Dreams of life

There was a time when men were kind,

And their voices were soft,

And their words inviting.

There was a time when love was blind,

And the world was a song,

And the song was exciting.

Then there was the time it all went wrong...

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I'm living.

So different now from what it seemed;

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

This is part of the song "i dreamed a dream". i just found out, this song is from a musical - the less miserables. This is yet another song which can tell alot from a few lines of the lyrics. I have not watched the musical, but i can guess its a rather solemn story. Above are the first 6 lines of the song and then the last 4 lines.

From those 10 lines, i picture the author to have been living is a peaceful and harmonious society, and had dreams of a beautiful life. But all these are shattered as the times change and so do the people. the author ventures into a new society, where social ills dominate, and life is so much harder than expected.

I think this happens to many of us too. As little children we live a peaceful and carefree life, with all our needs well taken care of. We start to dream of the wonderful life ahead and what our bright future may be. But as we grow up, we slowly enter a totally new society, where there are countless harsh realities of life and we are forced to adapt, struggling for survival. Inevitable downfall await the incompetent. Life can never be as simple as before.

Sometimes i do wish to go back to my younger days. That will be a relieving break from this highly competitive and demanding world. But lets face it - no pain no gain. We cannot turn back the clock and return to our old ways, lest we be deemed as a useless creature. We have to fight for our place and achieve our goals. So let us be forward-looking and do our best in everything. Good luck exams for all students and good luck in career for all graduates!

Forgotten!

im sure evry1 dint noe or dint rmb that 13 august, which was sunday, is my birthday. It turned out, nobody rmbed my bd. nobody in school. and in JYM, only 1 person rmbed - Goh aikhong. i think she must have been told too.

But aikhong did sth worse than forgetting my bd... she forgot my age!
she asked me, "now u are 15 isit?" (i gave her a disappointed look.) "14?" (i gave her a shocked look.) "ohh... 16. sorry. i forgot u doing O levels this year." =.='
If not for O lvls she may have tot i was sec 2.

So later that evening my family took me out for dinner. I invited my grandparents along cos i wanted an extra present. The result - they forgot my bd too. they attended the evening church service and my dad had to go to their church to get them out. i had to wait abt 40 mins for them, doing nth. dinner wasnt atg great aither. i picked a dish that looked good on the pic but turned out really lousy. i ate it for the sake of filling my stomach.

Yesterday, one friend wished me a 'happy passed birthday'. beta dan nth. but so far no present.
Only my parents rmb my bd evry year without fail. my parents and grandparents have quit giving me items some time ago cos even i dun noe what i want, let alone them. so they give me red packet instead. better this way.
Joel Pang prolly rmbed but din wish me happy bd. But its usual for family members to cut formalities with each other.
I dint expect many ppl to rmb my bd, but i dint expect so few to rmb. Its quite depressing to be forgotten like that.
Anyway, whats past is past. i still have many more bds to come.

School Review

Nth much happened this week so ill do a 'special post'. this post is just for general sharing and information. I encourage all readers to post stuff like this too. so that we can know whats it like inside other schools, and our plights as students or ex-students.


--4/2--
i am now in class 4/2. total population of 39. Lotsa girls in my class. They outnumber boys 11 to 28! I noticed almost all the malay girls in the cohort are in my class. 8 in total. no malay boys. 6 indos. 1 indian, 1 chinagirl and 1 filipino. the rest sporean chinese. 1 boy n 5 girls r overweight. 8 girls r chio according to my judgement, which is very lenient.

Ok enuf of those stuff. my class is a so-called '2nd grade class.' apparently almost evry1 opted for science stream in sec2. so the better half of the express students get into 4/1 and the remainder make up 4/2. its quite a clear division. according to year end sec 3 results i was 8th in the class but 36th in the level. almost in the bottom half. I can see also; a lot of ppl in my class r not serious about their education. they fail badly and dun seem to care. many teachers have also commented my batch is one of the worst so far in history. if u were me, would u not be worried? So im starting to get eliteist as a preventive measure of not being assimilated into the community of slackers. Sounds harsh? wait till youre in my shoes.

I am now quite fenced up in school. i do not hang around after school or go sumwhere with frens. I also hardly talk. I think this is suits my introverted nature well. The guy sitting next to me in class used to be a good fren of mine. He is from the same class as me for all 4 years. We used to talk alot and sumtimes even share personal info. All his flaws and nonsense i knew and accepted for the past year or so. But recently i suddenly asked myself; whats so good abt a fren like him? It was like enlightenment. Here's some stuff abt him.

- He has terrible mood swings. one moment happy, another angry, another depressed... so it can be hard to relate to him.
- When hes in the 'happy' mood, he annoys me with his childish crap like purposely asking me lame or stupid qns and disturbing me (eg shaking my table when im writing.)
- I cannot be sure when hes serious or not unless he is really in a serious mood. When hes not serious, he may lie to me 'for fun'. and doesn correct it.
- When he is serious, he gets too serious. many times he accused me illogically and is very short tempered. he also likes to take revenge or make things difficult for me when hes not happy with me, whether im at fault or not. In short; very unreasonable.
- He has double standards. he does to others what he makes a big fuss out if it were done to him.
- he is unappreciative. after helping him so many times, he say im unhelpful when i do not help him. he will then list the ways he helped me, making them sound so great. but i helped him much more.
- He is one of the worst students in my class in terms of education. his L1R5 for midyears is 46. He sleeps or eats in class. his bag contains comics, snacks, sweets and CDs. he does last min studies just before tests. he rarely does holiday hw. his hw are either slipshod or copied from frens. sometimes i get slightly influenced by him. i have to occasionally 'reformat' myself.

The inspiration on how bad he was did not come out of the blue. i happened after he borrowed my eraser, lost it and dint bother to get it back. i had to remind him before he did, and it was gone. its been almost a month now and he hasnt bought me a new eraser on the excuse that he has no $. but he buys gundam toys and CDs. its not the eraser that matters. but i cant tolerate his attitude.

Im currently starting to befriend a group of girls. ppl think im flirting but i treat them just as friends. i seem to relate to them better than with the boys in my class. i hope im not aqua.

Looking ahead, my prelims are coming up in abt 3 weeks time. the last exam before the final showdown. still got lots to buck up on. the prelims will contain the full syllabus, so it shd be harder. But ill just stay cool and do my best. id appreci8 prayers for me. =)

update 5/8

Okay. this week was much less boring than last week. quite alot of stuff went on.

Firstly, my F&N coursework is finally over!! A blessed relief. The courseworks are really boring and tedious and takes up alot of time. Plus got to keep doing corrections den waste so much paper and ink. And whenever you make changes, u may have to change many other stuff in the other parts of the coursework so that the whole thing is consistent. super sian stuff.
On tuesday i did my execution on the coursework part B and on friday i handed up the whole part B, complete with evaluation. Part B is much less work than Part A, which was submitted on 25 june. (I wrote abit about it on my post on 2nd June.) Now, for F&N, i am free from the agony of coursework, but coming up are tons of past year papers! manz. looks like i still cant be free.

This week all my english lessons were focused on orals. On friday i had my prelim english oral and not far ahead comes my O lvl oral. Looked easy at first, but suddenly when my turn comes i became a bundle of nerves. Reading is ok. Picture not so good. Conversation sucks!

Upcoming is national day. like every year, the uniform groups will be the busiest during this period. Preparing for the NDP held in the school. This year im in the GOH section. More pressure to perform. Spent 3 consecutive days rehearsing the parade. So damn tired. And the ICs dun care. cant help it anyway. we started the rehearsals late.

Best news for last: my comp is fixed!! yeahh. For about 5 weeks i havn played Dota. And i miss it alot already. The problem of the comp lied in a very simple thing: faulty electrical connection. And i tried so many other ways in vain. Even wanted to buy a new comp.
Anyway, this incident has somehow changed me. After the problem came and i couldnt play any games, i sudenly became more quiet and lifeless in class. became easily irritated with my partner and talk much less to him. But i wasnt having depression, cos stuff like TV and even homework grew to interest me more. now after the comp is fixed, i still hardly talk to my partner and my newfound interest in studies still remain. Perhaps this whole thing was planned (not by me) to be of benefit to me. Its not good being a comp addict.

Signing off here.