I've been keeping myself so busy over the last few months I haven't felt that I've had the energy to create a decent entry for this blog. Also, with the hoo-ha nowadays about how blogs are becoming increasingly a means by which people reveal undesirable details about themselves and result in them being fired from their jobs (or not even be considered for jobs that their applying for), and the fact that blogs are fast becoming old media, I seriously wonder about the point of me keeping a blog going anyway. The only reasons I'm not deleting this blog are that I've paid for subscription for about 1.5 years more, and I don't want this domain to go to someone else. There's every chance that I'll create a website for a business that's under my name in the future (e.g. personal tuition business) and it would be useful to have a neat little website for that eventuality.

So I'm 6 weeks into my internship at Givaudan, and although things have stabilized (and in a sense, even winding down), there's still lots of difficult work left to do, and I believe everything will come down to the wire, on the last day of my internship. There's a good chance that we'll be presenting our work as interns here to the big global boss of the entire division when he comes to Singapore from Europe at the end of our internship, so we have to make sure that we are confident enough to say stuff in front of him that will impress him. So that's just a little bit more stressful. Thankfully, because it's over a much longer duration than my internship at MTI, so I'm not so stressed out that I need to pop painkillers to get through each day.

Tuition is going well. I've got three students now, two of whom are working on long-term projects that are due in a year's time, so it's a very interesting experience advising them on how to go about research in the proper academic way. Their topics aren't terribly exciting, but then again I haven't found an Economics research topic that really interests me yet. Which is a real worry because I know that in about 2 months' time I will have to be ready to embark on my senior thesis if I choose to go ahead with it, and one kind of has to have a seemingly interesting and challenging topic to study before that can happen. So part of me is thinking about not doing the thesis and really enjoying my last year doing only the few mods I need to do / am interested in, giving tuition, taking dance easy and spending more time with important people in my life. And finding a job. Tuition will give me a steady income stream for the next 1.5 years, but that's really only adequate for my life as a student, and people are expecting me to explode onto the job market the very moment I graduate anyway. It's a little depressing somehow.

I'm surprised at how tired I feel, and how much I want to just watch TV and movies and play computer games all day, and go for holidays to all kinds of weird places - basically afford myself all the decadent pleasures that I've been rigorously denying myself these past three years in SMU. I don't think I'll ever be able to get the chance though, at least not before I start work next year.

So much has happened over the last two months, I wonder how I'm going to squeeze it all in. Three main things I guess: MTI internship, Caderas and Bailamos, and then academics and other school stuff that have happened so far this term.

As I mentioned the last time, my internship at MTI was really tough. Not because the project was too difficult for me to handle, but because the timeframe was so tight and the constraints on the completeness and timeliness of arrival of the data I needed that I didn’t have time to synthesize all the little interesting findings I made. The end result was that the final product was something that I wasn’t really proud to put my name on. Well, maybe I did have difficulty handling it – very early on there was a problem with comparability of data from different countries because I ran up against the nominal-real issue and exchange rates – if I had had a little more experience about how to adjust my data to account for these discrepancies the end result might not have been so convoluted.

But strangely enough, when I finally went back to give a presentation on my project findings it seemed to go surprisingly well. About halfway through my presentation people got really interested in my animated bubble charts that I figured out how to do in Excel, as well as my inter-country comparison, which I had gone through several calculations in order to obtain. I felt it was all very fluffy and disjointed, but in the 45 minutes that I was speaking it seemed relatively well-received. So thankfully, I'm all done with that now – I learnt that I quite like the idea of working with data and doing research, just perhaps not in the public sector… seriously considering an academic career path right now. But we’ll see.

Dance has been another headache over the last few months, albeit a marginally more enjoyable one. The main sticking point has been the fact that the Salsa choreography that we did for Bailamos was the toughest I have ever attempted. About two months before performance day, I strained my wrist while practicing the final trick (which basically involves carrying the girl straight up, placing her on my shoulders, holding one of her legs while allowing the other to whirl around in a turn, catching her and then putting her down into a side dip), and I was struggling with it ever since. Saw a TCM doctor, saw a GP, got wrist guards, plasters, and took Panadol regularly every day the week before the performance. It took so much out of me that now that the performance is over, I honestly am thinking about stopping Salsa and enjoy the rest of my life as a regular Joe. Instead of a Latin-dancing sexy wannabe Joe.

But the performance came off really well, and the sense of achievement was insane. Here are some shots – not very good ones of course. Oh! - I must add - Charlotte, my partner for this piece, was just amazing throughout the whole training process. Took all my nonsense and even gave me back some of her own; not too slack and not too on, and it all turned out a lot better than I expected. Thanks Charlotte.



Some other cool stuff has happened in Caderas. First of all, we’re gearing up for a split between Latin and Salsa. Which some people found regrettable, including myself. If Salsa and Latin hadn’t been part of the same club in SMU I think there would have been precious little chance that I’d have joined both. But when I look at the way the club has evolved over the last three years I can't help but feel that this is inevitable. People are just not interested in what’s happening on the other side of the wall anymore. Honestly, I don’t blame them. It’s really hard to maintain continuity and consistency in this club; I feel we are lurching from one event to another and it’s a miracle that we manage to achieve anything beautiful at all – praise God! Secondly, we are finally going to execute our first ever JC outreach dance workshop thingy. This will see some 60 JC students coming down to the ACC for a Caderas101-style event, and hopefully we will get them interested in our school and the dance scene therein. I'm in charge of that, and honestly I'm so slack I think we’ll need another miracle to get it off the ground. But we’ll see.

Finally, academics. Decided to take up 6 modules again this semester because I honestly feel slack doing 5. Say whatever you like. I originally intended by 6th module to be ECON305 Advanced Mathematical Methods, but after 1.5 lessons I felt really lost, so I decided to just walk out without even bidding for it. Even sold off my brand-new textbook as a commitment mechanism. Instead I signed up for an Operations Management Independent Study on Sales and Operations Planning, which honestly sounds really cool. But what’s really cool about it is that it’s a 2-for-1 deal – it’s an Ops Mgmt Elective module which sees me and a partner and my Prof doing research on Sales and Operations Planning, and then writing a paper about it. It’ll then snowball into an internship in the summer, so I hit quite a lot of bases for effort that isn’t quite proportional to the outcome – in a positive sense. A little hairy because at times I really feel out of my depth but I'm sure it’ll all turn out dandily in the end.

Chinese New Year just passed. Sharon was able to join the gathering of the relatives on my dad’s side – I was really happy! I think she and my cousins really “click”! But then I mixed up the ang pows that I was holding for both of us, and she ended up “earning” more than me. Sigh.

Apart from that, I realize that this is already the middle of Term 2! That means I'm roughly 70% through my university education. That’s actually really sad because I enjoy school so much. Only now do I feel that I have the credibility to undertake a lot of cool stuff like thesis, independent study, exchange, internship etc., but there’s just enough time to do all that. Nor is there enough money to extend my stay here in SMU – well, maybe there is, somewhere, but my scholarship runs out after 4 years, and I need to start earning some cash so I can get married anyway. Sigh. Hopefully I can come back to school after a few years of actual work and commence on my very alluring academic career path.

Blink blink, and a whole term is over. Here’s my first blog post in three months. Ought to start feeling less guilty about not posting. Not like anybody reads this anyway.

 

Just like that, the hellacious 6-module term is over. At many points during the term I told myself that I would never do 6 modules again because it’s so tiring and stressful. Somehow I managed it, and my GPA didn’t even fall! Really praise God for that. Once again I did worse for my Economics modules than my Business or Core modules, or even the extra Persuasion module that I decided to take for fun this semester. But not that much worse. Now I’m considering doing 6 modules again next semester; oh how joyful that’ll be.

 

But for now I’m stuck doing a 4-week internship at MTI because I got a cash prize from them sometime back and I felt that it would be rather unbecoming to turn it down so blatantly, given that my belief that part of the reason why I was given the award was because my school’s faculty wanted a good representative to intern at MTI. The sense of obligation was rather overwhelming. Would have been a pretty embarrassing picture at the award ceremony if I had had to tell people that I wasn’t going to intern at MTI after receiving the attendant accolades.

 

Got a pretty meaty project to handle, one that I'm not entirely sure I can complete to spec on time. I'm trying not to think about or work on the project at home, but something tells me that I’ll eventually have to anyway because the timeframe is so tight. At least for the next two weeks I think we’ll have 3.5 day weeks because of the Christmas and New Year holidays. And I have my laptop working, with Eviews and email and everything I'm supposed to have working on laptop because my lovely girlfriend Sharon was nice enough to let me have use of her wireless broadband modem for this period! When I'm working at the 11^th floor of the building and apparently Wireless@SG ends at somewhere around the 4^th floor. Sigh.

 

Anyway, we recently marked our 1^st year anniversary. No pictures yet because I think Sharon has them all, but we had a lovely time picnicking at Sentosa’s Tanjung Beach. Sharon brought all the food and I drove, and things were just as they should be. Love.

 

Dance trainings are really tiring me out nowadays. Haven’t done intensive training since Week 14, so the ramping-up of trainings as we enter crunch period for Bailamos is really taking its toll on me physically. And now, horror of horrors, Angeline, my dear Latin Ballroom partner, has decided to retire. It’s the right decision for her personally, but now Latin trainings are no longer the same for me. I feel like a Ronin.

 

Oh well. I’ll be making it a point to blog as often as I can, seeing that I'm sitting in front of two laptops all day and can't seem to focus on my research and report continuously anyway. Hopefully with some effort this blog will be brought back to some modicum of life at the end of the next three weeks.  

Lots of cool things have happened over the last four weeks or so. Now, in no particular order…

6 modules in 1 semester is INSANE. For the first time in my life in SMU I feel like I have no chance to breathe. I exaggerate of course – last semester was pretty tight too, but that was mostly because of dance exco work and Bailamos, which was pretty manageable because at least I had the luxury of switching from one thing to another and keeping myself from feeling jaded. But now the mind-numbness is coming all from the academic avenue, and I want to absorb everything that I'm learning but I find I just can't. Once again I find myself winging it, faking one thing after another and just trying to stay ahead of the curve in every module. I tell myself that this is the only way to take all the modules that I want to take before I leave SMU, but even if I push myself to the brink this year (i.e. end up taking 14 modules or something) I will still probably end up having to deal with 6 modules per semester in my final year as well. I'm a big greedy academic pig! At least we get to watch cool videos every now and then in class.

Sharon’s birthday was a blast! I brilliantly executed my plan to take her out to the grass-covered roof of Marina Barrage for an open-air picnic. The wind was great, the view was lovely and best of all, nobody came to chase us away! The picnic comprised of the following:

- Picnic mat (partially permeable)
- Discman with portable speakers, playing Sharon-selected love songs for ambience
- Improvised tea-light-in-jute-bag lantern (pictured below)
- Take-out dinner from Saizeriya
- 2 slices of cheesecake from Cheesecake Café
- 2 bottles of Seasons flavoured tea
- 1 random cushion from my brother’s car
- Inspired gift of a custom T-shirt in a nice pastel pink box with silver ribbon


Sounds like a recipe for romance? I’ll let the pictures below tell the story.



Improvised Lantern




Birthday Cake from Cheesecake Cafe!


 

My birthday gift to her!!


 

And here’s a close-up of the T-shirt. Witty, isn’t it?

I'm really happy at the way it turned out…

Vivace this year was pretty cool. I had my doubts about how things would happen, but I guess God is watching and taking care of all of us. We got pretty good sign-ups for Caderas101, auditions and classes – nobody complained too much. I was surprised at how tired I was by the time it was all over. The only part I was annoyed about was our performance – not only did I have to run across wet asphalt in my ballroom shoes in order to get to the performance stage on time (thereby completely ruining their soles, which was unfortunate but not wholly so since they were almost gone anyway), but our music got cut off at the end, which was positively infuriating. Apart from that I had lots of fun talking to juniors (or rather yelling at them because the music and noise at every booth in the Concourse was deafening) and getting them interested in Caderas. Basically my job for the last year, which I relived for one day.





A couple of weekends ago Angeline and I hit KL for a ballroom competition. Crappy result, but an awesome experience. It was the first time that I had travelled completely on my own itinerary, i.e. planning my own flight, accommodation and preoccupations. So although performed terribly at the competition, didn’t get enough sleep and generally felt like mucus for most of the time, we had a good time just relaxing and shopping, doing whatever we wanted to do and going wherever we wanted to go. Ate Wendy's for the first time in my (very nice) and got some Krispy Kremes too (definitely very nice). We saw the Petronas Towers too, though we didn’t go up (to do that, one has to queue for tickets at like 8am in the morning). I enjoyed the break from school, though when I got back there was a world of suffering because I had to catch up on sleep as well as homework and readings. I feel relatively on top of things now, but that’s a very transient feeling.

  

Which brings me back to schoolwork. Every weekend is a mad rush for me as I try to complete the tasks that I've accumulated over the course of the entire week. I’ve MPW readings and notes to go through, a surprise Economic Forecasting assignment to complete, Ethics notes submission and readings, as well as a Persuasion thesis statement to come up with. And this won't be the last term of doing random stuff that doesn’t fall under my areas of specialization – there’s still Management Accounting and Strategy to go. Hey, actually that’s not too bad. Oh and of course ICC if I still want to do it next year. Sigh.

Well. Year 3 in SMU. Who’d have thought we’d ever get here. Was just agreeing with Felicia the other day that we never thought that we’d ever be in Year 3. It’s strange feeling too old to make silly mistakes in academics, yet not old enough that I feel confident behaving any way I like, as some wizened seniors are wont to.

Anyhow, the first week of school has been predominated by a sense of worry over my 6th module. I’ve been aiming to take a 6th module this semester, just to try the workload on for size, but silly regulations dictate that I can only apply for the 6th module during the 2nd week of school. Which means that up till this point I'm in the unusual position of not being 100% sure about what modules I’m going to take. Not to mention that I severely overpaid for a module that I really wanted to get and now am considering dropping it and rebidding so I can save some e$60 or so. Really risky but I think it’s essential – otherwise I may not have enough ammunition to last me into next term. I’d hate having to do summer term again… besides, I don’t think I really can because I need to dedicate my time to internship.

I’ve removed my Cbox because people keep leaving random insults on it. Whoever it is who is vandalizing that thing, if you know who I am please stop being a wuss and take your problems out with me directly. How old are you already. Sheesh.

Anyway no point talking about my academics until it’s all settled. Somehow I think that I would have gotten pawned if I stayed sitting on my Logistics module. Some part of me is glad that I'm out of it, and that now my progression is more balanced between my Statistics and Operations majors. I just wish the bidding hadn’t been so costly.

Two big things coming up to look forward to – KL dance competition and then Sharon’s birthday. Going all the way to KL for competition is a huge step for Angie and I, and we’re probably not going to win anything because there’s no Rising Star Novice category, only a Novice one. Which means we are spending about $500 in total to go up there and get thrashed. And I learned a painful lesson in booking budget flights online. I guess it’s all about gaining experience.

For Sharon’s birthday… I guess I’m a little stressed about it, but can't say much because it’s meant to be a surprise!

Back to Ethics readings I guess. Who sets 8 readings for the first lesson? Gosh.

Lots of things have happened this summer, dance-wise. First of all, there's been the Malaysian Salsa Festival, an event that I told myself I would go for so that I would be able to say, at the end of four years in Caderas, that I at least went out of my comfort zone enough to attend a Salsa Festival overseas and pay good money for it. Ultimately not a very enjoyable experience, but at least the performances and a couple of the performances went well. Social dancing doesn't excite me anymore, as I realize that my passion for Latin Dance is largely confined to competing in ballroom competitions and teaching when the opportunity presents itself. Some pics of me, just to document my time there.







Didn't even bring my own camera; all these photos are from facebook. Brought two textbooks instead, and I do believe that brought me much more enjoyment. Finished reading them by now, but still have at least three more to read. Sigh. Failed again in my objective to finish reading textbooks before term starts. In any case the performance was ok, and thenice part about it is that most of the costumes we used are generic (i.e. not tailored) and can be used again by almost anyone else! Actually the guys shirts were tailored but they are very baggy and don't fit very well. What to do.

Second thing that happened dance-wise was Stardust competition. Really disappointing because Angeline and I didn't win anything, which is a first, but understandable because we just moved up to Novice category. And add to that the fact that we missed the next two competitions, Merlion (because of clash with MSF) and the Hong Kong competition (I wonder how that went for those two couples who went...) We need to work hard at it if we're gonna make any progress at the Novice level. The other senior couples are having a really difficult time getting anywhere too. Angeline and I really need to get our game together. There are 5 more competitions locally and in Malaysia till the end of the year, so there is ample opportunity to make some headway and history. At least during Stardust we won the Showdance category, which was unexpected and a little weird. Oh well. At least now I can say that I was part of a Showdance-winning team. My mailer, hopefully the last I will ever do.



And of course the last thing that has happened that I am really looking forward to is the Missions Month dance item that I have led a bunch of Kaleo youth in preparing for. Choreographed quite a bit and got a few of the youth to come up with individual verses, and several disorganized practices later we have something approaching a dance item ready for consumption this Sunday. Will have one more dance video in my collection by this Sunday. Tricky because we have yet to find a chance to do a full-dress run; things will come down to the wire this Saturday afternoon where it's make or break on the sanctuary stage. Personally I'm quite worried about how it will be received, i.e. whether anyone will take offence, or whether we will screw up our steps or showmanship, but then Sharon reminds me of the "audience of one" concept, which is refreshing and humbling. Must try to keep that in mind this weekend.

Wow this whole summer has really been a big rush for me. Never anticipated that taking 2 summer mods in a row would be so challenging. I guess taking summer mods is difficult in another way because the compressed timeframe doesn't give one a chance to develop a sense of what's important and what's not in the course... before you know it it's exams. Game Theory was fine of course, but Environmental Science was really hairy. Chiefly that had to do with the fact that there was a group project to do just before the final, but also because I couldn't figure out what was going on in the Prof's head most of the time. Didn't help that I missed the first lesson.

Let's maintain the academic tenor of this post - I guess that's probably because I'm sitting in school writing this. I've decided to do 6 modules this term, just to try it on for size and see if it hurts because I did 5.5 last semester and it was still quite manageable. However there's a stupid rule that says that I can't bid for my extra module until BOSS 2A, which is basically the second week of school. Hence, all the spaces in most of the courses that I would have liked to take as my 6th module have been snapped up, and I'm left with the unpalatable option of waiting until someone randomly decides to drop the course sometime in 2A in order to sneak in. I have two things working in my favour though - firstly, I have almost e$140 on hand, thanks to liberal dispensations from my summer courses, and secondly I have a few options of courses that I can take as my 6th module, after accounting for clashes and the like. No point going into the boring details, but here's the point - if you are an incoming SMU freshman, please do not underestimate BOSS bidding. If even I can screw it up, you can too.

Well the reason why I'm in school today is that I've also signed up to be a TA for OPIM101 under Prof Pascale Crama. Pretty cool deal - I only have to be in class for 2 lessons, mark the quantitative portions of weekly assignments and answer student queries without any need for regular consultation hours. And of course there's the stipend, which is rather attractive - but I shan't elaborate on that because it's really not about the money. I just feel that I should do at least a couple of TA jobs before I graduate - would feel awkward otherwise given that TA-ing is such a common activity among my friends. The key really is finding the right profs to TA under so that you don't get a bad deal.

Sharon's away again in Kuching to sell property. Sigh... She'll be back today, but with my recent trip to Pahang for the recently concluded Malaysian Salsa Festival, I do agree with her that we have spent a lot of time apart from each other during this summer break of mine. Perhaps next summer will be better because I'll be on internship, which means that my schedule will be better coordinated with hers. Of course there's always the very real possibility that I will simply become so stressed and irritable and not want to spend time with her or doing anything else fun. Just stating the possible outcomes; no implications intended.

Which brings me back to academic matters - apparently I'm the top Econs student again this year. Yay... And also the other day I attended an interview for this Econs prize awarded by MTI. Was really confused during the interview (which turned out to be an interview with the dean and vice-dean) but I think that I eventually acquitted myself decently. Or maybe that's just the natural human tendency to stylize memories increasingly positively as time elapses after the end of the event being recollected. Either way, if I receive the award, apparently it comes with some cash and an internship opportunity with MTI. Which in theory is quite cool but somehow I'm not head over heels about it. I guess it would be nice to work for an institution like MTI, but I wouldn't fight tooth and nail over it... especially not when there are so many prima facie interesting internship opportunities in the supply chain industry.

OK I think this will do for a blog post for now...

This apparently appeared in the Straits Times on the 21st of May this year. Part of a series of advertisements to market SMU, I believe. This left me feeling rather weird about my candidature here in SMU – I understand the basic idea behind playing up the entrepreneurial paths that some of our graduates have taken, but really, fish soup? In an admissions advertisement? Here’s what the text in the little blue box at the bottom of the ad reads:

“SMU students don’t follow the crowd, they lead the way. Our revolutionary, broad-based and participative pedagogy transforms them into confident individuals prepared to go against convention. It helps them develop an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of social and ethical responsibility. Claire Au, for example, runs a thriving fish soup business and considers giving meal coupons to the poor an integral aspect of her business philosophy. Above all, SMU teaches students to follow their passions, through good times and bad. Many found challenging careers in a variety of industries, others became budding entrepreneurs. Either way, each one has what it takes to choose their own path in life. THE WORLD IS YOUR CAMPUS.”

Once again, I think I can appreciate the spirit of the advertisement – entrepreneurship generally tends not to be the usual path of advancement for many young workforce entrants in Singapore, and now that the government is encouraging it, SMU is trying to be out in front and encourage it to. And a large part of that is attracting the kind of students that have the inspiration and drive to one day set up their own businesses and not just start climbing the ladder at a big-name MNC. So yep, to this Claire Au person and all the other entrepreneurs who have graduated from SMU, well done, and all the best. Honestly.

But I think the really questionable thing the marketing department of SMU has done here is putting the name of our school next to a picture of a lady offering the cameraman a bowl of what is allegedly fish soup (albeit a very well-dressed and attractive lady). We know that the economy is bad, and everyone who’s applying to university is weighing how marketable each university can make him or her. All this while SMU has been running the line that SMU graduates are on average more marketable than most Singaporean graduates, i.e. 100% find a job within 6 months of graduation, SMU Economics students are on average the highest paid among whoever, etc. My question to the school marketing department is – why suddenly change tack and emphasize entrepreneurship? And even if entrepreneurship is to be emphasized, why fish soup? Different, for sure, but what kind of impression is it going to give someone who has just left JC/Poly and is looking for somewhere to invest his/her next four years and $30,000+ in?

So in a spirit of candor, I present my take on this ad.



(I'm sorry if I've offended anyone, don't take it personally, I just have it in me to criticize marketing materials)

Most people who talk about my time management with me usually don’t expect that I spend a lot of time studying – they think that I make most of it up on the spot, and put it down to intelligence. But the fact of the matter is that I do spend lots of time studying, just that I study at times that others don’t, so that when the rubber meets the road in the weeks just before an exam or test I appear relatively relaxed and carefree. For example, it’s been a long-time strategy of mine to acquire textbooks for the courses I'm taking in the upcoming term long before the term proper actually starts, and then try to read as much of the assigned chapters as possible. That way, when the term starts, I’ve already got most of the material covered, and if I haven’t, I’m at least in good stead to ensure that I keep up with my readings for the entire term, i.e. go into lessons having actually read the relevant textbook chapters. So that aids class participation, and contributes to my general enjoyment of the class. Nothing mystical, really. And I haven’t been doing this just in SMU – I do remember reading an Economics textbook after my ‘O’ Levels, in preparation for the inevitable plunge into Hwa Chong Humanities, and I ended up really loving Economics.

The upshot of this behavior is that my whole life, I’ve been studying during what most people regard as school holidays, and even more intensively during term, so consequently I’ve missed out on a lot of games/shows that I told myself I must play/watch. Thankfully, because I’ve got a lot of relatives and friends with these games/shows (and the Internet, if these relatives and friends prove insufficient) who are willing to loan them to me / copy them for me, I end up always having a little stockpile of games/shows to watch. So this holiday, given that I’m not interning but doing summer term instead, which is more than manageable, given that the workload is much less than during regular term, I’ve been catching up all of the above that I told myself I would. So in this holiday alone I’ve finally finished watching the last of the 15 seasons of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis (which I started watching in Term 2 of last year), as well as Heroes Season 3. I’ve also finished playing Homeworld 2, the Black Knight Expansion of Mechwarrior 4 and C&C Renegade, the last of which I just finished last night. I never knew such old games could still be so much fun after so many years! While the world is going off and on about new games like Halo 3 and Fallout whatever here I am playing games I should have gotten over with in my primary school years. Yet here I am, living up the good old days and in awe of seeing C&C in 3D. And finding it quite tough. Here’s a screenshot of the final cutscene from C&C Renegade to prove that I did indeed finish it. Haha. I can imagine myself coming back here in a few years and laughing at myself.



Dance, dance, dance. Hm. Oh right, we just had dance camp not long ago. I took some pictures which I haven’t gone through till now. Well, up on Facebook and this blog they go. Hope you enjoy looking through them! Dance camp was crazy. Didn’t stay over of course, would probably have fallen sick the next day. The very thought of staying in school overnight just sickens me. Ugh. Anyway, it was wicked fun. Really tired out by it; ended up going back to school for the 2nd day of camp only at 11am. But that was mainly because those workshops which I attended were really fun. Thanks to juniors too for organizing the fun-fun stuff.

                                                           

Angie and I have a short dance performance for HPB coming up this Saturday. I really hope we get time to practice and the stage is good and we look pro on that day. And that it ends quickly so I can rush back to town and watch movie with Sharon. At her recommendation, we’re gonna watch a – gasp – Chinese-language film called 18 Grams of Love. At least it’s local. Watched the trailer, should be good.



On with my life. I guess I should be reading something for my Game Theory now. Interesting but gosh I do wish it was more challenging. Knew it would be easy but didn’t know it would be this easy.

Woke up this morning only to realize that actually I was supposed to be in church this morning to manage my boys to provide refreshments for Kaleo too. Prayed that God would help to sort it out and then went back to sleep. All I wanted was a big steaming bowl of some soup noodle, so I headed out to Bedok Central to get a bowl of my favourite Qiu Lian Ban Mee. Keeps you very warm, queue is very long. Well not really nowadays – it’s become so mainstream that there is usually no queue; at least at the Bedok outlets.

Spent the whole day working on my AE project writeup and watching stockpiled videos. Nice to be able to spend the whole day doing my own thing. But I just realized how much is to be covered for my AE quiz tomorrow, and I freaked out a little bit because I remember being quite lost last lesson. I guess I better stop blogging and go and study now.