Monday, January 30, 2012
~ 7:05 AM ~
I don't care right now since nobody reads this God-forsaken place. I spent 5 years of my life putting my blood, sweat and dedication just to get a good future.Look where my life is headed. This totally gone wrong. I blame myself for my pessimistic view of the "stretched rubber band" I blame myself for everything.
Now don't get me wrong. I DONT look down on ITE. I am filled with regret for giving up my will to fight, but rather focusing on my stupid pre-teenage girl emotions. Trying to comfort myself as I slowly forgot that time is ticking... very fast. Now I am stuck with a 26 (28 raw, after subtracting 2 points from my CCA)
Well, honestly I still can get to Republic Poly. But why am I not there? Because I bloody got D7 for maths. Yes, it's ridiculous and unexpected how I got that. Knowing that the papers honestly weren't as hard and rigid as what Mr. Siew gave me and doing the past year papers. Getting ranging from B3 to A2. So why am I getting a D7? What, Bell curve? Are you kidding me?
On the other hand. I have mum. She's being paranoid and temperamental about it. She doesnt want me to retake, she doesnt want me to go to ITE. Then what?! She wants me to go to NS right this instance and go to Australia to study. We don't even have money. Moreover, who's idea is it to bloody hell spend 57k just to renovate the whole bloody house when we can just renovate on those that's falling apart?!
Oh God... What am I gonna do... I have 1 hour and 45 minutes to go before it's 9am and for me to appeal my JAE. I'll go down the polytechnic and beg on my knees if I have to.
I blame myself. I could have done better. But I wasted 10 months doing God knows what. O Levels isn't that hard honestly speaking. But what went wrong seriously. Ability wise again? What am I going to do.
Society's not a friendly places. Second chances? Those are one in a million. Almost a myth. So what if you come out old? So what if you have a degree? It's not locally from Singapore. So what are you going to do Kevin?
Kevin, you disappoint me. You piece of old fat lazy old blob. You make me sick. You disappoint yourself. You disappoint your family, you bloody hell let down everyone who helped you. YOU EMOTIONAL LITTLE BITCH.
Friday, May 28, 2010
~ 12:07 PM ~
Can you stop this?!
Facebook groups can be really annoying! Specially those stupid love quotes. They're just so dumb and they're such a spammage. Meh...
Saturday, May 22, 2010
~ 12:40 AM ~
I know that I dont really expect people to read my blog since the real reason why I open it was for myself to practice my english, or may be to use it to spend time reading the past...
Lately, my tagboard has been flooded with people [or maybe bots] with their blogshop's link.
Im just assuming that they're mostly girl's stuff since I did went into one of them... Guess what, I dont wear a skirt and I'll never will! HAHA!!
Right now, Im just waiting for summer holiday to come...
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
~ 12:23 AM ~
Posted by Stephen Christian on Modesty.blogspot.com/The Root of Opportunity
The slogan 'stay in school' is not just grossly overplayed, it really doesn't explain anything. it is more like a command, 'here is what you must do. why you ask? don't ask just stay'. this revelation hit me as i walked the halls of my mothers K-6 school in Haines City, Florida (probably because it was plastered on a few walls). I was there for a 'release party' my mother called it, not a record. butterflies. we gathered the children around, songs were sung, lessons were given, and i had the duty of releasing them into the 'wild'. These kids were asked to stay but i wondered if they truly had any idea why.
That night i spoke at the community college i attended. afterwards i was asked to give a brief interview for the schools newspaper and one of the questions was 'do you think your education has had an impact on your career'. that's when my thoughts started flowing and i realized that it had not only everything to do with my career but with life.
Education is the root of opportunity. the more education we receive the more doors that will be opened. its not about 'stay in school' or 'be cool stay in school'; i honestly think were selling it to ourselves all wrong! if you really want to see eyes opened and imaginations soaring then try explaining the numerous benefits of what higher education can do! try asking them to imagine the limitless empowerment that the future could hold. try explaining that they do not have to live out their parents lives, if only they would absorb and continue. its a daunting task, but its reality.
Its not just about opportunity either, it has other lifetime implications as well. its about the ultimate defeat of racism. we as humanity 'fear the unknown,' and if we do not know or understand other races, cultures, religions, ideas, etc. then by NATURE we fear it. if we fear it then we mentally make an enemy of it, we avoid it, we label it so we feel in control or superior to it. want to end racism in your community? fight for better education. i would love to see statistics of non-high school graduates and then master degree students in percentage of those with racist tendencies. i think we would be floored by the fact that opening your mind and gaining an understanding of the world around us allows us to accept and even embrace others.
Its not just about racism either... just yesterday i read an article in 'the week' stating the fact that people with higher education are less likely to get a divorce. relationally effects us.
Its not just about opportunity, divorce, racism, etc. its about the development of you. its about reaching your potential as a human being. its about not having the questions of who could have i become if only i...
And i know what some of you are thinking, i don't think i am smart enough!: you are reading an online journal from the patron saint of middle school dropouts. honestly my grade point average hovers on a good day right around the number two. i worked so hard to get so little it felt. i was so jealous of my two younger brothers who never had to study and still made A's, meanwhile my ADHD brain was to busy thinking about some random etching in my desk about who loves who to even attempt to concentrate on what PIE equaled. in high school the guidance counselor took me in her office and asked me what vocational school i would like to sign up for (side note: there is NOTHING wrong with trade school!) and i even questioned myself if i could do that!
So after high school i did what most people who don't believe in themselves do, i got a job at the bottom rung of the ladder picking weeds at an amusement park. and i did this for awhile! day after day i would wake up at 5AM and run lawn mowers, or plant bulbs, or blow off sidewalks. but after a few months i realized that this couldn't be it, i looked at the men who had been working at this job for years and years and i knew i didn't want to be like them. this couldn't be it. this is not what i was meant to be.
I didn't gamble on the lottery, i didn't hope for someone to see my raw leadership talent and move me up to corporate amusement park management, i didn't even put in my resume in the food service part of the park... i applied for community college.
So i have a new slogans i would like to pitch and implement in the global educational community.
EDUCATION.
it is the only thing that separates you from where you want to be in 10 years.
EDUCATION.
do you really want to end up exactly like them? i mean really? exactly?
EDUCATION.
because people on the other side of the world don't all hate you.
EDUCATION.
because picking weeds really sucks at 5AM.
-esteban
post script: my sister and i have always struggled with good grades, but she fought and fought. now she is enrolled in Florida State getting her Masters in Psychology, and i couldn't be more proud.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
~ 11:38 PM ~
DON'T WORK. BE HATED. LOVE SOMEONE-----
Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
-----
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
LIFE'S A MESS.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO GET A JOB. INSTEAD, PLAY.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
BE HATED.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
LOVE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
Friday, April 2, 2010
~ 7:29 PM ~
Renaissance, a movie made in 2006, all black and white. Really awesome, got to watch it at Jonadab's houes with Xin Tian and Vinson :D
Monday, March 29, 2010
~ 6:16 PM ~
March Holidays are over, and now school is back. Was really grateful to my homies and specially churchmates and Pastor Jason! Its unbelievable the he's willing to spend such a bomb on Ichiban Sushi!TWLOHA's new shirt is so awesome! But getting a shirt and all, I feel like I'm a copycat. Civil war with my own brain. -sigh-
Frankly speaking, everyday seems the same to me. I need a getaway. Everyone can dream big, but reality comes is a total pain.
