You know, I miss having a school uniform. When I still wore a school uniform, it was considered special when I got to wear... Not a uniform. It was special even when I wore something that was still considered a school garment, but not the common school uniform. Not wearing a uniform meant something. It meant a day of fun, relaxation. It meant that I wasn't about to sit at a very dirty desk and listen to a teacher talk.

Not that lessons were bad. I loved lessons back then. It's just that... Uniforms. They're cool and all, but they also have that air of formality about them. It was also interesting to observe people and the ways they tried to make their uniform... Not uniform. People actually had to try in order to look different and have something extra that can be identified with.

Not anymore, though. Not for me. Believe it or not, I'd rather wear a cardboard-grey JC uniform than jeans and a T-shirt every day. Monday. Jeans and T-shirt. Tuesday. Jeans and T-shirt. Wednesday. Jeans and T-shirt. Yeah, you get the picture. The shirt may change, but in the end, it's still a uniform. I still wear the same things every day.

But the thing about this new uniform, is that it doesn't come with the benefits that the old one did. During the PAE period, old uniforms were great for identifying people from afar. The distinctive green of Ang Mo Kio Secondary, the very-obvious pinafores from... Wherever. All that stuff. Also wearing my old uniform made me realise how much more I like it than any other school's uniform. I remember commenting rather crudely "Jeez, what kind of an idiot would make his students wear that?" And I actually still hold that opinion. White shirt and dark pants is the best combo ever.

So yeah. My new uniform. What am I going to wear on an outing? T-shirt and jeans? Wow. Awesome. It's exactly like wearing your school uniform to a movie, or to a dinner. I don't think I'm ready to spend any money on more...Formal clothing just yet.

On the other hand, lab coats are seriously the coolest things ever. They're way up there together with Neo's trenchcoat and a Darth Vader costume. And I quote from Zoidberg, "Just because I say I'm a doctor, it doesn't mean I'm a doctor. The fancy clothes do!" Yeah. Fancy clothes. Lab coats. They're awesome. I totally look forward to wearing them on a daily basis... Eventually.

Just sad that we only have practicals once a week. Oh well.

Hm and it turns out that I can't connect my laptop to my printer. Because it only works for XP and below. Have you heard about the thingy where people are petitioning for Microsoft to keep selling XP until 2010? Yeah their reasoning is basically that Vista sucks. And I actually agree with them. Vista is really just XP with a sleeker interface, more useless, resource-eating animations, and less compatability to today's(and yesterday's) software. Unless people start developing their software to be compatible with Vista in droves, Vista will remain as the fancy OS for people who hardly use their computers.

Also I should probably get back to my microbiology report. At least my lab partner volunteered to do something this time. I guess she didn't feel that good when I said "Hey, do this" last week.

Also, there's been this whole thing where the school has been trying to get me to take part in that NYAA thing. National Youth Achievement Award. Supposedly, I'm one of their students viable enough to win that Lee Kuan Yew award, but I need a good CCA record in order to be eligible for it. The entire concept of the NYAA is rather... Well, let's just say that it's not really my type of thing.

Community service. That's one of the big aspects of the programme. Even though I'm pretty much free to choose whatever type of service I want to do, I am still faced with an issue: I can't think of anything that I'd like to do, that would benefit the community. I would very much like to NEUTER all of them. That probably would benefit the community, but that probably won't go down very well with those people who'll be reviewing my journal.

"Today, I hunted people down with a morphine-filled dart gun and a pair of sharpened garden shears. I managed to get four people. I'm not sure if I stapled the third one up properly... There was still some bleeding when I left the site..."

Yeah. Brilliant.

I'm SURE they want to read that, and award me for "Effort in helping the human race".

Either way, I think the question for me is... Do I want that award badly enough? I mean, sure, it'd be cool to shake hands with the president at the end of these three years, but that would also mean that I'd have to do a bunch of extra stuff along the way. Most people who've known me for any more than a couple of years would know that I am not the type to go out of my way to help the community... Unless it involves something that I can take out my sadistic urges on. Also, I would have a bunch less time to play all those cool next-gen games coming out later this year and beyond.

Do you think that "hunting rabid bears" is a valid community service project?

"Day 24 of bear hunt:
Apparently, that "bear" that I captured and disposed of was not actually a hideously mutated member of the Ursidae family, but actually a childhood acquantaince whom I hated very much and would just have loved to kill painfully under the pretence that he was in fact, a bear."

Also, shit. Using my laptop PC. No picture.

-Joe