So, it turns out that our relay teams seems to have been bumped up to a joint-gold with RI, because the officials are still kinda unsure as to what to do with Val's ripping off the starting block frame. Dang, I still think we could have broken therecord, though, and trashed the RI team too. Oh well, it's over and done with... and we're joint first without having to reswim or anything. Hee hee.
Nearly panicked in school today cause I couldn't find my A-maths ten year series, turns out my friend took it home yesterday without telling me. Arrr... Then he returned it to me today, and I was, like, no, I already have one... somewhere... I think...? Then, he looks me straight in the eye and says, "Err... this is yours." So, I'm blinking, going, "What? That's mine? How'd you get that? No wonder I couldn't find it yesterday..." Geez.
Finally, my Prelim English Orals are tomorrow, I'm not that nervous, at least not half as much as my chinese O-levels. But then, that was chinese... and O-levels. I hope to do quite well, my bro says I should crack a joke. Hmm... tried that for chinese. Teachers didn't even blink, freaked the hell out of me, so I never tried it again for the Chinese Orals.
Bio prac countdown: 1 down, 2 to go. I missed 3 while away at swimming and all. So, my bio teacher is trying to get me to finish all of them.
Yeah, so I'm back again. Whoopee...
Well, the National inter-schools are over, and my school came in second, 19 points behind Raffles. Yay... After winning every single year for 43 years running, we lost the cup. My year's going down in history...
Also, I think it's really unfair for our realay team. Val ripped of the frame of the block when he started and was kinda distracted, so he jumped late, and as a result, we started off quite far behind. *Sigh*, of course, typically, the officials followed protocol before realising that, *gasp*, there's actually no rule in F.I.N.A. for ripping off starting block frames! And we were so close to beating raffles and breaking the record too. I feel so cheated.
And so, raffles gets all the glory and two or three news articles in the various sportspage. Large would not come close to describing the size of the article they got. For what? Winning one year?! Argh...
We had a cultural event, "cultural fiesta", today, to commemorate racial harmony day. The celebrations will be on Monday. Luckily or unluckily, my class got selected by our teacher to help out with the hopscotch corner. Our teacher, however, wasn't in school, due to some apointment, I have no idea what. As a result, half the class was gone before the other students came down to look around. Ah, well, it was hopscotch, not like a whole lot of people were terribly excited.
There was a modified version of Kabadi that some of the indians were showcasing, it was mainly different in that the guys didn't have to chant anything under their breathes. Apparently they had to at first, but everyone except the sec4s showcasing it got it wrong so they decided to take that part out. Well, it was still really fun, and at one point, a bunch of the ruggers got together and made one team against the other sec 4s, needless to say, they won. Quite an unfair advantage really, if you consider the fact that tackling people is part of their sport.
I took one shot at it, with a bunch of friends and a couple other guys. Of course, we won. How could we not, with me in the team? :D Hahaha, towards the end, it was one poor sec 2 on the other team versus two other sec 4s and I. Mwahahahahahaha! Of course, one of our team members was disqualified for dragging the guy to our side and jumping on top of him. The sec2 wasn't injured or anything, just terribly uncomfortable.
There was also quite a bit of food, but I didn't get to try most of it, cause it was very, very crowded when I went. Oh well, some other time maybe.
Yeah, yeah, I know, long time since I last updated, kinda slipped my mind. I did have a lot to worry about, without having to seek inspiration to write a blog entry... Anyway, I'm updating it now, so you readers out there better be happy.
So, anyway, last week was my Chinese Oral Examination and Listening Comprehension. The Chinese Oral was horrible... I was so nervous, my hands were shaking when I grabbed the passage to read and I kept stammering, course, it got better gradually, but then, the close passage reading was first, so I don't think I scored very high there.
Then, the first question they asked, roughly translated to English, would be, recently, many students have been using their holidays to travel overseas to do voluntary work. What are your views?
My first thought was... eh? Voluntary work? Overseas? Why overseas? What's the significance??? What on earth am I missing here??? So, I figured, I must have heard wrongly and spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of going overseas generally, without touching the subject voluntary work whatsoever. Bravo.
Well, come to think of it, I actually thought it was voluntary work overseas, till I replied that I would rather stay in Singapore to relax than do voluntary work at all. (Yes, yes, I know, selfish, but I wasn't sure what it meant...) Then, she asked me what would happen if everyone stayed in Singapore and no one went overseas to do voluntary work. I went eh? No, I must be hearing wrongly, if it was volutary work, why would she be asking me this?? If everyone stayed in Singapore to do community service, all the better for us, ain't it? That was the start of my downhill slide...
I just hope they didn't pick up the fact that I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE TOPIC!!!
So, anyway, the listening was good. I got 9 out of 10, which was good. Except that I could have gotten the last mark, I was careless. And pre-occupied, trying not to laugh at my friend rather blatantly trying unsuccessfully to copy the guy next to him. Note, this would probably be the only time we could ever cheat during the GCE 'O's because we're put into class rooms instead of the Hall due to SARS. So there's only ONE teacher watching us.
I was really happy with my marks, till the teacher reminded us, "Listening is VERY important, I can't emphasise how IMPORTANT it IS! It's TEN marks, which is 5% of your total marks... WHICH IS ONE GRADE!" Okay, so she didn't quite pronounce it that way. But, she had to remind us it was one whole grade... *Sigh* Well, at least, that's the end of my Chinese for the rest of the year, now I only have 7 subs to concentrate on. If I pass first. But, I've got a month till then... Yay!
My National Inter-school is coming up soon. Tomorrow, it starts, in fact. But I'm only swimming Wednesday. And only in the afternoon for most of the events. So, I don't get to miss a lot of school. And I don't get to miss the English and Maths test. I know, wonderful planning, ain't it?
Our School Swimming team T-shirts also look horrible. Absolutely horrible. I don't think even half of us will wear it. And Jed said it was fantastic. Well, it is MUCH better than their shirt, but it still looks horrible. And we all thought that since it was designed by Jed's Dad, it'd look great. Evidently we were quite wrong. Still, it could be worse, I guess.
I find it absolutely amazing how this year's sec 4 bunch can not turn up for a single meeting at half strength. Not to say I haven't been doing my part, I've attended every single meeting, even though I don't really have to. Neither does Yao Wen, but he's swim Captain, so he doesn't have much of a choice. Besides, half of them were discussing strategies for selecting events, and it's not like ACS is gonna drop me anywhere other than my pet events. Even after we sent guys to go around to tell the other Sec 4s and held the meeting at the stair well after school, with guys on the look out for sec 4 swimmers, only slightly more than half of us appeared. Absolutely amazing.
Finally, our Head of Physical Education... or... Director of Health / Physical Education & Recreation, won't allow us a combined dinner with our sister school, MGS... They're our sister school! It's not that scandalous!! Dang it, and I was so close to getting a dinner organised beginning of this year.
We had a new swim teacher, so I thought I could maybe persuade him, unlike last year's FEMALE teacher. Besides, I'm sec 4 this year, and the sec 3s were QUITE supportive. I was so close, he said it was fine with him, as long as our Director agreed. Which he did, at first, but he demanded everyone agreeing to having a combined dinner, which was not impossible... but he said he wouldn't allow it just a few days ago!! ARGH!! So frustrating! Our lousy captain moved too slowly, he should have sealed the deal with the MGS captain looong ago, especially since she was in our club. I mean, I would have been perfectly fine helping them, but nooo... they left me in the dark as to everything going on. Bah! Fools! Fools! All of them!... Grr...