A carrot birthday cake, with wax

My schoolmates and I went to watch Imagine That (rest assured no spoiler here) this afternoon. The movie is rather thought-striking to those who don’t really cherish their families so much. Since it’s not really very impressive a movie, Imagine That would be apt for those who like watching movies with moral and meaning. The movie has lots of funny sarcasm too to appeal to people who love satirical and sardonic content.

Allen, who had his birthday yesterday, was supposed to come but could not with the claim of studying Chinese. Yet we still decided to give him a surprise celebration after the movies by originally asking him to come over to my house with some schoolwork I supposedly lost so I could have better reference for “studying”.

The previous days we’ve been thinking of what cake to buy for him since he’s lactose intolerant. After calling popular cake shops like Prima Deli, Polar Puffs & Cakes, Bengawan Solo, Four Leaves et cetera to ask about dairy-free cakes in vain, I had to have Zhong Ping to chip in – from whom I got the following wonderful SMS:

carrot cake no milk

Ingenious idea! And yes, we really bought cai tau kueh (菜头粿) plus 15 candles.

Yet at the time we called him after the movies, he was asleep!!!

Since his mum picked up the phone, I requested her to call him up so that he could come over to receive our surprise, but a few minutes later he repeatedly refused to come over to help a desperate friend in need of references for studying to the extent he just hung up on me after my irritatingly incessant whining.

Of course, the studying part was all acted for the sake of getting his ass here to feel the warmth of our friendship. LOL

He claimed he couldn’t get out of home because he just had his treatment in the morning – okay very reasonable, so we decided to bring the “cake” over to his house that is just a few flats away fortunately.

Before the trip to his place we already had difficulties making the 15 candles stand upright. Imagine how difficult lighting the candles was… The candles melted as if they were infrastructures self-demolishing in the face of gusts of wind blowing in the stairwell near Allen’s residence.

Just after a few minutes…

This certainly looks palatable

The “cake” was drizzled and littered with wax. Standing ovation for the twenty-cent candles from Prima Deli. LOL!

Nah it isn’t Prima Deli’s fault… The wind was really strong LOL.

I could have posted a picture of him posing with the cake, but I’m not allowed to because he felt he looked retarded.

You might ask how we could eat a carrot cake with wax. – We ate pieces of the cake under the top layer HAHA.

His mum, according to Allen, though, has ingested the food after he had removed the wax for her.

… I could pay $5 for that large carrot cake but not his mum’s life!

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Doraemon had its bell detached!

Few days ago, my schoolmates slept over at my house to celebrate the end of exams. LOL – two days filled with fun and laughter and also exhaustion [yawns]. But Yi Hong caused a minor disfigurement of my beloved Doraemon as you can see up above.

So they started fixing the bell…

Allen being paparazzi-like was definitely helpful

Thanks Yi Hong for attaching the bell! Hehe~

Recalling what was learned in Home Economics

Cute right?! LOL goodness have I been Doraemon-crazy here?

Doraemon's back!

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Just bought a $131-worth guitar…

A Jack & Danny

LOL I actually turned one of the tuning pegs too much one of the strings popped out suddenly. First day use LOL.

So I sent it back to get the string replaced for $5…

I don’t really know if this guitar’s good LOL. Whatever~ Shall see…

Hovering between the Poles

I call it hovering between the Poles because I’ve been trying to find out in which Pole I can feel warmer, when in fact both Poles are known to be cold.

Since March, I’ve been vacillating between the Poles, asking myself if I feel better and warmer with romance or with friendship.

I tried getting closer to the Pole nearer to me, but some sudden major tectonic movements of the Earth shifted the Pole further from me.

With a bit of disappointment, I tried getting closer to the Pole further from me, yet before I could reach, someone more agile invaded the Pole.

Perhaps I should just stay forever along the equator in solitude. In fact the equator’s where I’ll get the most warmth. Now I realize, maybe after all, loneliness is the state in which my heart will feel the warmest.

That’s my life geographically explained.

Papers could fly for Ris Low

Before talking about the oh-so-pitiful Miss Low, allow me to show off my piano results as promised. Hehe~

Nice handwriting, huh?

Finally! – I’m done with piano. That’s my result slip written by a female examiner. For the past few years and grades my practicals were examined by male examiners whose handwriting could be compared with doctors’. That was when my piano teacher and I would have to toil in reading about my performance.

And it’s the first time I’ve read an examiner using slang like “ya”.

And and… while my teacher warned me about how meticulous yet stringent and stingy female examiners can be in administering the piano exam, I’ve actually attained a high pass for this particular exam I think I screwed up the most among all the piano exams I’d taken in the past.

Turns out the examiner was pretty generous.

But it’s a pity to think that I could have garnered three more marks for a merit with some more hard work.

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Ris Low, donning a cheongsam in the interview by Channel 8, was virtually catwalking along a beach more frequently than she was defending herself against the criticisms.

Ris Low is certainly fashionably versatile

Having been convicted for credit card fraud that sent her to 24 months of supervised probation, and having cheated in various exams, she alleged that her bipolar disorder caused her to seek excitement (刺激感 cijigan was what she said in the Chinese interview).

Ris Low started stealing things she wouldn’t need to use since she was in Primary 1. Yet, excitement superseded her guilt (“兴奋多过于内疚”).

Even recently, she was caught to have small pieces of paper in her pencil case during an exam in August. Yet, she said it wasn’t considered cheating at all because she didn’t mean to cheat.

Oh righttt so next time I can jolly well cheat in my ‘O’s and tell the examiners to let me off for I don’t mean to cheat at all.

To my astonishment, she put up such a weak defense against her cheating act by claiming that those papers were remnants of her torn revision notes that happened to “fly” into her pencil case.

Yes, I can vividly recall her ludicrous use of the word 飞 (fei: to fly):

Papers could fly for Ris Low

LOL Okay whatever, maybe she used it metaphorically… But… =_=

And to top it off she admitted to not checking her pencil case at all despite the examiner’s reminders before the exam to surrender any unauthorized materials.

Sad!

Though her command of spoken English has shown to be pathetic, she self-proclaimed that she had attained a B3 in ‘O’ Level English and an A1 in English within a certain course she couldn’t name properly (again).

She was trying to name her polytechnic course. Unfortunately she stumbled, “Communications and… communications and… 就是 (jiushi: just) communication skills lah…” just like how she had to while recalling what she was majoring in:

Currently I’m majoring in my… [looks up to ponder] … [looks back to camera] Diploma in Health Science and Horse-pee-telly-tee and Travel Tourism. Right now I’m studying, steel.

LOL I mean, look, she had to commit the same mistake twice…

So what if she might get nervous once she had to face the camera? Wasn’t she supposed to be ready to face such challenges? If she’s camera-phobic, that’s her loss – she was supposed to deal with it herself. If she couldn’t, she should be prepared to face such criticisms.

Thank God, she’s currently having English lessons to improve her diction. Goes to show her spoken English wasn’t bad because of her nerves whatsoever.

But what the boomz, Ris Low also claimed that she still wants to realize her dream of becoming a pageant queen. Boomz!

(Pictures of Ris Low from http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2516060&page=152, users imanon and jq75)

What makes me a repeated absentee (II)

[...continued from previous post...]

2. LOSING FRIENDS

Another reason for me skipping school is that I just can’t accept losing friends despite knowing that it’s part and parcel of school life. With changing classes and leaving ex-classmates with whom we have been studying for 2 years, in addition to the academic hierarchy putting down students in less demanding classes, induced by the existence of different classes of different standards, you can’t imagine how friendship can crumble piece by piece in the face of such circumstances.

But what’s ironic is how some of my friends who have been in the same class with me for 3 years have also started to pull the distances. Aww I sound so schmaltzy here. But it’s true. I always feel that some of the clever ones, with their knowledge acquired by rote, and the desperate one in my class have taken all the friends I can depend on away.

I’m jealous, yes I am. So now I’d have to resort being the desperate one. But seriously I don’t wanna be some jerk hovering around some friends trying to obtain some sort of attention. It’s annoying and seriously sad to see them foraging like predators on a cruel hunt – I have had such experiences of such people and I’m able to imagine myself like that.

I’d rather be a loner, even for one more year, if that’s necessary.

After all, let’s stop putting on that ostentatious display of only looking at what’s within and not outside, we all know behind that pretense we all are superficial human beings who still hunger for the better-looking things and not as much for the worse-looking things. Aren’t we? Eh?

That means obviously not many would like me, a ball laden with lipids, as a friend.

If we aren’t, people wouldn’t bother to do the extremes to shed off their fats – liposuction, plastic surgery etc etc…

How I wish I can retain some of my close friends after secondary school! But so many of them are aiming for junior colleges whereas I’m the stupid one aiming for only a polytechnic even before my ‘O’ Levels. Furthermore, at this rate of getting more and more distant from my friends, we’ll already be infinity apart by the end of secondary school.

However lonely I am, whatever solitude I dwell in, I’m just gonna be the softhearted kind Jialormee who does and helps in whatever he can for anyone including friends and acquaintances…

…because I believe in the spirit of not forsaking the world even when the world has forsaken you.

And that’s what I can present to you as my bland yet depressing school life. Thanks to those who commented in the previous post! I really am grateful for your words of encouragement.

P.S. I need recommendations on what kind of guitar I should buy as a beginner. Anyone?

P.P.S. Look out for the next post where I’ll be vaingloriously bragging about my recent piano exam results LOL and talking about the recent Chinese interview of Ris Low in Channel 8 (like how she wore a cheongsam there =_=)

What makes me a repeated absentee (I)

N.B. This will be a 800-word long post with no pictures, bland. I’m sorry, but these are my true and hidden feelings I pray you’d read. Please do not take offense in whatever I’ve typed here, especially those in my class.

Accept my sincere apologies for not blogging these days. I was on this hiatus without prior notice because of those notorious end-of-year exams. All I can say is that exams have just ended today, with a heavily awful and ugly full-stop. You catch my drift? Yes you did.

My classmates know a lot about me playing truant, albeit with “medical certificates“, quite a few times in a row. Some expressed such knowledge so wittily by attaching to me an endearing nickname known as “ponstar”. I might not be sexy or have a tool long enough to sound like it, but that’s mainly because I’m a fat lazy indolent guy who hates school for a number of reasons:

1. MY CLASS

I don’t hate my class. I just don’t fancy that kind of environment and atmosphere where my classmates endlessly do their school work without failure. It’s a triple-science class environment – a sudden change of environment I cannot adapt to, at all. It’s a great pity to always recall how I fell into this deep abyss of only studying, studying and studying:

I opted for a double-science class as my first choice (and triple-science class as my following choice) but was allotted to a triple-science class for my good results in Secondary Two. At first I was appalled because I’ve heard of the tough life students lead in a triple-science class. The first word that hovered in my mind was “appeal“. Unfortunately, my stupidity misled me into thinking that I couldn’t appeal for a position in a class with less demanding standards while lots of students were aching for one in a better class.

Only during this year was I told that I could have actually had my appeal for a less demanding class approved straight away. It was those appeals for better classes which often got refuted. I was utterly disappointed; I didn’t feel fortunate at all. Despite all the privileges a triple-science class entails such as good teachers and reputation etc, it encompasses stress, stress and stress, doesn’t it?

Just the thought of studying in a triple-science class sent chills down my spine as school started opening. I’m not smart and furthermore, studying is totally not my cup of tea. Stress, needless to say, has been one of my major phobias. I definitely did and do not deserve a place in this class if the teachers had known my results were desirable and good by chance.

With my inertia in studying, I have to say I don’t deserve any good teachers and I feel completely shameful that I have to let my conscience put up with wonderful teachers who can teach wonderfully.

However, what’s done can’t be undone. Not that I’m jealous of the dedicated bibliophiles in my class whatsoever, but what can be worse than seeing your fellow classmates doing homework every recess, doing homework during the National Day celebrations? Yes, they do sound quite conventional and even normal, but the sight of them just inexplicably irks my eyes. Seriously, why can’t they take a rest?! I know I’m getting personal here, but I reiterate that I don’t hate my class. It’s just in my genes to get irritated by people studying so often they have to forsake class bonding and spirit.

It’s just astonishing how my class attained the Best Class Award for a certain month. This plunges me in deep and profound wonder – in what ways have we demonstrated ourselves as the best class should you define the best class as a class being bonded and spirited? Even if we have done a lot of things to look like the best class, I sincerely believe there were better classes who exuded greater class bonding and spirit.

We can’t even keep our class spick-and-span, my dear.

And to be able to possess certain undecided (as of now) privileges as a result of this accolade, I feel like I have done classes who deserved our title better wrong. Recently, I’ve read a friend’s status update on Facebook about how effing unfair the best class has certain ‘privileges’. I don’t really know what the said privilege is, even till now, but the question is: Do we as a class really deserve any of the privileges we are/were given?

In fact I feel very bad when she ranted about the unfair hierarchy of classes in school. I asked her about it but no reply was given. Perhaps I shouldn’t probe.

Those incessant sounds of pens scribbling on papers, reminiscent of unfailing competitiveness… and that inertia in me… I’m not choosing to keep up with my classmates yet, because the problem is – in the first place, was I supposed to be here?

Until I am convinced enough to say yes, I don’t think I have sufficient strength to keep up and eliminate that sense of inferiority dominating my school life. [...to be continued in next post tomorrow...]

93% Luck, Elaborate!

A portent?

On the previous day of my Combined Humanities exam, I was on the verge of giving up studying. I started playing Typing Maniac in Facebook out of boredom and hopelessness – the last word I played turned out to be “elaborate”.

Hmm…

So I took it as a hint. I have to elaborate as much as possible while answering my Structured Essay Questions.

Then, it was rumored the topic of Deterrence & Diplomacy in Social Studies will be tested. I read through swiftly, remembering the only small details like how China built the Aksai Chin Road and had a war with India over territory.

AND IT WAS TESTED! LOL

But unfortunately, I didn’t remember much about the China-India conflict. Since the question was “to what extent is conflict over territories the conflict among countries”, I remembered the last word I played in the game, and elaborated on Singapore and Malaysia laying claims on Pedra Branca. Yet again, unfortunately, I realized that I have misspelled it as Pedra Blanca. Awww heck those people who love to confuse their R’s and L’s in their pronunciations.

After tackling Social Studies, I was met with the challenge of History…

I had only studied the first chapter of History. And thank God it was tested! :O

Was that my 93% luck!?!?! It’s a mere number generator that I used early in the morning before my exam.

I’ve given up

Not studying how to be social at all

Questioning the past

I have to probably study one and a half of these two books but I have only read the first chapter of each book. Mind you, I merely read – I didn’t memorize anything. It’s 2130 hours now on the day preceding the day of my Combined Humanities exam and I’m so darn prepared for it. Wow!

I don’t even bother to spot questions. Haha~ Shall flip through those topics that people have spotted later before sleep. And yes I’ve decided to have a good rest at the expense of my marks. My droopy eyes as you can see from those photos have not recovered even till now. Nothing could be worse than reading convoluted paragraphs of text just now during the English exam…

Do ‘O’ Level English setters have the idiosyncrasy of giving us passages that always have gotta do with animals and animals and animals? I just don’t comprehend why our comprehension passages for various exams we’ve taken since Secondary One till now have always gotta to do with animals and animals and animals. Why isn’t there any kind of variety at all?!

Meerkats, dolphins, lions, tigers and what not…… GIVE ME A BREAK! It’s like some kind of propaganda informing you ad nauseam about wildlife protection and extinction and endangering et cetera. Don’t tell me SPCA took lead of SEAB English Dept? =_= Think they’ll only be satisfied when they finished testing about all the animals on Earth.

I’m ranting because I only wrote 101 words for the summary that allowed a maximum of 150 words.

It’s my virgin attempt writing a descriptive essay using only one piece of paper, though I have no intention in becoming green.

And my email for the letter-writing seems too informal! ARGH

I’m afraid my quite unruly hair will get caught tomorrow. If that’s the case technically I’ll be barred from taking the exam but as expected, schools are afraid of parents complaining so of course they’ll do something else. But it turns out that one of my friends had the honor of having his hair professionally cut by some of our school discipline personnel.

He complained:

Mr __ cut this side and Mrs __ cut that side!

LOL HILARIOUS! And whuttt, the back of his hair looked terrible…

Exams are no more nearin’…

They’re startin’.

The challenge of language

Time seems to pass so quickly, yet I’ve been perfunctorily indulging in my computer, yet I’ve been lackadaisically leading a life overwhelmed with ennui.

Then all of a sudden, I’m met with such an unfamiliar enemy that I have to deal with in such a short time – THE START OF EXAMS!

Exams just look, sound, taste, feel, smell strange. They are ugly, noisy, unpalatable, spiky and smelly. LOL

I sincerely apologize for the two sentences above that do not make sense at all for I have made an unsuccessful attempt in using the 5 senses + 1 template recommended by my English teacher for writing descriptive essays.

The + 1 means the input of your feelings and thoughts and emotions etc.

So I shall make sure everything I describe has to be detailed and specifically adorned with my 5 senses and my feelings etc:

Jeremy’s blog is visually rejuvenating such that it even causes your pupil to dilate in captivation. When you print his blog on papers, it is edible and even irresistibly delicious, so yummy that you feel the words being chewed in your mouth. You could even have your hunger easily and fully satisfied just by letting the tantalizing aroma of the paper assault your nostrils, vibrate its hair. The paper feels as smooth as Barbie Doll’s skin and produces a beautiful music by mere flipping.

The paragraph above should be ignored.

How boring

Life's boring

There’s nothing much I can blog about my life for now obviously unless you’re fine with me going into details about my mundane school routines as well as every breath I breathe, drip of urine I pass, and pile of feces I defecate.

I mean, look, what can be fun in a school that emphasizes so much about credit and merit (hey, they rhyme!)? It’s all about exams, exams and you guessed it right, still exams.

The teachers say all this is nothing in comparison with the Secondary Four students. Quite true – even I, though a level below them, felt intimidated as announcements of frequent mock tests from time to time were made over the PA system.

If only studying can be fun…

Once Yvette taught me how studying can be fun – humming your mathematical formulae on a tune. She improvised one from:

Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb. Mary had a lit-tle lamb, its fleece as white as snow.

Try singing the general formula for the roots of a quadratic question with the same tune:

x e-quals to mi-nus b, plus mi-nus, square root of. B square mi-nus four a c, o-ver two a.

Fortunately I didn’t hear anyone humming the formula out during our mid-year examinations. LOL

Till my exams are over, I’ll be blogging about whatever comes to my mind; when they’re over, I SHALL GET A LIFE! Yes, I don’t consider myself living now. I have long pronounced myself dead since the start of the grueling studies and revision period. Hence, I’m technically a ghost blogging now. Yay paranormal investigators, check it out!

This makes me feel like going back to Blogger -

How encouraging!

Whatever… LOL. Carolyn reminded me that patience is a virtue. Nevermind, I shall tenaciously blog till I get my share of loyal readers.

Please comment! No comments, no tagboard. LOL

Can’t bear to bear a grudge

Is it really that easy?

Now I have a limping gait that looks really awkward as I take the stairs. And to sound a bit pampered, I must say I suffered a minor major minor scratch on my left arm that would render me a shrieking sissy if pinched…

…all thanks to my mum! She loved me so much she transformed the kitchen ground into a small oasis while she was chopping some food for her diet at midnight.

I entered the kitchen at such timely moment I had to slip and fall in the face of my treacherous fate.

The living ball of lipids had clumsily fallen and sprained his left knee before while playing some sports game in his Health and Fitness Club Trim-and-Fit (TAF) program. I seriously don’t think there’s a need to assign the TAF program any sort of euphemism until fat people suffer zero discrimination.

Thanks to the compound with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, I fell on my left knee and sprained it again.

It was excruciating but I’d pray for my fate to allow me to fall a few times more so as to get my mum to react to my fall with obvious care and concern and love…

… for she was rebuking me for overreacting merely due to a fall. That surely did not work as any sort of emotional anesthesia for me, nor psychological. Was that an act of love?

Only my dad helped me up. This looks more like an act of love.

She could have been shocked, bewildered or confused why I had to make a big deal out of falling; she could have not known I suffered a painful sprain too – but it’s utterly impossible for me to ignore it and took it like my mum was really concerned about me through (how ironic) anger and irritation. Her voice was blatantly reminiscent of irritation rather than love.

I know she loves me, but all these years she hasn’t been displaying this love as openly as how those actors in soppy family drama serials would display it.

Dramas are such a misleading representation of life’s ups and downs.

To top it off, to date I still cannot forget an incident once of her kicking me with her invincible foot as I cuddled in a corner all because she had to malign me for screwing her computer up, all because she wasn’t computer-savvy enough to recognize the fact that different versions of softwares have different features, all because she was under grueling stress…

I know as her child I have to give her the understanding she desires as she goes through her tribulations and crises. But why, until now, hasn’t my mum at least apologized to me? She could have said “sorry” as casually as my dad would say to my acceptance but she never did.

Without her apology, I can’t just forget the injuries, no matter how minor, she inflicted on me because it’s obvious I’m not such a magnanimous person, even when I’m speaking about my own parents.

Burying the hatchet itself is difficult, how much more without an apology?

Perhaps I’m just too naïve to even think of parents apologizing to their children~ Probably I’ve been watching too many drama serials in which parents would kneel down before their children for making some grave mistake like an extramarital affair etc…

PS: I’m not asking my parents to do so LOLOLOL