i shall get away from icy tower for a bit. i started playing it and the next thing i knew was, the sky went dark and i totally missed the process (when i'm sitting right next to the window -.-) gosh, just shows how addictive icy tower is, just like bejeweled last year. (:

lab in the morning. cost me 2 hours to get to ntu as usual. but oh well, i had my times magazine to keep me company so it wasn't all that bad (: there goes the usual stuff: dissolving, liquid-liquid extraction, drying with magnesium sulphate, with dessicator, with suction pump, with rotary evaporator (haha so many ways of obtaining solute from solution lol). then comes the widely used thin layer chromatography (first time i got the name right, cos i'd been think the abbreviation was TRC all along and couldn't piece together the full name :p). minh phuong kept breaking the TLC plates. to the point that when she needed the lecturer to sign her out, she waved to him and he thought she broke something again and immediately went to bring a broom and dustpan over. LOL. blacklisted :x but it's her first time. i broke so many of my previous mentor's glassware. i hoped he didn't have to pay too much for it! :x haha :) it was scheduled to end at 3pm but we amazingly finished at 12noon. of course, at a price. our yields were pretty low because in our speed, we spilled some of the sample. minh phuong spilled almost all. her table was like white with dried-up sample LOL. hahaha! ok i shouldn't laugh, cos i destroyed my entire sample on my first day at ntu last year ：x anyway, 12 is still way too early! lol. so huangcheng, here i come (:

黄城夜韵 was great (: haha took dewei's ticket without his permission. i still don't know why he couldn't make it at the last minute though. shall ask him when i see him on monday. anyway, big thanks. i just realised how much i missed out on last year. it's really good. aside from a few typical scenes of soap operas, i think the plot was sufficiently complex. i can't imagine 17/18-year-olds piecing together such intertwining yet logical and easy-to-follow plotlines. this requires an incredible amount of experience and skill! kudos people!

especially loved the way they presented 别无选择, how the "gods" and mortals acted were on the same stage, though they. it was nicely organised and unconfusing (: my favourite plot was still the 代价 that beehoon told us about last year, and were deliberating over how to end the story properly. no spoilers here, so yea, i'm not telling you the decided ending (: i found it vaguely familiar when the play first started and then got really intrigued when i recalled the storyline. (y) the actors and actresses were good. plus the theme 命运 was really thought-provoking. i think it's worth the watch (:

no more handholding. i begin to understand how it feels when there's nobody to tell you constantly, what you have to do next, in preparation for your goal. for us, it's the "A" levels. and the aims are not as simple as: 6 out of 10As. it's all 7A's we're looking for here, which makes this task especially daunting. and as a middle tier student, we ain't getting the help we'd all like to have. the mere thought of ploughing our way through on our own is no doubt chilling. and extremely discouraging.

let's practise a bit of economics or what i call stress theory. anyway, mrs chua was pretty entertaining today. i learnt quite a bit (it's one of the econs lessons that i'm actually awake the entire time :x). quite like her idea on extrinsic motivation like waving tidbits around to get us to answer questions. she brought so many different types of food. for what? "for variety to cater to different needs" HAHA :d plus points for class participation, though we were just eyeing the food :p ooh i love the goldilocks peanut thing that she gave me. one of my favourite childhood tidbits, the kind that melts in your mouth and it's not hot marshmellows :D and she was really cute when she says she shouldn't be doing this, but went on about her philosophy of encouraging students to develop some intrinsic motivation lol.

alright stress theory. students generally experience higher levels of stress as they expand their knowledge while climbing up the education level. somehow or another, it peaks at jc level, and begins to fall (and possibly remain constant?) when you proceed beyond college. at least that applies in singapore. and unfortunately, mid tier students will experience higher level of LRAS (long-run average stress) because help from teachers is minimal. so we can only improve by trial and error. thus our productivity is reduced, increasing average stress levels. :x is there any way out of this?

not even you.

maybe i'd placed too high hopes on you. but it shouldn't be too much to ask for a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on. just when i needed you most, you turned a blind eye to my tears. my heart was bleeding but your voice drowned out my cries.

11.59pm 2.4.2010

"this maths test can predict your favourite idol. try it without looking at the answer. pick 1 number from 1 to 9. then multiply it by 3. then +3 then x3 again. you will get a 2 digit number. add the 2 numbers tigether and find your favourite idol!

scroll down only after you've gotten the final single-digit answer!

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1. jay chou

2. super junior

3. jolin tsai

4. rain

5. SHINee

6. obama

7. andy lau

8. show luo

9. xinying :D

I knew I was your idol! ! !"

probably the best sms joke i've seen in ages. sent to me by li lan (:

i can't quite recall what happened during the school day itself. always happens. i do thing i've an automatic "clear memory" function that's activated whenever we're dismissed from school. oh yea, i remember now, council q & a and elections, followed by math lecture and ct session. i shall skip council elections, don't wanna get chased after for putting up anything that can be deemed as a personal attack on anyone. besides, the moment i get on the topic of council, i can go on forever. if claudia is present, that's it. it takes two hands to clap. so both of us can go on for two forevers :p chengyan found us really entertaining during break today, when we complained until we were completely red in the face hahahaha. such a nice way to destress. made the teh bing that we drank after that taste so sweet and hard-earned (:

principal's address at ct session was epic. i think this was one dialogue where the students felt most involved, most able to relate to the issue at hand, cos we had a real-life example that happened not so long ago. that is, how teachers should deal with students who are talking during a talk/lecture/lesson. should they reprimand, talk to us nicely and just turn a blind eye to it? and if the teacher does reprimand, what exactly constitutes humiliation of the students he or she is targetting? what do you think? well, i'm not sure whether the teacher in question should speak up, and whether she made things for better or for worse for herself. but joleen sounded very poor thing when she went to the mic and said that she was the girl who was called up to the front of the auditorium. even beverly and yuanxi echoed my views. :x but she was so brave to stand up and say that. (:

enough with controversial issues that can get opposite camps to argue till the cows come home. oh after school, centad debrief scheduled for 2.30 to 4.30. ultimate sian-ness just to think about it. but we ended at 3.15 after a short discussion (which wasn't even a discussion cos we merely wrote down our views on the project that we did and passed them to the secretary -.-). skipped to psc talk. we actually checked a few LTs before we got the venue right, cos we didn't think we could make it beforehand. bev, rachel and i did some unglam stuff outside the LT. :x then mircle after miracle, the talk ended near 4?? gosh, everything was running way ahead of time.

when we were nearing bev's class bench, the anticipated announcement came (: hahaha heard cheers of joy everywhere as well as sighs though :x 5 sc girls got in. congrats :d then bridge and off we go, home. :D 852 gang!