we are #1!

Me and BenCheok are now Rank 1 in our division in Starcraft 2! For 2v2s. hahaha. It's not THAT much of a big deal, because there are many many divisions for Gold league, and there is still platinum league, diamond league which are the pool of players who are much better than us.

But still! rank 1! yeaaa .

Huh what? What about my readings? school? what what?

back to school

This is a very long, wordy(and maybe emo) post, so if that's not your thing, just skip it.

The last time I was in school was November 2007, when i took my Physics paper if I'm not wrong. Of course I'm not counting the other times when I returned to school such as to collect results, etc, just the period when I was still studying.

Now, almost 3 years later (2 years 9 months to be exact), I'm about to embark on my studies again. This time it's going to be for FOUR years at one institution, the longest i've been anywhere in the past 4 years. (only 2 years in JC, 2 years in army)

Like all good students should (lol), I have had several goals laid out, some realistic, some not so.

1) Graduate with First Class Honors
Yes yes, stop looking at me with those judgmental eyes. (oh i never knew 'judgmental had no 'e' after g) Of course it is every student's dream to achieve the best results possible right!! Unless you're some extremely under-ambitious person who doesn't hope to succeed in life.

Then again, this is very very optimistic seeing how I'm likely to fail one module in my first sem (FRENCH lol gg) ... i guess I'll set a new target with regards to this goal after my first sem, need to see what kind of CAP i can actually attain in uni.

2) Study 2 extra hours a day (minimum)
With an eye on goal number one, this is the action plan of course. I aim to hit the books at least 2 hours everyday, whether it's just casual reading of the textbook or actual memorization. Actually I may have to tweak this to be abit more because I'm sure there'll be homework and stuff. This is meant to be EXTRA , on top of the regular workload.

3) Make many many friends
This may seem trivial to many people, but it is actually quite big for me.
Those who know me well will know I'm quite an introvert by nature - I don't mind spending hours to end at home playing computer games, and would turn down invitations to go out with friends ; I don't mind wandering around school and studying alone in the library.

I'm just not naturally outgoing or anything. The feeling to interact doesn't come naturally. Like you know, how our feeling of hunger comes naturally when we smell food, or when the feeling of pain comes naturally when we get pricked with a pin. I don't naturally want to go out and interact with people.

However, after evaluating the pathetic state of my social life, I have decided to break this shell and go out and make more friends! rawr. Hence the signing up for camps, hence the quitting of WoW (part of the reason of my quitting was of course Goal #1), hence the change in my mindset.
Also linked to this reason is 3b) - find a girlfriend. hahaha. I mean, after my studies, I'm going to be in the workforce, and assuming I get a common usual job, I'll be seeing the same few people for a long time, not like in Uni when we are constantly interacting with new people. If there's any better time to get attached, it is now! lol. ok matchmake me now kgo.

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I think those are the 3 main goals, yes. You may argue that #2 is actually a subset of #1 but ... who cares. Fine, 2 main goals. Of course there are other minor goals such as keeping fit/getting a nicer bod, getting into Dean's List at least once, etc but i won't list them all.

Now one worrying thing that may kill off ALL THREE goals is - I'm getting hooked on Starcraft2! I'm starting to really enjoy the game and learning the different strategies. And after losing TEN straight games (fml i was at 60% win rate before this, i think now 40% or something) in 1v1 matches , the desire to go learn and read up more and learn more is ever so strong! I must be better!

okok i hope when school starts (on thursday -_- i dont have lessons these 2 days when others have because of the modules i chose) and i get my textbooks I will be more interested in studying and spend more times on my books.


And i just went on a shopping spree earlier! Sheesh I feel so ashamed of myself spent so much money! Broke broke. Well I didn't exactly buy alot of expensive things, just many many average-priced things such as :
- a new pen, pencil, pencil lead, foolscap(history of how 'foolscap' came along) paper, pencil case(all these average price of 2 dollars)
- berms, haversack/bag, (ave $20)
- 6 pairs of ankle socks ($9.90 for 3 which I thought was quite cheap)
- shoes! I've wanted this for really long just never got about to buying it. Finally bought a pair today! $40. It's those white covered shoes that like the whole male population was wearing last year or something? hahaha.

Ok that's really alot of things damn. And i'm still going to spend more on textbooks !! Like my projected spending for textbooks is probably about $200? That's with the estimation of $40 for each module which may turn out to be more. :S

need to save money!! grr. My only source of income now is my tuition which is about 50-60 dollars a week. And I also want to go for exchange in year 3 so.. need to start saving!

Ok wow this post is really long and really random. If you really read every single word.. I salute your determination and am grateful for your interest in my life :p kudos !

and yes, off to playing SC2 =X

The O Week Blog Post

I just went for a 7 day 'camp', basically my arts 'O' (orientation) week. 'Camp' is in inverted commas because we didn't stay over for all the days.. only 3 nights were stayover.
Then because the stayovers i didn't sleep for most of them (the 2nd one i slept about 1-2 hours? ), the whole 7 days felt like 4 days only.


Day 1 (Sat and Sun)
So the camp was scheduled to start at 3pm on Saturday.. So I went there with an apprehensive feeling, don't know what to expect! The general feel was pretty good, the facils all quite enthu on the first day, the OG was super big (for the moment) (like 20 ppl?)


Didn't see half the people here after the 2nd day.

So we played some mass games.. and more games.


This was taken during night games of the first day.. these were all the guys we had in the OG.. 90% of them were not around 80% of the time subsequently -_- I was the most onz one , everyday come. grr.
This game we played just before this photo was taken was quite sick though.. we had to use our shirts and soak in this pail of water and from the 2nd storey squeeze it into cups held by the girls below.. i can imagine them grossing out from the sweat-water combination oozing out from upstairs hahaha.

So yea, we stayed over that night, I stayed up the whole night with some people just talking about random stuff... and it rained on Sunday so we couldn't have the programme we were supposed to have :( So in the end just went home after lunch.


Day 2 (Mon and Tues)
Mon was Freshmen Inauguration Ceremony.. which was at freaking 8am in the morning or something! Sorry, I can't wake up so early (no idea how i'm going to wake up for my 8AM french lecture every wednesday)

So in the end i went at about 1+ to school.. and there was noone there -_- As in, noone from the OG. then when those people who went for FIC came back (only about 7 ppl?) it was quite pathetic also. Like you see other OGs have like 20 people and we're like less than half of that.

Random people started coming at random times, because at night it was Social Night!

It was supposed to be some clubbing kinda thing, got loud music and Mambo. But i thought it was quite fail.. the first half of the programme just involved getting guys on stage and taking off their shirts (fml stupid girls-heavy faculty) , the 3rd quarter was some performers and the last quarter was finally the Mambo.

Some pictures we took:

That wet patch on my shirt is damn fugly i know... i think it's like, perspiration. :( ew. I don't know why it was so oddly placed though. Like, i only have sweat glands on my right chest lolol.



I really like this picture!! I don't know why.. i think maybe because we all look quite good? These 2 are Si En and Mun Ching, both freshmen facilitators of my group. Prob the 2 girls I talk to the most this camp. Don't feel v close to them tho... maybe they dont like me :( dunno.
Like for psych camp i was close to chonghui, huijun, darren. Really can feel the closeness one!
Yes, her name is Munching. Like, Munching is munching on munchy food. hahaha.

(ok a side random note, FB is really annoying me. Because I'm taking all these photos from FB, but the thing is I can't click 'next pic' to go to the next picture, so i have to click 'Photos of Alan' then scroll to that page then click on the pic i want from the thumbnail page. Like 3 steps instead of one. damn troublesome!)

So after the mambo .. we went to Chi Pang's (yes, his name is Chi Pang. like chicken wing. hahaha) house to play Rock Band!! My first time playing!

Girl on bouncy ball is Chmel.. she is DAMN zhai at the drums.. she play expert and clear quite easily. Just that she can't do the pedal so she keep asking me press for her . damn tiring can.


No picture of me playing because I was the one taking these photos. I only played the drums , cos i can't sing and I tried the guitar before in guitar hero i think.


Then Tuesday was Flag! Like you know, Flag Day. Where you hold the tins and walk around and beg for money collect donations. It was damn lame la, I heard NUS Business started their Flag at 530AM -_- was i even asleep yet then? Then for us.. we started at 2pm lololol. And only 2-5pm.

It was because we had a mass dance at cineleisure!! I really enjoyed it, one of the few choreo dances i've taken part in (apart from the lame mass dance in JC), and though i suck at learning choreo, i like it :)
There is a video but noone seems to have uploaded it. I wanna see! Tho abit embarassing, the video can see me and I'm abit laggy cos i keep forgetting haha.


The hardworking people who flagged for charities.



This is what you do when you don't sell much flags (those stickers are called flags right?) and your sticker paper looks too full so you need to empty it abit.

There are actually more pictures of us playing with the stickers but Chmel didn't upload them so.. :(


Day 3 - Beach Day! (Wednesday)

We went to Sentosa to play some games! The games were generally quite fun, and i almost lost my specs in the sea!! Damn scary la, like go into the water then come out and no specs. It's like.. how the hell do you find a pair of spectacles in the sea. But somehow Shaun managed to pick it out for me.

Alot of photos on FB if you want to see all can go and see! I'll just pick out some of my favourites.


Haha Nigel (top left guy) has his eyes closed. Probably one of the biggest turnouts besides the first day, because everyone loves Beach Day!



Ok let me explain this photo. We were playing one of the station games, and this game was basically like there is a waterbomb like 10 metres away. So it's a OG vs OG thing, one at a time each group will have one person who has to roll across the sand (imagine a log rolling) and reach the water bomb, then pick it up and smash it on the opposite OG's person.

How they picked people was that we were assigned numbers before the game, then the station IC will give a 'riddle' like how many legs does a spider have? then the #8 person of both OGs have to go.

So it was halfway in the game when the riddle's answer was my answer but i didn't catch the question.. Then the other group's girl started rolling already. Then i only realised it was me when she was HALFWAY on the course. Then i just dived to the sand and basically rolled so fast then i overtook her! hahahhaa. look at this picture, i'm already grabbing my waterbomb and she's nowhere to be seen lol.
Ok ego trip explanation over next picture.



The sun was making this nice golden glow on our faces! So we took quite a few pics like this.


Another golden pic.


Isn't this damn cool? It's 100% natural, no photoshop at all!! I don't know what happened to the camera lens, like it was semi-open or something. So this was the result. Damn cool right!! The whole effect.


Trying to spell 'Karma' (my group's name was Skarma), though i think our M quite ugly.



SKARMAAA. Last shot at the beach before we went over to Harbourfront to grab dinner.



We were on the way back after eating and all.. then we all suddenly realised Munching was barefoot! (fyi there's no such word as barefooted)
It was only then that she told us that she lost her slippers at Sentosa! And she was damn nonchalant about it! Like oh, no big deal. She's damn amusing la.. like she says she loses things very often so it's like, nvm one :S
So she basically went home all the way without wearing any footwear -_-


Day 4 - Thurs and Friday
Let's see.. Thursday was 'Sports Day', but it was essentially just station games though they claimed it was supposed to be more 'sporty'. Didn't see how it was though.

Oh yea and.. the supposed meeting time was 10AM in school.. i came at 10.15AM expecting to be slightly late.. and there were only like 15 people in the entire S HOUSE. -_- (one OG has like, 20 people). And by 11 or something there were only 7-8 people in my OG la -_-

So demoralising, like i so on come then like everybody pon. I heard arts camp was better because it's a stayover camp, so you don't go home and don't feel like coming back. O Week wasn't stay over (for all days) so it encourages people to pon -_-
Dammit man i should've gone for arts camp. stupid reservist. (i had reservist during arts camp)

And erm, there aren't any photos of this day. I think too few people come then noone wanna take photo lol.

The stayover was okok lor.. played some random games like 'I never'.. and I think i established my 'i'm a nice guai guy who haven't done alot of dirty things' image because like.. all the things i never do before lol. I shan't mention them here.

Had a nice chatting session with Joy. Munch and Tengyong after supper. Didn't sleep at all! If you exclude the -close eyes for 30 minutes because really felt like KOing and then have to wake up because we had to clear the room- part.


Felt super shack la! then somemore still got war games in the morning.. which were basically very dirty station games. Erm, dirty as in, messy dirty. Not pervertic dirty. yea.
Like, roll in the mud, having chilli sauce smeared on my body, sitting on flour + hershey's syrup.. yadayada.
There are some photos but I'm like bare body in some so i shy. HA.


then after that we just waited around for Rag to start(exhibition of floats made by all the faculties with some dances), had some prize presentation (damn i didn't win best freshie rawrrr. Always like that, my facils tell me they vote for me then i always never get. psych camp also lidat) but my House won the best house!! Go S House!!


We're doing our trademark S House signal.. We will slap our chest and do a hitler like gesture like this and go 'SUI AH'. Quite fun to do la, when all do together. Got the 'sehh' one k.
There is actually a video of us doing the S House cheer which i stumbled upon on FB.. but the cheer quite dirty one hahaha so i don't wanna post. I'm a guai boy remember? :p


Yuppp and that's a wrap!

I went to camp wanting to have fun, and i did, i was enthusiastic about everything and took part in everything. I really think whether you have fun is a choice, you just have to change your mindset.
Like i could easily have gone all emo and start ponning when i saw people not turning up.. but i just kept going and kept being ... fun? ahha.

I don't feel like I've forged any really really close friendships, though that is yet to be seen. Like maybe will somehow suddenly click very well with some people and study alot with them? lol i dunno. optimistic me.
Sure will see/meet up with my OG mates when school starts, hopefully can have some good friends that will last for life!!

Ok, time to go spend my remaining free time to play some more SC2, when school starts must mug like a toad!

(how did the term mugger toad come about anyway? A toad doesn't study and sure doesnt use a mug or resemble a mug. why is mugging = studying anyway? )