jorge luis borges believed that human experience is essentially a perpetual cycle. there is a pre-defined set of experiences that all humans go through with variations, what you go through today, might have been similar to what someone went through a millenia ago.
if that's true, why do we never learn? looking into our past, only to commit the very same mistakes we'd thought we realised before.
they say looking back is like being at a bus-stop. you can't move forward on a bus without looking backward to see if it has come.
somehow i get the feeling of dejavu a lot during the exam, not that it is acutely similar but just that faint feeling of similarity.
i wonder what's different. the fact that i got my concepts right this time, and bothered practising, whether i am less careless, or just have a different attitude. i just can't be bothered if i have put in my best while sitting for a paper. no point fretting about the amount of time and effort put in now. just sit for it, curse and swear for a bit, get over it.
few people in class suggested the notion that majority of boys just cannot score at the o levels. most boys being boys, just have different priorities. i found myself this year a totally different person from the person i was in secondary two. i could easily have been fretting about a paper, despite doing x number of geog, maths, science and lit papers, where x is a particularly large number. and yes, i found myself photocopying many past year exam papers in the library, while going through the same chapters over and over again, while studying with jp.
i think exams matter a lot, but they shouldn't possess my life. Giving up a whole year or two just to prepare for an exam is absurd considering the amount of things you can learn provided you pay more attention to them. this is something i risked this year. i didn't study hard at all, rather i preferred to study smart. just going through concepts and questions i didn't understand. i admit i could have been quite the sloth, but in the leadup to the prelimnaries and o levels, i did study what i needed to. and yeah, i think it's more or less confirmed, i should have delayed sleep phase syndrome, that's why i fall asleep in class so frequently. after three examinations, i still find myself alert 8 hours on at 12.30am.
studying really hard is like throwing a boulder on a domestic cat when you can just use an injection. a crude analogy but relevant still.
i don't know if the risk was worth it, but i hope it tells in my results. at least i learnt a lot more outside the textbook.
and this isn't the only dejavu i get nowadays. anyway, after the Emaths paper later today its just three papers left excluding the Science P1s. frankly, i'm partially looking forward to it, and partially wanting to remain in this limbo of an examination period. all you have to do is study, once in a lifetime thing for students. studying for the o levels, and nothing else, except yeah maybe the spot of fun here or there.
I've got a hunger Twisting my stomach into knots That my tongue was tied off
My brain's repeating "if you've got an impulse let it out" But they never make it past my mouth.
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HOLA!
Saturday, October 27, 2007 @ 12:01 AM
can you smell that waft of freedom! i sure can! WOOOOOT!
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Thursday, October 25, 2007 @ 1:06 AM
THE WORST IS OVER! WOOOT!
now it's me, a ten foot pole and history!
no more looking at essays while eating, while in the toilet, while i'm walking around in wow. no more dreaming of what part of essays i left out when i sleep. NO MORE!
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wake up and smell the ashes.
Saturday, October 20, 2007 @ 7:32 AM
post title is a quote from half-life 2. (said by G-man) one of the best games ever methinks. intriguing plot, good graphics, reasonably intelligent ai, excellent gameplay.
the halo series still wins hands down though. :D gonna try getting a second hand xbox360 during the hols just to play halo3.
i'm up early for once, thoroughly sick and tired of amaths, anything to do with world organisations and politics.
slept at 11pm, woke up at 3am. circadian rhythm's going all awry. sigh. on monday, the rush starts. after the whole slew of exams, i'm free.
no posts till then anyway. before i go, here's something for all the romantics. was quoted in the movie patch adams. i think i posted it before but not in its entirety.
I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
i have no idea what paragraph two is about, but it sounds pretty uhm, weird, to me. the rest though is really good.
anyway, bye for now. and i'm not signing off with night for once. what a change.
i'll be frank. i'm finding it more and more difficult to prevent complacency from setting in.
not because i think the o levels are bloody easy, but because i'm assured a place for my next 2 years already.
i think getting 8a1s on my cert now would be something purely aesthetic.
some of you might argue an o level cert does matter when applying for a job in future. thing is, if you have pre-u qualifications, or even uni (which i am intent on getting a scholarship abroad), employers won't look at your o level qualifications.
so i'm trying to psycho myself (read: changing perspective) into thinking this is a battle of will. haha sounds unecessarily grand.
so i'm trying to use this as a gauge of where my determination and discipline has gone.
and i sort of used something i learnt during rme retreat to help me.
enter battle meditation (aka centering prayer) !
with the context that the o level is a war, you need something to counteract the opponent (read: laziness/complacency/wanting to play WoW or jam or just slack)!
so this is what i did that i found out was pretty useful whenever i felt lazy or wanted to procrastinate: use the centering prayer, which is a catholic form of meditation.
s4 catholics would know what to do. for those that might wanna try, simply sit down, make sure you're in a comfortable position and posture, everything should be relaxed and you shouldn't fidget.
clear your mind, have a single word mantra (i use maranatha, an aramaic phrase).
this could be: "a1!" "study!" "concentrate"
or any other phrase, as long as you're not as cheesy as me.
repeat it, if you find that distracting thoughts enter your mind, use the mantra to repel those thoughts, and center all your consciousness on that single phrase again. you should not be thinking of any bodily sensation, any sounds, or anything from your environment.
do this for a while until you really cannot stand it. but always have an alarm clock or someone to alert you when your set time is up ie. 5-15mins, because you might just enter into a really deep trance. after that, you should be able to start studying already.
not for the gore, but the way lucy liu scares the shit out of people twice her size and age, and with a smile. muaha.
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fanboy!
Saturday, October 13, 2007 @ 11:17 PM
i'm a new fan of quentin tarantino! and experimental rock! go listen to the animal collective! not for those who prefer to stay safe. musically. (: Animal Collective Myspace
i'm still finding it hard to be a fan of any of the dictators, deng, or any treaties. basically, i'm not going to ever touch history after the o levels. but im still gonna get my a1.
this is not happening. i am not a lian magnet. oh please, nononononononononono.
basically im going delirious with mugging for history. and i came up with titles for history essays. yes, that's the degree of my delirium.
Pacific War: Opening Phase - Bang Bang in the Pacific! Part 1 I didn't give any name to the second phase in light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which wa the most horrific IMO.
Pre 1949 China: 1920-1935 Luding Bridge is falling down...
Pre 49 China: 1936-1949 Chiang tried a 300 with a million men... and still failed. (Battle of Hwai-hai)
Japanese Aggression in China: CHINA IZZ OWARS! [in japanese accent]
The Treaty of Versailles - was really stupid. This is I think because the Treaty was neither here nor there. In terms of self-determination, maybe it gave it to quite a lot of people, but for the people for did not get it, they were significantly disadvantaged. With such punitive terms for Germany, it only paved the way for Hitler, so really quite dumb. They got more money in loans then they paid for reparations anyway.
I came across a wikipedia article today. The other day Jeremy Tan (the tall one) was talking about how in his church the pastor preaches that dinosaur bones and other evidence for the earth being millions of years old was put there by God to test our faith, and whether we believe he created everything or not.
Basically it is an extremely skeptical philisophical argument. In brief:
The omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Creation (Omphalos) by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels ("omphalos is Greek for "navel"), and that therefore no evidence that we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.
That basically means you could have been born 5 minutes ago with all your memories with all your memories posited in you, and not realise it.
Or you could have been destroyed last Thursday or created again that same Thursday without you knowing, along with the rest of the human race. This is actually the basis of a real religion called Last Thursdayism. Americans.
Very matrix-like. How do you know you're not in the Matrix?
Very philosophical. Apparently Theory of Knowledge in IB will be covering philosophy. Oh and I thought of this.
Consider the following. Both facts, one by Tom, are true. Fact 1: Tom is good at lying. Fact 2: Tom is lying he is good.
Which means Tom is lying that he is good at lying. What would that make him? A good liar? Or a bad one, because people know he is lying? Which one is he lying in?
Lateral thinking: Tom lied. He said both facts. Tom was trying to be a prick so he could coming up with something confusing to mindf*** you. Tom was a professor with too much time on his hands, or rather was paid to come up with unsolvable paradoxes. Tom exists only in your mind, and is an imagination. Therefore by imagining both facts are wrong, or Tom never existed, and therefore the situation never existed, there is no paradox.
Still, there are paradoxes. Like the grandfather paradox. If you went back in time, and fathered a child, that grew to father you. Wouldn't you then be your own grandfather?
And one inspirational sort-of paradox methinks, doesn't really qualify but nice nonetheless:
"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
- Mother Teresa
One thing is, a good deal of people, I think, will commit suicide if they ever reach such a stage of emotional hurt.
Oh, I came across one more term: The dark night of the soul. It sounds like something straight out of some half-assed cliched fantasy/medieval/crap novel, but it's something spiritual.
That the most spiritual people on this Earth experience a time when prayer proves unrewarding and unbearable, and God seems non-existent, or even seems to have abandoned the person. Apparently, it is a severe test of faith.
Apparently Mother Teresa suffered it for most of her life, and one saint did so for 45 years. Same thing I heard from John Paul that Mr Ang said that God might just be most near when he seems farthest away.
Oh well, I'm gonna sleep. Can't stand anymore League of Nations.
he's complex, colourful, and promises something new everyday. meet rubik's revenge!
basically, it's a 4x4 version of the rubik's cube, which is the current trend. he's bloody difficult to solve. first, you have to solve the centers, which is difficult cause while solving when yo end up disturbing the obverse side, then you have to do pairing, and oslve it like a normal rubik's cube.
the next 13 weeks are really gonna discipline me.
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d/dx.
@ 1:20 AM
There are some common stereotypes in a typical Josephian class: Slacker Mugger Emo Rocker Clown Follower Loner Weirdo etc etc
I kinda got struck by this - people more or less adopt traits from these stereotypes, either by choice or circumstance, because they want to integrate themselves into the class or differentiate themselves from the 'rest', or maybe they're just being themselves, so they make no effort to do either.
Yes, I know, lame. Bio's lamer. Got this question at today's Bio mock exam:
Fig 1.1 has a magnified image of the lower surface of a leaf cell, you can see epidermal cells and guard cells.
Now imagine it being viewed with a lower power microscope. What will be observed?
Answer: THE CELLS WILL BE SMALLER, AND LESS DETAILED.
WTF?! HELLO?! O LEVEL BIOLOGY IS LIKE THIS?!(@&*#^*&^#&*^@&*#&*
So if you answered things like guard cells will not be seen, or thought it was a trick question, it wasn't.
STILL?! I didn't study Biology for 4 years to be tested on whether there are more cells to be seen under a low power microscope.
COME ON MAN, HOW OFTEN DO WE ACTUALLY DO NON-THEORY STUFF?! and here you come testing our THEORY on something PRACTICAL! EH HELLO! Blatantly simple, and tricky, complicated questions are two extremes of the spectrum. Should try reaching a compromise instead?
It's like asking what do people see a hawker centre as in this day and age?
First answer: A place to buy food, eat food, and say mai hum.
Second answer: A culinary melting pot, showcasing the diverse cultures present in Singapore, as well as representing a gathering place for families to savour local flavours to the tune of loud dialect banter in various languages.
