JP

I write this with my IOP presentation (which I’m supposed to be working on) opened in the background. In an effort to take quick occasional breaks from my work, I’ll post my weekend here, so please excuse any incoherence.

Friday was the much awaited, final installment of Anglo Olympics: Ultimate Frisbee. Anglo Olympics is an inter class competition in which junior classes team up with their senior classes to compete in a few sports; the overall winner get the Anglo Olympics trophy. The reason why this was “much awaited” was because the event had been postponed like 7 times, for varying reasons, the primary culprit among them: bad weather. Before the event started, the heat was blistering, and you could almost smell the melting rubber of the artificial turf (well not quite, but it was still hot); but just as the starting whistle was about to be blown, the sky turned gray and threatened to rain.

Dwayne, Charles and I, together with members of the senior class represented 5.11 and 6.11. By God’s grace, the weather was good through out: the rain occasionally came for short spells then left quickly, until the the end of the finals, when it poured (wet Frisbees are hard to catch); and we got 3rd! We had loads of fun, Charles learned to throw and catch a Frisbee, all in all, a sweet end to a good week.

Saturday morning was an early one, I got up to cycling with the training ride of the Charity Bike n Blade. Once more by God’s grace, it was fun and I’m still in one piece; for those of you that don’t know, I’m really afraid of riding on busy roads especially those with the heavy vehicles charging at their maximum speed limit. The traffic was light that morning, except for this one stretch of road near Tampines where there so many of those huge machines that might for all I know be Optimus Prime in disguise. There are some really nice drivers on the road that leave lots of room between cyclists and their cars, and give way to them; but there are some, especially those that carry soil and what not, to and from construction sites, that just for the sake of doing so, come really dangerously close to cyclists. These people, they ought to be thrown in jail for a couple of days to teach ‘em a lesson.

Anyway, the IOP, which is basically a presentation on Literature texts, is entitled: “the pursuit of Happiness”, some how or other, watching the brilliant film starring Will Smith and his son, inspired me to do something like this. The phase, is taken from the line “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” which is a line in the Declaration of Independence. I’m going to end here leaving you with an inspirational quote from this historic document.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Jon Pang goes back to his IOP.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, but contrary to all the bad luck associated with the inauspicious day, the day went really great. The school day was pretty short, after school we had to stay back for the English paper review, that ended at about 2pm. Then I took the train to City Hall with Roshen and Nick, then changed to the other line and went to Novena. The whole point of going there was to submit my application for the Charity Bike n Blade to the elusive office of the organizing company, which is located in the office block of Novena Square. It took me a couple of wrong turns, several back tracks, and a few stops to ask for directions- all that even though I was walking, before I finally found the place.

Anyway, about the Charity Bike n Blade, my latest CAS project: I need to raise $2000 by the end of August for the beneficiaries: the Salvation Army, Pertapis Centre for Women and Girls, and Ling Kwang Youth Centre. As you have probably guessed, I have a mammoth task before me, so please please donate if I walk up to you with donation cards in hand.

Getting back to Friday the 13th, after collecting the donation cards, I went back to school to meet the Theater Arts people (T.Arts), Asyikin, Bobbie, Gua, Theo, Mary and Ivan, to go for the ACJC Drama Elective Program showcase. Wow, the ACJC drama guy were awesome; acting, dancing, singing to original pieces of work as well those that were created by themselves. After that, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Holland Village with the remaining T.Arts (Asyikin and Ivan left). Dinner was a blast because of the food, but more so because of the company; the conversation went from the translation of dialect swear words to school rules, to south park, to the best play to eat Xiao Long Bao.

Now, earlier on during the week , I had a Chinese Tuition in which my teacher read an uber long article about Chinese tea to me. Inspired by what she had said about tea (no, seriously), I asked for Chinese tea at the restaurant as opposed to regular water I normally order. The tea was fine, and had unlimited refills, so by the end of the dinner, due to the nature of the food and general thirst, I had consumed about 4 glasses of tea. Which did not seem to be much a problem until I tried to sleep that night and realized that Chinese tea, like most kinds of tea, have caffeine in them!

So I finally managed to sleep later on, and got up later than planned on Saturday the 14th.

Heh. My inaugural post on my new blog.

Today was the release of examination scripts! Mmm … without going into the specifics, I can say that I’m pretty satisfied with everything that came back, save Chemistry, which was sadly the hardest one that I studied for. By God’s grace everything worked out the way it did anf I’m really thankful for it. Glory to God!

In other news, I have just received my MINDEF registration letter! The conscription order, is really nothing like all them glossy advertisements with fighter jets and tanks that try to use to get the youths hyped up about joining the army. This one is just dull, official and all business, and has the word “NOTIFICATION” (recognize how word choice changes the tone) printed all over the front .

Unlike what the exclamation mark indicates, I’m not particularly excited at this point. Firstly because, I’m feeling pretty sleepy right now; and secondly because, its going to be a long time before I really enlist for National Service, don the camouflage and get shouted at in strings of dialects that I probably won’t understand. Maybe after shooting one too many terrorists on Rainbow Six, or watching a platoon single handedly win the 2nd World War for America in a movie will I have the desire to get my hands on a real SAR-21 and my head shaved.

Anyway, Chinese tuition beckons.

P.S: If you want me to link you just drop a comment here.