Pictures Of You - The Last Goodnight

A bit of tenses before I go on, since there will be a test on tenses this week.

"What we could have been" is definitely not the same as "What we could be", since
"What we could have been" implies "very possible, but in the end it didn't turn out in the way I would have liked", whereas
"What we could be" is more positive and implies "very possible, and let's work hard together for the desired ending".

Today's song is Pictures Of You, by The Last Goodnight. Note the above. For me, I feel strongly that this is not a "let's work hard for our relationship" song; it's the reverse (well, kind of).


Lyrics to Pictures Of You [The Last Goodnight]
This is the clock up on the wall
This is the story of us all
This is the first sound
Of a new born child before he starts to crawl

This is the war that's never won
This is the soldier and his gun
This is the mother waiting by the phone praying for her son

Pictures of you, pictures of me
Hung up on your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we used to be

There is a drug that cures it all
Blocked by the governmental wall
We are the scientists inside the lab
Just waiting for the call

This earthquake weather has got me shaking
Inside I'm high up and dry

Pictures of you, pictures of me
Hung up on your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we used to be

Confess to me every secret moment
Every stolen promise you believe
Confess to me, all that lies between us
All that lies between you and me

We are the boxers in the ring
We are the bells that never sing
There is a title we can't win
No matter how hard we must swing

Pictures of you, pictures of me
Hung up on your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we could have been

Pictures of you, pictures of me
Hung up on your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we could have been
What could have been, we could have been

Pictures of you, pictures of me
Remind us all of what we could have been
What could have been

2009

I like number patterns. Such as today's date: 20/09/2009. Take away the slashes and you get 2009 X2. Nice! So many couples have chosen to marry on this date, even more than 09/09/2009! That shows the fascination that people have with number patterns. Which leads me to think: What would be the date of my wedding?

There will be more blog posts about my fascination in numbers (not just patterns) in the coming weeks, before the O levels. Stay tuned! (And Music Monday will be back starting tomorrow!)

Sickness, school, career day and F451

I was down with fever the whole of last week, which explains why there was a dearth of posts for the past week. Well, now I'm back (with a sore neck) but I might have to stay away from the computer as time gets closer to the O' levels.

The last term in my secondary school life just started yesterday. It was a light day yesterday, but the Maths teachers happily *ahem* spammed us with Maths papers from other schools. Guess I'm going to take it easy and do them like I'm strolling through the park. That means no staying awake all the way past midnight just for them. But maybe I have to pump caffeine into my system for the humanities ...

Today we had the career day. A talk from NJC, ACJC and Ngee Ann Poly about their programs, and later on talks from people who are experienced in their fields of work. The Poly talk was interesting (now I am more inclined to choose the Poly route) and engineering seems like a good job for me. I don't mind standing around in construction sites if it brings me good money ;) And psychology is an interesting field ...

But for now, my Fahrenheit 451 book is available if anyone wants to borrow it for notes. Just ask me for it!

Qing Yu and his lunch

I had the McSpicy McValue lunch today. (I upsized it as well.) So I asked Qing Yu what he had for lunch.

SY: What did you have for lunch?
QY: Mac.
SY: What food?
QY: McScicy. I long time haven't eat liao.
SY: Did you upsize it?
QY: Yah.

What are the odds of that?

A comparison between EOY '08 and Prelims '09

I read the archives of my blog just now and I stumbled upon a post I made last year, an analysis of my EOY (End-Of-Year Exams) '08 performance. I though that I would put it in this post, along with my performance for the Prelim exams this year, for a side-by-side comparison. So here goes last year's post, with this year's analysis.

###A preliminary analysis of my End Of Year exams 08###
Exam #1: English Language (23/9/08)
Ok, so I had originally decided to do the narrative. But, upon seeing the narrative question (I almost typed "sawing") , I thought I had better do something else. Hence, I went to the discursive question. Just hope that my arguments are good enough for the examiner. Also, for the situational writing, we had to select between 4 choices, when I was expecting 2. Of course, this meant more time for thinking. Not to forget, I could handle the comprehension in Paper 2. It wasn't too difficult, so that was quite a relief.

Prelims: English Language (1127)
Apart from the summary, I'm glad the rest of the papers went relatively well. I thought I almost killed my chances of an A when I chose to write the descriptive essay; that turned out better than I expected. Apparently I overloaded on repetition for my speech, and the summary was as good as crap. 3/10 for language? HELLO!

Exam #2: Social Studies (24/9/08)
Pure mugging, this one. Given a choice between a topic with only 2 types of questions and a topic with 7 types of questions, which one whould you want to study? Of course, the former, since you can get away with memorising 2 model essays, while for the latter, there are 7. Hence, I did Q2 in 40 mins, thanks to my memorising. The inference question was okay, but I busted my C&C and left barely any time to complete the reliability question. So that was a lesson learnt.

Prelims: Social Studies (2192/01)
I misinterpreted the Sources C, D and E (half the sources!!!), which meant that I lost a valuable 11 marks here. If not for this mistake, I could have gotten an A1 for Combined Humanities. But how can I prevent such misinterpretations from happening again?

Exam #3: Higher Chinese (3/10/08)
The letter was okay, but I'm not so sure about the compo. Just hope it doesn't fail. And Paper 2 was relatively easy, true to Ms Qin's words!

Prelims: Higher Chinese (1111)
After throwing all my firepower in for the 报章报道, I still cannot get at least 50/70. Looks like I need to replenish all my weaponry for the O' levels ...

Exam #4: Elementary Mathematics (6/10/08)
This is like riding a bike up a rather hilly terrain, before descending down gentle slopes. But it's okay.

Prelims: Elementary Mathematics (4016)
Didn't hit expectations. Though my expectations are rather high.

Exam #5: Chemistry (7/10/08)
This left me with time to sleep, but Mr Osgodby woke me up, so I decided to run through the Fahrenheit 451 quotes I'd memorised instead.

Prelims: Chemistry (5072)
Nice to know I didn't drop too many marks. Though I still made a few careless mistakes here and there, my MCQ still managed to make me happy ;)

Exam #6: Literature (Elective) (7/10/08)
I was expecting a thematic question, but that was about censorship by the dystopian government in Fahrenheit 451. I had prepared for other themes, setting and style, so I could not do the Beatty and Montag question and did the Faber question instead. And I wanted to do poem, but it's tough to me, so I did the prose. I hope I can get good grades, since I have 3 personal feelings (a personal best) !

Prelims: Literature (2192/04)
Good to know that I didn't screw my F451 essay on the "Development of Montag", but the same can't be said for my unseen prose ...

Exam #7: Geography (8/10/08)
Having prepared for plate tectonics (my bet was the questions would weigh heavily on volcanoes) , weather and climate and natural vegetation only (rivers and coasts had quite a lot to memorise) , I did Q1 and Q2. I'm feeling confident about this paper.

Prelims: Geography (2235)
I am VERY pleased with my results for this. It feels nice to be on the top of the cohort, especially after overcoming failures in the start of Sec 3.

Exam #8: Additional Mathematics (9/10/08)
Stumped at the first question! Fooled by a +/- sign! I have to find a way to reduce the occurrence of such errors that have to be corrected by checking the answers thoroughly.

Prelims: Additional Mathematics (4038)
Didn't hit expectations too. While working through the paper, I also made a few errors that could be easily avoided if I checked my paper. Time to work on error prevention ...

Exam #9: Biology (9/10/08)
I would say that this paper is definitely for someone who did not study in depth. Also, I had hinged on an enzyme question to come out. it did not disappoint, but it brought along a fresh twist to it. I look forward to such questions that allow me to learn new things from exam papers.

Prelims: Biology (5094)
This fared the worst among the sciences. I should have studied more thoroughly on ecology and Man's impacts on the environment, but otherwise it's OK.

Exam #10:Physics (10/10/08)
A killer, I admit. I thought the paper (specifically Section B) could be improved. So little space to do any calulations! Also, there are questions where a question is at the end of a page, with lines at the next page. Darn, I wrote under the question itself, and so I had to happily copy the answers onto the lines. (The "happily" was a sarcastic remark, if you do not get it.)

Prelims: Physics (5058)
I'm really surprised by my results! I had expected a rather low mark (low A1) for I encountered totally unknown questions, and I felt that I was answering them crappily, so I wasn't expecting much from the paper, like last year ...

For the September Holidays, it's time to strengthen and upgrade existing weapons, acquire more advanced weapons, and to test fire them thoroughly. There's lots to do in the September Holidays ...

Year One

It's nice to watch Year One.

A synopsis from Youtube:
When a couple of lazy hunter-gatherers (Black and Cera) are banished from their primitive village, they set off on an epic journey through the ancient world.

My synopsis goes below:
Think of two people (one fat, one thin), who set off from their tribe to explore the world. Along the way, they meet various kinds of people: People who f*** with sheep (no joke! Later in the movie someone commented "this sheep has a damaged rectum") and a person who stones his brother (accidentally) to death ("I didn't do it!!!"). They go on to save their crushes (from their home tribe) who are being used for slaves, and bring rain (they are godlike!) for the village they are in. (This village has suffered droughts for a long time already.)

The interesting part of the movie that I particularly enjoy is when Oh makes love with Eema at the climax of the movie, while there was chaos right outside where they were. Talk about contrast! You can't get a better contrast than that; chaos, making love, chaos, making love - the alternation was awesome! And the way Oh did it, that was hilarious!

Anyway, this movie has helped to relieve some of the bad feelings in me, which is good. Hopefully this good feeling lasts ...

Dreams and more dreams

I dreamed a dream last night. Just thought to put this up too.

Susan Boyle's I dreamed a dream on Britain's Got Talent

I might reveal the contents of my (super weird) dream if you ask for it personally. Other than that, this dream is (1) very crazy and (2) virtually impossible to replicate in real life.

Susan Boyle probably did not even dream of passing through the many rounds of Britain's Got Talent. And look at her now, she did not just reach the finals of Britain's Got Talent, she also became famous worldwide. Did she dream of becoming famous all over the world? Probably not. So do dreams come true in real life? I don't think so.

But, do you think that dreams are possible to repeat itself in real life?

MRT and cheese

I'm still in exactly the same phase as I was on Friday (actually it's Displacement = 0).

The thing that triggered this relapse had to do with MRT trains. It's not that I couldn't find a MRT station that started with "G", it was something else. Something that I shared with my juniors a few months back. And to see this appear again before my eyes triggered this relapse. (It's possible to guess what occured in me the instant before the relapse).

It's like holding back a whole bunch of crazy mobs with a barrier, and for them to push it over and cause a stampede, stamping over many people and seriously injuring others.

From a book I'd read:
"The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you can enjoy new cheese."

Maybe I need to vomit the old cheese that I ingested ...

The completion of a hiatus.

I did say in my previous post that I will be posting today right? (I wonder how many would see this though?)

Right now, my mind has been hit hard by several matters and words said to me. After the Prelims yesterday, I found the time to take a long hard look at myself, and everything that is in my mind. They say you can say it with music, and I thought about the kinds of the songs that I have, in my iPod and handphone. Just gonna quote some of the song lyrics out:

"Remind us all of what we could have been" What could we have been?

"All that I feel is the realness I'm faking" for what?

"Maybe in time you'll change your mind" Really?

"And I'm sitting here thinking I messed the whole thing up, up, up" :-(

"You're so hard to forget" I tried, so hard ...

"I'm just a little too not over you" A little or is it really a lot?

And I haven't even gone to the Chinese songs yet. Here's just one of the few Chinese songs that I sing when I am feeling down due to ...

杨培安 - 爱不能从头


Actually I was feeling OK nearer the end of the Prelims. But a line from someone set this who chain of emo-ing in me. This emo-ing is like a relapse, like I have a history of stroke and I have a relapse and the stroke paralyzes half my body.

"This earthquake weather has got me shaking inside" or is the earthquake in me self-induced?

"There is a drug that cures it all" I would really want to have this drug, please?

"I gotta turn this thing around" Can I do so in time for the O' levels?

Or maybe for now I should go watch a movie. What I have in mind is Year One. Just a quote from the trailer: "So who's with me?"

A hiatus for the Prelims

This is to formally announce that the owner of this blog will officially go into a hiatus here, from the 4th of August 2009, and will only return to post by the 28 of August 2009. That means that in this period, you readers will not be seeing any new posts.

That means that by 28 August, I will have many good things here, so be sure to return by then! Until then, study hard and study smart, everyone!