So... I heard about the decision regarding Pluto's planetary status yesterday. Michelle told me about it when I got back to Hall; she'd stayed the night in my room after Bash.

"Pluto's not a planet anymore."

"Yeah, I heard they were trying to come to a decision... So what's it now if it isn't a planet?"

"A dwarf planet."

My brain goes, "What the hell??"

Me: "So a dwarf planet isn't a planet? So a dwarf isn't human?"


Poor Pluto.

Am going to be so dead tomorrow.

Both literally and metaphorically speaking.

I swear that one day, when you look up "madness" in the dictionary, my picture's gonna be on there. What other kind of idiot goes for a bash on Thursday night when she has class from 8am-6pm on Friday?

Madness. Idiocy. Gerri.

Synonymous, no.

Anyway. Doing the student helper thing in the AS7 com lab again. Watching the minutes tick away before I can scurry back to Hall to get ready and leave with the other girls. Busy ignoring my Welfare and Social Justice reading for tomorrow's lesson in front of me. Because all that it's done for the whole of yesterday and today is confuse me.

And this is only the second reading.

Saw a friend just now who's also taking the course, and as she hasn't zapped the reading yet (you're so gonna die, girl), I lent her mine to do so. She was flipping through it when she was done and she asked, "He (our lecturer) wants to explain this in one and a half hours?"

The first thing which popped into my head was: "Huh? Explain?"

And being oh-so-intelligent and being in the habit of speaking without thinking, it happened to be the first thing that popped out of my mouth as well.

But, I saved myself by elaborating: "He's not gonna explain; it's taken for granted that we've all read and understood it, so all we're gonna do is discuss."

I.e: Confuse yourself even further if you don't even understand the reading itself in the first place.

"Oh, man," was her reply.

Yeah, you and me both, girl.

We're two of the seven Year 3s in the module fighting with the remaining thirty-two Year 4s for a good grade. And if the readings carry on like this.....

Someone save me.

TGIF...? Whoever thought of that phrase hasn't seen my Friday schedule for this semester...

8-10am: GEK1519, Science of Music. All the way in Science fac. And I have to walk up the blardy slope and how many flights of stairs to get to LT 32. Even getting to wake up at 7 am because I stay in hall isn't much concession.

12-2pm: SN2234, Gender and Society in South Asia. Lunch made me a little sleepy. Maybe in future I should just go back to hall and sleep...

3-6pm: SC4215D, Welfare and Social Justice. My very first level 4 module. Woot. Wish me luck. First lecture is later, in about half and hour's time. It's a seminar-style module though, and from my experience with seminar classes, they're usually more fun than lectures. Probably coz they're more interactive and stuff. Hope this one will be the same.

So... 8 to 6 on a Friday. Sigh. At least there are breaks in between. And at least I still have a four-day week. Mondays are free. Yay. :)



Things I have found out about hall recently: was working at the AS7 computer lab yesterday, doing the student helper thing. Turns out that Bingjie's my partner for the timeslot, and his eyes yesterday were damn bloody (pun intended) RED.

So he tells me that I should be careful coz apparently there's a bout of conjunctivitis making its way around Eusoff. Eeks. And there're about ten victims already. :S Somehow this sounds familiar... last semester I heard that a lot of people staying in Kent Ridge Hall got dengue or some other fever-related virus...?

Also, last night, Yuimin dragged Meiling and me down to the function hall to go for the interim committee interviews. So we all decided to go for the IBG (Inter-Block Games) comm, since after careful consideration, we realised that that was the only "short-term commitment" comm. (IBG is only on for about a couple of weeks; after that then no more comm, haha. :P)



And in other news, Gerri has made two purchases today which make her very happy: earphones and a LAN cable. Yay. :) :) I can now enjoy my music while in the library (provided I don't turn it on too loud) and I don't have to rely on the shoddy wireless in hall anymore! It's not that NUS' network is terrible or anything, it's just that the Halls are all far away from the main buildings (hence the main area where the network is stronger), so it makes more sense for the residents to plug into the LAN, which is *even* faster. Like whoa. Haha. :D

Well, shall go back tonight and have fun. :D

Tired. Post-Rag syndrome. It's been this way for the last two years now.

Still feeling sore and bitter that we lost; that we didn't win *anything*. Our float was the nicest of all the faculty clubs' out there on 12th August; almost everyone who was there on Rag day and whose opinions I know agree on this.

Even if we didn't win, I'd be less pissed off if a more deserving faculty had won it. SDE, best float? What the fuck.

It's exactly the same float as last year; they just repainted it. "Best Float" should at least go to a faculty club which *bothered* to put in the effort to build from scratch.

I think the judges were (and probably still are) blind. With all the painstakingly-done tessellation of cans all over our float, I honestly believe our points for design detail were higher than any other faculty's, and as I've said before, there're plenty of people who thought our float should win. Heck, even some of the Halls thought so, and there isn't anyone whose opinions I trust more than the Halls' on the subject of Rag.

Or maybe they were just an overly-conservative bunch of old fogeys who took issue with the fact that our float theme was that of a casino. But that's something else that I'm proud of; that the Arts float is one which always pushes boundaries and is something bordering on controversial.

Last year when the theme given was something along the lines of dreams and aspirations for the future (it being NUS' centennial year and all), we built a float whose theme was disillusionment upon graduation and finding out that a degree wasn't everything.

This year, we're poking fun at the soon-to-be-existent IR. :)

Maybe next year our float will be a re-enactment of one of the many book-burnings which have taken place in history. Perhaps a theme about the death of creativity would be fitting. ;)


So far Hall life is good.

Eusoff Hall gets kinda noisy at night though. But I can't tell if the noise is coming from C1 (C block, 1st floor) or from Temasek Hall just next door. It's still bearable, but things could be a lot better; like how the person whose room is directly below mine could lower the volume of her TV at 11 pm at night. -_-

C block is tucked away right in the corner of the Hall though, so maybe that's why it's relatively quieter than what I've been told the other blocks are. It does mean that I have to walk slightly further to get back to my room, but the distance is still pretty all right. All in all, C is a nice block. :)

My room overlooks the swimming pool of a private house just behind my block, and while there are a few trees between my window and them, this doesn't mean I get a lot of bugs in my room. It also means no direct sunlight in the mornings. :)

Our block staircase also looks right out onto this small collection of massive bungalows; three of them, to be exact. Of the one which is nearest to our block, we can see the whole porch, driveway and front of the house, designed with Roman columns and such and painted completely white. Beyond that is another house; the one room which is visible is on a top floor; it has a massage chair, that much I can make out. :) And next to the white bungalow is yet another house of which the dining room is visible. There's a sparse covering of trees blocking, but I've seen warm lighting and a lot of glinting silverware in display cupboards at night, and someone reading the news at the table. Feels so cosy. :)

Haven't really gotten to know my neighbours yet; the most frustrating thing is that while I know plenty of people in EH, none of them are in C block! Grr.

Figure I'll get to know them soon though. Especially once you keep seeing the same people awake at the same unearthly time as you early in the mornings. :P So far, I have a four-day week, and three of those days start at 8 am. :P

Body clock has been turned upside down by now.

I just went to sleep at 8 am this morning and woke up at 1 in the afternoon.

Seven days left for Rag.

Seven days left to complete everything and make it something we can really be proud of.

We need people to dream with us, to believe with us, to work with us.

I wonder if other Raggers get asked this question sometimes: "Do Rag for what?"

It's the third time I'm doing this now, and I can honestly say that this is something that I love; I love the people that I'm working with and I love the goal that we're all working for-- but sometimes I think my faith shakes a little when I get asked, "You wanna do Rag for what?"

"Don't be stupid, can... It's a one-time experience; you only do it as a freshie."

Then again, we can't stop people from knocking holes in our dreams.

We can only patch up the holes and hold them up the best we can. And make something beautiful of it all in the end.

Busy busy busy. It's been a busy week, and things are gonna get even busier in the next two weeks.

Haven't had the time to blog the whole of last week, despite the fact that there's been lots of stuff going on. So this gonna be an all-in-one post.


26th July, Wednesday:

Moved into hall.

Thanks Weiquan for driving me to school and helping me move all my stuff into my room, and thanks kor for helping me clean the room later. :)

Found out later in the afternoon that Theresa was staying on my floor, just four doors down from me. :) This is good; at least I'll know someone on my floor. :P


28th July, Friday:

Busy day.

Up in the morning to shoot for a while, confirm sighting, do a bit of bow and arrow maintenance; rag in the late afternoon and evening, then home at about midnight with all my equipment, ready for competition at NJC tomorrow morning.


29th July, Saturday:

NJC shoot.

First shock of the day was when we found out that the target face for 50m was 80 cm and not 122 cm. This is what happens when you don't bother to read the invitation and details carefully. Nic and I were very thankful though, that Weiquan suggested "playing" with the 80 cm target a few times.

We were lazy to get a new 122 cm target from the lounge one day when we came down to train, so we shot using the 80 cm target that happened to be on the board that we were using, and did so for another two trainings, just for fun. So at least we'd had some "experience". :P

Surprisingly though, my score was pretty good; 244 out of 360.

In the end, the combined score of my team (myself, Weiquan and Zhicong) was even enough to get us into the top 8 teams for the team event. Was so happy considering that I hadn't shot in team event for two years. The first and only time I shot in team event was during my first competition in my first year. After that, my team never managed to qualify for team event, and after I upgraded to C-class, we never had enough girls in C-class to form a team. Damn.

At least this time, mixed teams were allowed for Recurve Open class, so I could have a team. :)

I managed 4th placing in Ladies' Recurve Open... getting so tired of getting 4th place. 4th place is the worst place to be; it's so close yet so far. The top three places went to these three girls from the Malaysian sports school that participated; obviously they have more time to train than the rest of us do...

Zhicong and Kenneth were saying stuff like, "Never mind, that means you're the best in Singapore lah." -_-...

Same went for Zhicong though; he was placed 5th, and if the Malaysian sports school archers hadn't been there, he would've got 2nd place.

But the best thing of all had to be that James, Henry and Connor won GOLD for Standard Men's Team.

So proud of them; James in particular since he's one of the juniors I mentored and he's really come a long, long way. I cried while hugging and congratulating him. It's silly, but yeah. I was just that happy for them. :)