I dun where should I start, how should I start. I know not how do I feel, how do I react. In the end, I'll be wrting glibberish but well, something has to be written. Its been 2 days and I think I can put events into rationale thoughts now.

The last day of school was rather uneventful. Was an NMA, thus played bridge at 4G. Then had two lessons and poof, we attended the last lesson and our secondary school academic chapter is closed. The whole class stayed in class after the report books were given out and startrd to pose for photos. Was a nostalgic moment when we tore down the notice boards and the classroom was reduced to what it was before, whitewash and empty. The lockers were emptied, every single thing that was not there at the start of the year was thrown, taken away, devasted. It seems to be the cycle of life, of moving on, of maturing, yet human's greatest double-edged knife, love, passion, pinch at which it hurt most, parting ways. It was not without anticipation that this day would come, but the impact, like death, took its toll on me. When I stepped into the classroom the start of the year, I told myself, I had one year left to not regret my choice to come to RI and take away the most exquisite and wonderful memories of secondary school days. My sec 1 and 2s were a mess, it was only in sec 3 that i began to understand why many great Rafflesians still finds it hard to forget RI. "You reap what you sow" How true. In sec 3 and 4, I put in everything I had into my CCA, into school activities, involving in a much higher level of events than in lower sec. I was duly rewarded...with experience, with friendship, with love, with care tht is so uniquely RI. RI devasted my lower sec days and picked me up in my upper sec days. They say "Only when a man is destroyed, then will he learn. Only when he learns, then will he progress." I thank you RI, for providing me with the failures and sucesses, with the disappointment and euphoria, for teaching me how to love, how to feel and most importantly for making me who I am today...

Graduation...with a bit of laughter, a bit of tears

Sat afternoon was grad ceremony. Again I understood why other schools, even top schools cannot compare with RI. RI seeks to provide the experience, like in this instance, how many schools would provide for a formal ceremony where you receive your graduation certs like in the university. Yes, you may say its formalities, but I am sure, no one would be quick to forget the moment they had on stage, being the pride of the school, the parents, the teachers and being appreciated and sent off appropiately. Many speeches were made and they all carried blessings. We had went through 4 years to live this day, what so sigificant is not the day itself but the 4 yrs. A video was shown, capturing images from sec 1-4. From orientation camp in sec 1, to the many batch activities and daily, trivial activities were recorded. They indeed brought laughter, but along with laughter came the tears. No matter how much you deny, the Rafflesian experience had become part of us. The pain, agony, tears, laughter, euphoria bound us together. After the day, nothing changes, life goes on, we go our separate ways, to JCs and Us, but....we'll remember the day where the batch song and school song were loudly sung for the last time........together......Whether you believe it or not, I almost teared during the ceremony, esp. when Mrs Koh was on the verge of tears, her voice breaking and hoarse. and I almost teared again reliving the experience in words...but...thats the exact feeling i wanted....if I did not tear, it would mean that my choice in P6 had been a great great mistake. Same thing applies for all of u out there, if u do not feel, then it is just so sad.

Okae...graduation's over...i shall make some updates to the few days after

Open Houses
in a short span of 48 hrs, I went to TJC, MJC, VJC open houses. TJC was on the last day of school. We reached there at about 3.30 i believe. I dunno but I felt rather oppressed in there. Yes, the ppl were helpful and some of the activities were rather interesting, but its just the whole atmosphere that didn't click. The group of us who went got bored soon and went to MJ. reached MJ at about 5pm? one hour before closing. Well....they were obviously much more delightful than TJ as much as I can tell, though we got some strange stares here and there. Who says RI ppl cannot go MJ?(indignantly) The thing that caught my eye was its CO. At its current strength, it would have been all but wise to join. But, there is a very huge BUT, the diff is that the conductor is Guo Ling Qiang Lao Shi, vice-conductor to SCO. oh yeah, i forgot to mention that their instruments were brand new and the timpanis were shiny...Thus i formed up this rather fallible argument, but it sounds logical though. Why stress urself up and travel more than 2hrs each day to go somewhere where a percussion teacher is non-existant when right at your doorstep, there is a super pro teacher waiting to teach u and the stress level, entry requirements are much lower. Furthermore, the chance of a leadership position is much higher becoz of a "glorious past". I'll get more CCA points, save on travelling time, get my grades, get a better testimonial due to a better chance of leadership position, have a super zai teacher to teach you, have brand new instruments staring at you. ppl out there, offer me a reason not to go to this JC. The only one I can thinf of so far is that i lose the rafflesian prestige and perhaps end up with 10000 unwanted abortions as quoted from Xunqi. Well.. guess I got to start weighing my options. Today in the LT, Bjorn made a statement that goes "RJ is a cold heartless place, they'll slam you out of a CCA if you do not have past experience or have not met entry requirement. Contrasted with NJ (for example), they allow you to join any CCA as long as you put ur heart in it." Tell me now, which is the obvious choice?

The last JC i went was VJ. Nothing much to say,just that their goodie bag veri gd, also got free ice-cream and free Milo, veri propagandive and attractive in a way. but in any way, i'll consider MJ b4 VJ. VJ, MJ, well done on your open house. TJ, I believe you need to improve to captivate more of the sec 4 innocous heart.

Okae, i'll try to keep it short today. I dun have much time anw. So just dropping back to record some of the feelings and emotions. Had a massive headache yesterday, was intending to blog, but never did and never did i complete the hw. It was only today that I found out that it was the fourth last day of school. Well..in pri sch...after PSLE, we had the 1 month together before we moved on. But now, even when nostalgia sets in, it is overwhelmed by the stress from O's, the mugging "festivity" and the dog eat dog rat race.It is just so hard to sit down as a class and realise that this is the last few moments we are going to spend together. It is even harder to engage in romantic moods in which the impact of parting is fully felt. We are so hard-pressed these days. If u wan work, there was work. In fact, there is more work than we can do and the mounting stacks of paper just adds to the painful reminder that o's are in a week. While we are so stressed out, my message to all of u is ppl, chill out. Yes, O levels are once in a lifetime, but i feel that since this world we see is made up of ppl, ppl must come b4 anything else, even grades. Grades are superficial. You can't judge a person from grades This is learnt from a painful personal encounter 2 yrs ago and i hope no one would repeat this mistake.

What defines a person is his love

.
I'll leave u with yet another song. This time- N'sync with This I Promise You

"This I Promise You"

Ohh ohh...

When the visions around you,
Bring tears to your eyes
And all that surround you,
Are secrets and lies
I'll be your strength,
I'll give you hope,
Keeping your faith when it's gone
The one you should call,
Was standing here all along..

And I will take
You in my arms
And hold you right where you belong
Till the day my life is through
This I promise you
This I promise you

I've loved you forever,
In lifetimes before
And I promise you never...
Will you hurt anymore
I give you my word
I give you my heart (give you my heart)
This is a battle we've won
And with this vow,
Forever has now begun...

Just close your eyes (close your eyes)
Each loving day (each loving day)
I know this feeling won't go away (no..)
Till the day my life is through
This I promise you..
This I promise you..

Over and over I fall (over and over I fall)
When I hear you call
Without you in my life baby
I just wouldn't be living at all...

And I will take (I will take you in my arms)
You in my arms
And hold you right where you belong (right where you belong)
Till the day my life is through
This I promise you baby

Just close your eyes
Each loving day (each loving day)
I know this feeling won't go away (no..)
Every word I say is true
This I promise you

Every word I say is true
This I promise you
Ooh, I promise you...

I really shouldn't be here today but I had really wanted to blog yesterday but my lit essay took 1 hr more than expected and so there...Yesterday made and broke many people and if you still do not knoe what I am talking about, I'm talking about grades, more specifically, moderation. Yes, I knoe I said in my last entry I'm laying off grades, I still maintain that stance, just that I was a little disturbed at how this grades moderation thingy affected others. While, Mr Mac says that moderation is based on the "paper hardness", what we cannot deny that it is all in statistics. By reducing human to mere numbers obviously has its drawbacks. Till now, I question the "fairness" of moderation. True 6-pointers lose their prestige, people get a false impression of their results. I wouldn't dare to flaunt my 6 points and compare it with other people who got theirs before moderation. Just to quote a casual example, mok got his 6 points before moderation. After moderation, I am on the same level as him if not higher due to my 9 distinctions where he only got 8. The report card we get will not show our actual marks, thus in a way, I have beat him....through moderation....Thus, I was disgusted, at how people start flaunting their moderated results as if we really deserved them. I cannot deny that moderation is a must, but the apparent message that has gotten across to us was far less encouraging. Mr Mac apparently did not get his point across, I must say, sadly...

Enough of grades, i say, Let man perish in them for all they want. Today, I met my senior again, the one currently in army. Okae, he's not really in army now, his NS was disrupted, took up a scholarship and is currently studying medical at NUS. Well, I asked him about JC choice and subject combinations. What I gathered is as follows, if you want to do arts, HC is the best, science, RJ, and he added that VJ might be a good choice because of its distance and school culture. If you are looking for girls, never go RJ as I quote "those chio one will "dao" you". May I add that he was from RJ as well doing triple science. Next, subjects combi, for science stream is obvious, if you want your options as open as possible, do triple science. For arts, econs is a must as a back-up for a good career prospect. Basically, it boils down to whether you know what you want. If you cannot decide yet, take triple science and you will be able to choose again in uni. If your path is set, then do what you want and score in them. The difference is that you might need to spend more years in uni if you decide to switch from science to arts then, for the other way, it is impossible to switch from arts to science, so if you take arts, you got to be very sure that this is the path you want to pick.

Finally, I shall point out a piece of information I sourced over the net and papers. Note: I am not 100% sure, so please do not quote me.
In striats times forum last week, there was a letter titled "Counsel Idiosyncratic Teachers". The letter is about teachers that cannot communicate well should be counselled as well. The writer draws our attention to 2 specific case studies, one in which the teacher points a middle finger at a student and ask him to laugh, the other in which the teacher deemed looking at certain parts of the human anatomy was disrespectful. I've read it and I was disturbed when the writer commented "Mind you, this is an top independent school." I thought hmm....so I went to the net and sourced information and came to conclusion that the writer was indeed refering to a teacher in RI. Gosh...I was stunned and rather amused at the same time. Anyway, my stand is that the writer was writing rubbish( jie4 ti2 fa1 hui1 would be the best chinese idiom for it) and if she had a point, she destroyed it with her excessive use of "propagandish" language and an improper tone to sum it off. In today's paper, a reader replied with "It takes 2 or even 3 to clap" After reading the article, I have only 1 thought: my sentiments exactly." Well, such issues are sometiimes worth discussing over a cup of tea...

The walls are closing in, I'm confunded.

All the prelim results were given back in these 3 days not only for RI but for many sec schools as well. My results are rather nice in stats, 9 dist., L1 R5: 6, L1 R5: 7. Well, my feelings throughout these three days fluctuated a lot.

Day 1
Well, we got back A maths, SS, Chem and HCL. Well, 2 A1s, 2 A2s. Well, the only depressing note was that I lost to Mok and Boon beside me for first 3 subs.

Day 2
THe climax took place. Hist, Maths and Physics, allowing 6 subs just nice to calculate L1 R5. It was 8 at that time. Then Mok and Eric went to Mrs Koh for Lit and Eng marks to confirm their 6 pts. There, perhaps I felt a little pressure at tht pt of time to perform as well. Well, after sch went to look for Mrs Koh for marks and I got my 7 with both my humance at A2. For a short while, I felt dissatisfied, I felt shattered. Yes, perhaps its the ego, its the framed perfection that was not met. But I soon realised otherwise. It was Mid-Autumn Festival and at night I went to the park that connected to the beach. It was there where I changed my whole perception of the prelims and the O's. The air was cool after the rain, the moon was bright and round. The usually queit park still held its tranquility but as one strolls through the park, occasional festive noises and laughter would be heard. Children were running around with a lantern, couples were sitting facing the sea, families were reunited ( as in chinese ren2 yuan2 yue4 yuan2). The atmosphere was friendly and held peace, I felt relaxed, like I had never b4 for the past few months. I stood on the beach, listening to the waves crashing and the wind blowing, admiring the moon in the distance, examining the length of shadows, reverting back to the natural self of man. As I looked towards the horizon, my heart told me that none of those things I have in the urbanised world counted for anything. It was a feeling that I could not understand. Therefore, I stood and marveled at nature, amazed and free at last.

Day 3
I went to school a much happier person than the day before. Got back english, bio and lit. a1,a1,a2. Thus making up all my 9 distinctions. I am no longer affected when someone tells me he got 6 pts. I do not react when someone tells me he got 74 and whine away how he lost the a1 when I got 70 and needed moderation of a whole grade to get the a1. Why? Because I've seen too much, heard too much and cannot feel that much. I've see ppl get C6 passes and they cried tears of joy, I've seen ppl get A2 and they cried tears of sadness. I've seen ppl trying their very best, slogging their hearts out and getting a pass, I've seen ppl slack through school, only to score an A1 in the end. I've seen so much that it suddenly just doesn't matter anymore. The obsession grades have caused is really too much for me to take, that I sometimes really not want to care. Zongjin has kindly helped me to appeal for my A2 CCA grade but I decided that enough was enough. I'm washing my hands off grades. I will just do my best and leave the rest for others to judge and critisize and at the end of the day, live my life the way I want it.

Only when we look forward to death, then perhaps we had really lived....

Whatever started it shall end it.....

Raffles Institution Prelimary Examinations 2004

English Paper 1

Duration: 1h 30 min

Section B- Functional Writing (250 - 350 words)

The prelims exam has just ended, you are now taking a break before studying for the "O"s
again. Write, as though you were writing in a "blog", your feelings and reflections during the
prelims and your plans for the next few days. Your prose may include the following:

-How the standard of each paper was and how you did.

-Your prediction of each of the nine subject grades and your "ideal JC"

-What problems you faced and how you handled them.

-Your assessment of the rationale of the prelims and your thoughts and reflection.

Hi, I'm finally back, after a long, gruelling and ardous experience. They say its the horror
movie that is filmed in all secondary schools and it is to run for two weeks. They say its the
sec 4 prelims. Let dive straight into it.

Day 1 (Physics Practical)

Standard of paper- easy

Prediction- high A1 score

After forcing myself to look at practicals over the past 2 years the day before, they came up
with something with requires little to no theory. Focal length of converging lens and ocillations
of a pendulum+basic stuff like measuring mass and volume... A big hu-ha was made about how long
is the focal length, but it turned out rather alrite..

Day 2 (English)

standard of paper- (paper 1) moderate

(paper 2) hard:(

prediction- at most low A1...

It started off quite okay as writing was expected to be hard and topic like "Walls" came
out,leading people to think about ice-cream at a "couldn't be more unappropiate" time. The compre
killed us all, with the summary resposible for most casualties. An expository on education
system, need I say more?

Day 3 (Chinese)

Standard of paper- (paper 1) average

(paper 3) easy?

prediction- A1 seems possible but it would be fatal to make predictions now as the chinese
paper is always unpredictable.

The writing part was okae, with its topic a little bit strange, "the lack of Nobel prize
winners in Sg". Paper 2 was rather easy, easiest in 10 yrs, commented TPH, hopefully the results
show likewise.

Day 4 (Chem Practical)

Standard of paper- titration-easy

QA- moderate

prediction- borderline A1 to med-high A1 seems possible

Titration was simple as i hit both the accurate titre values both time and i wasted little
time in thinking to plot for the experiment. QA is a little shaky for me as i failed to identify
oxygen in the 1st test and failed to observe a change as i did not add enough silver nitrate. The
unknown was apparently some rubydium nitrate. Transition metal salt...yucks...

Day 5 (SS + E maths 2)

Standard of paper - SS- easy? E maths 2- even easier?

prediction- SS- borderline A1 at most

E maths 2- high A1

SS structured qns were suprisingly easy but i found a flaw in my argument only when i reached
home, so maybe i would not get the level 5. SBQ was a killer, at least for me, finished in 40
mins and spending like 15 mins on the 1st qn decided if a source was more reliable than the
other... E maths was easy that i could only find 1 mistake so far....

Day 6 (Biology)

Standard of paper- 1 - easy

2 - hard

prediction- hope for a borderline A1Paper 1 was rather easy, after comparing answer only found 2 to 3 wrong, so... thats quite good.
Paper 2 was disastrous for me, spent too much time on structured that i have to rush through the
essay questions. Some of the structured questions were quite hard too...so hope they mod...

Day 7 (A Maths 1)

Standard of paper- moderate

prediction- anything from B4 to borderline A1

It was a normal paper, finishing 15 mins before time and was staring at a qn which i found out
much later on to be so simple...o_O.. The reason for the big range is becoz i have 7 marks gone
due to a stupid assumption made and 12 marks at stake in Linear Law as I wasn't even sure if my
graph was correct...

Day 8 (Chem + Hist)

Standard of paper chem 1- easy chem 2- easy Hist - moderate

Prediction- Chem A1

Hist- at most borderline A1

Chem papers were supposed to be hard according to previous prelim papers but they do not
appear to be so this yr i think due to the killer schedule (2 mugging-intensive subs on the same
day) and to make up for chem prac QA. Morale booster. Hist was next and i didn't like the
structured qns. I think i missed out the main point in the 1st qn and i was crapping for the 2nd
qn. Source- based was alright though, the all time favourte "inference qn" came back after it
presence being sorely missed in the SS paper.

Day 9 (Physics 2 and A Maths 2)

Standard of paper Physics 2- moderate

A Maths 2- easy to a slight extent

Prediction- Physics A2?

A Maths A1 i hope

Physics was supposed to be my pet subject, yet it is so screwed this yr. I got stuck at the
first qn only answering it in the last 5 mins. I left 1 two mark qn blank....my essay qn got 1
part totally wrong as i misunderstood the qn....With this kind of mistakes, the chance of an A1
is quite low, but I'm banking in on the other qns being well done to score. Hope my paper 1 and
prac can pull this up.

Day 10 (Maths 1 + Lit)

Standard of paper- Maths- easy

Lit - moderate

Prediction- Maths A1

Lit borderline A1

Maths paper 1, like its counterpart, was a breeze and a great morale booster. Till now, its
still at a 100% record:) Lit paper 1 was okae i guess. I jumped into poetry part (c) without
seeing the second part and in the end could only squeeze out 1 quote...hopefully that does not
affect my score... The prose was rather easy as it was different(hmm... this sounds
contradictory) The language was different and the symbolism and sacarsm was so strong that it was
hard to miss the point, still the qn made it hard for us to put the point into words. Lit paper
2, 12th Night. An unexpected theme threw me offguard as i scrambled an essay that was incoherent
...the given text was even worst, the second part did not have a thing to do with the text...

Day 11 (Bio Prac)

Standard of paper- EASY

Prediction- NOT more than a A1

Note the contrasting details, yeah, that means i screwed it up. Only figured everything at 9pm
at night. Yeah, for those interested... W1 has more starch than W2. S4 has most reducing sugar,
followed by S2, then S3 and finally S1. And note, i got the first part rite, yet the second part
wrong...

Day 12 (Physics 1)

standard of paper- expected moderate

Prediction- A1No more shall be said

With that 288 hrs of horror, the eposide "prelims" is officially closed.My L1R5 target would
be a single digit, which sounds reasonable to me. Just hoping the teachers will practice mercy
with their pens these few days.... Looking at the recent spade of events, i can't help having a
forum to post my self-opinionated views on these events in the blog. I shall try to keep it short
and snappy.

Case 1: The rhetorical "5-day week"

PM Lee said in his National Day rally that the civil service and schs and the army will lead
the nation to a "5-day week". This means 44 hrs for working ppl in 5 days as set by the MOM,
though it reminded of the "three-day week" in Animal Farm proposed by Snowball aka Trotsky in
Russia. For schs, a unique guideline was introduced stating that sch-initiated activities are not
to be carried out on Sats, only student-initiated activities are allowed and the emphasis on not
pushing all the work from Sat to Fri. Here there are two points of contention:Firstly, the workers are asked to squeeze their worktime into the 5 days yet schs are given the
priviledge of cutting down of syllabus. This could only mean 2 things. One, the workers have more
work to do at home and two, the cutting down of syllabus and homework are only in statistics.Secondly, the widely-contended student-initiated activity, define it. If a student initiate an
activity not approved by the sch, is it still a student-initiated activity. Going the other way,
if the activity is approved by the sch, what diff is it from a sch-initiated activity. The line
that sets them apart is blurred... Hopefully, no Boxer would be produced from this change.

Looking for manifestations within the sch...

Case 1: The apparent mystery of the Sec 4's misbehavior during Prelim peroid

Sec 4s within 1 and half weeks, were crowned as a "disgrace" to the school for some rowdy
behavior during morning assembly. Lets try to put things into perspective.On the side of the students, we do not see why we need to attend flag-raising as 1, most
annoucements do not concern us, 2, our exams were within 30mins and 3, walking in to a exam hall
sweaty and irritated by the irrelevance of the speaker during assembly isn't really the "
condusive" environment the sch so speak of to seek to provide.On the side of the sch authorities, it is a matter of policy, as we learnt in SS, since 1960s,
all schs in sg have been having flag-raising every morning and MOE states that it is compulsory
for every student to attend flag-raising. We all knoe the reasons behind this policy and today I
find myself sitting on the fence. The students have the right to be restless and talk during
assembly, they(we) were being excluded. Since the sch excluded us, why should we pay attention?
Two, with an exam so close, it is inexorable that we would feel nervous and talking is one of the
best ways of reducing fear and reinforcing ideas. Yet, we are forgetting a pertinent point, that
we are questioning the system that gave us what we needed to ask this qn in the first place. Such
we cannot deny, much less refute. Therefore, the behavior is understandable(if there is such
word), yet it contradicts ourselves. Unless like 50% of the whole cohort decides not to turn up
for morning assembly, then maybe we'll have a case, yet drastic actions are uncalled for. Thus, i
can conclude safely that this selfish, instinctive behavior by the sec 4s would gradually
diminish after the prelims though how gradual can the last 3 weeks be...

Case 2: A Case of a errant student or the failure of the CLE policy?

On the final day of the prelims, the sec 4s grudgingly strutted into the parade square for
flag-raising and annoucement. All was going well, or i thought, except the sun was already high
up and the speakers seemed to fail to notice this fact. Well...after all of us were sweating and
swearing away at the school's policy, a person of "great weight" decided to take the podium of
inform us of an incident that took place recently in the school. A apparent mysterious boy had
used a school's lock (as in standardised for whole school) to lock an ice-cream box that
contained ice-cream to be sold to raise funds for MINDs by Red Cross i believe. Now, our first
reaction is obviously humour due to our impure, sadistic mind. Thus, laughter travelled through
the parade square at the speed of 300m/s. A "this is not funny" travelled at the same speed soon
after though its amplitude was many many time larger and its tone was of anger and upset. So,
lets not point out who's right and who's wrong, rather step back and see thw whole picture.Firstly, why did the apparent boy do this? I don't have an answer but I do question the validity
of the claim that one of us did it. No evidence was shown through the process. Two, the sec 4s
were blamed for "not stopping the ""apparent boy"" in his act". Yet, they did not realise that of
the boy was to persist and bide his time, he would have found a way to do this unnoticed.
Furthermore, if the first does not stand, the second claim is "gone with the wind".Okae, now lets assume that a student did it, we need to ask why? Is it the failure of our CLE (
character Leadership Programme)? Could a student who took CLE and philosophy do this? According
to the system, no. Therefore, it could only be the failure of this system that lead to this act.
And why did the programme fail, its manifestation clearly seen in the laughing students, is the
more pertinent question, i think, rather than who did it.

JC talks

The marking days of the prelims were set aside for JC talks from the top 5 JCs in Sg. Me, as a
enthusist in propaganda and the use of language attended these talks trying to sieve out facts
from honey-lined words. Here are my accounts.

Raffles Junior College (Open House : 22nd Oct 10am-5pm)

Yes, the all so famous top JC that is affliated to the same great man that founded Singapore
and our school. The team that came were obviously extremely sure of themselves that they needed
no advertising...What they needed was(as they felt) impact, pompousity. Jargon were littered on
their powerpoint slides. Words they used were profound and sent a signal to the layman in RI, YOU
ARE NOT SUITED TO BE HERE. WE ARE ONLY OPEN TO GENIUSES. And yes, i should observe a very
sensitive trend, that they like to let their "British-like" Singaporeans to talk to us, using
heavily slanged English that had 90% of the audience stumped. However, we should applaud them for
their open policy, throwing at us all the achievements they achieved, lists after lists, item
after item. The seniors that came did not help much, after much probing, all I could gather from
their speech was RI Is not equal to RJC. At the end of the day. they had 3 hrs, 3 times as much
time as any other JC, yet as a stereotyped layman, I can straightaway tell you that my interest
in Rj had decreased proportionally to tht time they spent talking to us. However, as a observer,
this was a guarantee, that the environment would be competitive enough for the non self-motivated
and that they had the prestige. When they spoke, there's this air of superiority that I would not
deem as negative, and I believe that it is that air of "limited arrogance" that would bring a
person to greater heights. To sum it up, if you want to make it big in life, go RJ.

Hwa Chong Junior College (Open House : 22nd Oct 10am-5pm)

oh, sorry, next yr it would be called Hwa Chong Institute. The team, by far, was the most
well-prepared and came with one solitary purpose, entertain and attract, in other words,
propaganda. Thus, we were thoughly entertained by the wit, humour and the plain "spirit". The
presentation started with their GP teachers telling us 43 reasons to go to Hwa Chong, though he
was stuttering at first, he soon found his tone to produce a rousing speech that was magical.
Next, they played a video to promote their sch. They made advertisements that had a sting becoz
of one, their familiarity (ie.Henniken and HP), two, the amount of effort put in. I was rather
moved by the fact that they actually prepared so much for us when most of us had already made up
our mind where to go. Yet, this was trivial compared to what happened next. The humanities
teacher, I forgot his name, who started the humanities programme I think entertained us with a
witty speech laced with humour. The physical appearance wasn't exactly pleasing to the eye yet he
had a unique charisma, an ability to attract and capture attention. He often made digs at Mr Mac
by referring to RJC as "the other institute", sprayed insults at us and yet make it sound funny.
Then came the students, by which a few commented that was the only team who brought girls to
speak to us. We were reassured numerous times that we would feel like "family" within HC, making
me wonder if this is all but a self-fufilling prophecy. Still, they spoke convincingly and their
happy-go-lucky attitude contrasted with the RJ team, allowing them to score even higher. At the
end of the presentation, I think Mr Mac, worried that RJC had lost its appeal to us, requested to
say a few words. He refered to one of the GP teachers reason that a certain teacher was the most
handsome in HC as being the exact reason why he would not go HC. Oh, then he so light-hearted
atrributed the humanities' teacher reference to "the other institution" was due to "his lack of
vocabulary". He made one final dig, at their student concil pres, a certain female by the name
Faith I believe, that RI students respond well to "Faith"(Double pun!!!) in reference to an event
where a RI student toned down and used a high pitched voice to respond to her. The unintended
victim of the circumtance stood up to protest but was duely cut off so aptly by Mr Mac. Mr Mac
then left the room with this "triumphant" look on his face and I left the LT, totally tickled by
the events and reaffirmed my "faith" that English is such a wonderful language.

Temasek Junior College (Open House : 15th Oct 10am-5pm)

This one is rather cold, if you get what I mean. If you don't, read on. When I entered the LT,
it was dark and a video was screening. I sat down, watched the video and when the lights came on,
a vivacious young lady who claimed to be a former Rafflesian came out. I thought that was rather
normal, but...I was wrong. The first ominous signs came when she took on the phrase "vibrant
culture" mentioned by one of us as an aspect o JC we would look out for, and pun it with
................................guess.......................active bacteria in a microculture(
applause) the whole Lt suddenly felt very cold and i thoght eddison was bad enough...She then
went on to tell us how the sch won a NoBell prize (no, there is no spelling error), indeed as
their sch bell often not ring due to certain defects and how this causes lesson to be BOring, (
hokkein "BO" means no) Again, the temp in the LT dropped. When I left the LT, I was effectively
thawing...

National Junior College (Open House : 16th Oct 10am-3pm)

Nothing much to say about this. They were pretty formal and therefore so were we.

Victoria Junior College (Open House : 16th Oct 10am-3pm)

hmm...This seems like a toned-down version of HC's presentation. The principal was one funky
one, a female somemore. It appears that she could relate perfectly to us teenagers although with
her not so perfect singapore accented English. The wonderful display convinced me to add VJ to my
list of considerations because of its proximity to my house...

Well. folks, in a few days the prelims results would be back and then I would really be able
to set down my choices for JC. On an ending note, I've added a tagboard due to demand from snl
and I'll leave you with a song, the one playing in the background now. X- Japan------Tears.

ps. I think I exceeded 350 words and the midi file really doesn't do X-Japan justice, so if u
like the song, go find the real version.

TEARS

doko ni yukebaii anata to hanarete

ima wa sugisatta toki ni toi kakete

nagasugita yoru ni tobidachi wo yume mita

ikoku no sora mitsumete

kodoku wo dakishimete

nagareru namida wo toki no kaze ni kasanete

owaranai anata no toiki wo kanjite

Dry your tears with love

loneliness, your silent whisper

fills a river of tears through the night

Memory, you never let me cry

and you, you never said good-bye

Sometimes oue tears blinded the love

We lost our dreams along the way

But I never thought

you'd trade your soul to the fates,

never thought you'd leave me alone

Time through the rain has set me free

Sands of time will keep your memory

Love everlasting fades away

Alive within your beatless heart

Dry your tears with love

nagareru namida wo toki no kaze ni kasanete

owaranai kanashimi wo aoi bara ni kaete

Dry your tears with love

nagareru namida wo toki no kaze ni kasanete

owaranai anata no toiki wo kanjite

Dry your tears with love

Dry your tears with love