Hmm. So I just slept for thirteen hours.

I have no self control.

I hate group work now. No one else knows how to do anything.

My eyes are still tired, somehow.

Well, I've been practicing my trumpet for some time now. I don't know if I've made any good progress. I can certainly play more fluidly and with better sound than when I started out this year. I think my problem with not being able to come back into playing after breathing is going away. I don't lose my embrochure as easily now. I can probably attribute that to practice.

Still, I know that I'm not doing it right. For some reason, I just feel unwilling to put in extra air. I don't want to play loud. This is a problem. And it's a very annoying problem. There's just something about practicing at home that makes me feel restricted. It's because I know that my parents can hear me, my brother can hear me. If I play anything remotely familiar to my parents(my mom, specifically), she's bound to comment on it. I hate that. I'm being unreasonable, but it's just one of the things that really pisses me off. Because 1) I didn't even play it that well and 2) I don't want to talk about it. The thing with my brother, is that he's like... A professional violinist. Who doesn't really understand brass instruments.

Agh. Pointless. I need stop being like this. Why is it that I am so capable of showing off when I'm outside? And yet at home, all my showmanship just evaporates. It's obviously got nothing to do with the environment. It's the people. When I'm alone at home, I feel so free. I can put emotion and volume into my music, and then amuse myself at the thought of one of my neighbours yelling at me to shut up.

Sigh. Maybe I just feel inadequate. I feel that my trumpet playing skills are sub-par. Not worthy for my family to hear. I lack confidence in this area.

Also, I've been really wanting to get a euphonium lately. I mean, I was actually good at that. I think I was good at that. My seniors said so. The people in AJ said so. Supposedly, with more practice, I could get really good at that. But a euphonium is bloody expensive, especially since I won't settle for a baritone. They're just different. I have asked about getting one, but I got no definite answer.

I definitely want one, but I feel that it is sort of like taking a risk. In the time it takes for the euphonium to arrive, I may have improved so drastically on the trumpet that I wouldn't want to play the euphonium anymore. Either that, or I may get a euphonium and play it for years, and never get much better than I already was. Or, it may turn out to be a not-so-good investment, because I only play for myself and would never have any opportunity to actually perform.

Cakes.

Okay I'd start practicing now but my brother is already practicing. And as we all know, brass > strings in volume, so I'd better not. Musician's courtesy.

Heheh. Heh.

-Joe

Wow. Today has pretty much been perfect, so far.

Okay, so I wasn't feeling too good this morning. My eyes were tired, and I did not have as much sleep as I am used to. But that quickly went away during my first lecture, where, we were just starting on mycology. The lecturer talked really, really fast. She just machine-gunned through every slide, touching on a whole lot of topics including various examples of symbiotic relationships with plants, animals, and photosynthetic bacteria. Why am I happy about this? Because I could immediately sense that just about the entirety of the lecture hall stopped paying attention after the big words came out.

Yes, I'm a selfish bastard with a superiority complex. I know. But really, it just felt great to finally be pushed slightly. Even though the lecture was hardly in-depth, there were plenty of new terms and various other pieces of knowledge which I did not already have. I was scribbling in my notebook the entire time, taking it all down, like I would have back in mathematics during secondary school. I've still got plenty to find out, if I really want to know more about fungi, but I certainly do have the motivation today!

Then, communications skills. It was pointless, but entertaining nonetheless. The topic was conflict management, and the teacher had plenty of stories to share about her relationship with her in-laws. The conclusion was basically, stay away from your in-laws.

And then, no IMB! That was really awesome. Okay, it was in the schedule, but that doesn't stop it from being awesome. Any time that I am not in the same room as that person adds to the awesome-factor. The awesomeness of the situation increased by an awesome factor of 25 awesomes. That was just so damn awesome.

That basically had be dismissed at eleven. After some time at the library, I received a message from Sze Chuan, saying that he had just finished his Maths Olympiad thingy. So we went for lunch, and the most brilliant thing happened.

They gave us free coke. Heheheh. For some reason, they decided to be charitable and give us an extra medium. Of course, we accepted it graciously.

There's something about Macdonald's coke that I like. It's probably that it is somewhat sweeter than canned or bottled coke. Rachel says that it tastes of detergent, but I think it's lovely. It tastes like... Caramel. It's liquid caramel. Carbonated liquid caramel. And at Macdonald's, the magnitude of caramel-ness is substantially greater than that of "official" coke. Still, this is coming from a guy who likes the smell of burnt matched, candle wax, and various other hydrocarbons.

Oh, and it rained. Not like it hasn't rained for a long time, but it's always good when it rains. Rain makes the floors wet, thus increasing the probability of an idiot slipping and neutering himself. Also the air becomes nice and cool.

And that was my perfect day thus far. All I need is for the perfectness to continue as I attempt to complete the rest of my reports.

-Joe

Action precedes motivation.
However, one must have motivation, before performing any action that does not fall under the category of “procrastination”. Something, which, unsurprisingly, I have not gotten any worse at.

So anyway here I am. Trying to get started on my work. First, I try to remember what I have to do. It turns out that nothing is amazingly urgent. Except for that. I do not need to prepare for tomorrow’s chemistry quiz. I do not need to do a tutorial. I do, however, have a small amount of German homework that I could do, but the deadline seems so far away. I am realising that by definition, there isn’t a single assignment I have that I deem even vaguely important.

Thus taking “motivation” out of the picture. Surely, however, there are other factors which can induce “action”. Such as fear. Or obligation. Fear, of having my grades implode upon themselves due to a lack of interest on my part. That would be extremely unacceptable.

One of the pluses that I came up with some months ago, before I made my decision to come here, was that I would no longer need to study useless and uninteresting subjects. It seems, however, that all institutions in Singapore have an insatiable desire to press as many useless and uninteresting subjects on their students. I am referring to Communications Skills, of which there are two or three modules of. And that horrible excuse of a module known as Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology.

Aside from that, the whole "greater emphasis on practical skills" is little more than "your practical grades can kill you far more easily now". Honest. So far, none of the practicals that I have had have sufficiently imbibed appropriate laboratory etiquette or techniques into my knowledge. All I know now, is that the burettes are difficult to use, that I have been using doing titration wrong for all of my secondary school life, and that it's not a good idea to put a bunsen flame between you and something you're trying to grab.

No, the practicals are in essence useless, as they are not accompanied with a sufficient volume of theoretical knowledge. They tell us that these fancy chemicals with fancy names do certain things, so as to achieve fancy results. They do not tell us, however, how these fancy processes occur, or anything like that. Instead, I am left to find them out for myself. This, is not why I am complaining. Rather, it is more of the fact that the things that I find out for myself are entirely useless when it comes to exams and quizzes. Hence a lack of motivation.

When they told us that polytechnics are very practical-based, all they meant was that we are now able to screw up our GPA's by achieving botched up experimental results. As we only have but one opportunity to carry out each experiment, and in each one I am constantly impeded and hindered by my group's lack of insight and their inability to follow orders, it is difficult to obtain optimum(being 100% correct) results for each practical.

Also, the way our reports are assessed is completely assed. They care more about the student's ability to... Well I don't know. There was nothing in those grade-A reports that weren't in mine. Except obscure information about how sodium hypochlorite can make ionic iodine form triiodine ions. As far as I know, you need molecular iodine to react with ionic iodine before triiodide ions can form.

Also for no apparent reason, the marker circles "NaI" in my data sheet. What's wrong with NaI? It's sodium iodide. It's doing stuff. There is nothing wrong with it. Additionally, when red-lining my answers, don't write "3 sig figs!" next to it, when you were actually asking for standard form.

Standard form. Significant figures.

LEARN THE DIFFERENCE. GOD.

He's supposed to be a professional.

Well, that's unprofessionalism in just about every subject that has room for it. Microbiology? Grammatical errors and poor phrasing in the lab manual. Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology? Atrocious grammar and misspelled names of scientists. That one is really unforgivable. Chemistry? People not knowing the difference between significant figures and standard form.

So yeah. How can anyone be expected to learn anything when the lecturers and professors themselves aren't sure of what they're teaching? It's hard to believe that any of the mentioned people are, or were scientists.

Maybe "were". And then it was realised that they sucked too much, so they had to teach in a polytechnic where more people would be utterly oblivious to their mistakes.

Sigh. I notice that almost every post I have made in the past few weeks has been a rant about how idiotic people are over here. Oh well. I'd better go do some useless and uninteresting assignments so that my grades don't implode at the end of the term.

-Joe

Hmm. Well, my transition back into the swamp was about as swampy as one could imagine.

Minus the actual swampy-ness, because there wasn’t all that much sogginess or giant anacondas. Which was sad, because really, who wouldn’t want to go to school and see a two-foot thick, scaly, green, man-crushing serpent? Preferably performing that man-crushing on people you don’t like.

No, it was rather uneventful, other than that I could not get to sleep on Tuesday night, due to an unexplainable sore throat which kept me getting up to drink water every few minutes. My throat was just dry beyond belief. It was torturous. So anyway, eventually, I downed three glassfuls of water, one after the other, and was somehow able to get to sleep.

Still, I woke up slightly late and spent the entire day wishing that the people around me were dead, in some way or another. My classmates commented that I looked like I had a hangover. I replied that I was actually suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from being around smart people. I neglected to mention that last one.

I spent the rest of the time ranting about how people just have amazingly horrible grammar. Okay, not that my writing is entirely correct either, but at least I don’t butcher the language to the point where it just gets difficult controlling my gag-reflex. Thankfully, I have learned to convert the gag-reflex into a more useful annoyed snapping at the offender. Ugh.

There’s a certain person who happens to also seem to have PMS all the time, who I suspect, is guilty of butchering the English language in such a manner. Guilty, of turning today’s quiz into a torture device more potent than the Iron Maiden, for anyone who happens to be able to converse with the language of a primary schooler. Sheesh. I know, “xenotransplantation” has many syllables! That doesn’t mean it’s a difficult word. Come on. It’s not difficult to understand. It’s not difficult to figure out how to turn it into a noun. And once you’ve done that, it’s not that difficult to figure out whether or not its supposed to be plural or not.

Also, when referring to MANY things, it’s probably plural. I wouldn’t know. It’s so hard.

So anyway, ironically, not long after imagining the brutal murder of this certain person for being an idiot, I myself began to feel dumber than ever. No, it’s got nothing to do with the idiots around me. They’re not contaminating my mind. It’s just that I feel that I don’t know… Anything.

Yes, that’s not true. But this is how I’m thinking about it right now. During my secondary school years, I was able to rattle off entire(though simple) essays about metabolic pathways and blood transfer. It made me feel intelligent, that I had gained a substantial amount of knowledge. But now… Now, I don’t know anything. Or rather, I haven’t learned anything. There is no textbook. There is nothing to memorise, that has any link to anything else in this botched up thing they call a syllabus. There is not enough relevant homework, there isn’t a TYS, or any assessment compilations. I have gained substantially more knowledge from watching Iron Man than I have from this entire semester.

Okay, minus the pathogen identification stuff. Those are the only things that I can call part of my knowledge now. But it just doesn’t feel right. Everything we’ve learned so far in microbiology is really dispersed. One method here, one method there. No links. And they have not yet put any emphasis on memorising the names of the substances used. I’m guessing that they will eventually tell everyone that they need to know the difference between carbol fuschin and bromothymol blue.

(Ooh, there’s this really trippy piece in the Mario soundtrack)

On top of that, the lab manual doesn’t really explain how the processes work. I suppose that is not supposed to be found in the lab manual, but rather the theory sections. Now here’s the interesting thing. There isn’t a theory section.

Not a problem though. After all, the internet is a great place to find information that you don’t have.

Looking at it that way, there isn’t a problem. But when you take into account the sheer wrongness of the information they’re feeding us… Well, the difference in content is just, a lot. For one, the school seems to be using a twenty-year-old source. They claim that prokaryotes have no cytoskeletons. A quick wiki tells us that prokaryotes definitely have a kind of cytoskeleton. They also mention that archaea also have evidence of a cytoskeleton.

So. I should probably bring this up to the authorities, or I swear, I’m going to somehow make the phrase “Polytechnics: Made for idiots, by idiots” stick somewhere…

-Joe

And so it has come to an end. My long weekend, extending by one day for E-learning day. This has allowed me to fully enjoy myself and allow me to look forward to a 3-day schoolweek.

However, it saddens me to think that all the fun I had over the weekend is now coming to an end. On Friday night, I had a not-so-fun, but deeply satisfying struggle with an inorganic chemistry report. Many thanks to Hongjie for coming up with that equation. Even with my sleep issues, and general feeling of lethargy throughout the whole of Saturday, I managed to remain content, for I knew that the very next day, I would be meeting the KI semicircle again.

And what fun it was. It was truly a great escape from the tortures of poly life. And by “tortures”, I mean “surrounded by sheer intellectual disability”. The sense of escapism was paramount, on that day, as we chatted about certain things, and admired many medieval and futuristic weapons. The day rounded off nicely with a concert, and I could also look forward to another day of relaxation.

Relaxation, being a period of time when I am not surrounded by idiots.

I took the opportunity to slay demons, and take over the world once again. I was happy. I was satisfied. It was surreal. It was the best weekend I have had in a very long time.

Today, however, I have realised that I am going back to the place that I was so happy not to be in. It really feels like I had been temporarily taken out of a horrible, depressing Matrix, and now I’m going back. Back to this figurative, suffocating uterus, filled with slimy amniotic retard-fluid…

Utterly depressing. I’m looking forward to the June break.


-Joe

Woooh. My legs ache. I also now have a video of me playing a game which involves… Too much movement.

For some reason, I arrived at City Hall Interchange over an hour ahead of time. I ended up in MPH, where I spent some time reading the last chapter of The Return of the King. While listening to the soundtrack! It’s a great experience, really. I’m tempted to purchase the set again, after having misplaced my old book.

I finished with it, and set off to Suntec City in search of more books. I settled myself in a corner of Harris, with a book that supposedly explained The Physics of the Impossible. Yes, a guy attempted to explain how perpetual motion, psychokinesis, and telepathy could be achieved. Within the laws of physics. In a book. I immediately jumped to “Telepathy”. The chapter was mostly devoted to how we have so far been able to map the brain. In the end, they said that we were unlikely to be able to unscramble other people’s thoughts, even if we could receive them. Some explanation.

Eventually, I headed back to the station where I was very surprised by Sophial’s ninja skills. After that, we were both surprised by Hongjie’s own Shadowdancer abilities. Are they teaching people in JCs how to hide in plain sight? If so, this sucks. I need a Natural Camouflage module.

(LoTR weapon replicas are the single coolest collectibles ever)

Anyway, today… Yesterday… Was the first time I’ve been in the Esplanade for a concert, in at least a couple of years. It was definitely the first time that I got to sit so close to the stage. Our actual seats were about six astronomical units away from the stage, and surrounded by people who were chattering away. I couldn’t make out any faces on the stage, either. Rachel took my miming of a cutting action using a big pair of shears to be an indication that we should find another spot. And so we did.

We got those awesome seats that were literally right above the piano. Suddenly, the concert became so much more enjoyable. It didn’t hurt that the second half, when we had the awesome view, was also filled with much dancing and other interesting antics. Also the pinafores. Yeah, I know it sounds weird coming from me, but it was so cute. Really. They all looked like little girls.

(insert paedophilia joke)

Again, I’d like to say that voice ensembles are really quite brilliant. Nothing can blend as well as the human voice. Yes, you could probably explain this using wave physics. It’s different from bands, where all the sections produce a drastically different sound. So yes, great performance. Well worth my money. I’ll probably be back next year.

And I got my fix of donuts! Woot. After the concert, we (very slowly) made our way to J.Co, where we scrounged out the remaining donuts from the trays. We seemed to have taken too long, as by the time we were done, the gate leading to the MRT station was shut. We ended up walking all the way around the building and catching what might have been the very last train.

And then the shower. It was so necessary.

Inside joke!

-Joe

I think I’m developing some sort of neurotic sleep disorder. For absolutely no reason, I have been having trouble sleeping for the past few nights. First night, I was not tired at all. Wide, wide awake. I lay in bed for something like three hours, wondering why I was feeling so energetic. I put it down to… A lack of exercise. I didn’t really know. That was just a guess.

I got onto my computer and poked around at stuff for a while. I considered playing Bioshock, but I figured that I might get carried away and play till dawn. Yes, it’s happened before. When I first got the game, I played it till about 6am, before remembering that my parents would be waking up soon, and then hurriedly creating a save file and jumping into bed. So instead I started looking for stuff on the web. Tried to find a book, whose title I still do not know. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful.

However, I did make some rather troubling discoveries. For one, there were people online past 2am working on their PW. I was like what? Yes, it seems that I have underestimated the horror that is Project Work.

Still, I managed to register the irony of the situation. Elsewhere, there were people struggling to keep awake. Probably downing cup after cup of coffee. With heavy eyelids, they would stare at an uninteresting wall of text trying to remember what the point of the project was. And there I was, restless and painfully cognizant. It was just so wrong. If I could give my insomnia to other people when they need it, I would.

I eventually went to sleep at around four. I woke up somewhat later than I had planned. Went for German class and came home. That night, I couldn’t sleep either.

The difference however, was that this time, I was really, really tired. I’d been working on a surprisingly demonic chemistry practical report for about four hours, continuously. Okay, so I wasn’t really focusing for the first hour or so, but that didn’t stop the entire process of working out those obscure chemical reactions between hypochlorites and iodide salts from being frustrating. I eventually finished up at about one in the morning, having taken too much time creating a flowchart that contained so many permutations that I had to resize it about six times…

There has to be a better program for creating flowcharts than Powerpoint.

(and also, typing out chemical equations in Word is a real pain in the ass. And fingers.)

I thought, hm, should have no problem falling asleep this night. I was just, wrong. I lay down on the smooth, comfortable mattress and closed my eyes. And waited.

And waited.

After an hour of listless tossing and turning, I got up and starting cubing. Spinny spinny spinny. Seizure. I recorded a few of my solves on my mobile phone, and even managed to catch a 37 second solve. Eventually my hands grew numb, so I turned on my PC, and watched a couple of episodes of Futurama, while wondering when Heroes will return.

Soon, it was 4am. I thought, hell, I’d better try to sleep, or I’m going to be a total wreck later. So I did. And… Nothing happened. I tried everything. Honey, lavender, counting people who are getting their testicles chopped off… Getting desperate enough to pop a couple of my allergy pills, before realising that these weren’t the sedative kind.

Fuuuuu---

Damn. I’m going to ask for the sedative kind next appointment.

So instead I plugged into my MP3 player and listened to a few symphonics that I’d almost forgotten about ever since leaving band. I managed to get into a sort of… Semi-conscious state. Forty-five minutes later, I removed my earphones and tried to remain in that state. It… Sort of worked. I definitely managed to fall asleep soon after, because I remember grumbling about the sun being bright and hot when I woke up several hours later.

I don’t remember having anything caffeinated on those couple of days. Yet I was unable to sleep. It was really uncomfortable.

In any case, I feel like having donuts.

-Joe

You know, there were many ways I thought that I might describe my first semester here. Amongst them were “practical” and “interesting. Also, “slack-off” and “easy”. But “frustrating” wasn’t something I predicted.

I mean, sure, I expected that I would be surrounded by… Bell curve cannon-fodder. Even though I was taken by surprise at the actual level of intelligence around here, it was not something that I had not considered. It was more of a thing that I half wished to be true. Of course I expected that there would be a bunch of dickweeds who talk way too much, and don’t use their brains a lot. Yes. I expected all of this.

What I did not expect, however, was that there would be a certain module that sucks balls. Seriously. That module is called Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology. Molecular Biotechnology, the very name of the course which I am in. By the name, you’d think they’d be covering a little bit of each topic that goes under the Molecular Biotechnology. A sort of overview, to let us know what we’ve gotten ourselves into. That’s certainly what I thought.

I was so wrong. Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology, or IMB for short, is one of the most redundant modules ever. It’s so basic, and shallow that it looks like something that should have been taught during the lower secondary years. Or maybe as side-notes for O’ Level biology.

(also I hate the module coordinator. It’s like she constantly has PMS or something.)

Anyway, the source of my frustration is basically that. The sheer simplicity of it. It’s simple, but not in a good way. It’s not simple in the way that it sums the topic up well, or that it is a great analogy for the subject. No, it’s just so brief and so layman that I can(and probably have) picked up more knowledge from reading a faux-sci-fi novel.

Here, I’ll illustrate my point. My class has been assigned a project, where we are supposed to turn a lecture into a performance. Sort of like… A new way to deliver a lecture. I personally find the entire concept pointless, because people are idiots and are unlikely to learn anything anyway. The class was divided into five groups, one of which were supposed to play a team of scientists. Which, unsurprisingly, I am in. No way in hell I would play the part of some kind of animal activist.

The topic was on transgenesis and cloning. On the first day, when I picked my group… My group was really empty. I was supposed to have five people. All I had was me, and another guy(who fortunately, is actually significantly more intelligent and friendlier than the others), and some dude who seems to have issues with understanding sarcasm. At that point, I was going “Hey, where are my other two people? There are 26 people in the class. There’s no way that they shouldn’t be here.” For some reason, the role of the scientist was highly unpopular.

Okay, I’ll just give you a moment there to think about it. Scientist. Unpopular. Molecular biotechnology. God, these people need to be shot.

So anyway, my group got stuck with some… Person who was hanging on to another group even though it was already full. Obviously a reject. Someone who you don’t want to work with if you had the choice. The other member was someone who skips school half the time and was absent on that day. So, my group basically boiled down to: myself, one useful member, and a guy who’s just good for ordering around while getting frustrated at his inability to infer from your statements. Awesome.

Well, never mind that issue. I knew that it would come to this eventually. And anyway, my partner is a good worker. Certainly less lazy than I am. I gave out instructions to everyone to find out as much about the topic as they could, because the teachers gave me the impression that the reason why the scientist group was unpopular, was because of the need to do research. I took that to imply that we were expected to do research. And that’s why I made everyone go read up on stuff.

Next lesson, we come back, and the bloody teacher says gives me this look and says in that annoying voice of her’s “No, no. This is only an introductory module! It’s not supposed to be in-depth!” Oh, gee whiz, so what was that thing about research that you people mentioned last week? So then I turn to my group and say “Sorry, people. We’ve wasted all our time reading up and compiling all this stuff. They don’t want it.” Sheez, I wrote a frickin’ essay about recombinant DNA technology and cloning.

(Oh, by the way, the module coordinator also has issues with interpreting simple information.)

After a series of… Discussions, the class sort of came to a consensus on what we were supposed to do. I deleted about 80% of my essay and turned it into a script for the scientist group. During the run-through, the teachers made some very disconcerting comments about it. They commented that “a lot of people don’t even know what DNA is” and that “they would all be asking, ‘what do you mean, integrated into its genetic code?’” Also the way they said it, it was as though they thought that 90% of the student body had the general knowledge of a mollusc.

And I’m starting to think so, too.

Anyway, they basically asked me to turn the script into “layman-ese”. Oh, awesome, how are you supposed to turn the phrase “blastocyst-stage embryo” into layman-ese? How are you supposed to turn “embryo” into layman-ese? A lump of cells that appears inside a uterus after SEX occurs? Hell, judging from… Everything, not everyone is entirely sure about what a uterus is.

So I literally spent two effing hours sitting at my computer, trying to de-jargonise the text. I failed miserably at that. I just couldn’t do it. It was so entirely against my principles. Every time I tried to change anything into “normal human speech”, my brain just froze and crashed. I would eventually manage to type something out, and then I would read it over and my brain would automatically tell me “Hey, this is lame. There’s a better word for “nuclei of the sperm and ova which remain in the zygote for several hours before they come together to form the nucleus of the baby. It’s “pronuclei”.” So you see, my brain was instantly translating everything back into its original state.

Thankfully, a friend of mine volunteered to take it off my hands. He was slightly more successful than me, although he clearly stated “I will never, ever, degrade a scientific text like that, ever again. Never.” He said it so resolutely that he must have been creating a contingency plan for if he ever came across a similar situation again.

So, anyway, that’s my story, about the most useless module ever created. If you’re not going to teach anything useful beyond making illiterate people go “oooh!”, it’s entire pointless. There is just no good argument for devoting an entire module to this. It’s almost as if they ran out of ideas and a certain person came up with “Hey, I can do an introductory module, so as to torment anyone who so much as read a few pages on Wikipedia on the subject!”

I’m starting to think that that actually happened.

Then there’s Com Skills. But I think I’ll pass on ranting about that. It’s basically about the same thing: People over here have something against complexity and detail.

Oh, and shitcakes. We have an NE project. Ugh, biggest waste of time ever. Can’t even rant about it in a satisfying manner.



-Joe

So then. I've been having a few issues with motivation again. Just feel like I'd really, really, rather lay down and sleep. Also there seems to be a distinct lack of snacks in my house again. I've just run out of those cookies. I would buy more, but I also seem to have developed a kind of obsession with saving money.

I'm not really sure why. I guess there's something about planning ahead that makes you sort of lose interest in enjoying yourself now. But the issue with that is that once you get to "ahead", there's another "ahead" ahead of you that you need to plan for.

Thus making it impossible to enjoy yourself unless you seek instant gratification, at least once in a while.

(Yes, I know, I've already broken that vow.)

So anyway, I visited Sentosa for the first time in at least four years. Before this, I had never really seen the point of that place. Back then, Sentosa was this big tourist gimmick than was cleverly designed to suck your money out. By "cleverly", I mean "Ha ha you're stuck on an island and you need to eat. Here, have some overpriced fast food!"

...Yes.

Now, Sentosa is still a huge tourist scam. It falls under a similar categories for locals, too. Do you know how much it costs to just take that bloody monorail thing over? They've revamped the entire place. It looks a lot cleaner and more modern now. With that, it also became more theme-parkish and gimmicky. All we need now are big ferris wheels and a roller coaster that spans the entire island's circumference. Hey, that actually sounds pretty fun.

I suppose it is a good thing, after all. A nice place to immerse yourself in with the tourist trap gimmicky-ness. I mean, when people say they want a "refreshing, new experience" when they go for a holiday, they're lying. Or at least, I'd be lying. Thou shalt not underestimate the power of the familiar. So yes, I'd have to admit that I would probably enjoy myself at Sentosa, if I went there for that purpose.

Although, imagine if you could have a holiday anywhere you liked, five metres from your home? This, my friends, is called a holodeck. If any of you have seen the Star Trek films, or read their novels, this would be quite a familiar idea. Chances are, you didn't find out about this from Star Trek, but through some other piece of fiction.

The holodeck is basically a big room where very, very real simulations can be carried out. Anything that can be programmed into a computer, can appear in the holodeck as a real thing. You could change your environment completely, make it appear that you are in the middle of a swamp, fighting off flying crocodiles that shoot laserbeams out of their... Nipples. Somehow, all this information is sent to your brain wirelessly. Either that, or the holograms are actually solid and deadly. I forgot which.

This leaves us with a room which is probably what "awesome" would be if it were a tangible thing. You could essentially be anywhere you like, doing whatever you like, and involving other things that you like, without having to deal with this tacky little thing called reality. It's basically what everybody has dreamed of ever since the idea of simulated environments came about. Personally, I'd like to visit Middle Earth. Possibly have a fight with Shelob and get to wear a cool cloak. Also, the soundtrack would be playing in the background.

...Which essentially turns my entire immersive, realistic Lord of the Rings experience into a copy of a movie, directed by the same guy who did The Frighteners.

Yeah, I'll talk about how the imagination isn't quite as vast as people would like to think another day.

So then. Yes, that's the second "So then". And that's the third. So then, if everyone owned one of these holodecks, things would inevitably go wrong. First, everything that human civilisation has been built upon will cease to function. People will stop making the economy run. Organisations and cooperations will fall apart, as everyone visits their holodecks to copulate with their dream partners. The only things that people would want now are:

1) Better, more realistic holodecks, so that they can pretend to be superheroes

2) A way to stop having to leave the holodeck to pee, that doesn't involve giving your fantasy of being Iron Man a tangy aroma of dried piss.

And fecal matter, for that matter. Pun intended.

So all science would eventually boil down to... How to make The Matrix, for real. Because deep down, that's what every human wants. Eternal bliss. If you could achieve that through technology, and not have to worry about having pee breaks, everything Zen and deep about humanity would just cease to exist.

Oh, believe me. If you got the Pope to sit inside a holodeck for a day, he'd give his hat to someone else.

Ignorance is bliss. So I'm welcoming a future where we're all inside little fluid-filled pods being fed images of invisible pink unicorns and such.

-Joe

Oh woah. I've only realised that this blog now has over 200 posts. It was created on the 16th of July, 2007. That works out to 296 days... More or less. Can't be bothered to double-check. That means something like 2/3rds of a post per day. And 5004 views over 296 days is... Roughly seven views per day, and 25 views per post.

Of those, it is estimated that maybe 25% of the views are by myself, as I return often to check my posts for grammar, and to respond to tags. However, it is to be noted that the view-counter was only added after some time. Therefore, the first few months were not recorded.

(Not that we had a lot of visitors back then, either.)

So, anyway, Iron Man.

Iron Man is certainly a unique superhero. He's like the Batman of the Marvel universe. Like Batman, he's this bloody rich guy who happens to have enough brains and time to make some really cool weapons. The difference is that Iron Man is practically invulnerable to bullets. Batman isn't.

Now, let's sidetrack a little and notice something about Batman. Batman is supposed to be like a ninja. Yes, his fighting skills are definitely there. He can take on seven or eight henchmen at once, and almost always win. He's got the ninja gadgets, like bat-shaped shurikens, bat-shaped grappling hooks, bat-shaped sunglasses... Yeah. But he there's just something about being a ninja that he distinctly lacks...

We've ever seen him. That means he can't really be a ninja.

So then. Back to the real man of steel. Or iron. Or rather, a gold-titanium alloy. How that works, and why gold would enhance titanium's durability so much is beyond me. Hmm.

Well let's have a look at Iron Man's gear. Power suit, virtually indestructable, allows him to fly, has built in Street Fighter-esque repulsor cannons on his palms, and also on his chest. This essentially makes him an awesome killing machine, without him having to hold any weapons.

And then there's his really awesome computerised targeting interface, which grants him something like 10x digital zoom, even when moving at supersonic speeds. Okay. That part was slightly unrealistic. When used in conjunction with his shoulder-mounted mini-missile launchers, he can take out an entire group of enemies without having to raise a finger. Literally.

In the movie, it seems that he controlled his suit by giving it verbal commands. I guess they needed it to be slightly more realistic than in the comics, where the suit was wired directly into his brain. This not only explained(with much suspension of disbelief) his ability to control the suit so well, but also provided an important plot device where a to-be War Machine temporarily donned Iron Man's suit during his alcoholic reprise.

Alcoholic reprise. I think I just invented a new term here.

Now, the only other superhero that has more imbalanced powers than Iron Man would be Superman. Super speed, invulnerability, X-ray vision, eyebeams, flight, strength... Enough strength to turn the world backwards on its rotation to turn back time itself. His only weakness is kryptonite, so if you just happen to have the glowing green crystal in your pocket, you're in luck.

Iron Man, on the other hand, doesn't have absolutely gay powers, but still manages to hold his own in fights against... Pretty much everyone other than Magneto.

Yeah, I still want to see that fight.

Because, you know, Magneto's powers aren't really magnetism. He can control non-magnetic metals, too.

So anyway, I feel another need to rant about something. But I'm tired and I have an amazingly irrelevant chemistry project to do.

And that's pretty much what my rant is about. Irrelevance and pointlessness. They've all really got something against proper, academic work. I'm talking about things like essay-writing, and memorising loads and loads of cellular processes and technical terms.

Their emphasis on... Not these things is just frustrating. I also find it wrong that Communications Skills is taking priority over the other modules for me. It's just wrong. I came here to do science, not learn how to propose to a future reproductive partner.

-Joe

The last 40 hours that I just spent were probably the most slack-off camp I have ever been to. The degree of slack-offing-ness was exponentially larger than even the previously most slack-off camp. During my third and fourth years in MSSB, band camps were simply slack-off. There was plenty of free time, which I spent picking out tunes and playing them. I had time to help people complete 500-piece puzzles. I had so much time. When I was finally the one in charge, it got even more awesome. Slacking during camps... Is the best part of any camp.

And so, it turns out that astronomy camp has a lot of free time. In school, I had(for the first time ever during a camp) the chance to shower, multiple times, without whining about not having enough time. At East Coast Park, we had an amazingly long free-and-easy period as well. It's probably because there really isn't much to do. I mean, we had to wait till it was dark before stargazing could commence. And they only wanted us to be there at 3am or so to see a meteor shower. Which, incidentally, I slept through.

Well I was up all evening. As soon as darkness fell, I managed to get a glimpse of Saturn through a telescope. Yes people, Saturn. The planet, Saturn. The big one with the lovely rings. Okay, sure, the image was pretty small and not very detailed, but seriously, how many people can say that they've seen the sixth planet from the sun?

Not many, but I'm sure some of you have seen the seventh planet. Jupiter, a magnificent gas giant, is actually visible to the naked eye. I'm not entirely sure when it appears in the night sky, but it'll be around this month. Maybe more.

I learned that you can tell the difference between stars and other celestial bodies by the way they seem to flicker. Stars seem to grow bright and dark, changing colours rapidly. If there were more of them, it would have been seizurific. Planets, on the other hand, don't blink at all. So if you decide to go to the beach at night sometime this month, look out for a shining red light in the sky that doesn't blink.

Aaand about going to the beach at night. Cycling in the dark is something like the coolest thing a normal person can do on a bicycle. You can't see anything more than seventy meters ahead of you, the lamps on either side of the path don't do much other than cast long shadows around you. The night air whips your hair about as you speed through the night, relishing the sweet, cool, darkness. You just keep going, on, and on.

It was really fun. Even though I was mostly alone. I declined to cycle with the big group, because they were a bunch of people that I would neuter in the near future. Instead, I waited for a bike to become free(didn't want to rent one for myself. Wallet. Ouch.) and pedaled away into the darkness. I'll tell you, trees look a lot cooler when they're shadowy and all.

I probably don't want to imagine what my mom would say if she knew that I was cycling at two in the morning. What I can imagine is what she'll say when I tell her that I didn't bring my water bottle home.

Yes I think I lost it. It's just so... Annoying. I brought it to school. I brought it to East Coast Park. I brought it back to school. And then I think I forgot to put it in my bag when I was retrieving it. I was already packed up and ready to go, and I neglected to check if my water bottle was there. I was just too tired.

Oh well. Now I know what to use my vouchers for. A new water bottle. It shouldn't cost more than twelve dollars anyway.

Still, she's going to bitch at me, that's for sure. Hm. Oh well. Can't do much about that.

During my periods of free time, I inevitably began thinking about something that has been on my mind for a few days now. I keep getting this nagging feeling that I would be happier right now if I'd stayed in JC. Now, this is a huge problem because there is nothing I can do about it.

I blame it on everyone asking me "then why did you come over here?" when they find out that I was previously at AJ. I give them the usual answers. Didn't want to deal with more mathematics. Didn't want to deal with Chinese. Not interested in being graded for Geography. Usually I get about halfway through the first sentence before their attention shifts to another shiny object. But that's besides(or beside? Can't remember) the point. Shortly after one of these episodes(which, I swear, have been occurring on an almost hourly basis during the time I spend with people) I start to begin asking myself, yeah, why'd I come here?

And it turns out that I came here because I wanted to specialise. Because I wanted to start being professional. And it also turns out that that has not happened. And isn't going to be happening... For a while.

How much longer do I have to tolerate people who don't even know what the word "stimuli" means? I'm guessing, until I graduate. Tell me that people who go to universities actually are intelligent.

So yeah, last Friday, I was lamenting about how crummy I felt about this entire situation I've landed myself in. I was complaining about irrelevant projects. I was whining about how there has been this general lack of motivation everywhere. I remember saying something about how it has literally been months since I have had the joy of learning anything new in school. Daniel helpfully suggested that I should stop reading up the notes in advance. Maybe that's a good idea. Or not.

I said that if polytechnics were filled with the kind of people I've known from JC, it would be the best place of education ever. I suggested that they ought to completely revamp the education system, so that there wouldn't be this huge, dividing line between JC students, and those who chose a polytechnic. (Yes I suspect that some of my unhappiness is derived from having that "idiot part of Singapore" label that comes with a Polytechnic education.). After secondary school, people would be allowed to move on to a form of general tertiary education. There would still be cut-off points and prerequisites for various fields of study, of course, but they would all focus on training people for the real world. Students would be drilled with vast amounts of theoretical knowledge, and also practical skills. Real practical skills.

In a way, it would be like merging Junior Colleges and Polytechnics into one system. The idea is that the bright, talented students, would be recognised for what they are, whichever field of study they have chosen. The uh, cannon-fodder part of the population would remain as they are.

This way, I would get to be with the people that I feel that I should be with, and also enjoy the benefits of a specialised education.

Yeah I'll also add that it's annoying how I never, ever hear a conversation in anything other than Singlish over here. I also think that I may actually suffer from a mild form of psychosis. And by "suffer", I'm just referring to the technical term. The term should actually be "gifted". Depending on your point of view, anyway.

Because when I was saying "Hey, you have a lighter? I feel like setting people on fire.", I was almost serious. Honestly, I just felt like doing something very violent, for no particular reason other than that "it feels sort of like the right thing to do now".

Oh well. Brilliantly, Daniel helped me out by giving me a temporary reprise from my state of... Depressionishness. I think I've just been feeling down and cranky lately because of the whole lack of motivation. I haven't been motivated enough to go read up more on stuff that I normally stare at all day. Maybe the lack of motivation stems from(yes I'm accusing my current schoolmates) the general lack of interest everywhere. I just somehow don't see the point of knowing more things if no one around you needs you to know these things.

If I can't be appreciated... Well that just makes me completely unmotivated.

So then. From today onwards, I swear, I vow to absolutely not give a shit about the general population's habits and opinions. I am going to be a diligent, hardworking and motivated individual, who follows his schedules, does his assignments, and still finds time to enjoy himself with his friends.

I would do that blood oathy thingy if I wasn't about to go start on a report that's due tomorrow.

Alright. Aus Wiedersehen. Random motivational picture!

(damnit Photobucket won't work for me today)

-Joe

Yeah, happy Labour Day, everyone. I'll just need to add that it's still bloody hot. Even at night.

The KI circle(or semi-circle) managed to meet up, whilst moaning about how they should be spending their free day studying for something. I was moaning about not having anything worthwhile to study. I mean seriously, how irrelevant can a chemistry project get...

This time, Elrond- I mean, Mark, managed to make it, as did Ms Chan. It was funny. I don't think I've ever had an outing with a teacher before. Not a school-organised outing, that is. She brought Taboo along for us to play.

Taboo is this excellent word game where each person is given a word which he is supposed to get people to guess, while avoiding the usage of five related "taboo" words. Which can get a little challenging because you end up having to use a lot of synonyms and saying "the opposite of " a whole bunch.

It really is fun. I wasn't too good at it though.

Aaaanyway, I had lunch at Carl's Jr today. It's pretty expensive, with a burger set going for about ten dollars. It's well worth the money though, since the servings are notably larger than those at other fast-food joints. The burgers are sort of squarish, and mine had real bacon in it. A medium fries is probably larger than a large from Mickey D's. Also, the fries had more real potato in them while still retaining that salty unhealthiness that I like in my fries. The best part, however, would probably be the free flow of drinks. Which, while making the upsizing of your beverage rather pointless, is not something that I'd bother to complain about.

So I drank a whole lot of coke today. More than I'd drunk in the past couple of weeks. This, however, had the effect of making me too full to fully enjoy the donuts we had purchased earlier. They were still good, but next time, we eat donuts on an empty stomach. I demand it.

I actually started this post with the intention of talking about May Day. However, it has no one definite origin. There are plenty of festivals that were celebrated on May 1st. It has Christian roots, Pagan roots... Something to do with the Soviet Union...

Yeah it just doesn't have a lot of things that I'm interested in.

So now, I'm packing for some camp. You see, this camp happens to be eating away at my weekend. And weekends happen to be very important to me.

On the bright side, however, they seem to be giving us a whole lot of "free and easy" time. That's what it looks like in the schedule, anyway. Which is a good thing. I could do the rest of the annoying tutorials that I have yet to complete.

Now either I really am tired, or I'm having writer's block again.


-Joe