Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

- James Leigh Hunt

A very bad week

never seems to end. I can't remember what we did on the first day, except we handed in some work and got an SS essay question to do. And the lit test was postponed to tuesday.

On tuesday we had the first test of the term (see previous para) and the first assessment for the math adv. module. I totally flunked it. Funky thing about triangles, but just couldn't see it for a very long time. Phys advanced module was incomprehensible, as usual. Alwyn was showing off his knowledge, but i don't really care because i can't understand much anyway. I mean, i kind of know something about quarks and bosons: they exist. Other than that, they don't really bother me. so who cares?

Ah yes wednesday. On monday night i found out that we were in the Research Education semifinals. which were on wednesday. Panic panic panic. Anyway we prepared everything by wednesday. But shanghui had to forget to burn the ppt. Blast. So we did it at recess. I quote our long-suffering teacher mentor Mr Leong (heh)

I didnt appreciate at all the last minute skirmishes once again. Fortunately my heart has gotten used to your last minute antics after the last few months. But let not this be deemed as proper or even acceptable.

Anyway we got through to the finals. Through a miracle of tyco-ness (is that how you spell it?)

So I come to thursday. On thursday we helped JX to finish his set work assignment. lol. And funky YO rehearsal. Brandenburg no. 4 (not no. 3 as i thought). Whatever... only bassist again. After the rehearsal they played Mendelssohn's Octet. Really nice piece. and quite funny, the way they played it.

Ok Friday. Moor house comm meeting basically turned into a fun laughter peace and joy session. I blame the basketballs. Nothing was done, and now there's a talk cock mentality associated with comm meetings, which is bad.

After ensemble i was having a particularly intense session with kuangnan. psychoing him into the right attitude. maybe i got a temporary correction, but i bet its temporary. once he feels i'm relaxing, he'll do the same. Anyway ruiheng shouted 'fartist' so i got pissed with him and left off shouting at kuangnan to shout at him. gave him a whack of a punishment (by SE standards)... 50 pushups. It got doubled on Mr Sze's orders... so i guess ruiheng's learnt his lesson. at least temporarily.

i'm quite busy with homework now so i'll talk about saturday another time

The September Holidays

are a farce. Even though there's no homework besides the chem stuff, there's still the (overdue) SS, the reading portfolios for both languages, the... oh i listed them the last time. yeah and philo.

Oh anyway OTC rehearsal yesterday... didn't know that it was only musicians wrestle everywhere and saboed zhaohan into coming. lol. they're shining the spotlight on me. bah. nuts and i'm the only person right out there in stage right. everyone else's on the second or third risers. and everybody's going to watching me.

Yeah i'm done with 2 short stories and 3 articles. Not bad for a reading portfolio, but there's plenty more to do. 2 poems found for the poetic parallels project. And i've finished the polital parable worksheet. Darn there's still philo.

September holidays? What holidays? They went... that way. *points at some indeterminate speck of dust far out in orbit around Betelgeuse*

Wikipedia's Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense Pages

lol this is fun...

From the Microsoft entry:
Windows
Noun.

A thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition. -LW

From the Battle of Otford entry (since deleted):
THE BATTLE OF OTFORD IS STILL ONGOING, I HAVE A BATTLE TO PARK MY CAR EVERY TIME I GO THERE

From the Oatmeal entry:
Oatmeal contains small monsters that eat excess fat and help aid resfull sleep.

From Amoeba:
Most ameobae range from about 1 mm. But in Japan a 30 foot long amoeba was found after the atomic blast in Hiroshima. It is the largest recorded amoeba in history and has devoured two human beings. if you see this amoeba it is recommended to run for higher land. if you are in water dive under and swim to the safety of the land. Do not feed this amoeba because it will become even hungryer and chase you until it has devoured you too. This happened to the two humans. Many small dogs are missing so if you have a small pet keep it inside and away from water!

From a list of the Heads of KGB:
Kapil Jain March 13 1954 - December 8 1958
Sharon Stone December 25 1958 - November 13 1961
Demi Moore November 13 1961 - May 18 1967

From the Fen entry:
Fens were a 3-legged race of migrant smelly dwarves who nobody really liked but were uncertain how to get rid of in a nice way. They had a habit of making cucumber & eggy pies which tended to give them really awful gas which they had no qualms about sharing with whomever might be nearby. Although this was all done in a jovial nature it did not endear them in the least to the general population of England. Gertrit Mortldue is credited with ridding the Isles of them by starting a small, but effective, army of followers who befriended these dwarves and put gunpowder in their pies whenever they were not looking. Then the next time a Fen passed gas to a cohort he (or she) was blown to Smithereens. Smithereens is a small Isle off the coast of................

See also: ASCII Cows

It's

the first day of the hols... i'm writhing with excitement. i'm going to finish off my english reading portfolio and that is going to be so darn exhilarating. the poetry collection thing for the crucible absolutely rocks! w00t w00t w00t! oh then there're the chinese book reviews. oh yeah! nothing for math but i'm such a mugger that i'll start on next year's syllabus anyway. chem's already done. ah yes physics. i just love physics. don't you? september holidays are so extremely enjoyably mind-bogglingly fun!!!

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A sedentary lifestyle

is pretty bad for you. After a night of brisk walking from City Hall MRT to Esplanade to VCH to Raffles City to Esplanade, you feel muscles that you never knew existed cramp up in the morning in bed. Walking competitions aren't good for lazy people like me.

Anyway... I'm starting to like Beet's 8th. Quite fun, not too repetitive, moderately inventive. Amusing too. If i can figure out how to download an excerpt on my hp, it'll be my ringtone. haha.

So i was one of 2 bassists today. Fun rehearsal. Mr Casteels has a habit of saying "uhh?" if no one answers his questions. lol quite amusing. I need to practise though... especially the quaver runs.

Got home and played Civ III for 1 and a half hours. I like playing Ottomans... sipahi are good units (8 attack). Started a new game on a huge map (i hate huge maps cos my comp lags on them). The Play the World expansion pack is quite funky... multiplayer and 8 new civs. I haven't played multiplayer yet though.

After that i practised. on the piano. Did musicians wrestle everywhere. If that's music then i'm a pickled dodo. I'm still using the metronome and getting tired of it. I will never be a chamber pianist ever again (haven't I said this before?) After MWE i played some spanish dances, by granados. Neglected pieces, but pretty good. Debussy as well, played the arabesques. After 2 years i'm rediscovering a lot of piano music. Adam hasn't returned me my Rhapsody in Blue. *Makes mental note to bug him*

Why can't we do Elgar's Symphony No. 1 instead of Brahms's Symphony No. 1?

Last day of term...

... was a good day for me. Math was... ok. I saved zy from oblivion on the floor by telling mrs lim that i checked my graph with his. Ridiculous lah...

Phys is slack time, just make sure you keep your eyes open and your nose closed. And watch out for projectiles. We did temperature today - i mean in physics, not as in a temp-taking-exercise-thingy - and it was basically common sense. Except how they derived absolute 0. Quite funky. They take empirical graphs of Pressure/Volume data for all the gases they can think of, and they sort of converge on one point or something. ooooh...

PE - we convinced Mr Chan to let us play floorball... i like floorball except for the sticks which stink... left mine in the sun during water break and it stank less afterwards. pooh...

Chemistry is another slack period... Mr Tan is ok... explains things, then gives darn hard WSs that you somehow manage to complete as long as you get the concepts, and get ridiculously high marks. (not that i'm complaining!) Again to JX (if you read my blog): there's no reason to fail chem as long as you get the concepts. If you don't get the concepts, try asking.

Lunch at pastamania: w00t!

String ensemble assessments. Some people are extremely arrogant. I may not play the violin. So what? If you don't have common decency, there's nothing to be proud of. In case people start pointing fingers at anyone, i'm talking specifically about Shawn Neo. If you happen to be reading this, Shawn, I perceive you as lacking any sense of humility. That sucks.

Anyway... Gil Shaham concert. w00t! Got a seat in the O row, O-25 i think. The butterfly-lovers' concerto was quite good, except he was pretty rough with that violin. Same for tchaikovsky, though i can't stand the 1st and 2nd movements (i hate development cos it's boring and repetitive). Whatever... the playing was good though i don't like the pieces. Grasp the fine distinction. I liked the playing, but not the pieces. Anyway... felt the $15 was worth it.

Feeling good...

Oh yeah...

... finally started blogging again. This post should be backdated to yesterday, but i'm too lazy to change the date. (hey at least i'm blogging right?)

Ok MEP was fine. Finished my overdue (2nd) cantus firmus assgn in 2 minutes (lol i don't know why i don't do it). Anyway JX's gotten pretty dissed by Mr Lim. Sigh... Look, he's only trying to help. I wish people would care more about the impression they make on other people.

Practice for OTC concert today... funky... i dieded (again). Actually i'm getting used to fouling up in rehearsals... bad habit. Anyway it's all rhythm. Besides, I haven't practised for ages. Tango was really really good. If anyone reads my blog, I've got 2 extra tickets for this concert (complimentary). Email/IM me.

Does anyone read my blog at all? I doubt it. haha