Tuesday, May 10, 2005
This calls for a celebration!
In an enthusiastic, kiddy tone: Now that intensive choir practices have finally ended, I can finally do my tutorials, sleep early, and catch up on schoolwork and studies!Reality check: A naked man has a higher chance of surviving in the Amazon river than me actually beginning to study again.
Reason: Time and time again, slackers like me will find excuses not to study. This time around, it's my one year anniversary living in Singapore! Therefore, I've decided to celebrate the event by not studying and by blogging instead. That, and because I just spoke to a good friend of mine, a certain Benjamin Lee from secondary school, to whom I have not spoken to in almost a year. With two good excuses like these, I shall not deliberate further and just go into mindless-rant mode.
Ben and I have known one another for almost six years, and I'm proud to say that he's one of the more crazy, perverted, and yet at the same time, intelligent and musically inclined Catholic I've ever had the pleasure of meeting in my life (not that my other friends are shallow, boring, stupid and atheistic, so if you consider yourself a friend of mine, don't take that as a personal attack). In addition to that, we were Scouts, and both of us played Fallout too, so it wasn't surprising that we clicked. Back in secondary school, we used to skip school (in uniform, no less) to play Counterstrike (beta 6.0!) and Diablo II at nearby lan-gaming centres. What's worse, we don't pay, half of the time. And we got caught on several occasions too (or was it just me?). Fun times.
Today, I spoke to him on MSN for the first time in almost a year, and found out that he's now living the life of a foreign student in New Zealand (about friggin' time!). Not only that, he's also in choir! Another shared interest to add to the list... Of course, because he's good at the bass guitar, he can read scores better than I can, so...
Anyway, it's great to catch up with old friends and acquaintances, and even better when you find them in the same predicament as you; we're both students in alien lands, trying to eke a miserable existance out of what we're given.
Of course, Singapore isn't too different an environment from Malaysia as compared to Auckland, but hey, he's living in somewhere much colder than this equatorial island! Besides, I believe that his supply of fresh milk is kinda guaranteed there, so that's an added plus. Anyway, it's up to you to decide who's better or worse off.
Which brings me to my next point; it's been one year since the arrival of the second intake of ASEAN pre-university scholars on May 10th 2004. I have grown a little wiser since then:
1- My vocabulary of Chinese dialect words has increased, for one thing, allowing for more flowery conversation with the locals.
2- Choir has made an undeniable impact in my life... I can write a long, sappy post about this but I don't like to sound soap opera-ish so I'll save you the horror. For now.
3- I've learnt that Singaporean local food sucks. It's nigh-impossible to find good food anywhere outside of trendy eateries at shopping malls, and from what I've heard, it's too troublesome to look for good hawker food too.
4- Hostel food makes instant noodles taste good. Not because it's lousy; the food is edible, but the dishes repeat themselves every few days to the point that Maggi becomes a welcome break from the routine.
5- The probability of finding a good looking Singaporean chick is higher than in Malaysia, considering that it's the material hub of Southeast Asia. And that's also because the proportion of Chinese people in Singapore is higher than in Malaysia. Good looking girls with nice personalities are a different matter... But then again, most of the time, you only look at chicks to look at them, right?
6- I've learnt how to use eBay; I bought my (not so) sleek 40GB 4th-generation iPod for S$400 from a guy who worked across from my school. Granted, there's no warranty left and it's a tad scratched here and there, but overall, I'd like to think that it was a good deal.
7- More than half of the time, lectures are a waste of time.
8- The public transport system here is freakishly efficient. And to imagine that once, it took me more than two hours to wait for a bus and to ride it back to my house which was only 6km away.
9- A lot of other things which escapes my mind at the moment.
Therefore, no matter how much I bitch about this horrible island and its culture, Singaporeans, please don't be offended. I'm just showing my appreciation for what good (no kidding) your country has done to me for the duration of my stay in my own, weird way. In fact, I'm planning to work my way towards a place in NUS, too; that's gotta be a compliment, right?
Right?
P.S.: On an unrelated note, our beloved deputy principal of St. Andrew's Junior College (who, thankfully, is the voice of moderation in the campus) made an announcement today about a guy with a doctorate who posted defamatory stuff on his blog about some other dude in A*Star (some research company) who's about to get sued for defamation (duh). So, she advised bloggers to remove all defamatory stuff ("about students, about teachers, about your friends...") to prevent pissing off people. She even continued to say that it might not be too necessary to do so because we don't really have much to be sued for, being students and all.
I like my DP.
No, really.
