Time flies.

16 days to Christmas!

Today:

1. I went to CK Tangs to do CAS- gift wrapping in efforts to raise funds for Focus on the Family.
2. Was tiring- I spent about 5 hours standing at a booth in B1 attempting to wrap presents (I’m not very good).
3. Was embarrassing, there were times when the presents were so horribly wrapped, and the customers were right in front of me, trying their best to be patient. Though I was smiling on the outside, as per the Christmas spirit, there were times when I was panicking and praying internally.
4. Was blessed- customers were really nice, even when I messed up; and I managed to do some passable work.
5. I met my primary school mate cheng ying, who is studying at MJ now. The last time we talked was approximately 7 years ago! It was great to hear that she received Christ 2 years back.
6. I realized that its a good thing that gift wrapping is not one of my HLs.
7. I was reminded how far behind I am in terms of getting gifts for people. Please, don’t anyone expect much out of me this year.
8. I worked (still working) on my EE. Posting on this blog functions as a break.
9. I thanked God for the way today worked out.

Tomorrow

1. There is church to attend.
2. Bags to pack.
3. EE to work on.
4. Seven day camp to go for.
5. Foreign delegates to meet.
6. Dinner with foreign delegates at somewhere uniquely Singaporean.
7. God to trust.

In the near future, I have

1. EE, TOK Essay, Business IA to finish.
2. Christmas shopping to do.
3. Theater arts scripts to work on.
4. More gift wrapping at CK Tangs.
5. Family to celebrate Christmas with. I can’t believe I’ve spent so much time out of the house so far.
6. Cooking to learn. Mom’s teaching.
7. Christmas dinner to help prepare. Am looking forward to this.
8. Hopefully a trip around town to look at the lights.
9. Time to cherish! The holidays are passing so fast.
10. God to love.

Other interesting things worth doing.

1. Running to run.
2. Cycling to cycle.
3. Ultimate to play.

 

The End.

At long last the period of testing and revision drew to a close this morning, hopefully there’ll be no more revision for a long while, although I’m pretty sure that the work will kick in before the Year 5 cohort can say: “Freedom!”. By the grace of God, the exams have gone well, and the revision and absence of fun distracting stuff hasn’t been all that bad either. None the less, I enjoy the change from trying to study to slacking.

As per the after exam tradition, I went out with the KKK (which is not the Ku Klux Klan, but the Kyle Koh Klub), and watched a movie. Unfortunately, we picked a Russian fantasy action movie called Daywatch, which was preceded by the prequel Nightwatch, which none of us had watched before. The result was that we spent most of the movie trying to make sense of the plot and the rules of the fantastical world of the film; it did not help that a single piece of chalk had the power to alter reality and that all the dialog was in Russian. It wasn’t all that bad though, having figured out the gist of the story, it was pretty satisfying.

Oh, and the over due Charity Bike’n'Blade post? Well, just take a look at the photos. There are like 400 more photos on the web if you’re interested, I just took those relevant to me.

 

The Weekend.

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.

 

Friday the 13th!

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.