So, I shall cut the crap and go to the point. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Teachers? Get to the main point and you will get your marks.
I am writing this, not because I want to get a grade for my current affairs blog entry, not because I want to impress my teachers, but because I want to be heard. You love the way we look at you, while taking pleasure in the awful things you put me through, teachers? I hope not. What is this issue all about? It’s about education. Specifically education in Singapore. Before I start my ranting, let me give some definitions, and you should really remember this well before you read on, cos I will be using a lot of it.
1) Education: The act, process, or art of imparting knowledge and skill
2) Test: A series of questions, problems, or physical responses designed to determine knowledge, intelligence, or ability.
MOE Mission Statement:
The wealth of a nation lies in its people - their commitment to country and community, their willingness to strive and persevere, their ability to think, achieve and excel. Our future depends on our continually renewing and regenerating our leadership and citizenry, building upon the experience of the past, learning from the circumstances of the present, and preparing for the challenges of the future. How we bring up our young at home and teach them in school will shape Singapore in the next generation.
Alright, that’s what I am using. Frankly, I don’t know where to start, but oh well, from Mr Mac’s address. In his address, he said he did not see the Rafflesian spirit in us anymore, he had taken a walk around the school and seen cans, plastics flying all over the place; is that what we call Rafflesians? Yes. But I think otherwise, that’s just the character of people, something that takes time to change, something that cannot be TAUGHT and TESTED with quizzes from Character and Leadership education lessons. Character is cultivated, my dear teachers, not taught. By giving us quizzes and telling us what kind of a person we supposedly should be certainly does not change our character. I am tired of what you want me to be and I am feeling so faithless, like I have no aim in studying no more. Or rather, what you want us to be. Why can’t we just be ourselves? It’s ironic, isn’t it? Now, that’s one point.
Two. Okay, you want to talk about Rafflesian spirit? Sure, no problem. Yes I do agree, and to a very large extent about that. On Thursday, (I think), there’s some crucial softball match held on homegrounds and 0 Rafflesians went down to support, out of the thousand. During support for finals, RI guys sit down and say: “Sian ar, my whole afternoon gone just like that.” Then they pick out their handphones and start playing. Obviously the Rafflesian spirit is not there. The thing is: why? Why didn’t anyone go down to support the softballers? Tell me, teachers, with all the assignments, tests and very, very interesting performance tasks that you give us almost every 2 days at least, how do you think of supporting your friends? Put yourself in a RI guy’s shoe: you have a friend who is playing a really crucial match today, but you have a common class test 2 days later. Would you still go down? Well maybe some will, but I can safely tell you, with 101% assurance, that at least 95% of RI guys will not. All we have on our mind now is how we are gonna study for the tests, finish the assignments and stuff like that; do we still have space for the big thing called Rafflesian spirit, class spirit?
Third. I think that the purpose of education has completely been destroyed. Right from the start. Look at the ancient people, cos it so happens I am studying ancient science for history. They studied the stars. Why? They wanted to serve their religion better and help in organizing the rituals and stuff like that. Look at the guy who studied lightning. Why? He wanted to find out more about lightning because he got so amazed by it. The definition of education is to ‘impart a skill or knowledge’, I quote. He certainly did not do it because he wanted to impress his professor with a new report, or to pass his test. Look at ‘test’, it is supposed to serve as a gauge of your abilities, so that you know where to improve on in the future so that you can face challenges better. However, look at what is happening in schools now? What is happening in classes? You hear teachers saying, “okay you must study this topic/question more than the others because it will come out for the test and if you don’t do well your GPA will go down and your parents will be unhappy blahblahblah.” The test is now seen as a hurdle, a barrier that we have to overcome, which is so not supposed to be the case! You know what? I think Olympiads are a waste of time, and they completely contradict what the purpose of education and tests are. If you can go get me hmm. 20 guys in RI who truly love doing math Olympiads, come to me. Maybe I will treat you to an ice-cream. :D I told this to my brother and he said, look at the Nobel prize winners, look at John Nash in ‘A Beautiful Mind’, they all do maths because they like it! There are people who love doing maths. (and haha I finally can counter him). That’s precisely the point! How many people in RI are like John Nash you tell me? Now I come to sec 3, I look everywhere only to find, it’s not the way I had imagined it to be. It’s just work, work and more work. Specifically pointless work.
Look at what we are getting now: we have assignments almost everyday, math topical assessments almost every other week, CCTs every 2 weeks or so. Yea yea you may say, it has always been like that since what, 1960s or 70s; whatever. I don’t care; because it has been so, doesn’t mean it is correct my friend. Like you have always said, teachers, two wrongs don’t make one right, so 50 years of wrongs don’t make the present correct. Back to the Olympiads, again I can tell you, all the people in maths club and science club, you all want that ‘Science club member’ in your testimonials at the end of secondary 4 don’t you? Then what can you do with it? You can urm, let’s see. Impress your scholarship panel next time, then urm, get a good career, then you what? Okay become a MP, then again, become the next prime minister of Singapore. Yea. Success. You only get one shot, so do not miss your chance to blow, cos opportunity comes only once in a lifetime, isn’t it, Math Olympiad friends?
MOE, is that what you want? Directors of Academic Studies, all the directors, whoever you are, is that what you want of us? If you do, go on, keep spamming us with endless loads of worksheets, assignments. Can’t you see that you’re smothering me? Afraid to lose control huh? It’s quite sad that you fail to see that everyone has a face that they hold inside, a face that always has a motive below. It’s not about learning what you want anymore, not about learning because you are interested in something anymore. You learn because you are told to do so. That right, my friends? Thanks for reading this long post. But frankly, I don’t know what’s worth fighting for, or why I have to scream. It’s just that now I happen to have some clarity, to show you what I mean. :D
I love this post to bits. Really.
10:30 PM
http://www.vincentchow.net/1034/otters-holding-hands-while-napping
This one is SUPER funny, i think there's some singapore advert on this now, but this is still more funny lol:
http://www.vincentchow.net/935/troop-of-one-hundred-chasing-prank
back to CHAOS assignment... haiii
10:42 AM
So today!! Long day haha. Woke up late at 6.48am and rushed to school at 7.15am, still mananged to go to board meeting lol. Had PE later on and did some crazy skipping thing, you do it for 4 rounds, you skip at the length of the rectangle, which had seemed quite small at first, then at the breadth you hop on one leg across. I tell you. It's HELL. Never knew skipping can be so difficult, so i guess girls who skip all the time are super fit. I was panting near the end of the second lap, and so was sean. Had a really boring history lesson on Paul's wheel of reasoning (HAI.), then in chinese we did the SAME again!! Sian ar what's up with paul man. In the afternoon had a hearty lunch, then went for 3rd lang, wasn't quite concentrating because I was super tired and because i was gonna call someone. Then after 3rd lang we had board meeting!! Talked about the hell of a workload we are having and we intend to bring it up to the school exco, but meanwhile we are prescribing some painkillers for the students (hahahaha i coined that), because such solutions are temporary while we work with the school exco to solve the BIG problem. Came up with stuff like: the EMO book where you can write all your grievances, then we thought of having free hugs and high-fives like the man in youtube, we have ideas like booking the entire GV for one day just for ourselves, we have destress week, where there are no lessons after recess. Haha crazy ideas like that, but well.. we have a comm for organizing such stuff and i signed up!! partly because i dun have any other comm besides ORA stall on 12th May.
I dunno now lol, i feel quite lost in ri now... like no aim to go, no goal to achieve. Well i guess what i only have in mind now is catching up with my studies and ideas for ORA stall and stuff like the painkillers comm. Ahh well i uploaded Papercut by linkin park, an old song i know, but it still rocks man. Accompanied me in my trip back to history, copying everything with your pen.
study hard! :D
10:35 PM
Changed my tagboard to something like jon lim's blog, since i found it pretty cool... Some songs there as well, you might want to see www.radioblogclub.com!! It's sth like an online MP3 player. And guys you will find the pictures quite familiar haha, cos my comp is congested with such random shots from my handphone and i dun have any place to put them :P thanks jon! thanks radioblogclub! and thanks in advance: please tag haha!
12:56 PM
9:29 PM
--- There shall be no songs, no tribunes, no monuments, no poems of war and valor. "Remember us," said my king. "Remember why we died." It was that simple. ---
7:06 PM
Oh. and i forgot to bring my sports shoes, so haha winston got to wear black shoes for 1 hour :D
After PE I had lunch with my seniors and yin rong, marcus and kaiyu at the canteen. They were having some pantat ideas again, like writing 'WT' on their hands, so if an unfair foul was made they can show it to the referee. Another thing was writing 'look here>>>' on the front of the shoulder blade, so when the HCI guy is gonna shoot, and when you raise your hand to block, he will get distracted!! ahahhahaa cool idea! And they were really getting VERY psyched up on the bus, seeto went, "LET'S **** THEM UP THEIR ASS MAN!!" LOL i was wondering what if you did that in front of the hwa chong guys. Then i went on to imagine David, with the kind of anger he had at marcus the other day at trng for not passing the ball properly, shouting to the hwa chong guy, accompanied with a really really cold stare and the finger pointing at him, "i am gonna rip you apart."
I can tell you 101%, the HCI guy will pee in his trunks. Literally.
So came the match, me yin rong and kaiyu sat in the cafe to talk the time away... yea and we talked about polo, how expensive the food was, how urmm not-up-to-standard the acsi gurls were (i din suggest that. yin rong did) and yea from there we slowly cut into the usual topic. I rmb when i walked into the cafe some noob-o shit sec 2 acsi dude told his friend, thinking i din hear a thing: "eh. trip him." started to follow me, so i stopped, turned back and stared at them really coldly. HELLO prefects have sharp ears, dumb dumb.
The match itself din go quite well in the first quarter, cos they tried to get a five-second goal lead, but it kind of failed and we got countered. Then in the second quarter, Raffles WENT CRAZY!! woots. First brandon got the ball at the start, chionged all the way down to like 1m in front of the post, so the HCI guy pulled him, and he earned a penalty. That was the start of the walloping man. Following that, shan chong's shooting became really really sick, plus his really really coolio attitude. David followed suit and he owned the centerback up down left right and erm HAHA center. Scored 3 or 4 i think. Apparently mr lim was right man, they are scared of us when we go into the pool, why be nervous? So we killed HCI with a scoreline of 8-5!! YEAAAA next stop is acs barker, next monday. We can win GRAWAWHHHH!!
p.s if i can grow bigger and taller by sec 4, i am really gonna try the david thing. :D
8:20 PM
Okay yesterday was the only day which i enjoyed. Met Luwei again at East Coast Park and this time haha he skated with me for a longer distance. Went there at 5.30pm and left at 7pm. yeaaaaa skating rox my life upside down left right centre woots!
and thank you for the song!! eh. wait hahahah it's SONG(S). dunno whether you will read this, but i guess so... since you claim to be uhh a committed reader. listened to it at least 20 times yesterday and today. thanks hahaa
8:58 PM
Out of the 6 secondary 3s: me, marcus, weishen, yinrong, kaiyu and andrew; only marcus made it into the team. I kind of prepared myself for that moment when my name won't be read out, 2 weeks before it I think, but it really still struck me hard in my heart though. I know I am not really expected to get in, given my size and my speed, which only began to pick up a little just 1 week ago when I learnt from Andrew and Danfer some techniques. But still, yea it does hurt. But we still went on with training and I tried to take it in my stride, but apparently some of my friends can't, or simply just refuse. Suddenly all of us are split into 'team players' and 'non-team players'. I asked myself: is this a team? I don't know about the others, but for me, my aim in this CCA is not entirely just for points, or for the team. Does everything just fall apart; all the training you had in the 2 years, just disappear like that? No. It doesn't. If you are really not good enough to get into the team, well i will just have to accept it (and the others as well) and train hard for the next year's competition and hopefully we can win. Yes this was the first stage of psychoing myself.
The second: and apparently the colder, harder fact. Next year, the team will probably be comprised of marcus, weishen (if his mother doesn't force him to quit), yinrong, benjamin, andrew, me and kaiyu. Yes that forms one complete team of 7. But we have no subs at all. Completely no subs, unless you consider the secondary 3s next time, which are quite CMI. I really really have lost my direction, we don't exactly stand a good chance of winning next year. I am disappointed and down not because I didn't get on the team, but because my batch-mates are just not pulling together, the attitude and spirit they show is. is just completely disappointing. I must say i am empty now, i dunno what to do, cept for homeworking. Just played an hour of counterstrike... argh i am sian-ned. really.
8:00 PM
1) i was trying to touch up a little on the prototype for tan kah kee, but i screwed it up instead
2) because of 1, my fingers and hand are coated in super glue now, so it's super uncomfortable
3) i have hell lot of homework to do:
a. philosophy essay: "All steel bars expand when heated." Do you agree wif the statement? Please write an essay on this. HEHHH
b. biology worksheet (not that bad for this, i can copy from all over the place and i AM gonna finish this tonight.)
c. book test on toto-chan (chinese version), but yea it's quite interesting, cos i like kids haha
d. CHAOS assignment, some creative blah applications of science thing... what if marina bay was dammed up -.-
e. do 2 chinese du2 zhe3 reviews
f. ERP assignment
g.do some screwed up forum thingy for chinese, everyone was forced to participate...
h. malay article review
4) tan kah kee interview on saturday and still not quite prepared.
5) zuo wen 'test' tomorrow.
6) I CANNOT FIND K'S BLOGGG :S
Frankly i don't know what's wrong with my school's education system nowadays, it's like they tell us to do blogs, forums and supposedly the IN things, but it's completely nonsensical!! You blog, you post on a forum because you want to!! Not because you want to earn some stupid marks from the teacher zzz. Want me to post on a blog rite?? yea here it is. I feel that your assignments are meaningless, they have lost their true meaning. Tell me how many people in the world will go do up a blog on current affairs?? Even if i do post on current affairs here, it's because i have something to say about it, not because i want to get a 4.0GPA. Blogs are done out of personal interest and the fact that we are forced to do it completely defeats the purpose. And how on earth do you go through worksheets?
1)
"ooo i think you know question 1, can lar, okay. skip."
"ooo okay i think you know question 2 also, can lar. skip."
*challenging questions*
"ooo can lar, you guys are Academy students, sure can handle right. kay. done. next topic..."
2)
"okay what are the properties of water? they are high specific heat...... wait you should be the one telling me right? okay go ahead." *silence*
"uh ma'am the cohesion and adhesion of water? yea so the water molecules stick to each other *blah blah blah*"
LIKE what the!!! Is this the 'teach less, learn more' policy you have? Then i am very sorry to say that it has failed. Why aren't you teaching in class? Why are you even called a teacher? Hasn't it been reduced to just answering questions ONLY when we ask them, giving out assignments that we do not have the knowledge of because you haven't even taught the topic? Of course, i am only referring to some people in particular, not all teachers are like that and I appreciate those who aren't. This is ridiculous really. And the homework load we get. It's ... beyond words. can't go on anymore.
8:50 PM
Auspicium Melioris Aevi...cidieeefjeehejaijaykayelemenohpeekillarestee
youveedubbleuexwhyzee
cool rite. and now he's saying: "even vince thinks you are lame. so lammeee!!"
and i am in school. will be in the computer lab reading blogs for the next half hour (english)...and urm:
shang xuan >> "dammit i cannot do broad jump for nuts man... i am gonna die for my NAPFA!!"
me >> "how about doing for berries? it may be better hehhhh"
kay now the guys are trying to shut down computers bye!!
9:27 AM
Tuesday
Tuesday was the day just before prefects' investiture and we rushed work all the way till about 10.30pm, so I only reached home at 11pm or so. We were rushing the stage backdrop, external decorations, the 'roads' in the aisles and of course, our singing of 'High' by lighthouse family. I find our new stage really small, to be honest, as compared to the one I saw in the nanyang high sch auditorium, but then again, the school is intending to build another auditorium i think, so yep, hopefully it will be better. Yea in this pic you can see what I mean... the backdrop and the 't' road. And haha the backdrop; some people commented the gryphon in the RPM meter resembled a chicken... i only realised that after PI. Oh yea, I remember i went for the triple jump heats and earned 1 point!! Hahahaaa eighth place: at least i got into the finals, where most of the ppl were trackers. There were like 18++ ppl competing. Nvm i shall redeem myself in the house swim carnival. 
Yep so now for the real thing...
Wednesday
Crunch time!! Everything was quite a rush, yes i mean the entire day. In the morning, I had swimming PE lesson, haha but actually we were supposed to be doing basketball. Lucky for us because we weren't informed, so we swam.. or i would be stinking with sweat later on during PI, which isn't very good. Hmm yea that's the good thing about water sports: you don't sweat hahahaaa. Finally settled the touring allocations like just 1 hour before PI started. So everyone sat down... watched the introduction video clip of 'shift', 'steer' and 'speed', which basically introduces what we brainstormed for so long. Took really long to think of this theme. After the video was the introduction of the departments in RIPB.
First was Human Resource, which is my department!! Yeaaaaa!! The entrance was pretty cool, just like every single year, walked in from the right and the left, meeting in the middle where there was this yellow and black tape, like you know the bumblebee color. Walked all the way up to stage and did a pose. Ours was to tug the sides of our blazers, at the portion near the chest and then look at the audience with the look-i-am-the-coolest-guy-on-earth kind of look; jia hao suggested it, turned out pretty well. Then came discipline board with some rock music entrance, then urm communications with Seven Nation Army as the entrance song, and welfare, which i think is one of the best. yes; ONE of the best, the best is still HR :P They had Real Slim Shady by Eminem so it was quite cool, considering they had people like zheng xuan, gabriel tong and kartik.
Next was quite boring, we sat there for the speech by the Headmaster, guest of honour and finally master paul tern, cos he's so im-paul-tern. :D We all changed into the board tshirt backstage, and the finale was the singing of 'high'... yea quite fun. Finally for one year we can wear something else besides the blazer for touring. Did the unite cheer and spirit, as tradition.
So i toured the headgirl and one of the dpt heads of chij st. joseph wif luwei till about 5pm, brought one of yanliang's nanyang tour guests to the bus-stop cos yan liang was erhm busy entertaining the rest... Haha one of my friends from nanyang was complaining that we copied their entire finale, cos they did sing a song too, but ah well, all finales are the same. Next year shall be different though muahhahahaha!
After everything was over, we dunked the im-paul-tern guy into the baby pool, cos there were ace ppl swimming (yes. i missed training. :S) Can't post the picture here.. common sense hhaa. Was waiting for my mum to fetch me, so we were playing the remote controlled cars, and the construction workers seemed to enjoy watching the cars flying all over. I kinda enjoyed it too, the last time i played wif such cars was in primary 2 or 3 i guess. Yes that's for prefects' investiture!!
Post-PI celebrations!!
Yay had celebrations on Saturday, which was yesterday. wow this sure is a very long post... Spent the entire morning at home studying history. Then in the afternoon I went out to eat with my parents to kind of celebrate my mother's birthday, cos i couldn't make it in the evening. Went out at 3.30pm in the afternoon, took 13 long stops from bishan to Bukit batok, only to realise i left my handphone in the car when my father dropped me at bishan mrt. So i was technically in the stone age: no watch >> no check of time, no handphone >> lost.
When we were there we started to wonder how each of us got there, since we mostly lived quite far away. Paul probably navigated here using a compass and a parang; bashed through the forests haha, since he's a scout; Jonathan lim could have ran a marathon here, since he's always so enthu in running haha, tracker mah. So maybe i could have swam there...
Celebrated at the civil service club. First we did bowling, but I really really sucked bigtime, cos i got 0 for the first set. Guess i haven't played for quite a while, my final score was 94 i think. After bowling it was about 6.40pm, so I walked around the place together with some of my friends. To the arcade.. played a round of daytona with guan lin, almost lost though, cos he crashed into me at the start and my car was an auto, so i couldn't pick up speed properly. Had dinner at the treehouse. Was pretty plain but ahh it wasn't the food that mattered, we all had a fun time. After dinner we had birthday celebrations and this time Kristian is really sneaky. He took Oreo, and replaced the cream in it with toothpaste, so it was pretty cool haha. I helped!! Go check out shawn lee's blog for the photos hahaa.
http://ipodarshawn.blogspot.com/
was really fun!! After that I went LANning wif some of the prefects, but in the end only me, luwei and adil played counterstrike. Still it was very fun, haha luwei carried the para and sprayed like siao. At the last 10 minutes two outsiders wanted to fight us at fy_pool_day, but they got OWNED hahahaaa. They got owned by adil wif his MP5 navy, owned by luwei for his para spraying, and they got owned by me for my ak-47 and shotgun ahhahaaaa. They got quite frustrated I must say... haha cos i play wif china dudes on cs source, so got a bit of exp :P. nvm a game is always a game. So I took 13 looonng stops all the way back to bishan wif xiang peng and he gave me a 20minute lecture on the 'essentials of DOTA'. hahaha cos i never understand dota. I only realised ytd that in fact, you are only controlling one hero on the entire map which has always seemed so messy. For the last 10 minutes or so i told him about the 'essentials of Counter-strike' lol, about the techniques and so on. Had a great day!
Finally i reach the end of my post. hhahahaa!! essay writing mann and urmm sorrie about the larger font size. some things: i removed the bars and the videos cos ppl complain that it takes super long to load. oh well...
9:28 AM
