started on Bio Corrections. Which means that I'm practically doomed.

Now I'm watching We're The Millers alone. Yeah, I'm gonna be starting 2015 suckishly.

We had a BBQ and quite a few people came. My aunts and uncle are here but here I am, stuck in Mom's room watching this movie. I wanted to watch Brave, y'know, cause it's really sad to match my mood now. But since, I already feel so sad, I might as well watch a comedic movie.

Hmmm, I did nothing much these few days. I've been practically rotting at home. Ugh, and I did nothing productive so far.

Oh look, 3 mins left to New Year.

Oh look, it's 12.00am. 1 January, 2015.

I really don't know what I'm doing, but here're pictures of me. Before (left) and after (right) midnight.

                              

There ain't no difference y'know why? Cause the difference between 2014 and 2015 is just those few seconds. Those little moments. So many people around, but I still feel lonely. Isn't that upsetting.

Ah. "New Year, New Me". I wanna improve, I don't want a new me. I want the 2014 me and all the other years of me. It's just that the new year has new opportunities for me to improve.

I will, come up with New Year resolutions. Good ones that I will stick to.