now you would think this post is about POTC4 but it’s not. It’s about OBS. PotC4 post coming up next though! OBS was alright! I definitely expected it to be very fun but it wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. High expectations isn’t very good. D:

Monday:
Went to Pulau Ubin, and got our groups. I thought it was going to be all random but they grouped it by index number and class, so by some wonderful streak of luck (okay, i think its supposed to be stroke of luck but streak sounds nicer) S and T were together!! So it was basically: Aly, Anmol, Me, Sanjana, Bev, Adeline, Andrea, Bern, and Liz. and that was only from the SBC. <3 BEST GROUP EVER, duh. then there were other people from the other classes, including Deirdre and Danielle (who i know!) and Charlene, Shalyn, Fang Rong, Cheryl, Hui Jie. so i was really really happy with my group. :D I had expected a completely different and.. less comfortable group! But of course I’m not complaining :D Took a group photo, went to base camp, did some kayaking basic exercises like how to paddle and walking into the seawater fully clothed, and capsize drill (purposely capsizing, more fun than i thought it would be). I was in a kayak with Flik and Liz, best boat ever, duh. :D Then we showered and did some random stuff, then cooked dinner watching the sunset (it was so pretty. (: ) and ate in the dark. :D funfunfunfun. we saw an owl too! then we pitched our tents and went to sleep in some field. (: i was with sanj,anmol,andrea. best tent ever, duh. ;)

Tuesday:
Trekked to the other base camp! Was so tiring :( The bag I was carrying was I think, the food bag with all the cans or something. And it wasn’t put in properly so I was so unbalanced! D: Okay so after we finished dying, we arrived at the other camp! Then we found out we were doing high elements wheeee :D Practiced the belaying thing a bit, then we went to climb a ship :D I wanted to do the highest one but i didnt because 1) I dont think i would have survived that hahaha and 2) there was no time. But it was fun anyway, spent the rest of the time sitting around and talking (or rather, listening) to people. dinner (fav time of the day, except for sleep) was yummy and we tented indoors! oh also on this day i heard one of the groups nearly got struck by lightning, it hit the tree in front of them. There was a brilliant flash of light: blinding, overpowering, and I instinctively fell to the ground and covered my head. At the same time, I heard the loudest crack- like my world was made of the white light and it was splitting apart, not without some anguish. In that moment it was just me and Death- whoever said death was black was wrong. It was white. White as snow, white as light. I struggled to keep on living, to not let my whole world disintegrate into nothingness. It went on and on until… after a while, I became aware of colour again. The brown of the earth and green of the leaves and yellow of the flowers. A tree had fallen in front of us, just footsteps away from what could have been the end. It was blackened and definitely dead, like death had come and swept it away, barely leaving us in our little world. I could still feel it in my bones though. A little tremor of physical fear of what had nearly happened and could have happened. HAHAHAHA i have no idea where that came from since I wasn’t actually there. Sonico was there though (okay so maybe she didnt exactly say all that) but.. after i got over the fear that like some of my friends could have dieddd (actually, lightning is smart. it would hit a tree because its taller, faster path to the ground or something like that. i read about it once.), i realised that it’s such a nice moment to write about (okay maybe not nearly dying- but the idea of the lightning and all).. a writer moment. :D awesome, i dont get those often anymore.

Wednesday:
Land Ex Day! Okay honestly I didn’t think I would survive this day. Like after the 30min trek from base camp 2 to base camp 1 I was already dying and I was actually considering running away and sailing back to Singapore so i wouldnt have to do the land trek. But it was too difficult to wake up in the middle of the night hahaha. Luckily andrea had stones. haha anyway land trek: i got a lighter backpack (luckily!) so yeah. :D but then i switched with sanj because hers was the really heavy one with half of my stuff inside too. and it wasnt exactly unbalanced but it was still heavy so i was lightheaded and all.. so then sanjana switched back with me <3. (: oh wait before that, we plotted the points where we were supposed to go on a map. i helped! glad I take geog now, it’s so useful :D but we didnt reach all the points because the sky decided to spill on us (basically, it rained. really heavily) so we were all wet and had to take shelter. i was kind of sad that we couldnt make it to all the points marked, because i knew we could have done it. we went back to base camp, but that was the day we weren’t supposed to shower so i didnt shower :D used the powder spray thing for hair, love that stuff. ^^ btw, pei lee (our instructor) said that the backpacks were about 15kg. :O i thought it was at least 50.

Thursday:
SEA EXPEDITION DAY. (: best day out of the whole week! (title of post is dedicated to this). so we woke up as early as ever and left at around 7 (i think)! Non-stop kayaking for 7h, around the whole island of pulau ubin. O: i mean we only actually had one official break. I was in the sweeper boat with andrea and liz (liz was one of the sea ex leaders! :D) (andrea and liz swapped places so it was: andrea at the front, me in the middle, liz at the back) so it was really really tiring. like we had to purposely remain behind everyone else so everytime we got a bit of momentum, we had to stop and wait for the other kayaks to go ahead of us. so every time they had a break, it was basically just time for the back of the fleet to catch up with the front, then we had to go again, that’s why it was non-stop. ): peed in the sea. it was strange. XD and for some reason we had to pee more than usual, i guess something about sea water and osmosis? :X idk. i remember there was some point during the journey that all 3 of us had to pee. okay so you know one of the best feelings in the world? lying in a kayak in the sun (with a hat), in the middle of the sea. I mean i dont know why people got seasick (okay stupid comment, i know), i loved the currents on the sea. (: and i really really wanted to eat lunch out at sea but some people thought they would get seasick and they didnt want to waste time (since when did eating lunch become a waste of time?) so we just.. kayaked on. so i really really loved the sea expedition and my kayak and the people and the happy food (snacks!) and everything. :D when we got back we did JETTY JUMP. YESYESYES. :D been looking forward to this for a long time! it wasnt just a spectacular leap of a cliff, just take one step off this jumping plank thing into the sea. it was fun. i went twice. :D and for some reason i was thinking of physics when i was falling. (it was kind of free fall but with the air resistance!).. then like just before i hit the water, i could feel all the acceleration and stuff it was cool :D and i randomly became physically capable of screaming for a few seconds before i decided to close my mouth (sea water is disgusting to taste).
when we finished showering we prepared a feast or something from random ingredients. it was fun and the food was okay-ish, but then washing everything + pitching the tents took a really long time, plus we had run overtime for showers and cleaning up the kayaks too (did i mention my group was late for everything? literally everything. we had to keep asking for extensions and then went overtime for the extensions too).
okay then some idiot stole our tents (or more like, they got mixed up) so at first we had 1 tent.. for 16 people. o_0 but luckily we found another 2, so that was 3. so one tent had to split (we had 4 tents of 4 ppl for the past few nights). and okay for some reason that was my tent. ):< so obviously bern wanted anmol to join the rest of abba in their tent, and anmol wanted andrea too, so that left me and sanj to go split ourselves up into the remaining 2 tents! i was NOT HAPPY. i mean it wasnt really fair of them to decide without us right! ):< then deirdre decided to switch tents so that me and sanj could be in the same tent.. awww. (: she’s nicer than people give her credit for. okay so then i still wasnt happy about the tent thing (not only that, also because the whole them-in-a-group-leaving-us-out thing had been going on for the whole 4 days) but it ended up okay in the end i suppose. :) sleep is always okay. so thursday was like my highest AND lowest point of obs.

friday:
nothing much, just packed up, cleaned everything, and found all the camp stuff. we only lost 3 whistles in the end (: thats like $2.10 we have to pay altogether, compared to the >20 that some groups had to pay! (i heard). oh wait then pei lee asked us all to get in a circle and talk about the lowest point in our life. then everyone was talking about everyone dying and stuff it was so sad, nearly everyone was crying. D: yup then we went back to school (glad to be with 3S again actually :D)

hmm so i dont think i socialised much during OBS. with so many loud and well, popular people, there wasnt much of a need to talk and stuff >< okay so that isnt a good excuse. i’ll try to be more talkative and stuff in school and in class! i dont like the “should speak out more in class” on my report card ): and okay actually i dont feel that bonded with my group. i mean as a group. it was still the best group ever, but everyone was just so bonded and in their cliques already, i dont feel that anything changed but those cliques became stronger. so that was probably why we didnt bond as a group. but it was still an awesome week. <3 COLUMBUS forever!

woah this is a really long post. (congrats if youre still reading!). but i also wanted to say, i got sunburnt! on my ankles and wrists. okay i thought i couldnt get tanned, but i actually got sunburnt. hahaha. it hurt a bit for some time, but then it just got annoying because it was so ugly (oh i got sandfly bites too. they arent itching- just look disgusting). then after a while it started to peel (EWWW) then i just put moisturiser and it was okay. :) but seriously i did actually put a lot of sunblock during the kayaking.

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Glee. I don’t watch it but I listen to some of their songs. (:

Anyway CTs are finally over! I’m really surprised because I thought I would crash into them after SYF. And for some reason I didn’t. Must have been because of my seating arrangement for Term 2, I concentrated in class a lot more. :D Anyway, I guess my Term 2 results are always the best results in the whole year. In Term 3 my standard drops, then rises a bit for EOYs. Okay but I’m not complaining, because even though its a bit weird, i’m still quite satisfied with them and happy. Oh oh and my comment was “… should voice her views more in class”. Nooooo. I’m not supposed to get that comment anymore! I have to remember to do that so that I won’t. ):

OBS next week! I think I’m looking forward to it, a little! Everyone says it’s really fun. I guess the activities will be quite fun but I don’t want to carry stuff around. O: My bag is crazily heavy and I think I need another bag to put the rest of my stuff in. ): I’m really weak and I don’t want to be forced to carry stuff around! And we haven’t gotten our groupings yet even though last year they got it 2 weeks before. I hope I’m either with people I know, or with a group in which no one knows each other. But apparently there’s 10-16 people per group so people WILL know each other. I just dont want a group where everyone already knows each other and there are already cliques, because then it’ll be hard to make friends. ): Also, they showed us a video on thursday and apparently the jetty jump is just basically stepping off a jetty and falling straight into the water. I thought it was some spectacular leap off a cliff or something! :O oh well.

We haven’t gotten our seating arrangements for next term yet! I want to know who I sit next to! I think I quite like the people I’ve been sitting next to the whole year (or maybe I just like my class!) but I just want a seat, where there is actually a fan!! And the seating arrangement for the last week of school was really awesome. :D

Oh and we got a new timetable, we now have THREE recesses with 3T so YAY. :D Friday is still triple science day (sad!) and ES was moved to monday last period. and unfortunately we didn’t get more MT lessons hahaha. We also got our timetable for the last week of June. one hour of history on two days yay!!!! but we have um, about 2h of SS on wednesday. on the timetable. but we have to stay back for longer because we’re having a MUN too. XD (i think mrs raj’s system of having a MUN is different from the usual ones, so it could be a bit weird, but YESSSSS.) and also on tuesday, we have some pre-conference briefing for that or whatever. followed by the CIP meeting. O: i will just make the best of it and for this year, mentally change my birthday to the 23rd or something. then it will be on a thursday and i can go eat lunch with someone. XD

So I’m looking forward to June! RMUN and IMUN (which we don’t even know our topics for yet!). And PotC4 on the 28th! And.. woah there aren’t any more outings???? (i was planning like 3 for the march one-week holiday)… Well most of the people are going on holiday. So. Oh well I’ll ask around. (:

And recently we had Sonico’s party! It was an ice skating party. Umm I’m not exactly this huge fan of ice skating but.. okay fine it was averagely fun. I hate and love ice skating at once. (: fell quite a few times but the part that made it worth it was that people were willing to go one round very very very slowly with me to talk. <3 my friends.

OBS is on monday!
also, today was the day that we were supposed to carry out plan21 but it failed. :(

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more happy things and other things:

EASTERN EUROPE.
I GOT INTO EASTERN EUROPE TRIP. sure, it took 2 appeals and my mother going down to the school and the japanese earthquake to make them open more slots, but still. it all worked out in the end!!! i seriously cannot imagine myself having fun in any other country knowing that somewhere, some people are in eastern europe having the time of their lives there! its HISTORY AND MUSIC. AND SCIENCE. history is my favourite subject right now, and music??? WIN.

EXAMS.
so stressful. ): still have bio and chem left but since monday is a holiday i have some time. i think e math and a math should be okay because i studied the whole of last weekend for that. SS should be okay as well but that’s what i thought last time! ): oh then on thursday, had geog&lit&physics all on the same day (even though i wish i had taken history, if i had, then it would be geog&history&physics and that would be worse)!! had no time to study. started studying geog one day before, finished like 4h before the exam. didnt study physics properly but i read through the notes. only started lit one hour before, predicted the wrong question and memorised wrong quotes + misinterpreted question. GONNA FAIL FOR REAL THIS TIME. GEOG TOO. T_T history was okay-ish i think. but history is always risky, i hope i at least pass.

ELECTIONS.
im watching the elections thing now (: well i havent been following them because of CTs but nvm. i hope PAP wins. i think it would be very sad if they didnt. ): ppl say they’re getting complacent but they’ve done a lot for singapore, so. guess its about the current situation though.

and next week is sonico’s birthday party + rmun briefing 2!!! NOOOO havent done council research. -random spazz- monday (i procrastinate too much).

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it’s been a while! it seems i only post once a month now. :O i will post more. :) it’s been quite a happy month!! generally. i will talk abt syf in this post then the rest of it in another post, so that it wont be too long. xD

i got in through the reauditions!! it was e math last period then mr ya was being late and laggy, so after he went down to get worksheets i just RAN OUT OF CLASS and downstairs because it was 2.30 already. then when i got down i heard that MR OH WAS ALREADY INSIDE THE ROOM and apparently it was supposed to start at 2 TWENTY, so i got really panicky and ran into the room but apparently kyu ri and xiu yi had to be there but they weren’t there so practiced like once with cherie, went in for auditions.. and i was like SO SCARED during auditions i was half-crying on the way out. :O then cherie came out after her auditions too and we went to have a funeral for our SYF places together! i think we kind of bonded then (cant tell because now she acts normally & a bit awkwardly towards me again). gave her an ice cream stick anyway. (: haha she is so cute! (: i really really thought i wouldnt get in but then i did! they read the results, had re-reauditions the next week, kicked some ppl out (:X)

then omgsh the weeks and practices passed SO FAST and suddenly it was the moment!! skipped lessons the whole day, and violin lesson in the evening too. i remember in the morning i went down to find tabitha before assembly, then i followed the general flow of sec 4s to the quadrangle, then just as the last “ahhhh” from the hallelujah chorus was playing i realised there were NO sec 3s, or sec2s, or sec 1s around, then i remembered that it was thursday, so assembly was in the hall. HAHAHA ran all the way up, didnt really make it so stood outside. it was like the music outside and inside the hall were playing a canon. :) okay then we practiced a bit, had an early break. then me and tabitha went to change, didnt want to change at the dirty&crowded level 1 toilets so we went all the way up to level 3!! XD then we sneaked down and followed the plan, that was good. :)

okay then we went to republic poly, and waited for the time to play.. I REMEMBER THE PLACE. p6 SYF (gold! heehee.)!! :D:D i remember the practice room too. so then as we were waiting i felt a bit scared but then when we were actually lining up, i was thinking abt how RGS’s second song is quite nice! (i found it on youtube after) me and tabitha liked it :):) then, WE WENT ON STAGE. for some reason the 3rd stand didnt have chairs and they looked a bit confused then they went to get chairs from the back.. then IDK WHY but for some reason i wasn’t scared!! for the first time ever i think! :D smiled around a bit, then we sat down. and tchaikovsky, was okay. ended off quietly as the Plan went.. then shosty!! (LOVE.) apparently there was a “wow” when we played the first note, and when we finished there was a lot of murmuring. but i didnt hear it. anyway it was SO AWESOME. (though i still wish i was sitting next to tabitha, that is the way it’s supposed to be!! >:( but psh i dont know why im complaining. i was extremely lucky just to BE THERE. oh yeah in some of the practices i randomly started smiling because i was just happy to be there.) oops sidetracking. >.< anyway it was SO AWESOME. went for lunch at the republic poly canteen with tabitha and se ern! speculated about how we were. heard rumours that some ppl ended like 2 bars earlier than the rest of us! heard more rumours etc. saw some random ppl that i think i knew by sight but they didnt know me so i didnt bother saying hi.

then we went back and listened to the other schools. and RI was quite good, THEY DIDNT PLAY SHOSTAKOVICH but stef the ex-mg-violist said they were better than us. temasek JC was quite good too, they played suite for strings and some old SYF song that MG did last time. and they all wore silver ties against black clothes. (: also, the vending machine failed my expectations but at least there was still some yummy food inside so yay!! (: then came the time for results and judge’s comments.

when the judges were giving comments they were telling us about how good every group was. (and apparently they did NOT approve of having no scores or no conductor, but they DID approve of standing up and playing. that’s the only thing they said that i dont agree with. standing up made everyone look so unorganised, not together, and generally like strange non-maple-coloured maple leaves attempting to sway.) and how we were of INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS (:D) and how how we were as good or better than strings groups in the EU. then they talked about the meaning of strings, “the whole purpose of music is to enjoy, to play with each other” (the only one i managed to type into my phone fast enough). and i was so touched and happy by all the judge’s comments ahh. (‘: THEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE RESULTS. for other schools.. then it was north vista.. THEN RGS got gold.. and i was clutching michelle’s and tabitha’s hands and their hands were all sweaty i bet mine were too and then they said Methodist Girl’s School Secondary..

GOLD WITH HONOURS!!!!!!!

stood up and screamed and screamed and screamed. it was so amazing!!! :D i didnt hear any of the other results after that (but they posted it on the website later anyway (link at end of post!))!! it was all just screaming and crying and hugging and “omg”-ing and more crying and screaming!!! i dont know if i was impolitely screaming while the judges were reading out other school’s results, just the.. indescribable happiness. happiness is such an understatement. i swear i havent cried because of happiness in my entire life!!! and suddenly all the tears were pouring down :’D SCREAMED AND CRIED AND HUGGED PEOPLE EVEN MORE. it was so unbelievable. :’)

then on the bus back, i think we screamed the bus driver deaf HAHAHA i hope he’s okay. me&tabitha (more of tabitha) were talking abt how we STILL COULDNT BELIEVE WE GOT PAST 1ST AUDITIONS. random happiness. then left all the strings peeps there, went home. for the next like IDK how many days i was mainly trying to control my urge to scream! i know everyone around me wouldnt exactly have appreciated it if i did. (and gosh, im supposed to be physically incapable of screaming.) then went on FB and my whole newsfeed was spammed with “i love strings” “gold with honours”, etc etc. IT WAS REALLY COOL i got hyped again :D called tabitha and talked to her for like 2 hours or something (hope my phone bill isnt too high).

I LOVE STRINGS. LOVE LOVE LOVE. xinfinity.
this is really really meaningful for strings. seriously, the day of reauditions, they were disappointed in us and we were disappointed in ourselves. apparently we were so bad that we couldn’t even get a certificate of participation because we were just that bad. and all the rumours, the endless worrying that all the other schools were better than us, the fact that RGS was right before us and we were right before break, the fact that RI were going to play the same pieces as us (until they changed their second song).
it was all worth it:
every second of practice together
every second of practice by ourselves
every mistake we made, because we improved
every practice with not-so-good stands
every minute spent memorising
every scolding we got
every demoralising word, to make us push for this more
and the fact that we went through all of this together, is what made it the most worth it.

okay yes i had to describe syf in great detail so that it will be forever recorded in (virtual) ink how amazing that whole day was, because seriously i dont know if i’ll ever feel that happy again.and i apologise to any other groups that did not get the results they wanted and they read this or whatever. (according to um.. someone, all the syf hype is insulting to other strings groups and other instrumental groups.)

2011 strings syf results link

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cross country today! it was actually alright, quite a lot of sun but sun is good because sun=vitamin D. and im too pale, so yes, sun is good. (: i forgot to start the timing on time, i only started it about.. 300m into the run? so in the end my timing said “14.47″ but adding the 300m, probably 15 min something or 16min something! oh well at least i passed (: i hope i got.. a C though! XD the 100-plus was diluted (as usual), finished my water and alysia gave me some blackcurrent H20 drink (: oh oh then during the run, it was quite hard to gauge how much more we had to run, then some teacher told me “300m more!” so i thought yes, i shall run the next 300m! so i ran about 300m, then i realised that i was only at the “2100m” mark so i stopped a bit after that because i knew i couldnt run all the way.. and ended up walking most of the last lap omgsh :( i tried to run but my legs just wouldnt keep going! D: so i think im quite slow but.. nvm. actually running is quite fun. (: haha i can never “race with horses” i think!

after X-country, went to west mall for lunch! ate some japanese thing at the food court. then we went to FROLICK for ice-cream yay! XD the setting is quite nice there, and the music. (: took a few pictures (i should have brought my camera OMGSH!) and then went home.

oh i’ve been eating out quite a lot recently i think. :X luckily we ran a bit today. haha i bet by june or something i’ll have put on quite a bit of weight. and tomorrow i have to wake up early again to go for rehearsal. the last rehearsal before the re-auds!

and.. SYF REAUDITIONS ON MONDAY OMGSHHH. apparently its in alphabetical order so im going first for V2s, after all the V1s! i dont know whether to be happy or sad about that.. i mean, going first is scary but at least there isn’t already a standard for me to be compared with. but then again, he may compare me with the V1s.. and guess who’s probably last for the V1s?? haha i dont think there’s anyone else whose name comes after X. (: yes so i shall practice (later when its not so hot) and hopefully i’ll get in D: it’ll really be sad to be kicked out, this close to SYF.. its in like 3 weeks ):

and im really thirsty now! and i have a lot of hw that i plan to do today, so i should go. (:

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