School - The First Week

I have gone through school so many times that the first week seems all so normal after all. I had my first lab, had new lab partners, new books, new lecturers and new modules. The modules this semester look so daunting. I hope I'll do OK in all of them.

Projects are back again, and after this fairly relaxed week, back we go again into that mad cramming, and mugging and trying to catch up with work. Tirza has had a hectic week, and seeing how disciplined she is in working and all, makes me feel that Chem Engin might not be so bad after all.

I'm having another new set of group members for my projects this coming semester - different from the previous ones. I think after these years I'm going to have had lots of experience learning how to work with different people, some highly motivated, while others need to be motivated. Thank God for providing me with group members again this time.

Hall activities are starting to come alive now, although officially nothing is finalized, and the JCRC aren't even elected. I can just feel that Raffles Hall is all boosted up with aspirations and spirit, and part of me really wants to contribute to all that. But looking back at my past not-so-good results (putting it mildly) and the 22 MC of modules to study this semester, I highly doubt that I would be one of the high spirited Rafflesians contributing to hall this year, despite the high CCA points I had last year.

There are always people to carry on the baton in hall, and it looks like the batch of high-spirited year 1's last year (now Year 2), are actively taking up various leadership positions and look well prepared to handle them. I hope this will be a good year for hall, even if it might not be for me, in terms of CCA points. Hopefully I would be able to contribute more to hall than I plan to, this academic year.

There will be this horrible procedure of the whole hall shifting their rooms somewhere in September, but then there's a new prospect of newly renovated rooms and toilets. New facilities! :) I hope it would be really worth it. I looked into the designs of the new rooms and found them quite similar to the old ones in many respects. Our current doors are a bit battered and old, but somehow they feel more homely than the newer ones, and are certainly much stronger too. And I prefer the old roofs to the new ones!

I finally fished my diary out of all my boxes some time ago and it was pure bliss being able to write into it again. I wonder if in this busy semester I might be forced to cut down blogging and fall back to diary writing alone instead. Hmm. But I'm sure I'll be around to blog still, even though the frequency may be much lesser :)

如果 If

I like this song! It is very meaningful :) For those who can't understand Chinese here are the lyrics in English. (Chinese lyrics are in the MV itself.)

If my existence is just like a shooting star in the night sky
Why do I dream of eternity
If my being here is just an accidental chance
Why do I long to be loved

Who can hear me, hear me,
Hear the crying deep in my heart
Who can tell me, tell me,
Where I can find true love.

If my existence is just like a shooting star in the night sky
Why do I dream of eternity
If my being here is just an accidental chance
Why do I long to be loved

Who can hear me, hear me,
Hear the crying deep in my heart
Who can tell me, tell me,
Where I can find true love
Please tell me.

If your existence is just like a shooting star in the night sky
I won't be waiting patiently for you
If your being here is just an accidental chance
I won't use my life to exchange for that.

Do you understand me, understand me,
My heart is bleeding because of thinking of you
Do you know me, know me,
My love towards you will never change.

Who can hear me (understand me), hear me (understand me),
The crying in my heart (my heart is bleeding for you),
Who can tell me (know me), who can tell me (know me),
Where can I find true love (my love towards you will never change)

If my life is not a temporary shooting star...

Hol Storage, Rag Day and Start of School

School is starting on Tuesday (Monday is a National Day public holiday), and after making a rough timetable for the week, I realize that I already have tonnes of work to do. This is going to be the toughest semester yet. I hope I'm able to survive it!

My previous week was mainly occupied by holiday storage. Holidays are over and people are coming in and out to collect their luggage from storage rooms. I have to open the door and refund them their deposits. Although I was only on duty for four consecutive days in the week, I was quite sick of doing it at the end of it all. People called every hour of the day, waking me up every morning, and calling whenever I was eating, napping, talking, even when I was in the toilet! There was never a moment of peace. I walked from my room to the storage rooms about 30 times a day.

Still, this business is a very good source of income for hall. (I don't get paid for doing this, just earning CCA points to stay on next year). Look at the little space before you:


You see that rectangular area enclosed by the four crosses? That's one slot unit, which is as big as half a toilet cubicle. And believe me, that unit can hold a lot of things! If you're experienced and know how to pile up your luggage properly, it can hold up your whole room, or even too, if your things aren't a lot.

You can pile as high as you want. The sky, no wait, the ceiling is the limit.

We charge $8 per week for each slot. The price has gone up this year but if you think it's too expensive, I guess you must take into account three things.

1. The convenience of being able to store your things on campus.

2. The service - IC's to open the doors for you throughout the day, and keeping everything nice and locked up. But we don't help them to move things in and out. That would be too much.

3. We're a monopoly. No matter what price we set, there will always be a demand. And we do want to earn enough to cover our orientation costs ;)

Anyway, I never store my own things in those rooms. Haha.

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Rag Day came and went. I love our float and shirts! Azi designed the rag day shirts and they were cute. Junda thought it was some sort of environmental society shirt though, because it was green in colour and there was the slogan 'Go Green!'. Green is our hall colour you see.

The float was quite well cladded this year. I guess it's because the bulk of work is done by the floaters themselves since we don't have incoming freshmen. We were also the hall with the smallest number of supporters. But I'm glad our cheers were loud enough to be heard. And many alumni came back to support us too. :)


And surprisingly, this is the year we've broken the curse of not winning anything for years! We won the shield for lowest cost float! I think part of the credit should go to OMC for sourcing materials sucessfully, hehe. But to be fair, Float didn't give us too much work to do this year, in fact they were very innovative and found a lot of things themselves. So all in all, it's Float's credit for resourcefulness and good planning in material usage.

I think our cheering was more wholehearted this year even though our number was halved. I guess when times are good, all we do is complain about hall, but when we know we have to be united, we are a united bunch.

Hopefully, the winning of a rag day shield is just the start of a tide of change to flood into Raffles Hall.

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I visited my granduncle's house on Saturday night. My aunt flew back from America, so we had dinner with her family. The triplets are so interesting! One of them ate twice the amount of dinner that I did. And then we watched transformers, and the kids kept asking me for the time because it was already 9 something and their bedtime was at 8!

Don't think this will ever happen in Mable's case, whatever age she's at. Ahahaha.

Wai Pheng's Birthday

Yesterday was Wai Pheng's birthday. We planned a birthday surprise for her, but it didn't go exactly as predicted. Still the effect was good!

Abigail came to have dinner with us Rafflesians two weeks ago, and suggested a birthday surprise for Wai Pheng. We bought and made her presents! Then I was supposed to ask her out for lunch/dinner and the others would surprise her by suddenly coming out.

Just the day before yesterday there was change of plan. Abigail wanted to contact her boyfriend, Mark, to ask her out instead - then we'll suddenly appear out of nowhere. But it turned out that her boyfriend would be late from work, so the plan reverted to me asking her out. Then I had to tell Tirza who just came back to Singapore from home, and Jiun Ming of our last minute changes.

We asked Wai Pheng to meet Tirza and I at Coffee Bean, where the dinner was supposed to be. She didn't know where that was so we set out meeting place to be at Cold Storage instead. Jon and Abigail then suddenly decided to switch to somewhere else because all of us haven't had dinner, and it didn't do to have dinner at coffee bean. I was supposed to ask her to a certain Thai restaurant and Jon would direct me to it.

Tirza and I shopped in Cold Storage while waiting. There were no directions coming!! And Wai Pheng had already arrived.

"She's here" I texted Jon, after telling Wai Pheng we'd have dinner elsewhere.

"Ok... Coffee Bean then." Was the reply.

" I told her we'll be having dinner somewhere else!" texted me. Since I heard him mention some Thai place earlier, I had suggested Thai food to Wai Pheng, who knew where Thai Express was and was heading towards it.

" OK... Pho Hoa, 2 shops after coffee bean," came Jon's reply. Pho Hoa was a Vietnamese restaurant next to Thai Express. By the time I got this message, we were at Thai Express looking at the prices.

I felt instantly that Jon and I had zero chemistry.

I sighed inwardly, and glanced at Pho Hoa wondering how to direct Wai Pheng over there next. I suggested we go over to Pho Hoa to compare prices.

" OK, so we wait at Pho Hoa," texted Jon.

Pho Hoa was more expensive than Thai Express. Wai Pheng didn't want me and Tirza to spend so much money so she went into Thai Express instead. Giving up, I texted Jon and told him to come to Thai Express. Which they did! And we moved to a four seat table to a six seat one, because JM was coming later.

Abigail asked Wai Pheng to close her eyes and presented a 'cake' with candles in the shape of a heart.

This is what the 'cake' looks like with the melted wax in the middle.

And when it's lighted it looks like that!

The Thai curry was delicious! Pity we didn't take a picture of that. I want more but we can't eat this often as it is expensive.


We did, however, take a picture of ourselves. Thanks to the mirror everybody was in the picture. And Mark turned up later to join in the celebration too. Though we were quite tongue-tied in front of him, and him more so. =p

After having dinner, we got Wai Pheng a cake from Coffee Bean too.

It was yummy-licious! :D


After the cake cutting and cake-eating ceremonies, we headed for home. Simon happened to be in NUS when we were going to the bus stop, so he detoured to Holland V to fetch us back :)

Yay! Was so happy Wai Pheng enjoyed her birthday :) Thanks Campus for celebrating my birthday last Sunday too! I love the choc and green tea cake!