《领悟》

可能是从《孩子，我为什么打你》来的题目吧？文章说母亲在孩子拥有童年的智慧，为了教训孩子而打孩子；幼时不打，长大了也不打。所以我写出这文章，题目是《领悟》。

[目的是为了A水准的花纹考试做准备。。。啊，睡觉醒来就地去考试了啦！]

《领悟》

我小时候不怎么喜欢和母亲相处。母亲对我来说是非常苛刻的人，她要我补习，我不肯，结果总是被妈妈挨打。我不明白，其他的小孩似乎无忧无虑的能到处玩耍，我怎么却不能呢？幼时的我，认为母亲存在的唯一目的是为了折磨我，约束我，带给我无比的怨恨。

有一次，我没有把乘法表背熟。母亲生气了。当时，好像面对着火山即将爆发的心情，而火山是无法阻挡的强威的力量。母亲随手操起在烫衣板上面的藤条，狠狠地把我打成一团抽搭着的悲惨人物。我缩成一团，目的是为了保户自己，我抱着双脚，将身体检查一遍，以泪冲洗红肿的被藤条肆虐过的地方。我好像一只狼狈的小狗，浸泡在自己的悲哀之中。

经过时间的过去，岁月的累积，我朦朦胧胧的成长。如今，竟然是即将准备考试的少年。

可能是思想比较成熟了吧，现在我说的算。我痛恨的补习课程全都一扫而空；学习方式由我自己作主。我和母亲发生争执的纪律也减少了。

昨天，母亲特地为了我而尝试新的烹饪手法，她住的南瓜汤是从真正的南瓜里程出来的。虽然这是她第一次的尝试，汤也不知怎么的消失了，但是我能感受得到无比的温暖。今天也是如此，我在温习的当儿中，母亲就会开门，递给我新鲜挤出的橙汁。橙汁鲜甜，在我为考试而愁的时候带来了清爽的滋味。我意识到，母亲其实是疼我的！原来，她一直就在我的身边鼓励我，为我的将来作出贡献。

小学时期的补课，是她用血汗钱供我上课的；

要我多加的练习，是希望我能考入相当不错的中学；

甚至中学O’水准考试期间，是她放了假，每天下午为我煮丰富的午餐，这也是为了让我能有精神温习。

母亲的关照和伟大被我完完全全的错怪了！

看着她在沙发上熟睡的样子-啊！应该是等着我就寝后才睡觉额，但是因过度的劳累而预先睡觉- 我发誓长大成人的时候，我要好好地报答母亲。我领悟到了她的一番苦心，因为打于不打也是爱。小时候的幼稚想法被成熟所取代。现在恳请母亲别为我操心，因为我已经是半个大人了；请您耐心的等待，等待着我能够孝敬您的那一天。

[这文章在半睡半醒中一个字一个字的打出。。。                                                                                                           所以，可能出了许多差错，在这恳求读者的谅解。]

Quote

An adapted Newton's third law of motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; for what you give, you get something in return, and the more you give, the more you get back in reciprocation."
-Me

Anyway, Chinese A levels is tomorrow and I'm quite worried because there's no time to prepare and I'm left with quite alot of stuff to do. Oh well one day left! It's time to enter serious mode and dao everything but the essentials and focus to the max. I thank someone who has been here for me always and encouraging me and drawing funny stuff on some printing that I asked a favor for. You jiayou too (:

A Quote

"You don't have to look forward to life, just live for the moment." - Tisa

...

Anyways, a little on my personality. I kinda got inspired by my friend. Whose blog reads like a collection of GP essays.
At the start of the year, my chemistry teacher got us to say a chemical compound that represented ourselves, or something along those lines. I forgot what I chose, but i do remember that I explained it was because I felt that my personality is faceted and there are many sides to a person (and hence got teased about having multiple personalities. Okay, there are sides of me that nobody knows about, but still, it's not really multiple personality...)
Anyways, I stand by my explanation then, because it is true that nobody is fully transparent. Some may be hard to read and others extremely obvious, but nobody will ever know everything about another person, not even between spouses and the like. And by extension, there are different sides of yourself that you would show to different people... talking about nothing in particular with some, about politics and other "higher-order thinging" with others, and keeping some secrets of your own. That is what makes us humans so interesting, because when you peel back layer after layer and perhaps chance upon the essence of what makes a person who he or her is, there is a form of gratification and joy that someone else is letting you intrude upon what is essentially an increasing level of private space.
So to link it back to myself, I think that I fit this model quite well. Sometimes I feel like a fluid, flowing smoothly from one container to another, and yet with those whom i disagree with i may become hard and unmovable- the clashing of personalities. Perhaps human relations are all about adapting to another person's views, no? There is no one-size-fits-all solution to every friend or person you encounter, because nobody's personality is exactly the same. If you're lucky, some may be much more amicable in this respect, paving the way for a closer friendship, or even closer.

...
Got slightly carried away.
I think that's about all I wanted to blog about, so bye for now.

P.S.
Happy birthday once more SL, even though your birthday has passed by about two hours already! Your birthday may be over, but it simply marks the start of a new 17 year old SL who's ready to face anything thrown her way. 向前走吧！May you continue to grow and blossom. Just don't take on that much on your plate... it's slightly worrying :P
(this must be like at least the fourth birthday greeting)

On how I have changed.

Anyway, I was having another mini hyperness outbreak kind of thing from Monday to Friday, meaning that I slept 4 hours a day on average because of things like OP, life, and.. well... what was I doing, again? -.- Anyway. So I crashed and started sleeping later and later until finally I collapsed and conked out for 11 hours till 11am this morning. I woke up feeling really guilty. This means that I can't keep up the 4-hour-a-day-sleep thing in order to (finally) start on Chinese. This is very bad. It means I'm going to screw bio O, OP and all the extra tutorials that have come my way this last week. Because Chinese is far, far more important for now, and I haven't studied, and it's in a week and about two hours from now. Oh, shucks. Makes me wonder why I'm writing this bog post at all when I really should be studying.

So, anyway, on why and how I have changed:
I think that people around you affect you, even change your personality at times.
For example: Ms Yeo from primary school gave me  "Get the picture?" even though I don't use it now;
The World Of Magic (handphone game I played way too excessively in December 2010 after O'levels) gave me a nickname for that game (cookie); "un" (it means yes in informal Japanese) and other random stuff that I rarely use now because I'll be seen as weird if I do;
SL gave me a more cheerful deposition and many smileys (thanks! (:  ).
... Yeah, that's about it.

Chorale on Saturday was very funny. Especially after lunch during Fringe practice. Fringe is an accapella group I'm in and we're doing songs to prepare for the upcoming Chorale concert.
Now, I really shouldn't say this, but it's really too funny to not blog about this. So I'm going to compromise by not mentioning names at all... :D (Sorry to you if you're reading it, person-in-question!!)
So, this miss was happily singing and since she was the only one in her section (the other soprano left earlier for OP) when she screwed up it derailed the entire group. So once when she accidentally already started wrongly from the very beginning and Jiarong gently pointed that out she blushed furiously and laughed and hid her face behind C's (the lone alto, since her comrade was sick and helping out with something else in the LT we were rpacticing in) back. And various other permutations leading to more blushing. It was very epic and very entertaining. I'm sorry for being a sadist or something, but such behaviour is generally very, very cute. Also displayed by C in my class and another girl (both having similar-sounding names). The latter is made more obvious when she rarely does so and the red can actually show through her brown skin. *cough cough*

WE INTERRUPT YOU THIS BLOGPOST TO BRING A PIECE OF EXTREMELY GRAVE NEWS.
my eldest sister's boyfriend's dad is in critical condition. Hope he pulls through tonight. Praying for him now.. >.< Death, it is inevitable... yet...  whatever his will is, I hope he has no regrets, either if he wants to live, or if he... let's move on.

• went back to see my old house. Nearly cried.
• Friend came over. Wanted to study. Didn't do much. So later must do more.
• Bye for now. Sigh.

Tempest.

Ah-ha. The practice of using a full-stop to conclude my blog post title is back with this post. At least for now. Maybe it signifies a shift back towards more emo periods. If you would look through my blog posts from the first few to the later ones (NOT including this month's. Wherein many stuff happened, to put it very simply.) you would fine that the general tone of my voice has changed and become quite a lot happier, and consequently, quite alot more cutesy and childish (is what I think).

I got the rare moment of returning home alone without spamming people on whatsapp and/or SMSes today. It gave me the chance of revisiting my inner emo. I don't know if it's welcome or not, but even though some things do change, sometimes others would have stayed comfortingly, reassuringly constant. Anyways... shall keep it short and go straight to the main story of the day. And then fall sound asleep.

So, a dear friend of mine fell sick, somewhat, in the morning.

It broke my heart somewhat,because when you see someone whom you know is generally healthy and happy-go-lucky etc fall sick, presumably due to how things have been developing (falling sick is NOT a good signal). And blah blah but i just dozed off twice already, so who cares...

The other friend, too, has been sick for quite a llong while but I'm not going to say anythin because he's just quite seriously stupid. According to my point of view. I mean, sure, good that you're dedicated to your friends, but health first, no? Everything else can happen afterew[a[waes[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
oops. So anw.... yea. Felt realyly bad expecally when i clarified a little more during individual convos. I want to do something for them.. can't go over and hug them tho (sigh) but what else? i can only smile weakly, give a bitter smile, and pray (to anyone who'd listen) that they get better. I think the discussions took everything out of their mental and physical health... while due to my nature (at times a huge curse, but perfect for forgetting things that need ot be forgotten) i was having it much much easier. kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk oh shit really skeeping. K bye bye.

I dunno what to title stuff anymore...

Very, very tired now. I don't know why either when I've slept so much like a (skinny) little pig... So, I'm going to briefly talk about stuff today and yesterday and then go sleep early like a good boy.

• Just saw my friend's blog post (Oct 12th). So it may be a little outdated... I really hope it is, because if it isn't, it means that I've been deluding myself and living in a sort of farce and thinking that all the world's nice and happy when it isn't. This just got me quite worried.
• Someone sent me a cute picture of something called "The Various Stages Of Sleep". I think the pic suits me very aptly. Now, I've just passed the "extremely hyper" stage. I don't know what stage i am in now. Maybe it's the "hyperness gone but still awake but going to keel over at any moment" stage.
• In the morning, I was in school trying to read my Time magazine but I kept falling sleep for an hour or so until Chinese started.
• The Chinese teacher gave us all a curry puff with potato filling. Thank God for that... or else I wouldn't have survived till 2pm for lunch.
• Chorale at 11.20am cos Chinese finished earlier than expected. Nai Nai wanted more practices but the teacher has his H2 Chinese class to go to and so he said he'd put it in the class pigeonholes on Monday.
• More chorale pract (accapella group Fringe after 3pm, till 6pm).
• Finished reading Time after dinner. Notables:
• #1. On Iceland: "Imagine that you have a dog, and I have a cat... You sell me the dog for one billion, and I sell you the cat for one billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets."
• #2. "Imagine you're buying a mobile phone that retails for $100. At the store, you learn the same phone sells for $75 two blocks away. Now imagine that you're buying a ski jacket for $800. At the shop, you learn that the same coat foes for $775 at a branch two blocks away. Do you walk to that branch? If you're like most people, you answered yes to the first question but no to the second"- Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not most people... I'd rather exercise, and I don't see the need to buy ski jackets in the first place, anyway! Singapore's a tropical country, for Pete's sake.

So, about yesterday. I shall focus on Bio O cos that's the bulk of yesterday. And because I told someone that I'd blog about it. It was a journey of fails that enlightened me to my sad, sad prospects in Bio O...

• Slept during the one hour theory lecture before the practical started. Oops.
• Did hand sectioning of plants (the in-charge called this being 'human microtomes'... A microtome is a spacial machine that cuts thin slices of tissue to be mounted on slides). This involves breaking a razor blade into two, and using one half to cut thin slices of plant stem tissue (non-woody) and mount them on slides after staining with dye. Apparently the in-charge told us wrongly. He said 2-3minutes, but someone stained for one minute and got far better results. My stem slices were too thick -.-
• Looked at slides of plants under a light microscope. Couldn't identify much.
• Lunch: The school cat was posing for me. The greedy little thing then went and clamoured for food from me... it put its paws on the bench and stared at me and licked its lips. So I gave it two slices of chicken... >< Grr sometimes stuff are so cute that they're irrisistible.
• Back to the bio lab. Started on microbiology...
• Didn't know how to use a micropipette (measures volumes from 1ml to 1/1000ml, depending on the type of pipette. There were 3). Got my bio teacher who sat in to teach me.
• Couldn't really calculate the dilution factor thing... didn't even know what that was! I envied the bio RA (raffles academy) people who had many practices with the micropipettes already. So I obviously ran out of time. Felt so hapless.
• Last practical was working with a mixture of bacteria (E.coli and something else... oh, no, I need to ask someone knowledgable... ><)... we were doing Gram staining.
  E.coli was supposed to be pink. So after all the staining (added on to the pink on my fingers from the sectioning earlier on) I went to check my microscope. Then voila! Got pink stuff and funny purple stuff in clumps. I couldn't make them out clearly... so I went to get the emulsion oil from the teacher. She said only for those who were ready and I felt pretty ready so I went to get the thing... It looks like an oversized bottle of eyedrops but yellow in colour. And you add a drop to the top of the cover slip on the slide and inch the platform up until the 100X objective lens just touches the oil... then you use the fine adjustment knob to adjust to get a nice clear view because the oil is supposed to act as a second lens to further magnify the image. I was walking around from table to table because people were stealing the oil emulsion bottle left and right... >< then i finally took it and put a drop of oil on my cover slip and put the bottle of oil somewhere. So... the oil didn't help at all. I couldn't see anything afterwards. Another fail: We were supposed to disinfect everything by passing the bottle of bacterial culture across an open flame. So: I couldn't turn on the flame because the knob was too hard (it was a can of LPG, ODAC-style) and a (female!) teacher had to prise it open for me and light it up; then i turned off the flame and when i needed it again the lighter REFUSED TO BUDGE. So I gave up and took my own lighter and used it to light the thing. Then I forgot to flame everything: The mouth of the vial of bacteria; the slides; the wire loop used to take out a little bit of bacterial culture to put on the slides. So my hands were full of E.coli  after the practical and when i went home. So  I didn't dare to touch any orifice of my body (mouth, nose) for the rest of the day until I was done bathing.

A Spammage of Posts

Yea, that's what it seems like recently, no? Haha >.<
Actually i have lots and lots of crap to do and i haven't gotten started and i shouldn't be doing this but oh well -.-

• Today I didn't feel too good from the start. Maybe it's something to do with stress (wait... who has stress??? I'm stress-free!!!! >.<") or something about sleeping at 5.30am and waking up at 6.30am (with a 2hr nap before that, of course) or some emotional baggage (seems quite alot better today... thankfully. I won't know what to do if it didn't.) etc... but i felt nauseous all the way, even now, even though I'm much better, especially after sleeping for about 4 hours (wasn't planned... I flipped a page of Time magazine, then conked out). So in the morn, I ate about one small bite of sausage bread and gave up. The sausage tasted very grainy and my stomach was in a tight knot (still is... somewhat...) and the bread tasted like weird fluff that wasn't edible. Recess... drank a cup of hot tea and ate half of a small chicken burger. I'm sorry to waste food, but I really couldn't take eat anymore. Then it was out class monitor's birthday and I wanted to eat a slice of cake and have fun with him but i was very afraid that I would just puke the pile of cream out later...  Then I found a black Ipod touch and returned it to the Student Affairs Centre (SAC) and someone picked it up later and gave me a thank-you SMS. I was quite delighted (: (助人为快乐之本！It's one of the zuowen topics hmm. hehe :D) Then for dinner I ate about three-quarters of my food and gave up. I think I accidentally "learnt" this from someone who didn't eat much at all the day before! Poor person... >.< forgot the breakfast menu, but that person drank a fruit shake thingy for lunch and had cup corn for dinner. *stares accusingly as said person*
• Thought a little bit about seniority while I was singing in the shower. I think the natural procession (for me at least, and perhaps those leaning towards such traditional Chinese beliefs) is for people to gain more respect the older they get (unless they really don't deserve it). So taking me as an example... I think I admired my sec 3 and 4 seniors back at VS, such as one called Ashwin Thapa. I think he's Nepalese cos for choir camp he once taught us a few words and we had to repeat them as his checkpoint. (sub-point: I think the more you give, the more you get back emotionally. So as an example, of course people who find say reading distateful won't touch books, won't read, and won't get the knowledge from reading... and so they continue to not read books. Whereas those who read books know about the benefits of doing so and will continue to do so, and the more they read, the more insights are gained. It's like a positive feedback process.) SO anw. Yea... the older people get, the more natural it is for people to look up to them, due to accumulated life experiences, etc, and simply from being older. I think that's why my juniors kind of deferred to me a little when I was in sec 4, even though I don't feel as though I've done anything to deserve that respect. So now that I'm in JC, I look up to my seniors who are one year older than me... yet somehow they seem to exude that air of maturity that I can only hope to have one day. And so perhaps we look up to older people simply because they are older, and older people get more smug as they grow yet older, simply because the number of people who are still alive and senior to them dwindles. So the young respect the old, the old respect the famous greats of ancient times...
• I've been going around showing off my newly pimped (stuff added) iPhone. So as seen below, The button is now protruding. It feels kinda weird. And to those who say it seems sort of girlish... It's cos it's a birthday present (one of two parts) of iphone button things from a female friend (known her since primary school). I was so happy I immediately begun using the sticker, heh. Oh, well... Girlish or not, I have to put up with this button until I get bored of it/ rip it out when it's old and spoilt. And then: I have three more to use! hahahah  :P

• Everyone seems to be crashing on on Steve Job's death. I initially felt that Apple was pretty much moot about ten years back and Microsoft was The Thing. But now, I view both companies rather equally, becaue they're both successful in their own ways; as Time puts it, Apple is absolute, dictatorial, exculsive, while Microsoft shares its software with many other companies. So anyway, back to Jobs: I thank him for creating an easy-to-use iPhone (really user friendly, but I still don't find it doin anything much. But there's simply no better phone in the market to turn to). While everyone's praising Apple and Jobs now, perhaps the flipside of the comany and the man that was behind it has been largely glossed over. So I don't know that much too, but if you interpret the exclusivity of Apple's products in a different light, you find that apart from being attentive to your needs, they also tend to inhibit experimentation and the adding on of new things to them. So Jobs instead of catering to the needs of the consumers actually created a need for them, and they (we, whatever) have embraced it. Anyway, he really did revolutionise our everyday world (however much I don't see the need for an Ipad or Macbook, even though I would like something like that that runs on Windows, please. I'm not a Windows fan but I tend to resist change and so refuse to adapt to Mac OS.), so this is why he has tributes being paid to him and all. Even critics don't deny greatness when it has to be duly accorded.
• You know the the pic showing Job's silhouette in the bite of the Apple logo that's been spreading around like wildfire and created (not the first person, though) by some Taiwan poly student? I'm pretty blind, so if there's any stray bit of hair at the top of Jobs's head I can't tell whether it exists or not, so I essentially see a bald head. So you now what's the first name that pops into my mind even though bespectacled bald figures asccociated with Apple are probably Steve Jobs (plural? haha).....                  Mahatma Ghandi.                                                               .... So yeah, a peace-loving figure is tilting his head and giving a solemn look to Apple. The possible interpretations are endless. Heh.
• Anyway... Steve Jobs really looked quite different in the different phases of his life, from a handsome twentysomething year old dude to a slightly filled out 30-40 plus and then to white balding hair and growing beard and then growing more bald with his frame becoming skinnier due to his panceatic cancer. Oh, why must the greats always die early...