Storm Before the Rainbow

The pace of the uni life is simply relentless, and I am now back to the familiar high school days whereby you are constantly aware of the week numbers and the looming deadline.

While there are no experiments to do, no studio to sleep over nor long time-table since there are only 3 hours of lessons per module; there is plenty of hidden lesson time due to the amount of reading. Despite bringing my readings everywhere and retreating constantly to the library to clear the weekly stack (at least a hundred page), I still had a backlog now! And it is not helping that some of the readings assigned did not seen particularly relevant to the lectures or the lectures to the tutorials.

Tutorials had been rather interesting though. Funnily enough, you can still say something (and earn some participation point) without much preparation due to the discussion time allocated. Thus, tutorials had been pretty enjoyable :)

On another note, the style of essay-writing required across different modules is like mars and Venus (I think this analogy is crap, but can't think properly now). But I don't think I know how to write history essay nor was there criteria given, so I just write in my usual style. But some said I had too much citation. I hope my tutor thinks otherwise.
Meanwhile, it also emphasizes the importance of the ability to do last-mins work. Guess taking legitimate short-cuts is a valuable skill.

Meanwhile I joined quite different cca or interest group from hc, like environmental club, philo interest group and pol sci soc. paradoxically, uni cca is both slacker and busier than before. While there is no cca pt unless you are living in hostel nor regular attendance needed and in fact u need not join any, things can get pretty busy coupled with school work. Or if you are holding some positions.

Finally, I am still not quite sure whether to major in pol sci or philo. Pol sci seems too "empirical" for my liking while I am not sure if I am "philo" enough. And the average philo assignment scores are not helping.

Okay that's all for now. There are still some readings and yet I am watching tv.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

 Saturday was xiaopin 1st round. To be honest, not everything is settled as well as I would had liked. Not that I had the motivation to settle everything though. Anyway the stage trial ended on a dumb note, with the lorry driver going to the wrong place. The instruction was to go to tennis court, but the driver went to the one near the swimming pool =_=. Oh well, by the time the lorry came over, it's already like 130. Hmm. The stage trial is mixed. There's more facelight which brings some cheer to Danny. But sounds complained that they dont really know how to work the system. And soon the 10 mins is up. When sounds try to enquire about some stuff on Sat, you-know-what AP-ed us by saying that everything should be asked beforehand and we will not be entertained. So we were stoning there, unable to start, before I asked again how to operate. 
 
The performance was not that great anyway. Our actors were not fully "ru xi", and it showed very clearly. As a matter of fact, this had been a problem since the 1st 3 months which is not really solved. And then, they cannot project their voice properly. I'm struggling to catch the lines. I hesistated whether to down the volume, but didn't do it in the end. Overall, it's pretty dry and rather boring, and I think they deserves "thunderous applause". But at least there's some light effects and we can enjoy the wonderful sounds :D 

Meanwhile it's obvious the organization of the competition is screwed up, considering that 3 of the 5 judges don't have art background. And it's still chaotic. 

Meanwhile I would applaud the other schools for putting in so much effort, if you had seen the sets/costume they brought in. One school even brought a smoke machine to create the eerie/scary atmosphere. One school had this "milo tin tower", and I cant really figure out about its real purpose. It takes a lot of effort, but not particularly significant in my opinion.

Unfortunately, it would be better if they had focused more attention on the script, which is pretty messed up for most of the schools. As you watched more and more schools and rotted in the place underserved called a "theatrette", you notice some recurring similarties for most of the school performances. Basically, there's seem to be some sort of "xiao pin formula" for the best way to score your way through to the final. In my opinion, there's 2 major "formula". 

First of all, we had the slapstick ones. Basically, there's a general plot, if you can call that a plot, with all sorts of opportunities used to inject humour to tickle the crowd. Note that crowd response, aka how loud your school supporters laugh/clap/anything does affects the judges. For these performances, it's typical to find someone acting gay/idiot. However, there won't be significant artistic value and I take it as just that: live show of B-movies. If you take it as just entertainment, then it's pretty tolerable and you actually find it funny at times. Unfortunately, these rarely get past the 1st round unless it contains some "high class slapstick" (does it exist?) 

And then we had the "emo/quarrel-catharsis-resolution-moral of story" kind. Typically, the bulk of it is spent emo-ing about lots of stuff, which includes most of very fake and 煽情 scene. Note that some schools also tried to quarrel their way through, which irritates my ears thoroughly. Somehow for the quarrel ones, they always seem to be fighting for inheritance. Oh well. And then sometimes during the 11 mins mark, plus minus 1-2 mins, we will reach the climax of the show. 
For the emo-kind, one or more characters would suffer from some sort of mental breakdown, so as to generate the emotional impact and the punch to cover for the shallowness of the plot. For the quarrel ones, there would be even fiercer quarrel, or typically fighting to highlight the rise in tension. 
And then somehow, there would be a catharsis，or a state whereby the characters suddenly entered a state of moral cleansing, and realized all the wrongs they had done leading to the resolution. However, this is generally without much build-up, which makes the whole things look very fake. 
As if this is not enough, some schools also inserted an artificial epilogue right at the end, whereby one character would explain the moral of the story. This is not surprising, considering that the judges are screwed and there's a need to tell the audience what is all about after the confusion. And then let's face it, this is a competition and you need the judges to remember you. What ways than to insert a "gentle reminder"?

But this doent make artisitc sense. 

Anyway, it's plain that our script amended according to the 2nd formula. 
emo-quarrel - checked 
catharsis - fighting
resolution - "sun rising in the sky"

Hmm

Wow "happy holiday" seems to be an oxymoron these days, no thanks to  the mountain of work to be done. 

First of all the school gave quite a lot of homework over the holidays. And even if you want to do absolutely nothing about them , there are still quiz waiting for you. Thus, in one way or another, you surely need to do your work especially if you are trying to catch up. For other academic stuff, it is likely that there will not be enough time next year. As such, it is wise to start right now, so as to save more time for other stuffs.

For these nearly 2 full months of holidays, there had been almost endless meeting on script/designs for Huang Cheng. Rarely a day goes by without a meeting, moreover it is likely that you need to use it to prepare for the next meeting (amending script, giving instructions to designers, doing minutes, arrange meeting time and venue...).  

Besides preparing for next year's performance, Nov is spent on preparing for drama camp. To be honest, I'm not really involved in the planning but the run + the actual thing took out a week, which is significant. 

In Dec, further deadline looms over the horizon. You need to confirm set design, finalize colours and so on. Then I will be going overseas to give myself a break. But with so much going on, I doubt I would really relax much. And then I also need to go for attachment, which means yet another week gone.

There are no end in sight. Even the flickering beam of light at the tunnel had been blocked by a big boulder. I think I need to start using a magnifying glass to see what empty slots I had in my schedule.

PS. OMG, haven't really started on IS, script and Hol. Hw. DIE

My Personality

Neuroticism	45
Extraversion	43
Openness To Experience	67
Agreeableness	77
Conscientiousness	60

You do not experience strong, irresistible cravings and consequently do not find yourself tempted to overindulge, however you feel tense, jittery, and nervous and often feel like something dangerous is about to happen. You may be afraid of specific situations or be just generally fearful. You tend to feel overwhelmed by, and therefore actively avoid, large crowds. You often need privacy and time for yourself. You tend not to express your emotions openly and are sometimes not even aware of your own feelings. You dislike confrontations and are perfectly willing to compromise or to deny your own needs in order to get along with others, however you are willing to take credit for good things that you do but you don't often talk yourself up much. You take your time when making decisions and will deliberate on all the possible consequences and alternatives.

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report A wide variety of layouts for myspace to choose from.

I'm not advocating gambling, but it's just that I find some parallels between gambling and certain schools subjects. 

Bio is like buying 4D. You can argue that the more you mug, the higher the chances of winning because you bought more numbers. Unfortunately, you still may not hit the jackpot. You may try to beg for some "lucky numbers" with all sorts of questionable standard, but that won't really guarantee you the prize. The only fool-proof way is to literally to buy all the numbers and mug everything....Oh btw, did I say that the bookie/Singapore pool always win?

As for physics, it's akin to buying toto. There's obviously less things to study as reflected by the smaller "numbers of number" of around 40 as compared to 4D's 10, 000. Unfortunately due to something called permutation and application, the odds of winning toto is actually much smaller than winning 4D, though arguably it's easier to buy 4D. 

Maths is like playing dice/roulette/slot machine. There's nothing much to learnt in terms of formula and etc. so there's only 6 faces. However, the amount of things you can bet is deceiving. The reason being that there's much lesser control over what can come out, so on average it's even harder to win. 

As for essay-based subjects like say econ/history..., they are similar to poker. You may build up your hand by revising a lot, but it still depends whether or not you are able to respond to the flow of play (essay question). Thus, the skills of playing is equally important as getting the cards. 

Oh btw, do leave nothing to chance for promo because the stakes are too high. I certainly don't want to see anyone I know risking promotion in a showhand.

If we rank all the students in Hwa Chong, there seems to be few layers of clear sediments being formed. Risking hasty generalization,  the high school ISpark ppl seems to be at the top, other students from nanyang and other school in the middle while mainstream high school student at the bottom. Is IP standard so low?

I understand that college is very tough and competitive, but it's amazing to see so many struggling like crazy, like myself. 

We had been thrown into the deep end of the pool, to either swim or sink. I think currently I'm at the risk of sinking due to the great weight of slacking pulling me down. 

But I guess the only thing is to.........is to just keep swimming. just keep swimming. just keep swimming

For the alternative is suffocating and drowning to your death. 

And I don't think that the best (in terms of pain incurred) way to die.

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Read the following article on our ex-principal. You can also find it at http://www.zaobao.com/fk/fk070630_505.html.

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潘星华

小依：

　　华侨中学前任校长杜辉生是我二十多年跑教育新闻的好朋友。虽然退休多年，这位“新加坡教育的先行者”，还是我经常讨教的人。最近为了写特选中学，我们又见面了。 　　

　　这位华侨中学毕业生，在上世纪70年代，对母校“欲振乏力”的表现，颇为焦心。

　　他29岁出任裕廊中学校长，1979年出任华中校长时，只有39岁。

　　他说：“一所学校无论有多辉煌的历史，后继无力，在各种活动，表现不出成绩的话，再光辉的过去，也会被人遗忘。当时我是学校体育理事会主席，看到华中在学校体育理事会上的讲话没有被人听到，没有受到应有的尊重，让我很焦心。”

　　1978年华中校董和校友找上门来，请他回去掌校的时候，他虽然不舍得放下经营10年，已有成绩的裕廊中学，可面对振兴母校的使命，他是义无反顾的。

　　他说：“我是为恢复母校往日光辉，和身为华文教育堡垒的地位而回去，特选中学计划的推行是适逢其会。当日华中无论是不是特选中学，我都要去进行全面改革。”

　　当年华中学生某些体育项目取得全国冠军，杜辉生采取全校放假的奖励措施。

　　他说：“这是为了引起家长注意学校的成就。家长发现孩子不上课，问起来原来是学校得了全国冠军。这样的口碑，非常有效。”
训育主任和音乐老师合作把《满江红》列为“第二校歌”，学生必唱，也是他提高学生士气的策略。

　　他说：“岳飞这首词不仅慷慨激昂，气壮山河，而且深刻表达他执著收复失地的坚定信念和无所畏惧的英雄气概。‘待从头收拾旧河山，朝天阙’正表达了华中要收复河山的心志。”

　　当时不少老教师因为跟不上改革形势而离开，其中包括很多杜辉生学生时代，疼惜他的老教师。

　　他说：“要重振雄风，必须在各方面大刀阔斧，就连原本种在校门口的一排木麻黄树也不例外。这些树因为落叶很多，浪费人力照顾，结果都被我砍光，改种青龙木。这样做，当然更引起老教师的气愤。”

　　他在一个非常对抗的环境，开始了“敢叫日月换新天”，让华中脱胎换骨的大工程。这位被学生誉为“亲手改写校史”的校长说：“我什么都不怕，因为我无所求。”

　　人没有私心就能战胜一切，不是么？
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No wonder many people credited him for turning the school around, and I admire his passion and determination to turn the school around. 人没有私心就能战胜一切. I think it's quite true because I read somewhere that the only way to triumph over the lust of power is to give it up (in an article on  now Ex-PM Tony Blair).

I read an interesting paragraph about the relationship between the 3 sciences, in a chem reference book written by Peter Cann and Peter Hughes. So here goes: 

"Chemistry is the central science, at the crossroad of biology and its associated discipline on the one hand, and pohyscis on the other. Chemistry relies on physics for its understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter, and biology the process that go on inside them that we call life. Standing at the crossroads, the chemist is uniquely positioned to understand, and make significant contributions to, many interdisciplinary area of current and future importance".

Like what I learnt during my first make-up KI lesson, the body of knowledge is continuous in reality and consistent with one other, such that it is difficult to say when Biology end or when Chemistry begins. The truth be told, we need to integrate different perspectives to gain a complete understanding of an issue. 

In case I remembered incorrectly, Mr Tan said that the divisions between subjects are merely artificial. I believe (or maybe that's what he told me) this divison arise due to 2 main reasons. 

Firstly, although "everything is related to each other" to quote Mr. Lim, we should learn things systematically. This is particular pertinent for primary and secondary education, when the student had not gained adequate knowledge. The lack thereof makes them unable to see things from a broader perspective and the relations between each discipline, or simply put the so-called "helicopter ability". Thus, at the primary and secondary stage, we should aim to build a strong foundation in each subject, and hopefully the student will be able to see the links later on.

Secondly, we can only focus on a particular area for our higher education, so there is a need to set the boundary on what should be included and what is not.

However, I believe that ultimately, we should seek to remove the artificial barrier and learn the relations of everything to everything else, or what Plato will call "perfect knowledge". It is a lofty goal. However, if we set our heart working in that direction, maybe they will not be as distant as the stars.