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The week before and the week ahead...

Since Joan's memory is failing, Joan decided to take on the general approach to blogging, by describing in her blog entry detailed descriptions of what she did and what she'll be doing. This is especially so for this week as it was her birthday week. Birthdays are important to this girl.

Well, the funny thing about birthdays is that your older friends, the friends you have known for a longer period of time tends to give you your present belatedly or even even not give you a present. Actually, I'm guilty of doing that to my old friends too. And at the end, we'll say, it's okay not giving you a present cos you don't need to give me one either, use the money and get something for yourself.

An excerpt from a conversation I had with Peiyi:
spy: ur present will come super late i tell u
jal: why?
jal: make me feel sad only
spy: no time go buy la
spy: iyoh
jal: wah
jal: one cd only lor
jal: can go anw and buy lor
jal: haha
spy: er...
spy: i wont be gg out lately
...
spy: at least u will get it ultimately
spy: better than how u give me last yr k...
jal: what did i give u huh?
jal: forget liao
jal: hai...
jal: did i even give u anything?
jal: my memory recently very shortened
spy: u gave me a cdrama card
spy: ask me go redeem anything i want
spy: so no cheng yi

Well, this is between old friends.

Okay... So back to where I ended in my last blog entry. What did I do in the past week:
Wednesday: met up with a friend, went for rehearsals, got out of rehearsals for a while to meet another friend, went back home. Went for dinner with my family to celebrate my birthday in advance.

Shall elaborate about my dinner.
We went to Tampines Mall Crystal Jade. I ate my usual chicken noodles, but the chicken at TM's CJ isn't as nice as those in Takashimaya or Parkway's so I'm not eating chicken at TM if I ever go back there for CJ again. In place of a birthday cake which Joan doesn't eat, we had a little bowl of sharks' fins, and we also tried out a new dish called Deep Fried Prawns in Salted Egg Yolk. That's a very refreshing dish. The succulent of prawns in the salted egg yolk gave the prawns a sweet yet salty taste. Nice~

Thursday: I was supposed to do something for the ding-dings, but due to my pure stupidity and sheer forgetfulness, I had to use that time to meet up with a friend as a form of apologising and using actions instead of words to make ammends. Then after that I went back to my hostel room to have a short nap then went out again to meet another friend before meeting another friend for dinner.

You know, Joan really treasures friendships a lot and sometimes, she'll treat her friends better than herself. In a friendship, she'll really want to put in all her best effort to make her friends happy and sometimes this can put an immense pressure on her, this pressure can be more heavy than the pressure she put on herself. I know, amongst friends, one shouldn't feel stressed, but I just don't know why I'd feel stressed. Maybe it's because I can't match up to my friend, no matter what I do, how much I do, I can never be on par. To this friend, I'd like to send out my most sincere apologies and in return, I'd like to ask for more time, maybe then, you can be happier with me?

If friendships are already making this girl's head burst, Joan really can't possibly think of other stuff, can she? hai... This girl's life is horribly screwed up sia...

Friday: lessons. sian. sian sian. Then went out. Met that friend, felt stressed again. hai... Friendships shouldn't be that pressurising, should they? Okay, at least the night got better. Met up with another group of friends for a movie, Team America World Police. Then went for supper and went for night outings at Mt Faber and Kallang Suspension Bridge. Wanna see the pics, go to my Yahoo! Photos (see link under my photo), yup, they are in one of the albums there, on a boliao night outing. It wasn't really that boliao actually, quite fun, think it's the company, the act was indded rather boliao though. haha...

Team America World Police
At first watch, it was distasteful and crude, but on second thought, it was a really black humour satire on current US policies, their foreign policies. It made me hate America more than before, but the thought that Americans hate themselves more is quite interesting and I have to give them due respect. An interesting point of this movie that it's about puppets. In the age of digitalisation, where characters can be easily made into animations, why the use of puppets something so traditional? I think there must be a meaning behind this usage. Maybe the director thinks that Americans are just like puppets, being manipulated by the up there people. The first thought when I saw the puppet strings reminded me of Charlie Kaufman's Being John Malkovich, and that horrified me. Americans, what constitutes them?

Anyway, that night went home real late and I only had an hour's sleep before waking up and prepareing my self for... Saturday: NUS History Seminar. That took up a whole long day. I was supposed to meet Huijing, but couldn't due to this dumb seminar and I feel real bad about it. Actually I could have met her after the seminar, but due to my horrendous lack of sleep, I went straight home instead. But when I reached home, I didnt get any rest at all, I didn't sleep until past 12.

About the History Seminar, ACJC won the best paper and RJC won the best team. The best speaker went to this guy from CJC, I didn't manage to hear his speech so I shall not comment about it. But from those presentations I'd seen, I must say that there is this huge disparity between teams from top JC and those aren't. The most obvious would be their confidence. The team from RJ was just oozing with confidence which said that "I'm correct! And your point is?". Next would be their knowledge, the students from the top schools seem to know more than the others. I'm not going to be mean by slamming the other JCs, but this idiot from Yishun Junior College said, "Japanese only constitutes 70% of the population in Japan." yea... And the rest would be Japanese ghosts aren't they??? Japan is one of the most homogenised country in the world with the possible exception of maybe the Koreas, and that YJ guy said that? He needs to brush up on his knowledge sia...

But apparently, I shouldn't because of one black sheep and call the neighbourhood JCs lousy as it is said that Millenia Institute did a great job in their presentation, even though they didn't win anything, well, cos the others were better.

Another interesting thing was the extent of aid given by the teacher-in-charge. Some school's teachers went and gave lots of aids to their students by coaching them, giving them pointers, helped them with timing and even brought the students to the venue themselves, but some school's their teachers left all the work to the students to do themselves and only appeared on the event itself to make sure that the students are present and they did a decent job out of it.

JC students are matured enough to handle such presentations themselves and I think that the extent of help given by teachers should be minimal. Too much teacher aid would not make that project a student project already. But on the other hand, this is after all a project that would bring on glory to the school and for the very least, the teachers should not make the students arrive at the venue themselves and only later reach there to check on their students.

Sunday: slept and and slept some more~ cool~

The week ahead:
Monday: lessons at 2 till 4, probably heading down to the Asian Civilisation Museum after that alone to do my field trip for the Museum report. hai... sad sia... going to the museum alone... Where are all my friends?
Tuesday: lessons from 9-8, then at night I shall piah my museum report
Wednesday: lessons from 10-12, maybe I should give myself a short rest by going out in the afternoon. Any friends to jio me?
Thursday: lessons from 10-3 or 4 can't remember, maybe I shall meet up with my project mate to start on my project, then maybe I can start on my European Studies term paper. And tie up ends for my museum report.
Friday: lessons from 12-8, feel like going home after that and not go to school again on Saturday. I want my Saturdays to be relaxed.
Saturday: piah my EU term paper.
Sunday: continuing piah my EU term paper. perhaps also try and clear some of my piled up high readings.

That's Joan, the 20 year old girl now. Focus should be put on her studies. Jiayou ba...

Postscript: Damn... I keep forgetting stuff, and the incessant usage of ps is bursting my head. Okay, what did I wanted to say? Yup... I forgot to add in something in my week plan. I forgot that I needed to do lots of sai kang for the ding-dings. hai... Think I'd better get them to constantly remind me sia, if not, hai...