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I've been writing in my Blogger as of late. Not sure when I'll be back here again, but for now, if you would like to keep up with what's going on in my life and all, you can go to http://unspokeneloquence.blogspot.com/. Kindly leave a tag when you visit too! :)

A playlist of songs from my top 4 favourite Mandopop artists ending July 2011:
1. Rainie Yang 楊丞琳 — 匿名的好友
2. Yen-j 嚴爵 — 沒有你怎麼辦
3. A-Lin 黃麗玲 — 給我一個理由忘記
4. Aska Yang 楊宗緯 — 那個男人 (the Mandarin version of one of Secret Garden's soundtracks)

Forget about the continuation of my previous entry — life has been moving too fast for comfort, so fast I find it hard to even recall my days, let alone arrange them in chronological order. JC life has been stretching me to new limits every single day, making me feel eternally drained and leaving memories worth keeping with nothing but a temporal spot in the back my of mind, easily replaced by all the college affairs that don't seem to stop flowing in.

I'll just give a short summary of what my July was like in point form, before I get busy with catching up with reading my lecture notes.


1. 'A' Level Chinese oral exam
Even as I sat at the back of the hall, facing the examiners several feet ahead of me, the atmosphere was completely wrong. I didn't feel the tension expected from a national exam, neither did my heart stir in anxiety. I guess it's probably because everything has been moving so quickly that there's barely enough time left to appreciate the gravity of the situation I was in. I recall having a thousand thoughts running through my head while I was waiting for my turn — PW, SPA, homework, CCA, etc. I couldn't settle with a focused mind at all.
I kind of snapped back to the exam when I was preparing for the passage narration, but I still didn't sense the complete feeling I was supposed to have. Anyway, I messed up the narration completely. Thankfully, I did have something to say for the conversation component (the question was rather merciful — something about teenage street gangs), though I doubt it'll recover the loss, haha. My Chinese is just bad.
I walked out of the exam hall feeling as if I just sat for a school oral exam. I didn't even realise that that would be my final Chinese oral exam until minutes later.

2. Classmate antics
The class, especially the back row people, have been keeping me entertained throughout the course of this busy month, with their antics, jokes and all. Though sometimes they tend to get rather out-of-hand, they're hilarious all the same.

3. Swim team
Jia Min shaved her head, and when Venessa told me to look at her shiny scalp during an Economics lecture on the first day she came to school bald, I gasped in momentary shock, but filed my reactions shortly after under "admiration". Apparently she did that for 'Hair for Hope', an initiative for child cancer. I always knew she'd be the kind of girl who would shave her head. Or rather, do outrageous things like shaving her head. She still looks the same though, just that now, her inner beauty has started to shine through, if you get what I mean. Still in awe.

4. Singapore's unbelievably small after all
I kept in contact with Alan, my ex-tuition teacher, all the way until the JAE results release early this year, when I told him I was posted to Temasek. Then, he told me that his brother was going there as well, but I didn't give it much thought since I wouldn't recognise him anyway.
Consequently, my mom had this crazy idea of getting his girlfriend to tutor my brother in Math. As time passed and her schedules got tight, she had to give up tutoring him and passed the job on to Alan's other brother. He talked about the brother in TJ again, this time giving his name. Out of curiosity I did a quick Facebook search, and realised that I actually saw him quite a number of times. I told Rashid about it and he told me that he worked at the Popular BookFest as his colleague.
Hahaha, is the world small or what?

5. Taiwan Immersion Programme (TIP)
Some of my classmates are participants, and not too long ago, their buddies from Taiwan came to stay over at their homes, which meant that they went to school with them and also sat in during some classes, and that allowed for some interaction between them & I. Frankly, I experienced rather great culture shock. In Taiwan, students are taught every subject in Chinese, whereas in Singapore, English is used, except for Mother Tongue of course. I found myself constantly knocking into language barriers as well, despite being Chinese. Singaporean conversational Mandarin is just way too different from that of Taiwan's, and since I ain't brilliant with the language to start with, I found myself making quite a few embarrassing mistakes before the Taiwan buddies!
Despite the many setbacks, I went out for dinner with a Taiwan buddy, Cally, Michelle & Kai Yuan at Tampines 1's Manpuku yesterday after school. I guess everyone had a rather fun time, though we couldn't stay for long since there were a ton of pressing school issues to deal with.
I genuinely wonder how the Taiwanese students think of life in Singapore... surrounded by people speaking English they understand but find it hard to speak.


Aforementioned are probably the main highlights, though I believe I skipped quite a few. But I believe what I wrote was more than adequate. :P

It feels so good to be able to unlock my creative side after such a stale week.

It's been a really, really long time since I updated. And too many things have happened while I was away. So many, I believe I've already forgotten half of everything that's happened.

I remember sitting for the June Common Tests (JCTs) of course, an exam I performed horribly for. I scored U, S, E and S for Math, Chemistry, Biology & Economics respectively, and that means that I met the passing criteria at its bare minimum. I fared alright for the language subjects, though, with C's for both General Paper and Chinese. I regret not being particular about studying during the June break, but you've got to admit — studying and holidays will never be one.

Drowned myself in a flurry of fun right after the JCTs ended, and I believe I wrote about some of my post-exam outings earlier. Anyway, there were more. On the Saturday right after the exams, I went for a late lunch with Rashid, Janet & Li Ting at Swensen's Changi Airport. It was a great time of catching up, though I had to leave early for training.

On Sunday, I spent the morning with my PW group at Bedok Point discussing about our proposal reforms. Ended at a surprisingly early time of 12pm, so I could afford to head over to Rashid's place to join my secondary school friends. We did baking, and made three kinds of desserts - Oreo cheesecake, banana muffins (which eventually became a cake because we wanted to save some time and effort) and chocolate chip cookies. The process wasn't exactly arduous, though it was funny how we resorted to using a mortar and pestle to crush the Oreo cookies. The waiting times were, however, painfully long. We spent our time during those periods playing Monopoly Deal and fooling with one another's Facebook accounts.

Because one of Rashid's ovens couldn't work, we had to relocate operations to Jasper's place halfway through. Although I felt terribly guilty for crashing his house, I guess the fruits of labour made up for all the inconvenience. The banana muffin-cake, and the cookies especially, tasted delicious! And all of us were really surprised by that. Although the cheesecake was a little too... should I say salty? for my liking, everything turned out pretty successful.

Satisfied from a day's full of work, we went on to camwhore like no tomorrow as we headed home from Jasper's place, haha. But it didn't change the fact that we had such a fulfilling night. :)

Because I was so bushed by what happened on Sunday, I woke up late for my outing with Amira, Michelle, Kai Yuan, Sheryl & Teck Wee on Monday. That resulted in a mad rush to Serangoon to meet them for a karaoke session at NEX. I managed to devour a plate of char kway teow and rush to the karaoke lounge at record speed, though. Had a very fun time with them, but some of them, especially Sheryl, were just way too shy to sing. :( Got to make her open up a little more the next time we sing karaoke again.

We headed to the rooftop after our session ended for a camwhoring session. I swear, I've become such a camwhore ever since I started going out, haha. Browsed the new library for a bit after we got tired of taking pictures, then headed downstairs to have some dessert. Met Sean & Sue Ann halfway through, and followed them to design a birthday cake for Nadhir & Caleb. While they were doing the frosting, I decided to get some bubble tea with Michelle & Amira. Being the cheapskate I was, I ordered the small size, but when I received my order I was taken aback by how tiny the serving was. To make matters worse, Michelle was laughing away like there was no tomorrow! Apparently she knew about it but didn't want to tell me, haha. It totally wasn't value for money at all. All the Taiwanese bubble tea chains in Singapore are just out to scam their customers. :@

Guess those were the highlights of what happened over the post-JCT break. I have to say that I really had a lot of fun in June, but of course, it's courtesy of all the awesome friends I have. :)

I should stop here lest I end up bursting a word limit. But I'll try to divide this long entry into several parts.

Karma for not blogging consistently. Sorry readers (if I even have any of those)!