Casa De Shao

Category: General

  • see², year five day three: collapse

    Really tired. And frustrated. This day had so much potential to be memorable and a highlight, and yet all we could talk about was the fate of the damn future.

    The talk’s definitely essential. But argh the nice seniors were there, we were. But maybe it was unavoidable. We had people leaving after a while, discussion became slow, I couldn’t keep my story going and people started to become restless. Everything became bleak and it sucked because my feet were sodden from water bombs (thanks a lot, edmund and clarice sheesh) and I was cold and tired.

    When you’re tired you either get very high or just stay grumpy for no damn reason. And when you’re tired and cold and wet you can’t actually get high.

    The talk was bleak. About the future again. Don’t get me wrong, I love these guys. I love this event. I met new people, everything went smoothly and it was awesome. But if all we could talk about was how it’s gonna die and how we cannot save it. Denial, yup. But don’t send me off telling me that my hometown’s going to explode.

    This morning, I told someone that he was being pretentious. He got really sarcastic and defensive about it and said “don’t project”. I wasn’t even arguing with him; I was concerned. I gave an actual fuck. And all he could do was to say that I’m the one being stuck-up. Ironic, much. I’m not sore about it. I’m disappointed that I didn’t even try to argue back, just because he’s done me favours. I’m disappointed that he didn’t even bother to listen. I’m disappointed because that comeback was an unfair accusation and denial of what’s going on. I hope he understood my intent.

    There are a million other ways this event could’ve ended, and I don’t understand why it had to end this badly. Hope the AAR offers some sort of closure.

    Two prisoners look out the window; one looks down and sees the mud; the other looks up and sees a field of flowers.

  • see², year five day two: problem solving / public speaking

    Started off the day rather badly. Turned out that the certificates we went to print had a simple huge glaring typo where “contribute” was mistyped as “contriubte”. $63 down the drain, but we can’t really blame anyone, right?

    Then we had like no halal food. There were 5 muslim participants, and we all expected each other to buy the halal food instead, so it ended up with Ray Yan and me heading over to McD’s to buy 5 Fillet O’ Fish meals. Everyone was blaming each other but it was really ultimately my fault for being the food I/C and not doing my job. The participants were exceedingly nice and concerned about us so I felt great.

    Dinner was when the true wonderfulnessessity happened. We headed down to this posh cheap posh place to fill our stomachs. Although Edmund wanted to liven the atmosphere and entertain the other 2 at our table with stories, they were deemed too lame (seriously he just made one up) so I decided, this is too crunk fo’ sho. So Dexter and I tried to talk a bit about what happened the previous day, but I remembered Ray Yan saying something about not telling them. So I went over to Ray Yan’s table.

    Then we happened to move on to Wong jokes, which I completely forgot. And somehow I started talking about my JC life. It was pretty goddamn liberating. No, it was awesome as fuck.

    It’s obvious that everyone loves to talk about themselves. When you get a small audience who’s willing to hear about every single crap that’s shooting outta your mouth, fueled by the sugar rush from cheap free-flow dispensed Pepsi, it’s probably the most wonderful feeling in the world (well I technically am a lonely virgin so I wouldn’t know what other feelings there are that I’m missing out on). I talked about Health and Fitness. I talked about the scars from windsurfing. I talked about my infatuation. I talked about things my friend did to help when I was infatuated, and how I “failed to Carpe Diem“. I talked about how I noticed that she kept looking back whenever I looked at her. They gave me tips on how to say “Hi”. I talked about how much I’ve changed since the start of the year.

    And, well, the best thing was that everyone wanted to listen. When you have a very small group, people keep fighting to answer or to speak. This medium-sized group was actually interested, about the simple, screwed up life I lead. No one interrupted, people were laughing at appropriate moments and they were all focused. About the things I keep to myself because I find them narcissistic to yub about. About things that I’d never say in public because they’re rather different from the norm. And I’ll tell you honestly, that I’ve never felt this great in a long time. This seriously made my entire day.

    I’ve noticed that sometimes I get into the mood to yabber about stuff, and I tend to get animated and entertain others when doing so, which I really love to do.

    So that was my short-lived blubbering about the day. I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to have such a life-sharing session again, but in case people ask for a continuation tomorrow (HIGHLY UNLIKELY I MIGHT ADD), I’ll make it less about things that’ve happened and more of what has changed. The morals of the stories. To be more inspiring, I guess. Ha. Thanks, people. 🙂

    Next time when someone talks, I’ll listen carefully. It’s the best anyone can do, I guess.

    Okai, my com overheated on my lap this is bad my children might be retarded.

  • see², year five day one: rolled-up sleeves

    See² started today.

    It was fun for the most of the morning, when I had to romp around the LT@SRC just setting up the food and wearing a blazer and a long-sleeved collared shirt with a tie and just playing with the walkie-talkie. I like wearing formal attire. It makes me feel important, and I can roll up my sleeves and go “IT’S BUSINESS TIME!”

    The tea was kind of bad which made me wonder why I decided to choose such bad choices of food (Baked Spinach Quiche, Mini Soon Kueh, Mini Cheese Bun etc etc). The packed lunch was surprisingly okay.

    Meanwhile I’ve gotten the nickname of “childish” from Clarice because we were playing around with the talkies. I am such a wuss.

    And the OPs room has a nostalgic look to it. Must be the way things are arranged.

    On to serious stuff.

    See²’s been an important part of my CCA life thus far. I’ve been a part of it for 5 years, and I can safely say that I’m a veteran at this. (hoho)

    I’ve seen this event from various positions:

    As a worker in Sec 1 and 3 (I will not label myself with something as demeaning as saikang), my primary motivation was just screwing around with Derek while preparing for the games and stuff. I had no real connection to the event.

    As a participant in Sec 2, it was incredibly boring for me and I believe I bailed on the last day, which was quite honestly something I regret rather much.

    As a facilitator in Sec 4, I wanted to see how it was like to facilitate. Primarily to meet people. I ended up neglecting my duties and going over to the people I knew most of the time, which is making me hate myself right now.

    As a member of the Organising Team now, I wanted to help make this year’s See², well, “the best ever”. To make a terrific comeback. To raise a phoenix from the ashes. But we didn’t manage to.

    Of course, as part of human nature, we blamed teachers for being too restrictive. While this was, in part, rather true, Li Sheng had a little talk with us during dinner. He said to us (directed at Ray Yan) that he talked with the previous OS (Chin Ying was there so it was rather funny) and the previous one and the one before that about the problem of See² being far too… redundant.

    So we were all hunching at the food court, over plates of hokkien mee, spaghetti and char kway teow (the only things anyone ever eats there anyway), listening to his critical views.

    At first I didn’t really believe that it was so. I mean, low participant counts are the teacher’s fault right? Then it hit me that, well, most participants were forced to join this and they don’t really gain anything from it since NOTHING ever gets solved anyway.

    We were faced with 3 options for this problem: Fix it (what we’ve thought we’ve been doing), Ignore it (what we’ve actually been doing) or Kill it. We’ve been keeping See² afloat mainly because of a sense of duty, and not because of it main reason which was to create proposals to solve infocomm club problems. We’re trying to keep this afloat so as to hopefully have the same amount of fun we did as participants (which wasn’t actually a lot).

    We had a general consensus (actually it was Li Sheng’s idea) that See² should actually grab a proposal (frankly all proposals are the same; camps, competitions, workshops), and make it a reality. Make it something that people would actually join to save their clubs, and not some ol’ get-together where everyone nods their heads and do nothing.

    We also agreed (with Li Sheng’s view) that See² should move to a different location. Like a University, Polytechnic or a corporate location. This way we could appear more professional and get expert support at the same time.

    If we’re desperate (seeing that participant counts are dropping like flies I can safely say that we should be desperate) we could move the OT entirely to the JC side completely considering that we’re the only people who know about this problem and actually care about it.

    That guy’s a genius.

    Still, I don’t think it’s a pity to have joined the See² OT. It is a pity only joining it this year and nothing much has been done, but it’s definitely not a shame. The people are sweet and I get to feel useful and professional. Haha. I’d clarify my words but my laptop’s out of battery and I can’t be assed to get my charger.

    Sigh, it’s been a year already.

    TL;DR: See² can be saved. But it’ll be hard.

  • of leadership workshops, a LAN party and a BBQs

    I believe I owe y’all some updates.

    We had the leadership workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday.

    For Tuesday we had lots of lectures which were somewhat useful because of guidelines and stuff (otherwise pretty damn boring) and laser tag which was rather underwhelming because no one could tell who was shooting who and if you shot anyone.

    For Wednesday we had a “positive psychology” workshop which was basically common sense and the adventure camp. I was supposed to go with the sports CCAs (HnF is a sports CCA? Go figure) for an AdventureRacez which was mainly doing cool sporty things from Pasir Ris (!!!) to Bedok, about 5km. I got assigned to group 11 which had 5 girls and me. WHY.

    So being the natural chicken I was I chickened out and told Ms Teo that my feet were busted up from windsurfing (they actually were, there’s this huge gaping cut on my right foot which isn’t healing). Instead of letting me go home to slack as I had hoped, she sent me to the non-sports team where I hung out with Wang Ce’s group which were a fantastically pleasant bunch (probably because all the jocks were gone and they had people I knew like Rui Hao, Menquan and Jingyi). We had really really nice bonding activities such as building a catapult out of poles and rope (learnt 2 new knots, lots of teamwork), rock climbing and this obstacle course (we all had a chat with the instructor) It was fun but I was really tired to the bone after that. I missed a chance to man up. 🙁

    So in the natural order of things, like when heated water boils and scared men scream like girls, tired people go for LAN parties the next day. Obviously. Made some new friends, smashed a glass (very sorry 🙁 ) and rode around in tricycles on Dead Rising 2 while people watching hollered in laughter. It was nice. I didn’t really man up though 🙁

    Then today.

    Last night I dreamt I kissed someone and felt bad about it because she was taken. I woke up and felt bad about it too. SO DESPO. But I thought it was a cute dream. Blah.

    Naturally, people who have fun for a whole day follow it up immediately by rushing off the next day to complete work they should’ve. I went to school early in hopes of meeting the stall owner early, but she wasn’t there. So I called her which I could’ve done at 4pm. Then I went home.

    Then I went to Strahan’s house later at 7:10 (I’m a busy man, left home at 5:20) which was pretty damn late, but I was the second to arrive.

    The food was great, the atmosphere was good, but everyone was in small groups and doing their own things which wasn’t good for bonding.

    But I liked it when we were walking back. Everyone was joking and laughing and there was this big happy mood that surrounded us like the glow of a lantern.

    It kind of hit me that I don’t just like being around people, I like interacting with them and building relationships. Listening to Yirui’s interesting theories, Strahan’s death threats, Lixian’s teasing and Bryan’s fear of thrillers really adds to the atmosphere of the whole place. You know, adding character and stuff, things movies and food can’t bring by themselves. I’m liking my class a whole lot more now. 😀

    I’m in my cousins’ house right now, lounging on her bed while everyone’s asleep (she’s sleeping with the twins because of me).

    Full, but happy 🙂

  • prawnin’

    HUGE PRAWN

    IS GOOD.

  • resentment

    Woke up with unhealed cuts on my feet and hands to the sound of a crash, which was the sound of a printer, thousands of pens and everything falling from an unstable shelf and onto the floor; I&R is still not finished and I have to trapaise to school to hand it up.

    Do forgive me if I’m in a bad mood.

    EDIT: I just bled all over the floor and my mom helped me apply plasters to my feet so I can walk slightly better and I&R is going swimmingly I guess.

    Shit I just spent my 123rd post on an angry morning rant.

  • both hands on the mast

    Today we went windsurfing.

    It was at East Coast and the weather was somewhat fine. Except for the fact that I drifted over to the underwater drain pipe which was full of barnacles on the outside. Upon scraping the first of these barnacles I only had OH SHIT SHIT PISS COCK CUNT running through my head, so I just kicked harder which kind of shredded the soles of my bare feet. I hobbled onto shore with bloody feet and this NUS girl pointed it out and I looked down and was all like D: and I said I NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION.

    Bejeesus chriiiist my feet are full of these goddamn cuts which make me walk like some duck. Every time I lay my soles on the ground and lift them, there’s this slight sticking feeling which makes it sting, and every time I walk it opens the cuts a bit more.

    But when it was time to return to shore it started raining torrentially which was pretty effin cool and the best thing ever.

    I’m dizzy from these wave-like motions I’m feeling and tired as hell and there’s still like I&R to hand up tomorrow.

    It was fun. BUT I WANT TO SLEEP BLAH

  • rather costly mistakes

    OP just ended, fantastic. Came up with this last minute intro that was rather well received. Kept looking at cue cards although the assessors weren’t looking up at me. Answered question not superbly but okay I guess. Went for lunch with Kenneth after that too. Splurged a lot on DUMPLINGS AND CHICKEN. Went home. Came back to Bukit Timah Plaza for pool and Kinect FUN TIEM at Rachel’s. Wonderful place! Just came home.

    Uh had a stroke of pervasively bad luck recently. Wonder if I did anything to deserve such karmic payback.

    Woke up at 11 2 days ago when I was supposed to be in school to rehearse at 10. Prepared to leave house but was locked in without house keys. Made my bro rush back after A’s and hitched a taxi to school.

    Lost my entry proof and had to print it.

    Missed the last 151 today with Chor. Took 74 and got off halfway to try to catch the 88 but missed it as well.

    All those mistakes were literally rather costly. Doing my dad a major disservice; we aren’t exactly very rich to begin with…

    AND I MISSED 11:11 11/11/11 AGAIN.

    Yes it’s just a number but I feel like I missed a moment of our lifetime. A time when we could wish for prosperity and better luck perhaps. Well I was happily playing Kinect Adventures (laughing at myself more like.)

    And all my friends seem to be alive and doing very well, nothing more I could ask for I guess 🙂

    Whole list of activities Derek and Stra lined up for us next week: windsurfing on Sun, prawning on Mon, leadership camp on Tues and Wed, paintball on Thurs. Blah I hate jocks, not looking forward to the camp. The rest sound like plain silly fun haha.

    I’m shagged from playing Dance Central and Kinect Adventures and a very very hectic week. Time to sleep. And rush off to watch Tintin tomorrow (or later if you’re a twat) with 4S2!

    I can barely keep my eyes open…

  • delusional

    Dancing is probably the best form of art there is. Rarely does any other form of art exude so much brilliance, so much passion and express so much in the same length of time. Be it modern dance, hip-hop or traditional dance, they all have their strengths and are respectable forms of expression. Simply watching a dance, such as that of MAD’s during Retrospective, leads me to applaud soundly for the sheer amount of passion and power each of the dances express. I especially loved the dance I/Cs.

    –

    Wearily, I entered my house, rucksack in tow. I reached into every pocket of mine and put away all the trinkets I had. Looking out of the window at the exceptionally orange sky, I glanced downwards at Meridian Junior College. The dance studio had its lights on, and the track was open for business. Mistaking my fatigue and bad mood for restlessness, I decided to head down to have a run. For fun.

    When running, you might have your iPod with you, set to a playlist of motivational, energetic or just plain catchy songs. Thinking about the past experiences you had with stitches, you consider and proceed to do warm-ups to reduce the risk of getting them. There’s this pang in your abdomen which makes you question if you need the toilet, but you almost always ignore it. You tie your laces really tightly. Can’t risk having those come undone halfway.

    And you’re off. Each footstep makes you feel like you’re treading on air. You worry if you’re going too slow, or if you’re – gasp – going too slow! You shake your head and ignore the voices in your head. You pass by the dance studio. Hesitantly, you glance sideways – hoping to see that certain person. How stupid, of course you won’t. Idiot. Desperate idiot. But this doesn’t seem like desperation. More like… admiration? I don’t know. You skillfully dodge a toddler bopping a soccer ball along. As you reach your second round, you start to grimace from the strain. It’s an awful lot of work, keeping fit. How are you supposed to finish 5 more laps of this shit? You remember a senior’s wise words: “LOSE THE WEIGHT, GET THE GIRLS” (a female senior no less) Well, no pain, no gain. You charge on.

    A few rounds later, your subconscious asks you if you’d kindly take a rest. You pull out a mental checklist: Am I halfway there? Am I out of breath? Are my legs hurting? No, no, no. With a resounding TAKE THAT, your rationality beats your subconscious into retreating into its cove of primal instincts and bad ideas.

    A few more steps later, your shoes have turned into lead-filled clogs. Your breathing (through the mouth, nose-breathing ain’t cutting it) is labored with heavy pants and wheezes and my god a stitch is starting to form. Sweat drips along the contours of your face and into your eyes, stinging it with needles and blurs your vision. And yet, you endure this.

    But when halfway through the last round, you can’t take it no more. It’s too much for you. You throw in the towel. The stitch seems to have stapled your diaphragm to your insides, and each breath you take punches more and more needles into your sides. You form excuses to walk, knowing that you’re doing yourself a disservice. Throwing your hands by your side in defeat, you start walking. A slight wave of nausea tickles your throat, the stitch scrabbles at your belly and you take in each breath of air like they were your last. The stitch hides itself, pricking you every time you take a breath.

    At last, you hobble past the finish line.

    15 minutes 25 seconds. Dammit.

    As you walk back to your flat, you glance back, wistful and delusional and maybe a little confused. At the track, at the runners, at the dance studio.

    And you ask yourself: A man can dream, can’t he? Can’t he?

  • vindictive

    dead-horse flogging WHY WHY WHY I THOUGHT IT WAS OVER.

    In other news OP is going badly. But we’re starting early tomorrow.