NatComp 2011 - Northern Zone II - SMJK Jit Sin

I don't know why, but I'm obsessed with band competition (of our school, of course)

It's a great performance, though the drum major made a mistake (he missed, once), but it doesn't dilute the performance from disappointment or egregiousness.

At least their hard work are paid handsomely. I don't know why, but I just love their performance.

Personally, I prefer 2008 performance. It's better and the music was awesome!

Congratulations!

Congrats JSPO! You guys emerged as the champion again! You never disappoint us! Good luck in your coming competition!

Driving

1-6-2011

I thought driving a car would be easy. But here's where I was wrong: driving a manual car and an auto car are different. Auto car is easy, your left leg can tremble all you want, as long as your right leg is able to switch from stepping the accelerator to applying the brake. Manual car is a different car altogether, you need to step on the gas pedal before you release the clutch, or else the engine dies. If you want to stop the car, you have to make sure you've completely slammed on the clutch, only then you apply the brake, or else your car will dance - literally, but in a more annoying way.

I really did badly for the first time. I couldn't get the hang of its function, and I failed to slam on brake in time, and the car engine died many times and I'd lost count. I learnt side-parking that day, and it actually was easy. Tiga penjuru was also easy. Driving on the road was a bit challenging as I still couldn't control the car. But, well, that is always a first time for everything, and the first time usually is done badly.

3-6-2011

Second day of learning. I learnt going uphill, and it kind of suck. Here's why people always fail this part: 1) handbrake isn't fully pulled, 2) engine died, and 3) fail to stop on the yellow line. Actually the way to do it was blindingly simple. All we need was to balance the accelerator and the clutch, and released the handbrake only when the clutch was lifted to a certain point where the car was ready to surge forward and not move backward. Today was fine. But I need more practice as practice made perfect.

6-6-2011

Much better. I couldn't remember what I did today.

8-6-2011

Last day of learning. I did side-parking and uphill for several times, but I did not gain my confidence yet. I was sweating bullets when I visualised myself looking at the testers on the test day, and I was really afraid that I would fail.

9-6-2011 (Test Day)

We registered ourselves and went into Room 5 where we were briefed about everything. Then we moved and waited outside for our turns. As we watched the first seven students taking their tests, our hearts pumped with immense force nobody could experience everyday. The first student failed and we regarded it as ominous. I waited for nearly 2 hours before I got on a car and began my test. And sadly, I failed.

Here's the thing: While stopping on the hill, I thought engine died = fail. So when the engine died, I failed to slam on the brake on time and I was immediately told I failed. I was really angry and disappointed because I hated manual transmissions and, most importantly, I loathed that place and I never wanted to return to that school. But, faith said I must, so I obeyed. Going out road was easy, but I scored 16/20. 1 more X and I failed. Thank God.

16-6-2011

I had to play truant for this test, and I sure hoped I would pass. As we failed our first test, we were grouped in the second batch and we had to wait for the first batch to complete their test before we could finish our mission. I waited from 9am to 12.30pm, 3 hours and 30 minutes. And luckily, I passed.

All 7 Jit Sin students who went for the test went home with victory - the best news for the day!

Lady Gaga - The Edge Of Glory

The MV is kind of disappointing. I expected more but it turned out to be so simple, and sadly, a bit boring.

Nevertheless, the song is still enjoyable. A new change for Lady Gaga - perchance it's good?

We Have No Choice

We lodged a complaint to CSB about out Biology teacher, and she has taken her action.

She told us our Biology teacher is very sad (my biology teacher cried) and told us not to make her feel worse. I feel kind of guilty listening to that.

But she left us no choice.

We have tolerated with the fact that she can't teach and she knows nothing about Biology. Do you know how she teach? She reads what she types on the computer without elaborate explanation, and she expects us to be able to grasp the information once they're delivered.

If that's the case, I think it'll be easier if we just read the textbook. The process is similar, in fact, textbook contains more information than what she gives us.

Do you know how terrible her Biology is? She knows nothing! She doesn't know what is lymphocyte, thrombocyte, granum, grana, and I highly doubt she knows other things in our textbook.

Yes, she is this bad. I'm not exaggerating. Ask anyone from 5S3 and 5S6.

She is a Biology teacher but she knows nothing about lymphocytes. How can this type of person be a Biology teacher?

She makes us feel extremely angry. Our anger was pushed to the maximum when she gave back our exam papers.

Do you know how she marks our exam paper? She follows the answer scheme pedantically. Her ridiculous marking results in only 7 person passed the exam.

See this: The answer given in the marking scheme for the observation is 'Time taken for the methylene blue solution to decolourise for water sample C is 53 minutes'. If we write 'Water sample C takes 53 minutes to decolourise methylene blue solution', she says wrong. Why? She says: 'Skema saya macam ini'. *Updates: It is indeed wrong because the format is wrong. But yet she shouldn't give us an answer like this.

The results of the experiments are clearly given, they're crystal clear. The hypothesis given in the marking scheme is 'Water sample C is the most polluted.', if we write 'Water Sample A is the least polluted', she says wrong and no marks is awarded. When we ask her why, she says: 'Tak ada dalam skema'.

To predict the time taken, the answer scheme says: 'Longer than 53 minutes (2 marks), for example, 60 minutes (1 mark).' If we write 'More than 53 minutes, for example, 1 hour', no marks. When we ask her why, she says 'skema saya bukan macam ini.'

Her English is preposterously bad, ridiculous to the point nobody in the universe can accept. She says 'more than' and 'longer than' are different, 'most clean' and 'cleanest' are different. If your answer is grammatically different but conceptually similar to the answer in the marking scheme, she'll be confused and says your answer is wrong, even if you have all the key words. In fact, if the answer in the marking scheme is plural and your answer is singular, she says wrong.

When we asked her why our answers are not acceptable, the answers she'll give us are 'skema saya bukan macam ini', 'tak ada dalam skema', 'ikut skema sahaja'...She's a teacher, how can she give us answers like this? This is very unprofessional.

We nearly went berserk and yelled at her, but it would bring no benefit to us. So we went to the office and complained to CSB, and when we told her every thing that I mentioned above, she was stunned. She didn't laugh to her ignorance (I use 'ignorance' to sound polite), probably to be professional. But KLP who is sitting in front of her couldn't control the urge to laugh. She never laughs like that before.

Just for your information, most of the things (95%, seriously) that my biology teacher doesn't accept are accepted by CSB, and for the answers that are not acceptable, at least she tells us why they're not acceptable, and not just shrug us off with 'skema macam ini'.

How can the school expect us to trust a teacher like her? It's like asking an Indian who knows nothing about Chinese to teach Chinese. Or asking a panhandler to dominate a company and be the boss. Ignorance can never make a person professional.

We already tolerated with the fact that she can't teach, we can't tolerate this.

Yeah, she's pity. But what about us?

Many of us are going to use this semester's result to apply for scholarship and matrikulasi. If our result is terrible because the teacher can't mark and not because we can't do the paper, how are we going to apply for them?

Our future literally depends on our result. We are letting our future hangs on her hands, and she is going to ruin it with her ignorance. We simply can let this happen.

Our future is the marks we obtain, we cannot accept the fact the we fail to apply any scholarship because our teacher gives us low marks for our papers because she knows nothing about Biology and not because we suck at it.

If we do badly and get a horrible result, it's our fault and no one is to blame. But this...

I'm sorry, but we have to be selfish when coming to this. This is our future we are talking about. We cannot let our future be marred because our teacher doesn't know how to mark our papers.

I'm sorry, teacher, we can't.

I'm sure both of them are bothered by our complaint, but we really have no choice. Thanks CSB for trying to fix this problem and save our future, and to our Biology teacher: please improve yourself to be both a better person and a better teacher.

**Please excuse my long-winded complaint. I've to express it.

Horrible Song!

Okay, I've heard this song about 2 months ago, and I find it extremely hard to resist myself from giving comments.

When I first found this song, I wasn't really interested in it, so I just listened to it without paying any attention to anything.

Then, later, I found out that the video was a hit, so I replayed it again to try to find out what's the big deal about it.

Frankly, the music wasn't extremely bad. Though the abomination of the auto-tune kills the song, the music wasn't really that bad. If the song is sung by a professional, it might be good.

But the problem is the lyrics! The lyrics is so bad as if it is written by a seven years old whose mind is as narrow as the circumference of a pencil and the maturity as low as an infant.

The worst part is the ambivalence of Rebecca Black on the place she wants to sit. Why bother? Front seat, back seat - what's the big deal? Why so bothered by where to sit?

And, she is waiting for a bus at a bus stop, why is she getting on a car instead? Is it because there are too many seats on the bus?

"Yesterday was Thursday, tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards." - What is this?This lyrics is meaningless and reflects how stupid the writer is.

Overall, the song is bad, almost nightmarish. This is the music version of 'Meet the Spartans' - a terrible piece of creation in the industry.

UPDATES!!! Rebecca Black has officially removed 'Friday' from YouTube.

Holiday Movies

It's holidays, which means: FUN! I didn't really have a lot of fun, but I certainly have some. I knew and often heard people saying the Scream trilogy is superb and worth watching, so I dug up the movie and watched two. And I have to agree, the movie is awesome! I've watched Scream 1 and Scream 2 and I'm yet to watch Scream 3 and 4. Scream 1 was great. The movie kicks off superbly and I liked it. Not too much gore, not too much violence, my type. I loved the movie a lot! The movies gave you what you yearn for, trust me! I REALLY love the movie! Scream 2 was great too! Many people say Scream 3 suffers a little and Scream 4 has somehow got boring. Well, as what people say, sequel sucks. But, I'm yet to make a judgment on that.

What They Are Doing

This is what everybody is doing 2 hours (I assume) before BBQ.

The below sentences begin on 5.35pm, and it's arranged chronologically.

1) Pillow999, Phtt and OYV are chatting about various things. They are talking about somebody else, saying this person looks alike like her and then saying somebody is handsome...and bla bla bla

2) The annoying bastard, Marissa and the three mentioned above, including Eunice are talking and swooning over some food the annoying bastard's cousin cooked. They talked about, and yelled at, obviously impressed, by the vegetarian pizza she had cooked, delicious abalone, and some snails that looked mouth-watering. They are now mesmerised by the exceedingly looking-tasty food. They even complained how someone can eat ice-cream in a wintry weather.

3) Tungtungfish is reading a book most people perceived as sexually titilating. Whether he has been titilated or not, we do not know. It's a rhetorical question nobody except himself can answer. Now he's out, answering a phone call.

4) Minhuang is being screamingly impatient with his laptop. He found the internet service extremely slow. He then shows, or showing off, a house that he says looks like a hotel.

5) Pillow, Phtt and OYV are now looking at something in their handphone (or whatever jargons regarding mobile phones)

6)Minhuang is complaining someone's terrible photoshooting and is wondering the picture shown on his laptop is someone's abode or a hotel. He wants to borrow some money from his/her. He's acting like an innocent children.

7) Eunice and the annoying bastard are blocking Jesse from my visual. I can't see what she's doing, but I guess she's stunned by what the annoying bastard is saying.

8) I'm here typing, reporting every incidents by eavesdropping.

Movie Review - Voices From The Grave

I like horror movies, always. This is partly because I like being spooked, but the problem is, none of the horror movies I've watched spooked me. They certainly raced my heart a little, but none gave me what I'm thirst of.

Yesterday I watched another Thai horror- Voices from the Grave. Most Thai horror are usually visually disturbing. Many of the horror movies are made using bungled CGI effects or sickening phoney blood.

Well, as usual, the movie starts with a preamble, and then the screen changes into some random places as we watch a lady risking her life doing some stupid things for her job, and then the screen changes again and we see an old guy shooting himself in the head and setting his own mansion on fire. Bla bla bla.

After the mysterious kick-off, we see the lady, supposedly dead, driving a car, and then a phone call notifies her that her father is dead - supposedly dead - in the hospital, but when she goes to the hospital, her father sorts of resurrected. And then the story goes on........

Well, you see, most horror movies are intended to be scary and usually blood is introduced to produce a horror effect. But in this movie, blood is not a tool to spook the audience, but the sound effect and the suspense are.

Before I watched the movie, I knew the movie centres around the matter of life and death, and if the person who is supposed to die does not die, other deaths would not happen, new lives would not be born, and thus the cycle of life would be interrupted.

So, right in the beginning I know the lady is supposed to die, but she doesn't. So I had a good guess about what the story is about. And I hate to say this: the movie is a bit disappointing.

It's the director's intention to deliver horror without any blood, and I have to say, he fails. Either he fails or I'm the only one unaffected by his intention. Even the part that is considered the scariest, the part where the baby is born but then enigmatically 'sucked' back to the mother's body, does not affect me, not even the slightest.

There are quite many things in the movie that are unexplained. For instance, what happened to the guy the protagonist talks to? The guy who got bludgeoned pretty badly and kept in the refrigerator, who did that to him? And how the hell is the killer roaming around Thailand while he's act of killing is already exposed and the police is already searching for him? And is that cop her ex-boyfriend? There seemed to have some chemicals between them.

Maybe they've been explained, maybe I just did not pay attention.

Personally, the movie is a bit of a let-down. I expected more from a Thai horror, but this movie delivers only a little horror that even fails to scare a cockroach from flying.

Maybe the sound effect from the few boys sitting behind me lightened the mood. But still, the horror wasn't there.

The bright side is that the movie doesn't end like other horror movies do. It tells you the ending and you don't need to run your imagination. All the mysteries are answered except one, the one at the very end.

The dark side would be the bungled effects and the predictable plot. If you read the synopsis of the movie prior to the watch, you should be able to conjecture the entire story right from the beginning.

My rating: 3/5.