F.G.R.S.

Supplementary

2008-07-14T00:04:00.002+08:00

Does anyone out there still visit? If you're reading this, I guess so. Anyway, this is my latest work. The official blog of the Taylor's University College:

Click to visit.

I actually update this blog, but only because it's my job to.

Cheer up though, loyal (hopefully) readers. By the end of this week I promise to upload a few pretty videos from my latest competition. It was pretty epic.

Portfoliage

2008-05-18T23:45:00.001+08:00

Check. One, two, three.

My cbox is filled with spam. I hate it.

Here we go again.

Did you see? I created a word. I am very proud of this word.

It is a composite.

port·fo·li·o [noun]
The materials collected in a portable case, especially when representative of a person's work: a photographer's portfolio; an artist's portfolio of drawings.

fo·li·age [noun]
Plant leaves, especially tree leaves, considered as a group.

As the title suggests, this post will be dedicated to the various design projects I have assembled since the year began. I don't think I've posted any other artwork this year, have I?

Well, can't really remember but it doesn't matter anyway.

Exhibit A is my Psychology homework.

Why am I posting my homework on my blog? Because it looks good, and I like it.

I hope you're all taking notes.

On the actual presentations, Samaritanism and Conservation were two really, really easy chapters. A small part of me wishes I could have done one of the more challenging topics though - the physiological studies come to mind here - but on the whole I'm glad I got them over with early in the year.

I did this piece with Guan Xiong back in February: one of his projects for the architecture foundation. I have to admit I envy him. He's getting graded for the very things I do for kicks. But I don't think I want to be an architect... Not until I've thought about it some more anyway.

So it's a sniper on a cloud with hands for feet, ripping a pair of wings off the back of an angel with towers as legs, aiming a rifle at a nun crying bloody tears into a rippling pool above a habit that's also a graveyard, a bridge sticking out of her head and a finger missing from her hands...

Obviously a war montage.

The soldier represents, well, a soldier. He isn't a sinister character, just an ordinary man driven to atrocities by a higher authority.

The higher authority is represented by the fist in the clouds above the soldier - meaning not mere military might but also corporate greed - it is symbolic of the men in power, the real masterminds behind the war, and their motivations.

The latter can be seen clearly in the golden bridges arcing towards the fist: wealth, territory and ever self-perpetuating power.

The weeping nun represents peace under threat. The blood in her tears is the suffering of the millions the war has killed or displaced. The ripples symbolize the far-reaching effects of the war - no one anywhere is truly safe while it continues.

Her hands are raised in a pleading position, but even as she prays we see she has lost a finger in a most brutal fashion - another symbol of painful and crippling loss. The near-endless horizon of graves serves as a sombre reminder as to the heavy cost of armed conflict, a tale eternally retold in the pages of human history.

The severed bridge between her and the soldier is representative of the breakdown in communication that preceded the war. A figure dangles precariously off the edge of the bridge, the everyman caught in between opposing forces and imperiled as a result.

The bloody-winged angel represents the loss of freedom brought about by the war, and the death of dreams unfulfilled when the lives of the next generation are prematurely extinguished.

The city set against the blood red sky suggests that no matter how vast our metropolii (the dictionary gives "metropolises" but this feels right to me) and how tall our skyscrapers, a war is all it takes to turn our smug civilization on its head and bring the walls of false security crashing down around us.

And finally, the butterfly perched on the moon adds a theme of redemption to this otherwise grim portrayal - even in the darkest night, hope presents itself to those who look for it.

Did you find that a tad pretentious? Maybe.

Did I? Yes.

But I just had to explain it to you.

5W 2007 class page. This is how it would have looked - should have looked if they'd only printed them right. I swear putting this one together was the biggest pain - two pages just isn't enough, and the spread looks cluttered as a result.

The original 5C 2007 class page. The one currently within the pages of the yearbook was edited for content after the school objected. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with Delicia being Delicia.

Never used. After all the trouble me and Jason went through to come up with suitably irreverent latin for each of the monarchy, someone had to go and lose all the certificates on prom night.

The poster for the freshly-minted student council's April '08 CAL Nite.

And the accompanying ticket. I like this one.

The ticket for the CAL '08 Grad Ball.

Which was later shrunk to cut costs. Did I mention I somehow got a fifty dollar discount on printing? Some people refuse to believe I didn't pick up a couple of STDs in the process.

I'm not too happy with either design, by the way. I just don't like designing stuff for proms. It's so stiffy and formal and I can't bring myself to think out of the box.

Besides, once is enough.

Controversy. This poster was never published because the office deemed it too provocative. I still think it's pretty cool though.

Scrachess tournament. I am not a part of this club. But I am very happy with the design.

For the TCLink newsletter. Look it's Hitler!

And again. Personally I prefer this one, but it could just be all the bottles at the top.

Maybe next time I'll put up a proper post? This was never meant to be such anyway.

Public Service

2008-04-15T21:00:00.015+08:00

So I promised updates and I lied.

Blame MSN. Eiffel towers and cardinal sins.

Well I thought I would blog about my party (I didn't) but this is just more compelling. Tragedy is always more compelling.

This is today's tragedy.

What is it? It's our bloody yearbook.

Kind of late, isn't it? Already April, and now they decide to drop it. Well all the better. If they came up to us and handed us this while we were still in school, I would have killed them.

Of course, although I say "they" I'm not sure who exactly to blame for this mess... yet.

Well, let's start from the top.

Okay personally, I kinda like the way this page looks. I mean, if you stand really far back and sort of squint a little, it almost looks like a celebrity feature in a magazine.

Really far back.

Peako had a lot to say about this particular page though (along with the rest of the magazine). Doesn't it say loads about my writing style when I find out about this thing at seven, go online at eight and still not have a post up by midnight?

It's midnight now.

Even Peako finished his post. And I only told him about it at eleven or so.

Hell Hath No Fury Like The Class Of 2007.

His rant today is of course, perfectly justified.

You know how they say that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters forever would eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare?

Well I'm guessing the school tried a similar experiment here. Only using monkeys with Photoshop. Or maybe Microsoft Word. It sure looks more like the latter. I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to produce here.

Something half decent, maybe?

Looks like we're going to need more monkeys.

Hands up those of you who can actually make out the words "Clubs and Societies" in the above picture. It looks like one of those colorblind tests you'd expect to find at a hospital. I mean, white on white?

Oh and by the way, this is just one amongst the many title pages in the book. And they all look like they belong on the wall of a physician's waiting room. I remember how we used to have simple titles, with just a simple drawing or two. What happened to that? I miss them already.

Why in the name of good taste would you ever stretch a photograph you're planning to print? Have you ever seen them do it in TIME? Playboy maybe? No?

Then WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU DO IT?

She's short, we get it already. You don't have to make it worse. You stretched like half the pictures in here and didn't even have the decency to keep the proportions straight. And I guess none of you have ever heard of dots-per-inch either. What were you using? A camera phone?

And I guess you hate words. Why do you hate words? One of my siblings mentioned that the official explanation given for the almost complete castration of text from the yearbook was because "no one reads it anyway".

I'm sorry. Did I hear that right? No one reads it anyway so no more words? No more poems, no more stories and no more reports? Because no one reads it anyway? What planet are you from?

Get your head out of your ass and pay attention.

I usually don't make that big a deal about it when you mess up. Well, there was the concert. But that was just one time. But you don't just do something like this to our yearbook and expect to get away with it. This isn't some bi-weekly rag no one cares about that we're talking about here.

The school prints these once a year. But for students... we get the chance to be seniors once in a lifetime. And we were supposed to have the chance to design this ourselves. To properly immortalize the time of our lives within these pages.

You can't imagine what that might feel like? We were looking for something we could hold on to for the rest of our lives. We were hoping to be able to flip through these pages at sixty and feel the memories come rushing back.

How was this supposed to help?

You somehow managed to screw up what little text you did see fit to include. So how did you do it? Did you play spin-the-bottle with colors and themes? Maybe Russian Roulette would have been a better choice. I hear it's a lot more fun fully loaded.

Oh and Esmonde looks like a pedophile. Bet he really appreciates that.

You wanna know what i hate most? Guess. It's not that hard. I'll even throw you a couple of clues.

Number one. It's something we worked on for almost two entire years.

Number two. It's something you asked for, and received, complete documentation on. I should know. The folder for the report was thicker than your sorry excuse of a yearbook.

I can't believe we only got one page. I didn't actually spot it the first time I flipped through. I blinked. Same with the Leo, same with the Prefects. Don't we deserve more?

For as long as I can remember, if you were a board member in a club, you'd get your name in the yearbook. Which is the way it should be. How did we manage to end up the first year ever without the ghost of a mention as to who the President of the club even was?

No roll call for the committee.

Not even a picture of the club and its members.

You made us look like we had one fucking project. What's your excuse? Didn't you have enough pictures? We sent you tons. And with half the Editorial Board in the fucking club, forgive me if I fail to see why you weren't motivated enough to maybe work a little harder on your own club's page.

You couldn't even get the color of the badge right?

At least Leo were better represented in the photographs. At least you can see the club and the board.

Don't we deserve it at all? We raised thirty thousand dollars this year. I guess no one's ever going to know about that now. No one's ever going to remember the Famine, or I.U. Day, or the World Cup, or any other project we've ever done.

Why us?

You never did this to any of our seniors. And we gave you the results you wanted. We were perfect and they'll be chasing our record forever.

You even screwed up the class pages we spent weeks agonizing over. Maybe the new orientation doesn't allow for more a traditional view of the pages. It doesn't mean you have to stick them so you have to turn the fucking page to see the other half of your class!

We wanted this to be good. Really we did.

If you needed help, why the hell didn't you ask for it? In the first place, why didn't you finish the yearbook last year, like a normal institution? Then maybe we could have worked on it instead. And then if it didn't turn out the way we liked we would have no one else to blame but ourselves.
But you had to go and hand it to... who? People who I'm guessing don't even really care what happens to the yearbook at the end of the day. It isn't their year. Why should they?

You could have just let us do it. We wanted to do it.

And now this is what we get to live with.

I guess if the yearbook was a joke, this would be the punch. The page devoted to chapel service features myself and Liwen (the Buddhists) prominently, while the actual Christians feature in little boxes near the margins of the page.

I guess that's ironic.

But I'm not laughing.

Not Quite An Update

2008-04-03T00:52:00.004+08:00

Like the title suggests. I know it's been a while, but patience. My holidays start next week. Then you will all wish I'd stayed inactive.

Hah. Anyway, these are important matters.

AUDITIONS FOR PERFORMANCES FOR THE CAL GRAD BALL 2008

Details are as such :

It will be held between the 21st of April to the 25th of April 2008

Please tell ALL your friends about it. the performers are not restricted to merely Taylors students, but people from OUTSIDE of Taylors as well! :)
Feel free to inform anyone and everyone about our auditions!

We also welcome all kinds of performances, not just the usual dance or band performances! so feel free to contact us regarding any talents / performances (i.e. clogging, beatboxing, miming whatsoever! )

DO remind them to email us at www.junian@gmail.com (mind you the www. is part of the email ) or contact Jun Ian at 0169554388 to set up a slot !! :)

Notice how it's MY name attached to the advertisement? Yeah, you got that right.

That's because this is MY department! Important stuff.

Help me push this one to all your friends and sundry. Performing in front of seven hundred graduating students is a great way to get exposure.

Oh and my birthday was yesterday. I'm having a (last-minute) party on Friday. Cheers to my quickest post ever!

Just The First Of Many

2008-03-11T20:14:00.011+08:00

And... it rolls to life again.

It's been almost a full month since I last posted. The sheer content of life in the last twenty days makes me feel like writing the entire blog in point form. Of course, doing so would serve virtually no purpose besides illustrating a level of sloth fast approaching sin.

Does the thesauraphilia get annoying sometimes?

I swear. You haven't seen anything yet.

I almost fell asleep driving to college this morning. Potentially fatal as though this might have been, I guess it really shouldn't come as a surprise. My grandmother's birthday party last night forced me to stay up until past two in the morning writing my four page-Psychology essays. Classes today were from eight to three, with a one hour break at twelve. I fell asleep sitting up during Maths, Chemistry and Biology. From three to four thirty I had a student council subcommittee meeting, and after that I dropped in to see the dance club at the ECA studio before for all of five minutes before heading home. I have to design a poster for a paintball tournament next week, consider doing a sample piece for the HELP Charity Auction on Friday, and get in touch with the Sheraton Imperial - a possible venue for the CAL '07 Prom in June. There's an e-mail in my inbox from the Taylors AIESEC about a meeting in the business school tomorrow... and I don't even plan to be in college then because our SPM results are due that morning. I'll have to keep checking my mail, too - Jason said he'd get back to us on the proposal for the Inter-College Dance Competition in April by the end of the week. Brian hasn't called me back to confirm practice tonight, but I don't think we have any other choice because our performance at INTI is this Friday (the same day as my Maths test) and we're running out of time. I have to finish my LAN video project by Monday, along with the slides for my Psychology presentation next Wednesday. Not to mention my regular homework.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my head of department at the Newsletter Club doesn't suddenly decide to contact me about next month's issue... despite the fact that he's long overdue.

I think... life probably doesn't get much better than this.

Some highlights of the past few weeks.

Alex's birthday party at Secret Recipe. Someone thought it'd be a good idea to send him diabetes in a box. I mean. Fifteen sticks of Mentos should be enough to kill a horse.

Somehow, neither I nor anyone else really took any pictures of people. The real star of the afternoon was this marvel of modern architecture anyway.

This is Alex. While there's nothing really exceptional about the above picture, I thought it would only be proper to include a snap of the birthday boy.

Free coffee day at Starbucks. Underestimating its potency, I added roughly four packets of white sugar and a further three packets of brown to my espresso. The resulting mixture took six hours to down. Refusing to waste even a single drop, I dutifully carried the cup to all my classes and even lunch. There's probably a lesson to be learned here.

The bomb scare at INTI. For one afternoon in late February, our adjacent college was literally the bomb.

The crowd gathered outside INTI was a perfect demonstration of the moths-to-a-flame cliche - human beings drawn to the scene of a tragedy, a cocktail of curiosity and anticipation overpowering the sense of self-preservation supposedly inherent in all higher beings. Darwin would have been appalled.

Though I must admit, an explosion would have been spectacular.

Our performance at the Taylor's SAM Fiesta last Thursday night was set against a backdrop of high drama, nerves and desperation. Okay, maybe there wasn't that much drama. But this is how it went down. When we first joined the Dance Club in late February, our president Jason mentioned a request by the SAM student council for a performance or two by the club's members at the event.

Auditions, he said, would be held soon.

And so we waited for these, but nothing came. By the weekend before the event, we'd pretty much given up on the possibility.

Then fate came knocking.

On the fourth of March - two days before the SAM Fiesta - we met in the ECA dance studio. Myself, Yee Mun, Shevie, Hsien Ming, Hui Ning, Melissa, Yuh Miin, Ivan, Huong Ket, Eric and Ching Yu. We were for the most part complete strangers to each other, in the studio that day for our own reasons. But when Ms Yeap came in to tell us the SAM Fiesta didn't have any performing crew, and asked us if we could please do something that night, although it was on extremely short notice, for who ever heard of a dance night without a dance performance? - none of it mattered.

That night, I called Ellen and Hau, who brought in Tze Shen, completing the crew.

For practice space, we put the old staff lounge next to the cafeteria to good use, even bringing in a couple of laptops and speakers. We had only two days, but we were determined.

And the rest, they say, is history (thanks to Shevie for the screens).

The video is shaky and the lighting awful, but you can get a rough idea of what we were doing on stage that night. Not enough and all too much at the same time. Well, under the circumstances...

The rest of the night was pretty awesome too. The dance floor at the SAM Fiesta, once it got warmed up, was one of the best I've ever experienced. The crowd danced wildly and sang along to hits like Me Love and Low. There was even a rapper, and the photographer could beatbox. All and any incidents of shuffling were brief and isolated.

Now that's how you throw a party.

Not all of us are in this picture, but... oh well.

Here's to the first of many.

Literature Extraordinaire

2008-02-17T16:41:00.010+08:00

New artwork. They do seem to be coming rather fast all of a sudden, don't they?

As usual, you may click to embiggen.

For the uneducated - that is to say, everyone out there who isn't Peako, Dexter or Pia - this is Mr Wong, my form five English Literature teacher. Again, most of you probably won't get what the whole thing is about, but I'm confident the pretty colors will assuage any grievances that may arise as a result of this confusion. In case you haven't noticed, it was done in a new coloring style. Colors!

Just a couple of pictures to unload here.

Daniel's match with Tze Chiang's brother on Saturday night was the stuff of legend (if you consider comedy to be legend).

On Wednesday, a lion came to college.

Thursday was Valentine's day. A box of cakes came for Cassie.

Overall, the second week of February was a good one but childish, disjointed sentences aside, I don't really have much to say today.

Dexter's party on Friday was teh sex. I met old friends I never knew I had.

Jun Ian: Wait, what do you mean the power's out? When did that happen?
Angeline: While you were in the pool.
Jun Ian: What? How long were we in there?
Eliot: Long enough! The Berlin Wall's back up!

And... well, I guess that's about it. I have to start taking my camera more places. Or maybe my brain.

Yours.

The Learning Seasons, Part Four

2008-02-12T21:06:00.000+08:00

Pandamonium presents our word of the day!

sex burger [seks-BUR-ger] noun

HELP College slang, meaning a well-crafted answer to an English Literature question. Also used as a nickname for a certain Jason C.

Miss Tan: Okay class, good literature answers turn me on! Now Jason, why don't you try this question?
Jason: *elaborate answer*
Miss Tan: Oh, Jason. That's a sex burger.

And now, keep an eye out for horsemen... The comic has actually been actually updated.

Click to embiggen.

Thank you, friends and strangers alike for your continued support. I promise the next one won't take nearly half as long.

Here's one you might have heard before...

Three old friends meet on a dance floor.

Nick: So what are you guys doing here?
Yow Hwui: Swimming.

Captain obvious to the rescue!

And on an unrelated note.

Support Liverpool. We have the best fans.

You just have to believe.

The Model

2008-02-07T01:06:00.000+08:00

I have a friend who is going to be a L'Oreal model.

He so is.

He just needs your help a little.

Click here to vote for Lim Ben Kane!

Spread the word alright?

What goes around comes around, and who knows, all the good karma you generate might one day help you achieve something YOU want!

Don't be lame. Vote Ben Kane.

Monday

2008-02-06T19:10:00.000+08:00

Oh hello there. It's been a while hasn't it? Are you sure you even remember how to do this?

Well, I guess you're right. But let's start slow.

Backwards? I suppose that's one way to do it.

I had a late supper(?) Monday night with my cousins. Sketchy memory ensures a complete failure to recall the name of the place, but we played a variant of pass-the-hot-potato. Only the potato in question was not the titular potato but instead a variety of pabulum, all of which had to be consumed (within seconds!) by each member of the party as its orbit crossed his atmospheric pull.

A basic knowledge of Indian cuisine is required to fully appreciate the comedy in the following exchange.

Joolee: Are we going to order now? So what kind of naans are there?
Jun Ian: Oh uhm, Catholic...
Yee Wei: Protestant...

So what's the difference between a round indian flatbread and a woman who lives in a monastery?

Definitely not the proNUNciation!

I do apologize for that awful bit of humor. As I mentioned to Caitlin - just seconds after I wrote it - polite society should adopt a system that allows bad jokes to be thrown off a bridge into a river or left in the wilderness to die just as the Spartans do to weak or unwanted offspring.

Earlier that afternoon, I paid a visit to Sri KDU. Remember, we are traveling backwards chronologically.

Commit this to memory: the security team at KDU can be a bitch.

The school's impregnable front entrance.

In a way, it was kinda my fault. When the guard asked for my IC, I thoughtlessly flipped it onto the desk in front of him. I guess his parents made him sit in the corner a whole lot as a kid, since he got really pissed off at my (unintentional) dismissive gesture. He started yelling at me about manners and threw my IC back at me, then forbade me to enter the school and told me to wait outside until my other friends were done visiting.

Wow, really? I didn't know security guards could do that. Anyway, there were about five or six guards hanging around the front desk at the time, so I wasn't going to argue.

Now, I wish I could show you where exactly the back entrance is on this map, but I'm not really familiar with the school's aerial layout. Here's a hint though: it's near the back.

After the episode with the guard, I pretty much had my mind set on getting into the school, so I strolled around the exterior a bit and came across this student waiting in the parking lot.

Jun Ian: So say I wanted to get into your school, without having to go past the guards in the front... how would I go about doing that?
Student: Oh... I don't know. I think there's another entrance around the side but it could be locked.

Well, following his directions I found the side entrance locked, but as I walked a little more I discovered the school's built really funny. Five or six guys hanging around guarding the front, and they leave the kitchen service entrance wide open.

Once inside, I ran into the guys I'd come with, who were all pretty surprised to see me. About half an hour was then spent pretending to be an alumnus of the school as the gang went around pressing their faces against classroom windows and making cryptic hand gestures to teachers.

Are you by any chance wondering how I got out of KDU?

I didn't go through the kitchens.

I was actually considering walking out the front gate just to see the look on the guard's face, but that probably would have gotten my new friends into trouble. You know.

So I came across this window.

Hey, it's not every day you piss off a security guard, sneak into a private school and jump out a window on the first floor.

All shenanigans aside, I wasn't supposed to be at KDU at all that day.

The reason for my unexpected detour would lie with the owners of this delightful vehicle, a HELP duo by the names of Kevin and Matt, both formerly of Sri KDU.

I had gotten into their car at HELP - already filled to capacity with five passengers in the backseat - with the understanding that I would be ferried to 1 Utama, where I was expected for lunch. As you already know, they had other ideas.

Interestingly, Matt already knew a few things about me, even before I'd ever gotten into his car.

Matt: OH MY GOD! You're the same Jun Ian [x] has a [x] [x] on!

Sorry guys, privacy reasons. If you really wanna know go ahead and ask me.

Kevin and Matt could best be described as accident pros - hardly a stretch of road went by without a sudden jerk of the wheel, the smell of burning rubber or a cheerful recollection of some previous mishap at the location.

The Saga was to be replaced the next day, and it celebrated its impending retirement by running a flat tyre just outside the college.

So I did end up learning a couple of tricks that day. Not how to jack off a car, but rather how to jack it up.

The difference is subtle but crucial.

I found three pairs of safety glasses in the trunk, next to a set of starter cables. Sometimes in life, there are questions we just don't need the answers to.

However, I had loads of fun riding with Matt and Kevin. At one memorable red light, Tze Chiang pulled up right next to us, and Kevin and Alex wound down their respective windows to play a game of catch with a scrunched up timetable between the two cars.

Moving earlier on into the morning, I managed to taste a sample of life in HELP when Dexter and Alex led me to a restaurant in a double-storey bungalow near the Wisma building. If you can't tell from the name alone that Jarrod & Rawlins isn't the type of eatery one might normally find college students, the fare we consumed (gourmet sausages and white wine) should be a dead giveaway as to the type of extravagant lifestyles Dexter and Jason have been leading since the semester began in January.

Over lunch we discussed high school and college life, the meanings of various sexual slang (pearl necklaces and Soulja Boy's hit single, anyone?) and probably the most disturbing of all, the existence of a female Ming Yi.

Assume Fetal Position

2008-01-26T00:51:00.000+08:00

Updates on the new year begin soon. Hide your children.

Of course, the definition of 'soon' here is entirely relative.

Just so you know, I plan to finish the Learning Seasons, even if none of you really care what happens to our young heroes.

It's my blog.

Check out my Christmas card while you wait. I'm serious about this one. It's got more resolutions than a New Year's Eve countdown at Times Square.

If you've never clicked an image on the internet before, this one would be a good place to start.

College rocks, by the way. It's hell challenging and at the same time off-the-wall fun.

From Prom

2007-12-14T12:21:00.000+08:00

The video of our dance that night, filmed by the inimitable Jay-son. Yes, fries with that would be much appreciated. Hmmm?

Anyway, you can tell from the video we didn't get to practice that much... a lot of things didn't happen as planned - we never thought that we'd actually be performing on the dance floor - but overall being out there dancing in front of all our friends felt really good, something the video (as always) falls short of conveying.

Yes, there was an abundance of... manwhoring. But that's what you like, isn't it? That's right, I'm looking at you.

The prom slideshow. Looks terrible in low quality. Pictures provided by Peako, Mahadi, Sha, Michelle, Rachel, Sanjay, Suat, Yee Eng, Farrah and... Facebook.

Plenty of good things that never made it in though. Time constraints, you know. I'd already lost one whole night of sleep to it.

More... later?

And It Never Quits

2007-12-01T23:52:00.000+08:00

Yeah, my exams are over.

I think I did pretty well, thanks for asking.

See, all the maths, science and english papers were jokes so even though I didn't really study, if I don't get an A1 I'll be blaming the marker. Yeah it was that easy.

But no, I don't think I'll be blogging too much this month cause I'm really, really busy. For the first time in my life I have an event calendar. Maybe I'll photograph that for you guys later.

Well I don't care if you're not interested.

By the way, there is spam in my sexbox.

But I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: these guys are wasting their time. An inactive blog doesn't get too many visitors, so who do you think your advertising's gonna reach?

Also, being out of school's not as bad as I'd thought.

And to those of you unfortunate enough to be left behind in Wesley...

Suckers!

Probably blog some next year. But who knows? Anything might happen, so if you're really interested you can check back whenever... once a week should be fine.

The Intermission

2007-10-30T00:18:00.000+08:00

Some of the people in this picture are acting up.

Today is that last day of school.

Not technically true, since we're all coming back next Friday, and school doesn't even end til the sixteenth, so we've got those five days. But they dropped this bombshell on us so suddenly it feels like it really is the end.

The last day of school and we're trapped in double Biology, just cause Gina is relentless. I saw Sanjay and Wai Khuin run past our class, through the window in the door. It's pure torture, being chained to these desks while the other classes are flying wild, desperately taking in all the sights they'll never see again, and burning those images into precious memory or celluloid. Could it be some form of karmic retribution for my skipping all of Wednesday? If it is, the punishment is harsh.

Today is the last day of school.

I have no more classes to skip, only service and the farewell later. I wouldn't even be here but for the fact that I already missed this and she almost caught me for it. The lie I told to get out of it won't hold up twice. At least I've got a Mars Bar to make the waiting marginally more bearable... thanks Grace.

There's the bell.

- written at 9:20 AM during Biology in 5W, 26/10/07

I guess it's obvious we're not that good at group pictures.

It's been two weeks since I posted the Learning Seasons. The next one's coming... whenever. I plan to finish the series up before the start of the SPM. Which seems a lot more likely now that we've got all this free time.

Supposed to be study time, though. So I feel guilty even writing this. I've been taking way too many breaks, especially if I mean to be serious about nailing all twelve of my As.

! 22/10/07 - Monday

Made plans for Sha's birthday. I proposed a turtle.

We bought the turtle in the basement of the PWTC mall. We're not exactly sure what species it is (I forgot to ask at the time) but it bears a resemblance to the Indian Star Tortoise, which I found on Wikipedia.

"Raising these animals in captivity is extremely difficult and should be left to those with advanced tortoise experience. They are very finicky eaters and gain weight extremely slowly. Hatchlings would rather sleep than eat and most succumb in the first months of life. A typical hatchling in the United States costs about $500 from a reputable dealer and you should be prepared to lose this investment if you do not have significant experience with tortoises."

I don't know, it sure looks like one. But I bought Sha's turtle for seventy bucks, and everything I've heard about the species so far (from sources that are not Wikipedia) seems to contradict the above paragraph.

For one thing, Eugene's brother has a similar-looking turtle which, although mostly neglected by the family, has survived on - and I quote - "green beans, newspaper and poop" and grown to a size that requires both hands to illustrate in the process.

Grace's aunt has a pair of these creatures - enthusiastically described as hardy - which she allows to roam her garden like so many hounds. Every week, a head of lettuce is left outside for the turtles, almost like an offering, and by the end of the week it will be consumed.

Angeline's cousin has a variant that eats nothing but pink Lux soap.

Apparently it developed the taste after being allowed to forage through the house on a leash, and now refuses to sample any other food they try to tempt it with, to the point where it even turns up its snout at Lux soap of other colors, for example yellow.

Deciding on a name for Sha's turtle proved to be a challenge of unexpected difficulty. A variety of names were suggested and we filled four post-its with our handwriting. In the end, we shortlisted a few (dozen) possibilities, as seen in the picture below.

Yeah, I carry that much stuff to all my classes. So what?

On the list:

Inspire
Typo
Jahil
Linguini
Lilsha
Annoy
Kiss
Maths
Babysit
Stick It To
Sexyback
Respect
Conan
Apocalypse
Multiply
Ferrari
Terminate
Benefit
Spank
Emancipate
Satisfy
Demoralize
Delight

Most of these names, as you may have noticed, are not nouns but verbs. This makes sense when you add the suffix 'the turtle' to each. Example! Stick It To The Turtle, Satisfy The Turtle, Spank The Turtle and so on are all such great names.

Jahil is on the list because Sha likes Sejarah; Linguini is on the list because she likes the big-nosed punk from Ratatouille; Ferrari because Eugene proudly declared the turtle would be "powered by shell"; Conan, Apocalypse and Terminate because Li Wen was obsessed with getting a cute turtle with a badass name.

! 23/10/07 - Tuesday

Sha's birthday. I think we actually surprised her with the present.

Sha's turtle lived up to all expectations of being a fighter, poking its nose into every corner of our classroom and devouring the leaves I brought up from the canteen (Jimmy gave them away for free) within the day, all of which were several times his size.

As for the name, well, in the end we couldn't decide and gave it one name for each day of the week. The idea was that eventually Sha would stick with the one she liked best, and forget all the others. Or else she would learn to use all the names and that was fine too.

Monday - Inspire
Tuesday - Typo
Wednesday - Multiply
Thursday - Maths
Friday - Kiss
Saturday - Emancipate
Sunday - Delight

I slept for nine hours that night. It was an accident. I fell asleep on the floor at nine after trying to do my homework, and I woke up at one in the morning all confused and disoriented but there was nothing for it but to go back to sleep until six, when I got up for school.

! 24/10/07 - Wednesday

This was a pretty cool day. Guess how many classes I didn't skip?

One.

You heard me right. I skipped the whole day. Doing this wasn't actually as difficult as it might sound, but it was pretty fun. See, I kept a timetable of my activities.

8.00 - 5K (spent homeroom here cause like eleven people from my class came that day)
8.30 - lecture hall (inadvertently sat in for the 5M/C ceramah here cause Yow Hwui didn't know where exactly we were going)
9.30 - 3M (played chess with Wai Khuin after we found an abandoned set on one of the tables, ended up losing by one piece)
10.00 - 5P (free english, Wen Juin produced Maltesers)
10.40 - Break
11.00 - 5M (free add maths)
11.10 - 5L (free BM)
11.20 - corridors (watched volleyball with miscellaneous Form Fives)
11. 40 - above ping-pong court (watched Form One football with Wai Khuin, Nathan, Nick, Serene, Wei Li)
12.20 - above ping-pong court (watched Form One football with Anish and Jayson)
12.40 - 5K (free sejarah)
1. 00 - football court (played football with Wai Khuin, Dass, Nathan, Adi, Nick)
1.20 - office (sent to Matthews for playing football in uniform during lunch)
1.40 - 5M (free english, played football in class)
2.10 - 5W (free moral, let out by Selva)
2.20 - corridors (watched volleyball with miscellaneous Form Fives)
2.30 - 5W (add maths, the one class I didn't skip)

You see? It was my most fulfilling day at school in months. I can't even remember exactly everything that happened, but I think it was Wednesday when Aza tried to trap me behind a door. Why do these things keep happening to me every time I go to 5L?

Last time it was the broken doorknob at the back of the class.

! 25/10/07 - Thursday

I didn't skip too many classes today. But I placed bets on volleyball with James and Tze Kang. Thanks to Zhou Wei's efforts I won a dollar from James and nine from Tze Kang.

! 26/10/07 - Friday

The first thing they did on Friday was tell us we'd have study leave for two weeks, making it essentially the last day of school. Which was a shock, to say the least.

Another thing that happened. Mrs Matthews made us laugh.

Matthews: And he told me, the Japanese make the best condoms in the world.
Tze Kang: That's what my host family told me.
Matthews: I think you're hardly an expert on the subject matter.
Jun Ian: She actually said something funny.
Brian: There's a first time for everything.
Jun Ian: Too bad it's almost the last day of school.

So what if she mispronounced condoms? It's still a pretty monumental achievement. Remember the last time when she felt obliged to explain what whiskey was?

No, I don't mean that.

About the school leaver's service. Esther's persistence eventually won out and I agreed to say a few words about my experiences with the school's CF. Which I'd always found rather ironic, since I'm Buddhist.

In any case, I didn't really think about what I was going to say, but inspiration struck.

...And as for religion, or spirituality in general, I think it's important for all of us to find some form of Grace in our lives. Obviously it wouldn't be the same for everyone, but regardless of our beliefs we all need balance, and for me that's what Grace means. It was here in this school where I found Grace, and that's been crucial to my life ever since...

The look on everyone's face was priceless.

That's it for now. Our next post will be about what it actually feels like to be living out your last days of high school in the way the school's making us do.

It didn't all begin this way, but this is how it ends.

The Learning Seasons, Part 3

2007-10-14T22:40:00.001+08:00

It's been... ten whole days since my last post.

This is because despite the inordinate amount of holidays we've been having lately, it really is the learning seasons for me.

I'm sure there are things I could blog about, but I'm constantly uninspired at the keys.

All I seem to be doing these days is playing the saxophone and listening to Ian and Joey make music.

Yeah, these are also the musical seasons.

Click to embiggen.

Did I hear someone say embiggen isn't a word? It is totally a word.

I plan to update this post sometime. But for now, it exists solely to bring you this comic.

The Learning Seasons, Part 2

2007-10-04T22:35:00.000+08:00

I have a couple of announcements to make.

First, to the con artist formerly known as Sushi: we need to talk.

I don't know whether or not you'll actually read this but I think chances are pretty good.

Secondly, to Alex: thank you. It works like a charm.

Alex solved my MSN problem. Well, he didn't so much solve it as provide a way to circumvent its dark purpose. But after almost a month of eBuddy, I'll take what I can get. His solution?

A newer version of the classic seven-point-old.

If you somehow find yourself facing my old adversary, you may find proper armaments by clicking the above link.

Assuming you didn't already figure that one out.

End announcements.

This one's for Heroes fanboys and girls (I know you're out there):

Adrian Pasdar's YouTube account!

In the past few months, Adrian Pasdar, who plays the role of Nathan Petrelli (the congressman-turned-hobo who can also fly), has been posting videos on YouTube under the name buckshotwon. His videos are all taken behind the scenes, and some of them are pretty... well, all of them are pretty. Whatever else they are, you should check out for yourself.

His videos are usually accompanied by classy effects and soundtracks, and I am totally jealous. Click to see the gallery.

If you're still not convinced, here's a clip in which Sendhil Ramamurthy (I spelt that from memory, if you can believe it) contemplates an apple. Yes, it is as exciting as it sounds. Click to watch.

I just like this one because of Zachary Quinto and Kirsten Bell. Zach is Sylar, and Kirsten is Veronica Mars. Her role on Heroes has yet to be revealed, but we think it's coming soon.

By the way, Ricky's sister, the girl who Peter saved from the Irish gangs in the last episode is named Caitlin. Wicked huh?

Well, against all odds I actually finished a second page of my new short series... The Learning Seasons. Why is it called that?

Whoever comes up with the best original reason why my series is called the Learning Seasons... gets a special mystery prize! Special! Mystery!

Ahem.

Click to check out the larger version.

Now if you read that and you're wondering why the characters have such bad dialogue, it's because they're children.

Facebook's getting pretty popular these days. Well, all I'll say is that it does a pretty good job of making you feel wanted. And it looks so much better (tidier) than Friendster.

If Friendster was the Xanga of social networking, Facebook is the Blogger.

Addictive.

There's always something going on. If you logged on every two hours you would find a whole bunch of requests and notifications that require gratification. I mean, look at it! Top friend requests! Sex appeal invitations!

I know it's just clever marketing but it's almost irresistible.

Would love to write more but I'm a bit try on materials somehow. Maybe next time I'll let you all in on my most amazing, vivid, technicolour dreams about Halloween and the Great Escape.

PS: Skies! Photographs!

These snaps will be accompanied by no explanations.

If you know why they are there, you don't need me to tell you.

If you don't know why they are there, I won't be telling you. Hint: they are pretty.

The Learning Seasons

2007-09-23T16:46:00.000+08:00

Okay the full version has been posted. This is page one of... many. Hopefully.

Click to check out the larger version.

We continue to endorse the following statements.

In the meantime, study! Work on your own projects! Or spend some time watching Blogger Play. You might get pictures of babies, a gallery of delicious skies, a collection of individually shrink-wrapped grapes or a series of naked men in repose.

Who knows? I have experienced them all.

Operating Malfunctions

2007-09-14T17:15:00.000+08:00

We can't go online.

That's MSN error 81000378.

This afternoon, Microsoft finally pulled support on 7.0 and I was forced to update to Windows Live, which... has never... worked... on this computer.

It's just one error message after another. First, I encountered my old enemy, error code 80048820. Way back whenever I tried to use Live, it's always been 80048820 I just couldn't get past. This time, it was accompanied by extended code 80048439, which I assume to be a sort of second form in my boss fight against the internet.

I tried a few fixes, and suddenly I ran up error code 81000378. I'm not entirely sure whether this is a step forward or backwards; but the search results for 81000378 seem to suggest it has no reliable solution.

So I was stuck.

Well, there's always eBuddy I guess.

It looks good too. Pretty interface.

Anyone else got this problem?

At The Stroke Of Midnight

2007-08-31T23:59:00.000+08:00

I initially planned for this post to celebrate both our nation's 50th year of independence and this blog's 100th post but it looks like that's no longer possible.

Why?

Because that would take way too long, and I feel like posting something now.

How is it that I can go for weeks without writing a thing when everyone's poking and nudging me about it, and at the same time decide to stay up late and blog when people are telling me to forget it and concentrate on studies?

I'm a rebel without a clue.

When just about every other sane person decided to sleep in on Merdeka, I woke up early and headed down to the Dataran to catch the parade. Well, it was really Li Wen's idea.

His reasoning? Well, that fact is most of us have probably never seen the parade up close our entire lives (and never will). I know my parents haven't. And since it was our 50th Merdeka - surviving the half century mark is meant to be an achievement of significance - he decided that it was now or never.

This made sense to me.

But I would have slept through it if Li Wen didn't call at 6.30 am.

Anyway!

On to the parade. I took like two hundred pictures while I was there. Some of these are displayed below, with commentary.

We arrived at around 7.30. By this time, the stands were packed almost to capacity, but we still managed to get some really good positions, almost directly opposite the grandstand.

Yeah. The government provided monkey bars.

I was the first one to go up, and I stayed there until we left. You could see practically anything, it was just a question of how far up you were willing to climb.

This guy here? Doesn't look that high up, does he? But he was camped on the bar above my head (you can see it in the previous picture). The entire structure was actually more than two storeys tall but no one was fool enough to climb that high.

At the parade, we met AZA and Miss Leong. Apparently, they came for the celebrations the night before, and didn't go home. They spent the night in McDonald's, open 24 hours a day.

I think I might try that some day. Sounds crazy enough to work.

Here's Peako, looking at a poster reproduction of an old Berita Harian.

And here's Li Wen from my point of view. Doesn't he look like an orphan?

About the festivities... well, some of it was kinda like Hari Patriotisme, with the singing of patriotic songs and pembacaan ikrar. But Hari Patriotisme on steroids. The guy they got to recite the ikrar sounded like he could have given King Leonidas a run for his money. I kept expecting him to suddenly whip out a keris and scream MALAM INI KITA BERSANTAP DI NERAKA or something.

Didn't happen, though.

The parade itself was pretty good, I guess. There were lots of groups I didn't really care about. Some secondary schools sent marching bands. I think this one is from Catholic High School. Could be mistaken about that.

Check out their uniforms! Kinda like that dance from concert. I think it was... Texas?

I wasn't really paying attention to these guys, until I noticed they were holding up replicas of Malaysian coins and stuff. I think they're bank employees.

Jun Ian: Fifty cents!
Li Wen: What where?
Jun Ian: There!
Li Wen: I thought you meant the rapper!

Yeah right. Just try imagine 50 Cent hanging around the Dataran.

Hell, why imagine? There he is.

Look closely dammit.

There were plenty of floats, but this one caught my eye. It was releasing bubbles.

Looks like a scene out of a love story, doesn't it? See... boy meets girl, girl meets boy. They fall in love, but they're at a parade and the girl is on a float.

You should know these guys from your textbooks. They're the survivors of Force 136, a volunteer army who fought the against Japanese during the occupation. And there are like seven of them left. They're like superheroes.

They trotted out lots of war machinery at the parade. These ordinary look trucks were probably... missile trucks.

More military stuff. Kept me thinking about National Service.

The planes were awesome. There was this one jet that flew skywards, then killed its engines and dropped like a stone right above our heads. Before it hit the ground, it fired up again and zoomed off. You don't see that kind of thing much out of the movies.

Transformer babies aside, there were dogs at the parade. I guess the four major races in Malaysia are Malay, Chinese, Indian and Dog.

Horses too. Well I don't really know what to say about them... they were well behaved and didn't poop on the roads?

Later that day, I went to watch the fireworks with my cousins. We got a pretty good spot, wasn't too crowded or anything.

To pass the time, I played some saxophone for everyone within earshot. This instrument is just awesome.

Still waiting for fireworks to start. There's no point to this picture being here, but I like it a lot.

I hope you appreciate how hard it is to get good pictures of fireworks, especially if you're a novice with a shaky hand.

When we went again on Sunday, we got stuck in traffic trying to leave for two hours, but that's another story.

All in all it was a pretty good Merdeka.

Did it succeed in making me patriotic? Well... yeah, kinda. A lot of people think being patriotic's kinda like making a commitment to the country, and they don't wanna do that when the country in question is less than perfect.

Well I've got news for you, my friends. So is everything else.

I'm not going to tell you that this is about as good as it gets, cause I seriously doubt that. But it's still pretty good. Ignore the fact that the government will make sure the bumiputera will screw you over in just about every deal you can imagine business-wise. Disregard for a minute how our entire education system is screaming for change from the top down. Forget everything you know about Malaysian time, Malaysian traffic, manners, efficiency, censorship and all that.

Then step back and take a deep breath. Looks good, doesn't it?

No? Well, I love piracy okay. I love how you can just walk out to the stores and pick up a new movie for five bucks. Slightly more these days, but that's just inflation for you. Or how you can drive down to Petaling Street and get a new rolex or a pair of superstars without having to crack the bank open. This is very important to people like me who never have any money. And the jerseys in that stall outside KL Sentral are almost indistinguishable from the originals.

I also love corruption. I don't think I have to explain this. Here's a bit of wisdom I got from a taxi driver three years ago, when I was fourteen.

Taxi Driver: In this country you can do anything if you have money la. If you have money you can even fuck the King's wife.

And there were five of us in that cab and we were all looking at each other like (o_O) he did not just say that. But it's true. Many of the things we take for granted wouldn't have been possible without bribes!

I love our malls. Who doesn't? We have so many! And I heard from my cousin Joo Lee, that on the eve of the Merdeka celebrations a whole section of 1 Utama blacked out for half an hour. People started stealing things. How awesome is that? Imagine what you could do if you were in a mall plunged into total darkness for thirty whole minutes. If only I'd been there, I'd have a PS3 sitting in my den, three iPods in my pocket, new threads and five different perfumes on all the time.

How does one make a mall black out?

I love our food. I'm sure you love our food. Everyone loves our food.

Even our weather is edible.

Well this has been a great patriotic essay, but I'm starting to feel really guilty about neglecting my homework for so long. So I'm off to do that.

My next post, this blog's 101st, will be some time in coming (I got trials). Doesn't mean you should stop visiting though.

Jun Ian loves Malaysia. And hell, it's about time.

Don't Panic

2007-08-25T19:48:00.000+08:00

Jason: I'm sleeping in my parents room, cause my cousin's visiting from Canada and he's sleeping in my room with his girlfriend.
Jun Ian: Your cousin's getting it on in your bed!
Jason: Actually, he brought over another friend too. She's sleeping in the guest room.
Jun Ian: Tell me Jason, do you hear...animals sounds in the middle of the night? Does it sound like your cousin and the two girls are praying loudly in the next room, or maybe agreeing with each other a lot?

True story.

Jason's cousin is a PIMP, a man with the kind of night life every guy burns to have.

In other news, form ones are... making news. Not the good kind of news, but at least they're not making babies like last year's form ones.

Ancient history, that.

On to current issues, then. First up, Mrs Matthew's lawsuit.

Some of you might have heard that Mrs Matthews slapped a form one boy.

Some of you might have heard that the boy's parents are trying to sue her for it.

Your information is half correct.

Mrs Matthews definitely slapped Brian Thomas Silva for... well, details are vague but we believe he screamed out loud that he 'fucking hates Matthews' and was overheard and hauled to the office.

Not very clever of him, is it? While we might all feel the way he did from time to time, the difference is that we keep those feelings of resentment buried deep inside us, venting them in the company of friends or all over the internet in our blogs.

I think... I sound like a fag.

The point is, even if they had sued, chances are they wouldn't have had a leg to stand on. I certainly don't like our dear principal - I think she's an old-fashioned tart who takes forever to say nothing - but she was definitely within her rights to slap him that day.

I asked Pardeep (who apparently knows this degenerate) to find out if they were really suing her, and if they were, on what terms. Turns out they aren't.

Bummer. Even if they lost, it still would have been interesting.

Myth dispelled!

Exhibit B is Nicholas Gerard Kang.

They all have such interesting names. When I saw the Gerard I was like OMG thats like two famous guys (Gerard Butler and Steven Gerrard) but it turns out he's nothing like them.

Can't even toss a spear or kick a ball.

Looks like he has other talents, though.

Nicholas: Hey Sanjay, you wanna buy some porn?
Sanjay: What? Uh, no thanks.
Nicholas: How about a vibrator then? 75% off!

I don't even want to know where he would get his hands on such a thing. But Sanjay says he thinks the kid's not joking about the porn... I'm not sure if that's disturbing or what.

Last but not least, the WESLEY GOES GREENALL campaign is doing well.

If I did this for Sanjay last year, the theme would probably be BLACK IS BACK or something.

Today, I made a bunch of flags, and we waved them in the hall, while the Chinese guy was going on about what an idiot Zakaria was.

Now the rest of this post is going to be about National Service.

Again.

Shocking to see so many cots laid out at the admin building, two lines strung across and IV drips hanging from them. People lying bundled up in the green blankets, feet propped up on the cushions from the pink sofa set. They were - well - lying down and pretty much motionless. Some couldn't even move and had to be propped up and hand-fed. Many were out cold and wouldn't wake up.

The administration is trying to keep the whole thing hush-hush by reminding us of the "no talking to outsiders or members of the press about what's going on" rule, and also disconnecting the phones.
- operating instructions

That was an extract from the blog of an NS Trainee in the first intake. Doesn't reflect too well on the integrity of the camp administration, does it?

Well, don't let that scare you too badly, especially if you've actually been selected for the program... there are far worse stories to be found. However, the extent to which you allow these stories to affect your decision to defer or to go is completely up to you.

Well, the information on all these sites haven't been updated since 2004 and doubtless, the camp program has changed, most likely for the better. But if you're interested to find out about how to survive life as a trainee - or avoid it - you could do worse than to give the following sites a try.

operating instructions - The owner of this blog (known only as Kim) was a trainee in the first intake of National Service way back in 2004. Despite only having internet access in the third month of training, she managed to write almost daily entries that reveal much about the program, the camps and the instructors.

Although the experience described in these pages can best be described as 'hellish', reading through it is far from that, extensive though her accounts are. Take this story for example:

Other stories from Vera - some girls were caught fighting the other day. It started with just two people, who both happened to be, respectively, a karate black belt and a taekwondo black belt. "The sparring was very cantik one," said Vera. The room was turned upside down, water sprayed all over (from water bottles), chairs upturned, clothes thrown all over.

The fight soon expanded to seven against one, and the one girl somehow hid in the ceiling rafters above her room. The seven searched for her, and when they left, she quickly scurried down, ran down two flights of stairs, got spotted by the seven, and jumped from the first floor to the ground. Ran to the faci's room, tailed by the seven. And all eight got caught.
- operating instructions

Reads almost like the script of an action movie, doesn't it? I mean, I really like what she's written. Noble efforts indeed. Working tirelessly to bring the next generation an insider's account of camp... well when I go for NS next year, I'm bringing a notebook.

You know, to write blogs in.

PanGlobal Insurance - If you find it ominous that I'm linking you to the website of an insurance company in preparation for National Service, you'd be half right. Nothing I've said so far concerns deferment or exemption, does it? Well this website will explain how to do just that... it even has the deferment form ready for you, as well as some outdated information about campsites and stuff.

I'm not going to include any excerpts from this web, you can go and read it yourself if you want to.

Dinyahloreng - I have no idea what the name means, but this is a really useful page about what to bring, what to expect (yeah, just see above) and stuff. Eugene found me this site.

Here's an item aptly named How To Survive The Evil Jungle Forces.

Your trainers will teach you this, but it’s interesting enough to tell you in advance. When in the jungle at night, you SHOULD NOT call people by their name. Aiyah, you want to know why, go and ask your trainer yourself. Anyway, so you are lined up in single file and given numbers … like the person at the front, usually the leader is called D1 for example and the last person is D22. At points, you will stop and have a roll call to check if everyone is there, from D1 to D22. Just don’t be smart and call out an extra D23... You don’t want to cause panic in the middle of the jungle at night, trust me hysterical people are NOT a pretty sight.

- Diyahloreng

There's also this one crazy story about true love in NS, which I will not post here because I find it completely retarded, but you can go check it out.

And finally... one of the most disturbing things I've heard about National Service so far.

On Monday night, by the way, one of the things the soldiers yelled at us was the fact that 12 girls in Kolej D are pregnant, di manakah kehormatan kamu semua?! Hah? Kamu tak malu ke?

I was shocked to hear this, but Vera next to me simply raised her eyebrows and remarked, "You mean you don't know?"

I knew one girl was pregnant, but I didn't know about the other 11.

"So some people here are parents - together?" I spluttered. Vera confirmed this with a nod of her head. I felt like someone had just hit me on the head with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
- operating instructions

That's all for now.

Tomorrow I'm going to run off to the Dataran Merdeka at the crack of dawn, so... stay tuned for that.

The Sweet Escape

2007-08-22T00:29:00.000+08:00

This took me about six hours from start to finish. Including pencils, inks, some reworking of the lines, colors and gloss.

Click to see a higher quality picture. Seriously, trust me on this and click it.

Here it is again with lights, since I can't decide which version I like best. Same as before, the bigger picture is way better so... click it.

That's out of the way.

And now, here's the post!

Dear Gwen Stefani,

I love you. Love you love you love you love you love you.

Yeah...

I've never gone crazy over celebrities. To me they've always been so far away they were practically in a different world.

And it's always struck me as odd how some people could invest so much energy into getting all worked up over things that were never going to affect their lives.

Today I touched Gwen Stefani.

Despite all the objections about her interacting with the crowd, and all the restrictions they forced on us to make sure we couldn't get too close, I managed to suspend myself between a bit of railing and someone else's seat to reach out and touch her arm, and then the top of her head. The girl next to me looked scandalized and was like, "Don't touch her!"

I resisted the urge to just vault over the railing. Even if I had made a dash for it and found myself face to face with Gwen Stefani, I would have had no idea what to say or do. Get down on one knee and ask her to prom?

Don't give me that look.

Anyway, I'm a fan now. Never been a fan of anyone before, and never thought the first would be Gwen Stefani, but there you are.

Thanks Brian for the tickets, he says my luck is just unbelievable.

First he found free tickets in his father's files, and I got to go with him... the first concert I've ever been to. For real. Then we found out the seats were kinda far from the stage, and we wanted to sneak off and find somewhere closer. In the end we didn't, and thank God for that, cause Gwen Stefani ended up performing right in front of where we were standing. And to top it off... yeah, I was the lucky one. Brian couldn't reach her, and the girls who got the seats up front, nearer to the stage, never came close.

Thanks to the usher guarding the stairs to the lower seats, for that classic moment.

Jun Ian: Hey, can we go in and use the bathroom?
Usher: Which one?
Jun Ian: I dunno... the male one?
Brian: What the FUCK?

Last but not least (no DUH) thanks to Gwen Stefani. Rock!

In Matters Of Interest

2007-08-16T20:47:00.000+08:00

Dexter: Why are no two male sperm ducts the same?
Jun Ian: Why?
Dexter: Because of the vas deferens.

When I tried to pull this one on Azfar, he just screamed "VAS DEFERENS!" and then started griping loudly about how three people had already told him that joke. Then he wondered if he was responsible for the rising number of awful jokes floating around lately.

I wonder.

Azfar: What do you call it when I put my hands together like this?
Peako: What?
Azfar: Diameter! See? Radius and... radius!

If you don't know anything about Biology you probably wouldn't have gotten the last two, so to speak. However, appreciation of the following transcripts requires no such... specialization.

Jason: Are you tripping... tripping on pins?
Azfar: No, cause I got thumbtacks.

Crutches, Azfar. Crutches.

Azfar: What do you call waves in the black sea?
Jun Ian: Does this have something to do with Ribena?
Azfar: Black current!

He's made it into a sort of vendetta. Whenever Azfar opens his mouth these days, people just run.

Azfar: What do you call a Transformer's quest?
Jun Ian: If you say transmission I will end you.

But I got him back... sort of.

Jun Ian: What do Nathan and a boy wizard have in common?
Azfar: What?
Jun Ian: They're both Harry.

On a happier note, MTV's long search for its next rock star is now over. After Guan Xiong's live performance in Valencia a couple of weeks back, lesser artists everywhere are laying down their instruments to weep.

I'm proud to say I was there... though I was out of the room at the time and didn't witness the event firsthand.

Click to watch.

We predict runaway success.

Mdm Moses: So where are you all having your prom this year?

The class exchanges furtive looks.

Lisha: Er.... nowhere, madam.
Lih Fern: We're not having... a prom.
Jun Ian: What's a prom?

You know, that prom.

Oops.

I think we're not allowed to have prom. Like it's illegal or something. Well, no surprise there. The school doesn't encourage socialization anyway.

Mrs Matthews: Students in the lower secondary should not have upper secondary friends.

She really did say that... really.

Now I'm going to share a little bit about my mass communications talk last Career's Day. I've been meaning to do so for about a week, but the National Service mess took precedence.

Our speaker, Alfred, showed up about half an hour late, with a backpack, glasses and a ponytail. He was sweating.

Jun Ian: Guy looks like he ran here!
Daniel: No, he looks like he rock climbed here!

Lessons in Mass Communications #1

If you're an actor, success obviously is measured by how famous you become, but *COUGH*that*COUGH*is never*COUGH*going to*COUGH*happen*COUGH*in this country*COUGH*

Lessons in Mass Communications #2

My PC Gamer editor has the best job in the world. He plays World of Warcraft.
No, scratch that. My T3 editor has the best job in the world. See, it's a lifestyle magazine, so he gets to call up all these companies like BMW and Mercedes and ask for cars, and he calls modeling agencies for women to take pictures with the cars... I hate him.

Lessons in Mass Communications #3

So we having this exam, right. And at the beginning the examiner says to us, "Okay, you need to do whatever it takes to pass this exam. Now I'm going to go out for a while."
And we're just sitting there clueless, and we continue to do our exam like normal.
After some time he comes back in and says, "No look, I don't think I made myself clear enough. You need to do. Whatever. It. Takes. To pass this exam. Now I'm going to step out again."
This time, as soon as he's out of the room we all whip out our books and start copying like crazy.
Then suddenly, the door opens and this tutor walks in. Everyone freezes as we stare at him and he stares at us. Then he goes very slowly, "I'm not your invigilator..." and just turns around and walks back out.

He was a really interesting guy, funny and an engaging speaker. But his talk didn't do much to get us interested in mass communications. He painted a very realistic picture of the local industry - it sucks - and he never tried to hide that from us.

I guess overseas it is.

National Disservice

2007-08-11T10:54:00.001+08:00

Number of WMS Drafted: 34 and counting

Introduction

sherylgan: ok, fellow NS-ers
Li-Anne: OMG DAMN SAD LA

No one saw it coming. We all knew, well, that the possibility was clear and present, yet we somehow believed that National Service could only happen to 'someone else'. Which is true. Unfortunately, as Liwen puts it, to other people you're 'someone else'.

In other news, local emigration rates hit an all time high.

And what about myself?

*help christine: u kena... omg!!
*help christine: check the site

That was the beginning.

Checking

*unicef Demon Bound: where DO you check anyway
[DisEnchanted]: on the NS official site
*unicef Demon Bound: yeah the site runs like a carcass

The site is http://www.khidmatnegara.gov.my/ but don't count on getting in.

[5corch]: i cant get in the site
[5corch]: freaking ppl stop checking
[5corch]: i bet ppl when they get chosen they are so horrified that they forget to log off the site and start screaming for help

There's a good chance you'll just turn up one of these.

*unicef Demon Bound: ...the khidmat negara site refuses to let me check my name
Screw Khidmat Negara: they didnt let u check coz UVE BEEN A NAUGHTY BOY dex

There exist several theories to explain the site's sorry state.

junian - national disservice: its jammed up everywhere
-?ui?q?s-: uagrgahghahghghghg
-?ui?q?s-: just because i went for tuition
junian - national disservice: you jammed the internet by going tuition?
-?ui?q?s-: the internet wasn't jammed before my tuition

Seems unlikely? Well, here's another one.

G u a n x i o n g : no
G u a n x i o n g : no
G u a n x i o n g : YES
G u a n x i o n g : DIDNT KENA
G u a n x i o n g : deng
G u a n x i o n g : suat cheat me
G u a n x i o n g : still dont know kena a not
G u a n x i o n g : cause the connection timed out
G u a n x i o n g : fuck!
junian - national disservice: ah yeah
junian - national disservice: mine also timed out
junian - national disservice: you try yours
G u a n x i o n g : mine also la
G u a n x i o n g : maybe too many ppl ady the page sot kau

But we're guessing it's the third.

*unicef Demon Bound: It times out
*unicef Demon Bound: Well now I'm DEFINITELY sure it's a site run by our government

Do we love it? Huh? I think we nailed it.

The List

junian - national disservice: LIWEN GOING MAN
boonguan: LMAO ROFL

I should probably find something more interesting conversation starters, but this is (sadly) about as good as it gets sometimes.

junian - national disservice: the best one liwen
lih fern: i didnt get it!
lih fern: ahhahaha
lih fern: OHHHH
lih fern: pooor li wen

There is no why, okay? It just is.

junian - national disservice: LIWEN!
sherene: OMG!
sherene: hahahahahahhahahahha!
sherene: SERIOUSLY?!

How did they manage to draft all the most unlikely people?

junian - national disservice: waikhuin!
junian - national disservice: nooo
junian - national disservice: its like... watching the news for casualties
peako - seditious!: omg
peako - seditious!: we have to set up a candlelight vigil

I guess it would be good for them. Wai Khuin and Li Wen gonna come home looking like this.

That's what 90 days of intensive does to you. Or is it enough?

This is the list. Eighteen in all... so far. Help me keep it updated.

andrew
angeline
brianyeoh
clarissa
chunshuin
denise
edward
eliot
hsini
jeckbeng
jenming
jiahui
junian
leongwai
lianne
liwen
mayling
meichyi
michelletan
michelleyong
pardeep
pikyeng
phinwern
sarah
sheryl
thengee
tzekang
waikhuin
weelik
wenjuin
wilkin
yinghwee
yiwen
yuanling

More girls than guys though.

Well that's not too bad right?

People are treating it like it's a list of casualties or something though.

Chronicles: wat?
Chronicles: THEY KENA
Chronicles: thts sad

They took Jimmy? I can't believe it... I only just saw him last week!

marc: and daniel
junian - national disservice: daniel didnt
marc: he did la
junian - national disservice: he did not
junian - national disservice: he's lying

Just for the record... he was lying.

●Ĵŏjő● в ř ό ĸ έ й ●: WAT THE HELLL???
●Ĵŏjő● в ř ό ĸ έ й ●: DONT GO JUN IAN!!!!!!
junian - national disservice: do you know anyone who went for it?
●Ĵŏjő● в ř ό ĸ έ й ●: my cous did
junian - national disservice: did he say anything about it?
●Ĵŏjő● в ř ό ĸ έ й ●: she
●Ĵŏjő● в ř ό ĸ έ й ●: she and my aunty were spending the whole day crying

The state of the internet at 2130 last night.

Reactions

*^Yi^* 9 999 939: ask them go die
*^Yi^* 9 999 939: ask abdullah go NS himself

A rush of patriotism to the head.

junian - national disservice: lianne you got NS?
Li-Anne: BUGGER RIGHT
junian - national disservice: join the party

Well, the local forecast shows gloomy moods, with a high chance of panic. Small outbreaks of relief are also expected.

Screw Khidmat Negara: all peeps high 5!!
junian - national disservice: oh i see
Screw Khidmat Negara: owh
Screw Khidmat Negara: jun ian oops

Meteorologists admit the coming storm maybe be bigger than originally anticipated.

junian - national disservice: not that many ppl i know are going
nasyekim: rly?
nasyekim: its like the whole bloody kampung is going here

Apparently, getting drafted causes a lot of sympathy. It's almost like I said my canary died.

libby: did you get?
junian - national disservice: yeah
libby: oh.. sorry

Most people tend to take National Service... well... badly.

* pik: fuck fuck fuck fuck

However, this is not strictly true, as we shall now see.

The Other Camp

The reaction to National Service isn't negative across the board though. Some people want to go. I guess you could see it as a sort of three month OBS or something.

It's like Outward Bound on steroids!

If you're really really optimistic.

?a?·u?i ?? ??LOVE: i wanna get in too
?a?·u?i ?? ??LOVE: is it wrong?
-?ui?q?s-: good for you
junian - national disservice: get into NS?
junian - national disservice: you mean people want to get in?
?a?·u?i ?? ??LOVE: =/
?a?·u?i ?? ??LOVE: i do
-?ui?q?s-: apparently so...
?a?·u?i ?? ??LOVE: no one is as lazy as your spotlight hogging ass junian

Well I'm sorry my spotlight hogging ass might want to go to college during that time.

Some Clarity Required

Here's an interesting topic that came up last night.

[DisEnchanted]: i guess the 300 bucks isn't much of a motivation, huh
*unicef Demon Bound: I'd pay THEM 300 to not go
Screw Khidmat Negara: haha
the seething: id double that
Screw Khidmat Negara: u can get 300 bucks 4 stripping a whole night at a club lah
[DisEnchanted]: how the hell would you know?
Screw Khidmat Negara: u dont wanna know
junian - national disservice: wait they pay us to go?
the seething: im going to eat now
[DisEnchanted]: yeah
[DisEnchanted]: you get three hundred bucks
the seething: i hope the food isnt salty... WITH MY TEARS

Can anyone confirm this for me? I haven't been able to find it on any official website, but I've turned up a few blogs mentioning it.

There's no point of this picture being here. I just think it's cool.

Here's another. I initially heard that only one sibling from every family could be chosen. If you get picked, chances are your brothers and sisters wouldn't. Eliot says that's not the case.

Which means little Jamin, Dylan, Shern and Alison could still see the inside of a training camp.

junian - national disservice: i thought it was like the imperial army
junian - national disservice: one man from every family!
the seething: nope
junian - national disservice: i will be like mulan
junian - national disservice: cut my hair short and wear a corset
the seething: leave ur comb on ur fathers bed
the seething: ride out in the middle of the night
the seething: wait till the bus comes after lunch
junian - national disservice: yeah i imagine thats how it would work
the seething: a lot of singing

I want this toy.

The Rebellion

I was thinking about it, and... well, National Service is kinda like school. There are instructors and rules and... well, what keeps us from breaking too many school rules? The threat of expulsion, normally. But I don't see how getting expelled from National Service is a bad thing if you didn't want to go in the first place.

junian - national disservice: whats the worst they can do?
junian - national disservice: i wonder
junian - national disservice: call your parents?
junian - national disservice: solitary confinement?
the seething: sodomy
the seething: brutal, brutal sodomy

Probability

sherylgan: i calculated d probability
Li-Anne: *sheryl no life*

Well, I'm not going into details, but the outcome of Sheryl's calculations was that 25 people from our form would be chosen, or one out of every seven people.

Li-Anne: PROBABILITY SO WRONG
sherylgan: YES
sherylgan: last year
sherylgan: damn accurate lor

At this rate, it looks like Sheryl's going to be proven right by the end of the weekend.

The Remedy

junian - national disservice: apply for ns
junian - national disservice: omg who does that
yihui: mr low
yihui: so sad for u
yihui: think about the good side, u may meet a really hot chick there!
yihui: i always think like that if i am goin for a borin trip
yihui: and i always meet one or two

That could work, but I really like Daniel's way better.

junian - national disservice: why dont i have to go?
Screw Khidmat Negara: u can defer so when ure older u can buy ur way out.......thank you corruption!!

Boom!

Sequel

[AmonDeis]: is there a second batch or something?
junian - national disservice: thats... a good question
[AmonDeis]: i'll have to live in fear for another 3-4 months

Closure

2007-07-21T23:48:00.001+08:00

It's late, I'm just back from concert, my blog is a mess and I'm a mess. But there's something I've got to note down, and I plan never to forget it.

It's just a small detail, but it's often these things that leave the most lasting impressions.

Okay... flashback to last year, after the Saturday night concert... was it Saturday or Friday? After the show, we were spread around the stage, taking group pictures and trying to hold on to the time of our lives. I was walking past the front row of seats when this woman approached me with a little girl in tow.

She told me how much she had enjoyed our performance, and how her daughter - the little girl now clinging on to one of her legs - had been thrilled to catch the comb I threw into the audience during the dance. And sure enough, there it was in her daughter's hand - the little black comb we all decided to buy on impulse. At the time she couldn't have been more than three or four years old.

She doesn't exactly look like that, but let's pretend she does.

One year passed and I forgot all about the girl and her mother.

Maybe I was setting my expectations too high after what we did with Grease last year, but this year's concert definitely felt in want of something compared to its predecessor. Maybe it was how fast everyone disappeared after the show was over, or even before... there was no celebratory mood as there had been the last time.

Walking past the front row of seats, I was approached by a woman again. She smiled at me as though she knew me. She asked me if I was the same boy who had been in Grease, and this didn't surprise me... I'd been recognized as such by parents before. I said yes, I was, and behind her I noticed a little girl clinging to one of her legs.

Realization struck me like a load of bricks.

She spoke to me, confirming what I had suspected... she was the same mother who had complimented me last year, whose daughter had caught my comb and was now standing, noticeably taller, in the same position she had been the last time we met. She recognized me, and according to her, so did her daughter. The girl shied away from me, exactly as she had done previously and I was just overwhelmed by the most perfect feeling of closure.

It was more than I could have hoped for, more than I had ever dreamed of.

Closure, that's what it was. Closure of the last memory I would ever have performing before the whole school, and of the one almost-perfect year that had followed after August 2006, when I discovered what would become my deepest passion.

That's over now. I'm not being - to employ a word already abused by our students - emo or anything, but it's a fact. Tonight was a lot of last chances for me, and the far from perfect result meant that I missed most of them.

Nothing left to look forward to, huh? Nothing left but to hit the ground running, towards the trials and the SPM... And it'll be over so soon you'll look back at your school life and wonder where the time had gone... or maybe it's over already.

That's just too depressing for words.

Lest I Forget

2007-07-12T22:40:00.000+08:00

Warning: This post contains a hell lot of words.

It's not my style, so to speak, to write angry blogs about things because, well, it's so much nicer to read about nice things. But sometimes I need to make a note for myself. Lest I forget.

I'm going to write down my thoughts as they cross my mind. Something else I don't do much.

Two things. The Interact Club and the school concert.

About the Interact Club... well I don't have much to say. I mean, we're all so used to the tantrums getting correspondingly huger with each project, but the way she put it, firing the Vice President a fortnight before the end of the club year sounds almost like club policy (well, it didn't happen, but that's how she made it sound). An annual event, even. My feelings about the club have been inconsistent throughout.

On Tuesday I thought it was so amazing we were finally having a board meeting that was just pure fun... planning the installation of the new board, what was more. A farewell party was on the cards, and cushy retirement beckoned.

On Wednesday she was in a bad mood to begin with, but the installation went pretty well. And... well, Kai Foong asked me to say a few words and I almost choked up doing it. But I held on even though I thought my voice must have been getting shaky... and I spoke about how it suddenly became so clear, my memory of starting my directorship in that very spot barely a year ago, how brief and precious that year became to me, and how no matter what happened I'd always carry fond memories of my time as an Interactor.

On Thursday she had to go and spoil it all over again.

I found myself feeling sorry for the form fours. They have an entire year to go through. Funny huh? Just the day before I was telling everyone about how short our term of service was and how I wished it could be longer. I guess I'm not completely immune to her tantrums yet. It was one of those times I would have warned you against ever joining the Interact Club. I'm not sure how I feel about it right now. Thinking back to all the good and bad times... the good times were good, but the bad times were really bad.

And about the concert... I don't really know where to begin.

My dance... saying it's a disappointment would be an understatement. I mean, it's great for the girls, but I'd rather be a guy in any other dance but mine.

I don't care who reads this.

It's not your fault, any of you. The only ones I can blame for this are Matthews and myself. Matthews for following that amazing guide I wrote to the letter, and myself for not forseeing something like this.

When we first started out, the guys were doing their own thing, the girls were doing their own thing and everything was fine. The guys even got to practice in the hall... alone! I guess we were messing around too much cause Grace went and complained to Matthews about our dance being too hiphop, and Vicky pulled us out of there midway through the second week so we wouldn't get into any more trouble.

Not being able to use the hall was annoying, but we carried on without it and we managed to get our steps done by the third Wednesday of practice, one day before the first rehearsal.

On Thursday morning, Sarah came to me early and told me the guys wouldn't be dancing that day. According to Vicky, Matthews had already received complaints about the guys being too modern and the girls being too Malay, so she didn't want to risk anything by showing her our part when she was out to get us. I didn't feel that our steps were overly... not Indian, but I agreed.

Well, the dances were screwed from the start. I watched Matthews scold the Egyptian dancers until one of the girls cried. That was... well... I came to a realization. Matthews wasn't just a strict, old-fashioned cow. She actually was a bad principal. No matter what your stance on education, any principal who can yell at a performing student until they break down doesn't deserve to be in office. That's just too much.

Anyway, our girls got it from her too. The way they shook was too slow, she said. Too sexy. If they shook faster she would have called it Indian. We had to do the dance again, from scratch. Even the song had to go, since it was in Hindi, which was from North India, when we were South India. Where the Indians speak Tamil.

Why can't the Indians just be unified? Why do they have to have factions?

So we started from scratch. Without her having even seen the guys dance. And that was fine with me. So we changed the story of the dance too. Instead of the girls coming out, then the guys, then both, we'd have the girls out from the start with the guys, and they'd all have scenes. And that was fine with me.

They told me to come up with new moves for the guys. Which I did.

And so began the fourth week.

On Monday, the teaching of a whole new dance was underway. That day, the girls were getting most of the moves. I couldn't do much because I wasn't not familiar with the song (it all sounded the same) and I needed to know what the girls were doing because I had to fit the guys moves in around them. But that was fine with me. At least we had some freedom.

On Tuesday, the guys were taught steps... well, basically what the girls had done the day before. I was given a slot for the guys to do their own moves. We would still be sandwiched by the girls during that time though. But that was fine with me. At least we were doing our own thing.

On Wednesday, Vicky began the polishing of the dance, so to speak. Which basically meant doing mundane things like walking, turning and shaking over and over again until she was satisfied. That was still fine with me, since it was all for a good reason.

And another thing... the time the guys had for our own moves was cut in half, and now we would be spending about half a minute in a freeze behind the girls before rejoining them for the last few steps.

On Thursday, we had to give up that time completely. And instead of freezing behind the girls, we'd be backstage for a full minute. Enough time, we said, for a few rounds of Blackjack. And of all the time we did have on stage, all we did was either mimic the girls or shake. The final number of steps I contributed to the dance? Two.

During one of our cuter formations, Sharlene asked me if I was embarrassed. I told her I wasn't. It was the truth... I was past being embarrassed, past being angry and past trying to fix things.

I hate it, but what can I do? Wasting my energy on it won't solve a damn thing. I'm only sorry for the other guys. I'm sorry for En Yaw, Jason, Brian and Kevin. I'm sorry you got involved in this. I'm sorry I couldn't help you do more of a dance. I'm sorry things turned out so bad the only possible progression in this vein would be to remove the guys altogether.

Well, that's all I guess.

Good thing music's a healing force. If I hadn't been listening to these tracks all day, I might be in a much worse mood.

PS: A warning to North India's lady dancers (especially Sandra), Brian's Form Ones - the little Africans - are perving on you.

How To Organize A School Concert

2007-07-08T15:15:00.000+08:00

So you've decided to organize a concert for your school, but you're clueless about dancing and music, you have no previous experience and you're completely lost in the planning stage.

Never fear! This user friendly, step-by-step guide will have your concert up and floundering in no time.

* Step One: Just Add Water

First, you need to consider what your concert is going to feature. It could contain acting, singing, dancing, or a combination of all three. A musical is ideal for this purpose.

Apart from being greatly enjoyable for audiences of all ages, a good musical has the potential to immerse your entire school in a warm blanket of song, dance and high spirits.

Observe the following. It's a promotional video for Sri Cempaka's We Will Rock You Musical last year. Yeah, they did a musical based on Queen. So what?

Click to watch. It's a really fun, inspired piece of work.

* Step Two: Pick A Theme

You see, every concert needs a theme. However, the less original the theme the better.

As I just mentioned, last year Sri Cempaka did a musical based on Queen. That wasn't very unoriginal. And worse, the entire soundtrack consisted of rock songs!

If you let rock into your school, sooner or later you're going to end up with rock and roll, and your school concerts are going to start kicking ass. We don't want that. No way. It's a school production. Ass kicking has no place in an institution of learning.

Going back to the selection of an appropriate theme, what about one that allows for diverse selection of content while retaining watertight criteria for selection?

...Yeah, you probably didn't get that.

What it means, is that with the right theme, you can have a whole lot of different performances, yet make sure that everyone in those different performances sticks to the plan.

Sounds like getting to have your cake and eat it too, doesn't it?

Figure 1.0 - Cake

Well the cake is present, it is delicious and it has a name.

Dances From Around The World.

No... wait for it... Traditional Dances From Around The World. See? That way you can have a whole bunch of people doing anything you want - you have an entire world full of nations and cultures to pick from - and an easy way to remove any aspect you don't want. Just say it's not traditional enough!

Crazy huh? And as if that wasn't enough reason to go with Dances From Around The World, you can even take the chance to seed a little patriotism into the audience. Or force it down their throats.

See, you could have a couple of actors going all around the world, checking out all the dances in all the countries and eventually coming to the realization that there's no place like home. Brilliance!

So what do you think? I think we nailed it.

* Step Three: A Cast Of Thousands

Before deciding how many students you want to include in your production, consider this. Three hundred students will inevitably have more parents than a hundred students. And as a school, parental support is important. Think about it. Would you really pay to see a show staring someone else's kids?

You don't exactly get a warm and fuzzy feeling looking at it, do you?

See? See! That's magic.

All parents would prefer to look at the second picture, the one with their child in it, compared to the first one, which is almost identical but full of strangers. Similarly, a concert with their own child in it will garner more of their support than one without. How do we ensure that we reap the benefits of this support to its fullest?

You guessed it: a cast of thousands.

* Step Four: Rome Wasn't Built In A Day, But We're Not Building A City Here

There are several fundamental rules to a production of any kind. Observe the following.

Keeping this rule in mind is vital. You can't have everything.

If you want to have an awesome concert with maximum student participation, the sheer multitude of factors involved mean it's obviously not going to come together in a couple of weeks.

If you want to architect a great show but you haven't got a whole lot of time, you'd most likely have to give the spotlight to a handful of students who already know what they're doing and don't need weeks of practice to prepare.

If you want to involve as many students as possible, but you don't want to mess up too many of their lessons in the process, some quality will inevitably be sacrificed in bringing the show home.

We've already established that we want to pack as many students onto that stage as the UN will tolerate, so what are we going to sacrifice? Quality or lesson time?

Back up a minute, why is this even a question? If you detract pupils from the syllabus, you're going to get lots of complaints from parents! Besides, most moms and dads don't care how bad the show is, as long as their kids are in it they'll whoop and cheer all the same. It's high school!

* Step Five: Burn The Ships

Cortes had a plan, he wanted to lead an expedition into Mexico to obtain its many treasures. He presented his plan to the Spanish governor, who was so excited that he gave him eleven ships and seven hundred men.

Cortes did not tell the men or the governor the complete plan. After months of travel the eleven ships landed in Veracruz. Cortes had the men unload everything from all eleven ships. As they headed into their new adventure the men turned back and saw all eleven ships burning!

Their reaction was to fight back, as surely an enemy had initiated such an attack. Cortes halted the men, as this was in his plan, he had ordered the ships to all be burned.

Cortes did not know what he and his men would encounter in their expeditions. What he did know was that by burning the ships he had completely eliminated their option of going back. At the same time creating an intensely powerful motivation to succeed.

Figure 2.0 - Burn them good

What does this have to do with your concert? Well, it's hardly on equal terms with an invasion of Mexico, but what both ventures have in common is that they're, well, ventures and whether a venture is made or broken depends heavily on the level of commitment of the people involved.

Since you have no ships to burn, how do you ensure that your cast remains dedicated? Here's an idea: why not issue a directive that requires students to remain in a dance once they sign up? Most students will sign up for the concert as soon as they get the chance, and often don't check the details first. In a way, it's kinda like making them sign a contract with the devil, but less fair.

If any parents complain, just tell them that their child should not be in the school at all if they are unwilling to follow the rules. Don't forget to mention how many people frequently beg for a place in the school, even if the last time that happened was in 1994.

Congratulations! Now you know how to organize your very own school concert!

Good luck, and don't forget to check out Around The World With Wesley on the 22nd of July (this month)! Our dancers have been practicing real hard an hour a day, four days a week for about three weeks now!

Wait... by the time you're reading this, all the tickets for seats in our own highly exclusive, limited capacity hall have probably sold out.

Oh well.

Two Weeks Later

2007-06-28T20:04:00.000+08:00

Famine's this weekend? Are you excited? I know I am!

So far we've raised over twelve thousand dollars in the name of less fortunate children all over the world. So... thank you all for your generous donations!

Here's a quick (not really) recap of what's been happening in the days (weeks?) since I last blogged.

! 15/6/07 - Friday

We did not get the ball back. Neither did we hear from the staff of MBS.

Life went on.

! 16/6/07 - Saturday

The Interact Club's kids carnival took place in school. It doesn't really concern most of you, but if you're wondering what a kid's carnival is, it's like a carnival, for kids.

Profound!

The kids were mostly from orphanages or impoverished families around Sentul. The majority were young kids, between the ages of six to twelve. However, the group had a couple of extreme values (that's maths!) in the form of two sixteen year olds and one seventeen year old.

All morning we kept the younger kids busy with musical chairs, station games and sand art, while the others joined us for basketball, football and stories about life in school and church.

Guy: So your principal is Malay or what?
Kevin: No, Indian woman. Used to be a man.
Jun Ian: HAH!

It was a good time. Our photographer guy took like seven hundred pictures in the few hours we were there. Not that I've got any.

Night heralded the arrival of Jamie Neo, here for the weekend.

Jamie: I will have mercy and leave your national landmarks untouched. The Petronas Towers shall stand.

Wow, really? Our humble nation is eternally in your debt.

Jun Ian: And which is your guide? The blind one or the bald one?

A few of us met up for dinner at Bangsar Village - Peako, Lih Fern, En Yaw, Eugene, Jamie, Mahadi and myself.

Peako: Where's En Yaw? Oh he's calling.
Jun Ian: Tell him we're at Nike. Don't say which one.
Peako: How many does this place have?
Jun Ian: Two. One sporting and one casual.
Lih Fern: So which one are we going to?
Jun Ian: Puma.

The restaraunt was a posh deal, but not without its shortcomings.

Eugene: I can't believe everyone's food is here but mine.
En Yaw: Why's your lamb taking so long?
Mahadi: Maybe they're trying to catch the lamb.
Jun Ian: Or maybe their sheep is giving birth.

On a variety of topics.

Jun Ian: Would you really give up a cool name like Neo for one like Mohamadon?
Jamie: Maybe... if you shorten it I guess.
Peako: That wouldn't be all. You'd have to change Jamie to Jamaliah or something.
Jun Ian: They make you do what?

! 18/6/07 - Monday

Dance practice started. It's pretty sad how we only have an hour a day for a month to get our act together for concert.

Practice hours per day: 1
Practice days per week: 5
Practice hours per week: 1 x 5 = 5
Weeks until concert: 5
Total number of practice hours: 5 x 5 = 25

That's like one whole day.

WMS FTW.

! 19/6/07 - Tuesday

My pet sister Joey's birthday.

...What?

junian?: oh wait!
junian?: how about a FISH!
?Jojo?: WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I WANT THATT?!?!?!
junian?: no wait
?Jojo?: hahahhahahahah
junian?: if it died that would be bad
?Jojo?: WAT THE HELL MAN!!
?Jojo?: YEA!!
?Jojo?: that would be the end of our friendship!
?Jojo?: woot!!
junian?: who asked you not to take care of my FISH?
junian?: one day the fish i give you will save your life
?Jojo?: =____________________=
?Jojo?: if u rly give me a fish
?Jojo?: im SOOOOOOOOOOO gonna kill it

You will learn to love this sweet tropical fish.

! 20/6/07 - Wednesday

Wen Juin's birthday. Celebrated with boxes of Lindt and Chocolate Indulgence, which I discovered was the most delightful cake in the existence.

Some believe a new universe is created every time someone has a taste.

! 21/6/07 - Thursday

Keng Yee threw coleslaw at my head. I got her back though. I won't say where.

But it was an excellent shot.

! 23/6/07 - Saturday

CF Camp today. What can I say about it? It was awesome.

Like a religious rock concert.

Jun Ian: So you said you managed to get some of the best bands in the Klang Valley?
Marcus: That's right.
Jun Ian: How many bands are there in the Klang Valley exactly?
Marcus: Two. One for morning worship and one for night rally.

I went around to everyone's blog looking for pictures or a detailed account of some sort but I couldn't find any.

So I shall be the first. But there will be no actual pictures.

a Never Jumped

Ever been to chapel in the mornings? The barely audible vocals, the trash of the instruments, the futility of the piano, the crowds of Buddhists.

And the jumpers.

Don't know what a jumper is? In the language of our school chapel, a jumper is a person who gets so caught up in the music or worship during chapel that they start jumping up and down during the chorus of a fast song.

For example.

The thing about jumpers in daily morning chapel is that there's not a lot of them. The atmosphere's not that immersive, and people tend to be self-conscious. So what normally happens is that a couple of jumpers will start, in random places around the hall, then stop after a couple of lines.

Camp was not like that.

When XYZ, the second best band (according to Marcus) in the Klang Valley arrived that morning, one of the first things they did was teach us all to wave our arms and jump together, and which parts of the song to do what. Then they played Majesty.

The way the crowd responded was mind blowing.

z Hosanna

Worship's not all about hollering and jumping though, awesome as it may be. The Christians believe in quiet time and prayer, and we had that in spades too. As it turns out, the proper way to calm yourself after vigorous chapel activity is by closing your eyes and singing Hosanna like forty times.

d In Case of Emergency Break Dance

Pastor Andy Yeoh was one of those dynamic young church enthusiasts who never seem to run out of steam. His passion was infectious, and he spoke for an hour longer than the committee planned. But that was okay because he was just that good.

Right at the start, he gets on stage and starts bouncing around.

"Okay, I wanna try something out, and I need someone to help me. Is there anyone here who can breakdance?"

I freeze and my heart skips a beat as every gaze in the hall spins around to fix on me.

"Jun Ian!" Someone shouts.

"MARCUS!" I protest, pointing. Futile.

There I was, standing up on the stage next to him (I almost tripped on his Bible) and he starts talking again. He wants to make up a rap, about God. The drummer would play a beat, he explains, and he wants me to dance while he raps.

Before I know it, the beat is playing, the pastor is rapping and my inner voice is screaming at me in disbelief.

"My G-O-D is B-I-G!" Pastor Andy starts flashing crazy ghetto signs at the crowd, walking in true rapper style and looking at me like I'm supposed to be doing something.

"My G-O-D is B-I-G!"

No problem, I think. You can do this. Just step, bounce, step, bounce, cross and turn, step and slide... People are cheering. Guess this isn't so bad after all.

"My G-O-D is B-I-G!"

Step, bounce, step, wait, is Kay Lee recording this? Cross and turn, trip, whoops! Focus! Did anyone notice? Don't think so.

"My G-O-D is B-I-G!"

Step and slide, bounce and spin...

"My G-O-D is BIG!"

He shouts one last time, then it's all over.

m The Shoe and The Tower

The station games at camp were cool in the sense that most of them were original, creative and gave you sense of accomplishment to complete without being too challenging.

Except Marcus's game. Stupid Marcus.

I will not go into detail about Marcus's game. Suffice to say it involved running in circles with your head sideways around a stick until he was satisfied or you collapsed. No prizes for guessing which usually came first.

My favorite game was probably Caroline's. Construct a tower out of tape, newspaper and string. The tallest tower still standing after a blow from Zhou Wei wins.

The heights of the towers were measured in broomsticks. Before my group arrived, the record stood at three and a half broomsticks.

So I tied the string to my shoe and threw it over the branch of a nearby tree. The branch held. I lowered the string to the ground and we started tying newspapers around it. When we decided we were done, we raised the string back up to form a spiraling tower of six and a half broomsticks.

Thinking out of the box. It's awesome every time.

e Hallel

I thought the morning worship session was awesome. The night rally took it to a whole new level. The best band in the Klang Valley according to Marcus, ACTStreme took the stage. Apparently God loves to party hard, because pastor Andy returned to teach us moves that wouldn't have been out of place at a rave. Jumping as high as we could, punching the air, spinning in circles and gyrating wildly were all a part of worship that night.

I was up in front, next to one of the amps with Mike, Jocelyn, Grace, Tammy, Eli, Xyun, Hannah, David, Laura, Carmen, Mariko, Jon Yeoh, Zhou Wei and a whole crowd of people. It was insane.

There was a bit that went something like this, pastor Andy would call out,

"Give me a J!"

And we'd reply,

"J! We got your J we got your J!"

Which we did, with variations, for all the letters J-E-S-U-S and I just found that incredibly fun and cool. And then he taught us a new word.

Hallel.

According to the pastor, Hallel was a form of praise that literally meant go crazy. In accordance with some ancient party tradition, all of us had to take six steps, in each and every way, and then on the seventh, reach Hallel and lose ourselves completely.

"One... Two... Three... Four... Five... Six... SEVEN!"

Time slowed down as the lights flashed, the instruments rang and everyone threw themselves into a frenzy. The world around me exploded into a maelstrom of furious energy. I felt the vibrations of the crowd in the deepest reaches of my body, and while it lasted, I felt a sort of warmth fill me, and everything was clear in my head.

I guess you could call it a peak experience.

So much for my tale of CF Camp 2007 : Floodgates. There are a few things I didn't get to mention, like Ivan and Ju-Hann's sketch of the prodigal son, but it's actually past midnight and I'm really tired from staying up til two every night since the weekend.

I'm ending this post here, but you'll find out about what happened this week in my next post, most likely after Famine.

While you wait, why not have a look at my playlist?

Keep Their Candles Burning

2007-06-14T19:13:00.000+08:00

Matthews: Banyak orang ada anjing, kucing, burung...
Brian: Harimau...
Liwen: Babi.

I didn't blog much about things during my last post. Lots of things happened in the past week or two, during the holidays and in school. Some of these things deserve telling.

One such thing happened today.

We were playing football, as is our custom on Thursdays. The ball was a slick looking Adidas model that Wai Khuin brought. About five minutes into the second game, Adi kicked the ball over the wall (rhymes!) into the Methodist Boys School next door.

One of two things usually happens when the ball goes over the fence.

Someone in MBS throws it back.
One of us has to go get it.

So this occurence, while annoying common some days, has only ever resulted in a slight delay in the game.

Today, there were a few guys on the other side of the wall, so we shouted to them to help us retrieve it. Some of them ran off to search in the bushes, and I started thinking about what a funny thing it would be if they just decided to keep it.

Then a funny thing happened.

An indian boy in a black shirt found the ball and ran over. Instead of throwing the ball to us, he started kicking it around. Then when someone shouted at him he tucked it under his arm and ran into the school.

We stood stunned for a few moments.

Then Dass dashed off towards the school, followed by Adi, Nathan, Hari, Pardeep, Azfar, Daniel and a few other guys. I went with them, kinda hoping there would be a fight of some sort that I could participate in, or at least witness. Mr Siva tagged behind us, trying in vain to turn us back.

Daniel: Check out the size of this stick! We could really beat in some heads!
Adi: Put the stick down, Daniel.

We ran through the school. It was the first time I had ever been in MBS. Everything was so different. The school looked very old, and all the linked fences, open classrooms, worn tables and big metal signboards had a certain charm to them. The kind of charm you might find in say, a prison. But a homely sort of prison.

On the gate was a bright red sign:

Syabas! Kerana Anda Tiba Ke Sekolah.

Translated, that means, congratulations for making it to school!

Stellar. Why doesn't anyone congratulate me for coming to school?

There was another sign in the courtyard:

COUNTDOWN

[___] Days To PMR
[___] Days To SPM

Thankfully, both had been left blank.

Anyway, a quick tour through the school later, we found Dass, standing by the front gate with a security guard and a few students. As it turned out, they saw a boy with a ball under his arm sprint out of school a few minutes earlier. No one stopped him. That was the crazy thing. He just stole a ball, ran out of school and went home without even being questioned.

Defeated, we returned to our school. The MBS told us they'd try to get him when he came for school tomorrow, but for now we were out of a ball. So we split up and some of us went to play volleyball.

Lots of people probably saw us at it, since school was just over and we played like tools. If you get a chance, watch Jason play volleyball. It is a joy and an enlightenment.

Quick Lessons In Bio #1

Punitha: And next to the medulla oblongata are the pons, which control visceral functions like breathing.
Jen Ming: Are there brain ducks in the pons?

Quick Lessons In Bio #2

Punitha: This part is the cerebellum. It controls your body balance and if it gets it hard you can get knocked out.
Jing Hang: So it's like... the balls of the brain?

One more thing... registration for the Interact Club's 30 Hour Famine opens tomorrow.

I don't have to tell you to join up as soon as you can.

Our theme this year is PS the children, which stands for protect and save the children. A common mistake is thinking it means please save the children.

Jing Hang: What is the theme of our famine this year? Form fours!
Eugene: Please save the children.
Jing Hang: Are you sure?
Eugene: Yes.
Jing Hang: Very sure?
Eugene: Yes.
Jing Hang: Do you want to save the children?
Eugene: Yes...
Jing Hang: How are you going to save them?

Why do we have to save the children anyway? Well, simply put, children are the future of the world.

Save the children, save the world.

I know. We are huge fcuking lamers.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give your all to save the children.

Help them keep their candles burning.

Fun With English

2007-06-13T18:16:00.000+08:00

The Secret Lives Of Panda presents

Fun with English in 5W/P Set One!

On Tuesday, we played a game. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's the one where everyone takes turns to come up with a different sentence to form a story. Sounds childish, I know, but it was dope.

The text in fiery shades is the story we came up with. The text in icy blues is everything else.

Mdm Moses: I didn't know what just hit me.
Wei Han: I felt dizzy.
Sze Jian: So I lied down on my bed.
Mdm Moses: Lay down.
Sze Jian: Right.
Jethro: Then my sister came in... and jumped on me.

The class gives an two-note, ascending oo-OOH.

Jun Ian: Then... I came in and pulled Jethro's sister off him.
Mdm Moses: What? It doesn't work that way. It's you.
Jun Ian: It's me? No it's Jethro.
Wen Juin: Actually it's Wei Han.
Mdm Moses: No the way it works is that you're the one on the bed now.
Jun Ian: Oh okay. Then Jun Ian came in and pulled my sister off me.
Wen Juin: I felt sad because I couldn't spend quality time with my sister.

The class laughs.

Angeline: I sent my sister out of the room and locked the door.
Mdm Moses: So it's just you and Jun Ian in there? What's going to happen?
Phin Wern: We... had a long chat.
Jun Ian: I just realised I wrote myself into the story...
Wen: Yeah...
Jun Ian: That's so cool.
Rachel: We made plans about what we were going to do with Jun Ian.
Mdm Moses: Huh? But you're talking to Jun Ian!
Rachel: Oh I thought my sister. Never mind la.
Chuan Han: Okay... I felt sleepy so I sent him outside.
Eu Jin: And I went to sleep.
Mdm Moses: The story became so tame suddenly! All about long chats and sleeping!
Yan Por: I had a nightmare and I woke up.
Caryn: I saw Jun Ian... staring at me.
Yi Wen: I wondered what he was doing back in the room.
Brian: Then I realised Jun Ian wanted to sleep with me.

The class explodes into furious laughter.

Jing Hang: I... didn't know what to do.

Something about the way he says it makes the class laugh even harder. Even Mdm Moses is laughing.

Lih Fern: I decided to let Jun Ian sleep with me.

The class reacts.

Sherene: But I got hungry so I went out.
Mdm Moses: Okay okay... from now on, no more obscenities.

But she's still laughing.

Lisha: I realised I should have licked Jun Ian.
Mdm Moses: What did you say?
Lisha: Uhm... I realised I should have kicked Jun Ian.
Zhi Mei: Then I went to eat dinner.
Derek: I had my dinner.
Li Wen: And then after dinner I had another cake.
Mdm Moses: Another cake? A whole cake?
Li Wen: Yeah.
Peako: I went to the fridge and when I opened it, I found Jun Ian inside.
Soe Foong: I had a stomach ache.
Mdm Moses: You found Jun Ian in the fridge and had a stomach ache? Okay Denise, finish it.
Denise: Then I heard the sound of my alarm clock ringing. I woke in my bed and realised it had all been a very strange dream.
Jun Ian: Classic ending.

The Holiday

2007-05-29T12:10:00.000+08:00

Once, Rufus wrote an essay for Stanley that went something like this.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's two. Please forgive my excessive use of words.

Then he drew two pictures. And at the bottom he wrote,

(2018 words)

He really did. But she made him rewrite.

Anyway, here's my 14000++ word blog post.

It's about The Holiday. Like The River, minus the guitar solo.

Juinn: So who sang this song?
Jun Ian: Bad Charlotte. No wait... Better Charlotte.
Shern: We should make a band, call it Better Charlotte.
Kevin: When we meet the originals it'd be like... You're Good Charlotte? We're Better.

On stage we'd probably look something like this. We're actually on top of a boat on the water but you can't tell from this picture.

Clockwise starting from the Vodafone: Kevin, Me, Shern, Juinn.

We'd play songs about white sand, clear water, colorful fish and sunsets.

And volleyball. At least half the album would be about volleyball, considering the inordinate amount of it we played on the island.

Actually, we played lots of bullshit/bluff and mafia (you know, with cards), but I didn't take any pictures of that so here's a picture of us splashing water at each other.

We went places and did things.

Not sure if you can tell from the snaps, but I got amazingly burned. I am really dark now.

Group pictures, of which we took a lot.

We found this boat in the jungle!

Trying out the indian movie thing.

We took the boat all over, to swim and see fishes and corals and stuff.

Just another picture of Kevin, Lin Rui, Wei Yi and Joo Lee.

My eyes are closed, but it's still one of my favorite pictures.

All that and more in just three days? This holiday's tricked already and it's just getting started.

Points Of Interest

2007-05-17T17:46:00.000+08:00

Zhi Mei: You and I are inseperable!
Sha: But what about Marcus?
Zhi Mei: Marcus is inside me.

Chemistry tomorrow, but this won't be long, and besides, it looks like you don't need an education to do well in this country.

Just get into politics.

I'm not sure how accurate this is. I have enough to do without tracking the state of our ruling cabinet's tertiary education. But my dad says it most likely is. I trust my dad.

Sort of.

And I don't normally read mail, but this one caught my eye. I thought it was a chain letter from the education minister.

Here it is, reproduced in full except for the colors of the national flags (dutifully added by me).

It is not to say Singapore is really good, (it says) but looks like our cabinet ministers are really teruk!

Singapore Cabinet	Malaysia Cabinet
PM Lee Hsien Loong Cambridge University – First Class Honours (1974) Harvard University – Masters (1980)	PM Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi University of Malaya – Bachelor of Arts Honours (1964)
MM Lee Kuan Yew Cambridge University – First Class Honours (1949)	Deputy PM Dato' Sri Najib Razak University of Nottingham – Bachelor of Arts Honours (1974)
SM Goh Chok Tong University of Singapore – First Class Honours (1964) Williams College, USA – Masters (1967)	Minister of Foregn Affairs Syed Hamid Albar (can someone tell me his univeristy?) – Bachelor of Arts [UITM]
Minister for Law Prof. S Jayakumar University of Singapore – Bachelor of Law Honours (1963) Yale Univerity – Masters (1966)	Ministry of Works Dato' Seri Samy Vellu (Education Unknown) [Form 6, Anderson School]
Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng University of Singapore – Bachelor of Arts & Business Admin (1977) London Business School – Masters (1979)	Ministry of International Trade & Industry Rafidah binti Aziz University of Malaya – Bachelor of Arts Honours
Minister for Foreign Affairs BG George Yeo Cambridge University – Double First Class Honours (1976) Harvard Business School – MBA w/ Distinction (1985)	Minister of Agriculture Muhyiddin Yassin (Education Unknown) [Polytechnic Ungku Omar]
Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang Cambridge University – First Class Honours w/ Distinction (1976) Harvard University – Masters (1986)	Ministry of Domestic Trade Shafie Apdal (Education Unknown) [Form 5, Failed English]
Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean University of Manchester – First Class Honours (1976) Imperial College, London – Masters w/ Distinction (1977)	Minister of Education Hishammuddin Hussein (Education Unknown) [Bachelor of Arts, Social Science]
Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam London School of Economics – Bachelor of Arts Cambridge University – Masters Harvard University – Masters	Minister of Home Affairs Radzi bin Sheikh Ahmad (Education Unknown) [Kolej Islam Malaysia, Diploma]

Then it says,

**That is why they are so desperate to get Khairy Jamaluddin up so fast, because he is from Cambridge. God knows how he got in!

Okay, maybe you don't need a whole bunch of fancy degrees to head a nation. But this guy here... it says he failed english? In form five?

How do you fail english?

Maybe we should send all these guys back to school or something. Just to get a better looking testimonial.

No one's perfect though. If you read the thingy closely, you'll notice the guy who wrote it mispelled univeristy and foregn.

Though I would like to, I'm not going to show you a photoshopped picture of Samy Vellu sitting in Chemistry, getting chewed out by Haslina. I've got exams.

During English, I fell asleep. I had this weird dream where I think I was planning a party. I remember calling up this malay guy and asking, "Encik, siew pao ada?"
I was thinking about it so much I wrote the words siew pao into my essay.

That was fun. On to my second topic of interest...

I have to tell you about Spiderman 3 again. Some of you didn't like it. That's fine.

Myself, I really enjoyed it. But check out all the scenes they deleted from the movie!

- Following up on his firing, Eddie goes to see Gwen to ask her out. Gwen wants nothing to do with him and explains that they’ve only gone on one date, not counting the time they bumped into each other at a coffee place. Gwen admits that they did kiss, but is confused when Eddie insists she told him that she loves him.

- At the Spider-Man appreciation ceremony, Peter runs into a little boy with toy web-shooters. After getting sprayed on, Peter shoots a little webbing on the kid’s shoe as the boy’s walking away. The kid sees the webbing, turns around and points to his mother that he just met Spider-Man. The mother sees some guy in a ****py suit nearby and figures that’s what he was talking about.

- Some of the Eddie/Jameson dialogue got cut, including a great exchange.
“What’s that smell?”
“Brock, sir.”
“What kind of cologne is ‘Brock’?”
“No, sir. My name is Brock.”
“Why are you named after a cologne?”

- Harry goes up against Venom one-on-one for a round, not counting the impaling scene.

That's just a sample. There's lots more if you clicky clicky.

There's also a petition for the release of the director's cut DVD, which would be pretty interesting if it did include all those scenes.

I really wanna see the last one (Harry and Venom).

Yeah, that's it for now. Just thought you should know.

junian: i just had an idea
oh! ky: what?
junian: one day i will get you and esther ho to stand together
junian: and i will say
junian: look! its OH AND HO!
oh! ky: uh yeah, we wanted to put that on our jerseys
oh! ky: xP
junian: gosh
junian: you beat me to the lameness

Educational

2007-05-12T21:21:00.000+08:00

Because the first season is almost done.

The finale is during the exams. Damn!

If you have time to read blogs during the exams, you have time to watch this video.

It's only five minutes, and it's educational, in a way.

Before you proceed, there are a few things you should know.

The main religion of Israel is Jewish.
The coalition of the willing are the countries that followed the US into the Iraq war (Mainly the US, the UK and South Korea).
America lost the Vietnam War.
The United Kingdom, also known as Britain's official currency is the pound.
Fidel Castro is the president of Cuba.
Kofi Annan served as the Secretary General of the UN until January this year.
Tony Blair is the prime minister of Britain.
The axis of evil consists of North Korea, Iraq and Iran.

If you did not know all these things before, it's fine. If you're reading this you're (most likely) still in school, but you should probably pick up a newspaper or something.

Now watch this.

It's called Why Americans Are Geniuses. Click to watch.

Reporter: How many world wars have there been?
Man: Three.

This morning I watched an Inconvenient Truth. Yeah, it's almost the exams. So?

It was pretty scary. If you watch it you'll see a lot of graphs like that one. That's carbon dioxide levels in the past 60-ish years.

I thought it was good, but there was too much biography on Al Gore. Did we really need to see so much of the farm and even the road where he crashed his car?

Overall, it's really something everyone should get to know about. The pictures of disappearing glaciers and ice caps were just chilling.

Apart from that... I don't have anything serious to blog about.

Yeah okay! I get it! My chinese is bad!

Colour by numbers. Somehow coloring an all-black spiderman isn't as fun as I thought it'd be.

Seriously lame jokes.

On the EST paper.

Azfar: If you add a L-A-M in front, it becomes the LAMEST PAPER!

On Tim Tams.

Lih Fern: Where's Tam? Behind TIM!

Lame enough?

Peako: If Azfar and Lih Fern got married their children would be born with crutches.

Unlike so many others, I don't have a friendship quiz for you.

But you can always take THE IMPOSSIBLE QUIZ!

Take it with a friend. Remember, impossibility shared is impossibility halved.

Credit for the discovery of this insanity goes to Joey.

And if you get past question 50, props to you.

These Are The Days

2007-05-05T17:33:00.000+08:00

... that we really should be studying. And not, say, drawing things in our sketchbooks. Well I haven't inked it or colored it yet. And I'm sure I'll be really tempted to.

Spiderman and Rhino!

Hit the books dammit! Hit them! Stop blogging and stop drawing!

Sigh.

Spiderman <3 MO and Heroes + 5

2007-05-02T11:34:00.000+08:00

Hiro: Should I stop time?
Peter: No. I haven't had a good fight in years.

What happens next? Something cool no doubt.

Okay, okay. This post contains MAJOR SPOILERS about Spiderman 3 and Heroes.

I had to make the text bigger and emphasize this fact because three people already told me they spoiled themselves.

Spoilers are not good for your health.

If you want to enjoy these shows, leave now and come back after you've watched them.

Cause they're so much better unspoiled.

I warned you.

First, we interrupt this broadcast to bring you a picture of pandas doing handstands. On a tree.

Picture credit to Fox. And now we return.

Spiderman <3 MO

The first thing you have to know about Spiderman 3 is that it's...

Yup. EMO! Notice anything different about this poster? I did it myself.

Look closely dammit.

There are three things you should keep in mind when watching this movie.

Forget the comics.
Don't sit next to Li Wen.
Refer to 1 and 2.

The movie and the comics are two different things. If you get them mixed up you're going to end up making comments like this.

"That's not how the symbiote came to earth! Venom doesn't die that way! I thought Eddie Brock becomes Carnage later how can that happen? Why hasn't Gwen Stacey died?"
- Ben Kane

Personally I think Spiderman 3 was awesome. A couple of others said that the second one was better, but I don't remember it as being that good, and I don't feel like watching it again. I feel like watching 3 again though.

Peter with the black spider suit is completely badass and it is so good.

Out of costume, he has a towering mountain of personal issues. It's not all his fault, but life has a way of handing Peter lemons at every turn. There's a permanent residence in Springfield and then there's life as Peter Parker.

"OMB his life is so screwed up! I mean, I always knew he was a loser... But I didn't know he was that big a loser! WTH!"
- Li Wen, on Peter Parker's life

Okay I don't think he actually said those things but it was close.

If you fell down the social ladder of the Marvel Universe, at the bottom you'd find Grasshopper, a character so unfortunate he only appeared in one issue of the Great Lakes Avengers before being killed almost immediately.

"Five point eight seconds. A new record for shortest membership on ANY team."
- Monkey Joe, team sidekick, on the fast life and tragic death of Grasshopper

Well, Peter Parker isn't at the bottom of that ladder. But his life can and does suck.

This is fact.

So when the symbiote finally gives him a chance to take a walk on the dark side - basically his ticket out of loserville - it's not surprising how his behaviour changes.

I wanted some caps of his wardrobe, but I love this guy as an emo.

Remember the bar scene? When he gets his John Travolta on and then sexes up Gwen Stefani - whoops, Stacey - in front of MJ just to get back at her? As soon as I saw where they were going I knew it was gonna be good. Love his line when he slips the hostess a bill and tells her to "find us some shade".

Well this picture is okay but in the bar she looked so much better.

And when he takes it to the streets as Black Spidey he's ten times as hardcore. Example, the second time when he fought Harry, when they were in the secret room in Harry's mansion. Harry threw a goblin bomb at Peter's back and he just ducked, snared it with a webline and casually flicked it back into Harry's face which was off the charts and probably illegally cool.

You know what they say... once you go black, you can't go back!

Not that he doesn't have his moments as regular Spiderman. The way he destroyed Venom? Driving hollow bars into the ground to make a cage, rattling and banging them all the time to paralyze the symbiote with sound... that was... well.. I'm out of superlatives. Not really. I guess there are the regular ones like extraordinary or delightful. But those aren't extreme enough and besides I always wanted to say that.

Harry is cool as the New Goblin. Too bad he gets impaled on his own flying skateboard.

There was one fun little scene that gave us a hint of Carnage in the future movies. When Peter was using the phone and flirting with the landlord's daughter ("get me some milk" -D), he was doing his best not to pay attention to what Dr Connors was saying but if you did you would have noticed that he did have a sample of the symbiote with him. Spiderman 4, anyone?

If you had a choice, Gwen Stacey or Mary Jane Watson?

The one thing I took issue with was the unreliability of the goblin bombs. Peter's taken a bomb close to the face and all he lost was part of his mask. Harry took one in much closer proximity and developed burn marks not unlike the map of Australia Mahadi's got on his arm. But when Harry launched a bomb into the Sandman's head the resulting explosion had a mushroom cloud.

Maybe Harry's arsenal had a couple of duds. ROFLcopter.

One thing we all agreed on was that the movie at times had a decidedly MCR look to it. The scenes from the bar and the church could have made a video for The Black Parade or maybe I Don't Love You. Any ideas?

Heroes + 5

Five years gone. This episode is a look into a world where the heroes never saved the cheerleader or stopped the exploding man. This world is so much darker and more dangerous, which leads us to more powerful heroes and more intense battles.

I'm already out of blogging steam and I wanna get this to my publisher so I'll be quick. (Promise not to publish any spoilers?)

The future is wow. But it's also... very dead.

Nathan (killed by Sylar after becoming president and powers taken)
Candice (killed by Sylar after going into hiding and powers taken)
The Haitian (stabbed in the neck by Mohinder)
Claire (killed by Sylar pretending to be Nathan and powers taken)
Mr Bennet (shot by Matt after revealing Claire's location)
DL (killed by Sylar after going into hiding and powers taken)
Molly (killed by Sylar after going into hiding and powers taken)
Micah (died when the bomb exploded)
Ando (died when the bomb exploded)
Isaac (killed by Sylar and powers taken)
Hiro (shot by Matt while trying to teleport)
Hana (shot by Matt for helping Mr Bennet)
Zane (killed by Sylar and powers taken)
Dale (killed by Sylar and powers taken)
Charlie (killed by Sylar and powers taken)
Eden (shot self in the head to prevent Sylar from taking powers)

At least we have some super super heroes.

Peter (completely kickass)
Sylar (like Peter, but evil)

Okay, not that many. But Niki's a stripper now. And Jessica tragically disappeared somehow

I have a GIF file of Peter and Sylar fighting. Or at least, firing up their ice and fire powers. But for some reason I can't get it to move on blogger. Hmmm?

And Life's Like That?

2007-04-30T23:51:00.000+08:00

[†]'¿ßlαxĸ♥яђ◦sЄ-●?·667ֽ·cashedLithium¯`●þ[. ウアニラ.]♪ģŗicole ™ ♥♡o.O"[†] says:
go blog bonerhead

But I can't really blog right now, so in lieu of a groundbreaking new post, here's a picture of a rabbit.

I won't pretend I haven't been deeply uninspired for some time. That hasn't really changed though.

A blogger needs an original idea, or at least an opinion to keep things interesting. I'm still lacking in those departments, mainly cause there's too much going on right now.

I'm back at my keys now because of your encouragements and even threats (thanks). And also the fact that I have to go through my blog on the way to all yours and I can't stand to keep seeing the same old post every time I do.

A snapshot of life on the internet. Now it's been said that there's no actual way to win a flame war, but this could probably change the laws of social science. Forever.

Step 1: Anonymous person makes disparaging remark.

Step 2: The conflict escalates into a flame war.

Step 3: Guan Xiong swoops in and saves the day.

The Blackout

2007-04-22T21:15:00.000+08:00

As Lisha once said, I did good today.

Well actually it was yesterday, but this one sounds so much better, wouldn't you agree?

So you might have noticed that I haven't been active much since the Australians got here, and even for a while after they left.

Them.

There's been a lot of hype about them while they were here, and unless you live under the proverbial rock you would have seen them at some point or another as they failed completely at blending into the crowd here at school.

I haven't really got a lot of good pictures unlike the last time, but I will post them as they come.

On to the real issues.

Yellow > Blue
Blue > Green
Green > Red

Congrats yellow. Even though I have so many friends who are blue, it's the one house I couldn't stand to see win (again).

Sorry guys but it's true. No other house makes such a big deal out of winning. Jason Woi says it's because your house hasn't won in like, ten years or something, but just about everyone else wanted to see you fall as a house, no matter how much we like you all individually.

Which really says a lot about... bleh. Writer's block.

Do you get this picture? No?

It's a graphic representation of Friday morning, when Seah and I stumbled into the midst of a blue house pep talk. Peako was giving the talk and wearing his I-Don't-Like-This-Color green shirt.

It's a green shirt with the words I Don't Like This Color written on the back. I think I gave him that idea, but I'm not really sure.

So there we were, the two of us, standing shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by aliens, and there were a lot more blues than you see in the picture.

Peako: We're four points up, and tomorrow we can show the whole school, along with these two here that blue house is the best. Move along la... go and have your own pep talk!
Jun Ian: Oh, we're just going to mooch off yours.
Peako: You see? Everyone wants to be part of the winning house.
Jun Ian: What color are you wearing? Doesn't look like blue.
Peako: Can you read what it says on the back?
Jun Ian: Uhm, nope... the color too nice already...

Sports day ended on a pretty anticlimatic note though. Although yellow only won by ten points, it was hard to be excited when you couldn't hear the announcements.

Bzzt bzzt... red house!

The crowd cheers, and Wee Lik screams. I was like STFU man I can't hear what they're saying. And he tells me he can't hear them either.

Bzzt bzzt... green house!

The crowd cheers again, and none of us know why, but there are trophies being handed out.

This went on for awhile.

Bzzt bzzt... blue house!

And blue house starts jumping up and down, and someone says they just won gymrama (which it turns out they didn't).

Bzzt bzzt... yellow house!

This time, Peako drops to his knees, and admist the confusion you see the House Cup so you can kinda figure out what's happening.

Heck, even the PBSM won a trophy for... something.

Guan Xiong > Chuck Norris

Green house unleashed the beast that day. Guan Xiong won four golds and three silvers, even after not taking part in 400m and being disqualified from the 800m for turning up late.

Do I really have to tell you how fast he is?

His brother won the performance trophy though (broke two records when Guan Xiong only broke one), which has made us wonder if his family line is the result of centuries of crossbreeding or something.

While a Tangelo does sound pretty cool, shouldn't it be called a Tangrape or a Grangerine or something?

Guan Xiong confirmed this today, when he told us about his parents. And not in the way he once told us about his sister.

Guan Xiong: My sister? Like dog only la. Annoying like cibai.

As it turns out his mom set a disc-throwing record at some girls school in Sarawak that hasn't been broken to this day. And his dad? His dad plays chess.

Which explains so much.

Well, cybersports day, which took place in a nearby cybercafe roughly half an hour after sports day, was so much better.

More than three solid hours of CounterStrike seperated the men from the boys and showed us how the individual houses would fare if we actually had an interhouse cybersports day

Jenq Yan > Daniel > Brian

Brian is solid, and Daniel strikes fear with flashbangs and bunny hops, but Jenq Yan is to CounterStrike what Guan Xiong is to track (as in track and field, you know, running).

Godlike.

Yellow didn't even have a rep here. Jon, perhaps, or maybe even Eugene.

When we first started playing, there was a guy in a school shirt who was just leaving. Said he's been there for three hours already. Clever.

Anyway, more on mascots next time.

OMFB

2007-04-12T22:51:00.000+08:00

Okay, though I did intially promise that the next update would be a video of me and Hari poking a lion, dances come first because that's in bigger demand.

Also, so I don't forget, I have plans to blog about mascots, shirt designs, sports and the aussies.

Just a reminder.

Click to watch.

Click to watch.

Okay I know they look the same but the one on top is the Indian dance, and the one below is the Chinese dance. The Malay dance is only like two minutes so I won't upload it unless someone requests it.

Okay? Okay.

***

There was a video screen at IU day. It was made by Wilkin and me and some of the board and was supposed to be really good. Unfortunately the teachers behind the wheel in the projector room messed up my sound and played lounge music instead.

The injustice burns with the heat of a thousand suns.

Luckily I have this blog, and I have youtube, so you can now... you know.

Click to watch.

***

Jess plays Hands Down at the Interact IU Day!

Click to watch.

Told you there'd be updates.

***

The aussies are here and they are awesome.

Jun Ian is hosting Marc Gangemi, the smallest guy, so he will not be actively involved in the blogosphere for about a week.

This does not mean you should forsake the blog. I might still upload things.

This post will be removed eventually.

Karma

2007-04-09T21:03:00.000+08:00

Yup... they're coming. This Wednesday night! If you can you should definitely come and chill with our Australian friends. They are very cool.

Okay? Okay. I'm very tired right now since I slept only two hours last night. I plan to sleep by ten today. There is a video to keep you occupied.

It is not entirely about penguins kissing, but you should watch it. Your time will be well spent and I would like to have your opinion on it (cause I made it).

Click on the picture to watch the video.

Yup... I've been iPimped.

Gelaskin. Protects entire iPod except sides. Costs RM 69 normally but currently on 10% discount at Gizmo in 1 Utama.

Check out their other amazing designs here.

We're Always Right

2007-04-06T23:25:00.000+08:00

Peako thinks he's so smart. Don't tell the public Dr M is starting a guerrilla revolution, he says.

But oh gosh look! He really is!

Well the paper says it's a war not a revolution, but I say that's a matter of opinion!

And now to more serious things.

Peako (again) tells me that the government might make us register our blogs.

And this information comes from this website, as brought to his attention by Pinkpot.

Now, I would really encourage that you click on that link, but if you're afraid of finger cramps or something, here's the full article.

Proposal to register Malaysian bloggers

Malaysia's deputy communications minister, Shaziman Abu Mansorr, says bloggers may be forced to register their names to avoid unjust claims being posted on the Internet.

It comes after Malaysia's Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and a number of other ministers have launched attacks on Malaysian bloggers and internet surfers, accusing them of spreading lies about the government.

One prominent blogger, Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, has told Radio Australia's Katie Hamann it shows the Malaysian government is threatened by the freedom afforded by the medium.

"I think they're very sensitive right now because of the stuff that's coming out of the blogs," she said, speaking on the Connect Asia program.

"If you read the blogs and you read the mainstream media, there is a clear difference or clear gap between what's reported on the blogs and what's reported in the mainstream papers.

"Some things are simply not appearing in the mainstream papers which leads people to question why."

Blogs have seen an increase in popularity as Malaysians take to cyberspace to discuss politics and social issues.

Susan Loone, a Malaysian blogger and co-ordinator of Bloggers United, says Malaysia's 11 million internet users are relying increasingly on blogs for their news.

"Those who read blogs every day and those who are on the internet and read online news, I think they do believe blogs because more and more blogs are actually exposing stories which are later picked up by the newspapers," she said.

Okay! So what are they saying exactly?

Some Malaysian bloggers and internet surfers have been spreading lies about the government.

Yeah okay I mean it's the internet you guys making us register our blogs is not going to stop all the idiots you know from getting together each morning and finding new ways to make your lives hell.

If there is anyone here who has not read the article about Malaysia on Uncyclopedia now would be the time.

Incest is Malaysians' main hobby. To encourage the team spirit Malays like to organise themselves into gangs when conducting rapes and that is called a gang rape. That's why in 2007 Malaysian tourist board came up with slogan: Visit Malaysia 2007 and experience the true gang rape! They have opened what is called a cultural village where a visitor can experience rape by men from various cultures. Fuck these dumb motherfuckers who rape even their goddamn bloody grandmas. i know a person called don shue who raped his own goddamn rabbit. His penis is so short that it happens to fit the small cute little rabbit perfectly.

There's a lot more where that came from, if you like that kind of thing. There are a lot more topics like Malaysian history, culture, Warcraft and Friendster. Sure it's kind of crude and vulgar but everyone likes to read dumb things once in a while.

Is that the reason why the government wants to register blogs? If it isn't then what is?

This could be part of the problem.

And this is probably the other part.

Guys I don't know you really so I'm not going to say anything about you two personally but racism is disgusting.

What makes you want to publicly bash malays? Because the other guy is doing it? Because you want to win Blog of the Month?

That's like the time Than Shwe (the brutal dictator of Myanmar) slayed millions in a last-minute push to become Time Magazine's Man of the Year.

Yes, you can become Man of the Year for bad things. That title goes to whoever made the most impact on the world, for better or for worse.

Just so you know, neither of you is going to win for that.

Back to the censorship.

First we registered our phones. Fine. Just makes it a little harder for us to carry two numbers or more. And now if I'm getting messages from a stalker the government can tell me who that stalker is.

But blogs?

If they keep this up, I'm starting a petition. And I hope to get all of your support.

The High Life

2007-04-05T18:14:00.000+08:00

There are two notes of interest I would like to bring to your attention before we begin.

The first is this: high jumpers of Wesley Methodist School, please be informed that Lee Ju Hann is your God. He is a man not taller than myself, but he broke the 153 on his way to becoming the form four gold medalist. And did I mention he's in green house too?

This is Ju Hann. Well not really.

And the second: from what I've seen of them so far the form four dancers are really good. They were having concert auditions today and I watched them for a real long time cause it was hard to look away. The girls are pretty good, I noticed Ain, Carmen and Sandra, but the star of the show has to be Deepaq.

The guy mixes his indian moves with hip hop steps that make a solid if not unbeatable combination. From what I saw, looks like he's been watching You Got Served alot too. I recognized at least three sets from the movie.

I'm really nervous about how good they are since I don't wanna be in anything less than the best dance during this year's concert.

I can imagine how last year's form fives felt when the best dance wasn't by the form fives but the form fours and I would hate to have to go through that.

When I say that I mean this.

Last year when Keangston made his end of year speech he mentioned his experience in "the best dance in the concert" and I was like no Keangston you weren't in Grease... then it turns out he was talking about America and I was like yeah right get real man but I didn't say anything cause he was leaving school and everyone knew he was wrong anyway.

I don't want to say I'm in the best dance we've got unless that's really true.

We haven't got Brian, Sanjay or Jon and now that Brian's watched Stomp The Yard he's on fire with ideas for his African dance. And it's gonna be tough to one up him cause that movie was seriously good.

Screaming, hollering and awesomeness.

If we're the third best dance this concert I'm going to jump off a bridge.

Well not really.

That's all I had to say about stuff right now.

---

So you step back and breathe in. You loosen up, you stretch and you bounce a few times to make sure everyone knows it's you they should be watching.

And you feel their eyes on you as you're given the all clear and you run towards the bar, slowly for effect, and you feel their eyes on you, and you're starting to get a little nervous.

But as you draw nearer, the pressure evaporates, along with the crowd, and all that matters is you and the bar. Your mind frees itself of distractions as the bar looms ahead, and you speed up, already smiling because you've done it before and your body automatically knows what to do.

And your legs lift and you soar through the air.

The launch is perfect. The whole world slows down around you as you ascend, and your back arcs up and your head falls back.

For a moment, you're vaguely aware of the crowd again as their excitement reaches its peak. They're waiting to see if you pass, and you smile at their uncertainty.

In your mind, it's already done. And the truth is it was over long ago, the truth is it was over as soon as you made the decision to jump. All that remains is to clear the bar. And you do. Bright lights flash in your mind as every image burns a snapshot into your memory to savor over and over again.

Then you land intact, your back to the mat, and the crowd roars. The song of their applause and their cheers reach every fibre of your being. And your heart soars, flying even higher than you did just seconds ago. Then you rise, head held high and arms outstretched, savoring every moment. The moment lifts you on high as you run back to the starting point. You feel like their praise could give you wings.

They're still cheering.

It feels even better than being on stage. All those times you were an entertainer, but this time you're a hero.

The bar is raised. The others don't do so well but you're still brimming with confidence. You've cleared this height before and the audience has you pumped.

Your turn comes and you do everything the same, your mind working to remember all the steps and all the angles. But the bar draws closer and something's definitely wrong. But there's nothing you can do about it so you try anyway.

The launch is... less than perfect. The world slows down again but it doesn't last very long. You clear the bar but some part of you strikes it and it falls, and the crowd's disappointment is obvious. You shake your head slowly as you get up. It was close. You've cleared this height before. You can do it again.

So you try again. This time you scrape past the bar and for a moment you think you've made it, and so does the watching crowd. Then the bar shakes and falls, and you've got one more try.

You don't quite make it.

You could give any number of reasons why you failed, but somehow you feel like it was just bad luck. You're disappointed, but not devastated.

You gave it your all, though it wasn't your best. And that might not make sense to anyone else, but it means everything to you.

"Glory, Brian. One word. Glory." - Sanjay

You Heard Me

2007-04-01T23:22:00.000+08:00

April Fool's Joke #1

Jun Ian & Jamie vs Mahadi

At 00:16:19 this morning.

Jamie: chuck norris isn't in the hospital
Jamie: the hospital is in chuck norris
junian: oh shit you suck
Jamie: why because i popped your little bubble of chuck norris? xp
junian: okay
junian: we both tell mahadi that chuck norris in hospital
junian: are you talking to him now
Jamie: yeah huh
junian: put that in your name and i tell him
junian: you dont say anything but put in your name
Jamie: put what? chuck norris in hospital?
junian: yeah
Jamie: now? xp
junian: remember he's having a testicular operation
junian: now

* Jamie has changed his/her personal message to CHUCK NORRIS IS IN THE HOSPITAL!

Jamie: ah uhm okay (: now what?
junian: we wait
Jamie: okay. elevator music plays.

So!

junian: mahadi!
Mahadi (ci) : mmhmm...
junian: did you know
junian: CHUCK NORRIS MASUK HOSPITAL
junian: not so invincible after all
Mahadi (ci) : why
junian: testicular operation
junian: o.o
junian: for wearing tight jeans

Meanwhile!

Mahadi: oi noob
Mahadi: chuck norris in hospital
Jamie: damn sad right. we should send get well card
Mahadi: send get well card to me la
Mahadi: im damn emo now la

Back to us!

Mahadi (ci) : i always expected hard gay to get one before norris
Mahadi (ci) : heck i would never expect norris to get that
junian: hard gay already kena before what
junian: hip injury
Mahadi (ci) : serious arr
Mahadi (ci) : norris... haha
Mahadi (ci) : balls of steel too heavy
junian: lol
junian: theres an article
junian: wait i find
Mahadi (ci) : IS THIS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE!?!?

BUSTED! :P

April Fool's Joke #2

Jun Ian & Jamie vs Peako

Peako reads Jamie's personal message.

peako: WTF
peako: chuck norris is in the hospital??

So!

Jamie: HAHA. interested? (:
junian: okay wait
junian: i know how
Jamie: mm so how you wanna play this?
Jamie: yeah smooth la
junian: hold off
junian: tell him its on my blog
junian: not yet
junian: NOT YET
Jamie: okay. uh. say when
junian: is he suspicious?

Is he?

Jamie: yeah. testicular operation
Jamie: damn tragic right?
peako: when???
peako: link??
Jamie: you're so outdated
Jamie: how can you not know?
peako: lol
peako: oh
peako: cheyy
peako: that operation
peako: ah
Jamie: you know?

Then!

junian: okay im done
junian: tell him its on my blog

The bait!

peako: he finally updated
Jamie: yeah
Jamie: first post on the top la
Jamie: picture of chuck norris in the hospital

And then...

HOME RUN!;)

April Fool's Joke #3

Shu Wei vs Wai Khuin

I got a call from Wai Khuin this morning, when I was in the graveyard doing Qing Ming.

Wai Khuin: Jun Ian did you hear? No school tomorrow cause Mrs Matthews died!
Jun Ian: Happy April Fool's day to you too.
Wai Khuin: No I'm serious! All our monitors are sending sms! Shu Wei showed me! You don't believe you call the office la!
Jun Ian: Send me the message?

Message beep!

To all teachers, staff and students of Wesley Methodist School, I would like to express my deepest regrets for the death of our principal, Mrs Vimala Matthews. She passed away in the KLGH after a car accident yesterday night. As a result, the school office will be closed on Monday, 2nd April 2007 and will reopen the next day. Those who wish to pay their last respects to our beloved principal, please contact me. - Ms Goh Kai Lian

Message beep again!

oh wait. i just found out shu wei pranked me.

Oh Wai Khuin.

Heartbreak Hunt

2007-03-31T20:04:00.000+08:00

I don't really know how to put my feelings into words, cause it'd probably look alot like this.

junian: DAMN SAD OK

junian: explain to you
junian: last year the treasure hunt was damn hard
junian: so the people who won were the ones who really worked la and the prizes were so so only
junian: but this year dunno why it was so easy so everyone had a chance
junian: and the prizes damn crazy
~* JoJo*~: haha
~* JoJo*~: wat were the prizes?
junian: amir and shamir won second place for under-16
~* JoJo*~: hmmmhh?
~* JoJo*~: yea?
junian: each got one ipod nano, ipod speakers, basketballs and summore stuff
~* JoJo*~: WTH?!?!?!!?
~* JoJo*~: IPOD NANO?!?!?!!?
~* JoJo*~: F***!
junian: and then those who won higher places in other categories got things like ipod videos... sony ericsson until 8X00i series... dunno what bloody camera with alot of numbers
~* JoJo*~:OH SHIT!!!
~* JoJo*~: damn this thing larr
junian: one team win already a few thousand
~* JoJo*~: STOP TELLING ME
~* JoJo*~: i wanna cry adi
junian: its WORSE FOR ME AND THOSE WHO WENT
junian: the winners of my under-18
junian: everyone thought they were the biggest losers ok
junian: first they all no semangat and they finished almost last
junian: everyone pity them and help them
junian: and when they announce prize one was sleeping somewhere
junian: how do you think we feel
~* JoJo*~: sleeping
~* JoJo*~: OMG
~* JoJo*~: i need to go
~* JoJo*~: NXT YEAR
~* JoJo*~: i dun bloody care wat they say
~* JoJo*~: GET 1ST!
~* JoJo*~: I NEED A DAMN PHONE!!!
~* JoJo*~: i rly wanna swear like crazie now
~* JoJo*~: eyy
~* JoJo*~: suan yean jamie and carmen won?
junian: nope
junian: they all damn depressed also
~* JoJo*~: F***
~* JoJo*~: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo
~* JoJo*~: i wanna crryyyyy
~* JoJo*~: AIKZ
~* JoJo*~: need to bloody go nxt yearrr
~* JoJo*~: i so lost out this year
~* JoJo*~: i wanna die alreadyyyyy
~* JoJo*~: JUN IANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
~* JoJo*~: they got a damn hp
~* JoJo*~: FFFFFFFFFFFFFF
~* JoJo*~: i cant blif amir got ipod
~* JoJo*~: SHIT WEIH!
junian: just say it la
junian: FUCK THE WORLD
~* JoJo*~: AHAHAH
~* JoJo*~: YEA
~* JoJo*~: go jun ian!!
~* JoJo*~: I WANNA GO!!
junian: so damn pissed you know!
~* JoJo*~: ask them to rewind the time
~* JoJo*~: LIKE IM NOT
~* JoJo*~: i didnt even go!!
junian: after announcement i look at everyone who didnt win
~* JoJo*~: OMGOSH LARR
junian: everyone was like DAMN PAIN DAMN PAIN
~* JoJo*~: YERRRRRRRRRRRRRR
~* JoJo*~: FUCK THIS SHIT!!
junian: EXACTLY
~* JoJo*~: AHAAH
~* JoJo*~: I WANNA DIE!!
junian: the line between a few thousand dollars and going home with nothing
junian: THIS THIN
~* JoJo*~: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
~* JoJo*~: i want that phone
~* JoJo*~: WHY DIDNT I GO?!?!!?!?!?!!?!?
~* JoJo*~: EFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
~* JoJo*~: damn mad larr now
~* JoJo*~: summore they say f2 cant go
~* JoJo*~: THEN AMIR!!!
~* JoJo*~: FUCkk

IT WAS TRAGIC RETARDED.

Liverpool beat Arsenal 4-1. This doesn't erase the pain completely, but it does help.

Doing the treasure hunt itself was really fun though. And Times Square is a pretty cool place if you go before lunch.

It is built like at first they had a mall then they decided to build another mall on top of the first mall, and then a third mall behind the first two. With a rollercoaster.

The arcade is t3h sh1tz, there are all the stores you'd usually go to and a lot more you've never heard of, the theme park is crazy and the cinema... well it's everything you've come to expect from a cinema.

But you have to go before lunch. If you go after lunch, bring backup. At least five or six.

That place is not our turf. There are a couple of groups who have taken over it completely, and lunch is when they come out.

The government would cry to see them.

They're... how can I put this politely? Freaks.

I can't describe them. It would take a documentary.

Next time.

Sneaks Up On You

2007-03-26T23:30:00.000+08:00

Updated with new stuffs. Keep looking around and I'm hoping someone has something meaningful to say about all this.

Ain: That's your sister?
Jun Ian: Yeah.
Ain: But she doesn't look like you!
Kevin: Except the nose.
Jun Ian: Does my brother look like me?
Ain: You have a brother?!

My birthday's in less than a week. I can't believe it.

Today!

I have a few topics to write about.

Number one!

Stop. Global. Warming.

School is super hot these days. It's so hot I don't even feel like having dance practice.

Which is a real problem, since I don't mean dance practice for concert (which some people are already getting into), but for the Australian students, who are gonna be here in about two weeks. We haven't even started!

On a slightly related note, I really wanna watch An Inconvenient Truth. Anyone know when that's coming out here? Or is it out already or is it not coming out?

And number two... we found out the form fours are planning to carry on the year-old tradition of social night!

Is it considered a tradition if it only happened once? Probably not, but it might become a tradition soon enough! It's all up to future years to decide.

Form threes! Gonna do social night too? All up to you.

Okay, masterminded by Ain and Sandra, the form four social night seeks to emulate the previous year's social night by having dinner and a dance, but they are not planning to call it social night. I forgot what it is they were going to call it.

I don't know the details, you know, not being form four and all.

[22:09:23] † ???i † | I: they'll think we're drinking booze and having some mass orgy in there
[22:09:46] junian: im sure they would disapprove equally of sparkling juice and holding hands

Brii and I are talking about the school. The school would ~~probably~~ not like the idea of us having social night if they knew about it.

But how could they stop us? I mean, it's not like the school has to be involved at all. It's like trying to stop us celebrating our birthdays or going to the mall.

They will try if we give them the chance. They really will!

Somehow they think it's their business that we wanna get together for something like this. Maybe because if anything goes wrong it's their name that's gonna be all over the news regardless of whether we acted independently or not.

Their fears aren't completely unfounded I guess. After all, I did break a door at last year's social night. Yeah, I did.

It was like this.

As to the reason why I was so angry I will not post it here. If you want to know you can ask me yourself and I might tell you.

Some of the form fives don't like the form fours having social night. They see this as copying and are somehow offended.

That is really weird. It is not like it is going to trouble you in any way, and you are not losing anything from such a deal, so why not be proud that people want to do what you did?

One more thing. I had to find some music for our Malaysian international understanding video, so I tried an Ares search.

I think the results speak for themselves. I'm actually trying to download this. Keep drifting sideways, Malaysia.

This kinda proves that regardless of your bangsa or agama the international language is smut. But... oh dear Mahadi. MAS crews getting it on?

I ended up downloading Negaraku. For reals.

Finally, congratulations to the Under-18 football team for getting the squad you want, even though you had to push aside a few people to do it. Now if you don't win this year you have no more excuses.

Highype

2007-03-24T21:32:00.000+08:00

Here's my latest piece. Started out as a drawing of Rachel (because she wanted it) and ended up looking like a Bratz doll.

Rising Sun and Stonehenge backdrop.

I don't know what to say. This week has been pretty awesome.