well, it is finally the weekend after yet another week of school. would u believe it......week 8 over already. this year sure is moving by too fast for comfort. Saturday is almost over, within slightly over an hour, and basically today was spent lazing around for abit and then doing some work, and then going out for a dinner to celebrate seb's and ben chia's birthday, even though one birthday was already over and one was yet to come. but what to do, when u are in IB and everyday is just too packed to go out after school and going out on a weekday can be easily labelled as a unwise use of limited time? after taking shots of the dinner and night, they are now taking rather long to load, one pic at a time on an internet site, oh wells.












*photos served up raw.

sunday night, a time to contemplate once again. life seems so long and dreary, taking into consideration that life would be better off without an education system like singapore's. while in the midst of drafting up some points for a chinese essay, pondering over what things will be like at the end of this year. will it be a repeat of primary school? i hope not. i vividly recall the end of primary school, after the collection of the psle results. everyone just dispersed without really much of a bye to one another, focused mostly on results. from that day on, i have never really encountered most of my classmates or schoolmates. sad when i come to think about it. losing touch with every single one of the people i knew in primary school, as if that duration was but a dream. unlike many people in this currently school, who almost know everyone in their class because their classmates had been in their class some time or another in the past. what is it like to end another chapter this time? will it be the same, or will there be something different this time round. a few years ago the graduation (friends forever) song by vitamin C seemed so far away and easy to shrug off and laugh off as not going to happen soon. but how long more can i keep this up, everytime it pops up on my ipod under random shuffle mode? is life divergent, like how it seems to take increasing effort to find something to talk about among friends, only to be convergent again at the end of it all? well, according to the song always look on the bright side, we come from nothing and return back to nothing.

still searching for a bright side.

Valentine's day for yet another year, with nothing much eventful going on, except perhaps for the joke in the morning when david chan came to class to give Jim a packet of tissue that said "seet reserved".

what led for a contemplative day was the announcement by the principal today. sad that such a thing has indeed happened. somehow, when such a thing happens in the public, we can choose to be apathetic about it, but never when it has hit home so near. many who heard about it were sad in one way or another, but what makes me particularly sad, is not only because of that singular event itself, but rather the apathetic attitudes of certain people that i feel disgust in mentioning as belonging to the same year. sleeping during the duration in the auditorium, and then later defending his actions in class that he doesnt give a damn because he doesnt even know the person anyway, truly disgusts. would he only care if he knew the person well enough, leaves much for thought. another act that triggers disgust is that of joking over life and death, in this case the latter. to poke fun at this certainly reflects indifference. sure, most others will not care as well, some will even join in the joking, but that need not mean that it is ok. to mock is to lower oneself.

Stress is indeed here to stay.

the soul passed on, the body lives on, an empty shell

happy new year to one and all, taking note that this is the Chinese one, and not any other. how interesting that there is a new year for each of the separate cultures in singapore, with the unifying 1st of jan one. how short the new year will be. tomorrow and the day after, or rather today and tomorrow, will be a time of feasting on new year snacks and idling around. too fast the time shall past. and before you know it, the weekend end will have come and back to the school mode of finishing work before school begins yet again on monday. hope the angbao harvest this year will be good, taking into account inflation and the economy, dropping 6% in half a day today, according to my brother whose job includes monitoring market trends daily.

What God Has Promised

God hath not promised skies always blue,

Flower strewn pathways all our lives through;

God hath not promised sun without rain,

Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day,

Rest for the labor, light for the way,

Grace for the trials, help from above,

Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

God hath not promised we shall not know

Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;

He hath not told us we shall not bear

Many a burden, many a care.

God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,

Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;

Never a mountain rocky and steep,

Never a river turbid and deep

Annie Johnson Flint

Just a random thought that crossed my mind in the evening