my heart is an open palm, exposed and raw
In my land of bright lights you are effervescent -
Overwhelming at once, I am oblivious the next.
You are the palpable product of words I never meant,
Of clouded judgement, infinite dreams; my sweet Regret.
My conscience weighs you down and embeds you
Somewhere in the murky depths of this sepulchral soul.
Yet there is little want of redemption for what I do,
And you and your kind maketh the stories I never told.
Even now I would sing that I am yours, Yours!
As I believe you are mine in all your tainted forms.
Sucker as I am for your taste, touch and allure,
The beauty of folly is not weeping when all else mourns.
So this is an ode to my ill-fated penchant for
Secrets I have to keep, and everything that
I loved to hold but not to possess.
That I wish to forget, but forget to regret.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
woot today was great! teachers' day wasn't that bad after all, and my darling phoonie can shake that ass rather well eh. hurhur ching and i were like swooning until yani had to go 'shut up cheryl he's your best friend!' HAHA. sorreh but im not interested in you phoonie.
went out with bertie after school and that dodo actually pulled me to esplanade library to study! luckily i brought my unification notes or else i'd have nothing to do. but half the time we were fooling around instead of studying lar. he actually called nicholas up to disturb him and tell him im a bimbo like whatever man ig. and he kept using my notes as rough paper for his bio and it ended up with me having nothing to read. left for orchard for lunch and then we saw veralene oh my goodness. and like a million other rj ppl tongues are gonna wag man sigh. well its really nothing scandalous so whatever. saw heidi, PETTY (who was like WHO'S DAT GUY!?!?!), a million other vj ppl too, and yeah mostly were his friends lar. heh i'm not in rj anymore so whatever it's his prob THBBT.
well had loadsa fun and i kinda broke my fast cuz i felt i'd be sucha wet blanket if all i ate was salad. walked a lot more and we saw doc roy at borders goodness. and then they had their conversation on harry potter and c.s lewis yadayada while i was looking like a goon. ha ha then doc roy was like 'oh so do you take lit' and he went 'uh no' LOL and i went 'im the one who takes lit' HAHA *runs and hides in shame* walked a lot more and then he had to go for dental appointment so i went home and now im here typing this. yummy dinner's chicken rice! sigh fattening and i'm so sleepyweepy. shall sleep then finish up my essay!
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2:37 AM;
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
i lovee history :):)
extract from readings on German unification :
'...Germany is clearly too small for us both; as long as an honourable arrangement concerning the influence of each cannot be concluded and carried out, we will both plough the same disputed acre. In the not too distant future we shall have to fight for our existence against Austria...it is not within our power to avoid that, since the course of events in Germany has no other solution.'
-Otto Von Bismarck
i think he put it really well into words, i marvel at how they can put complex situations into words. its like you really have to be able to feel what it's like being in their shoes to be able to express the situation so accurately and lucidly. sigh when will i be able to do that.
anyways to my darling bombos going on the geog trip,
TAKE CARE OKAY. I LOVE ALL OF YOU SO PLEASE DONT LIKE DROWN WHILE ROLLING IN MUD. *hugs* have fun and hopefully i'll be back with loadsa goodies for yall! hearts!
and so tomorrow's teachers' day. somehow as you grow older all that hype about presents for teachers jes fade away into oblivion. i'm not even going back to my alma mater to visit them, because i already did so on founder's day. hurhur going out with bertieiggy tommorow, then it's time to finish up that stupid essay for ms tan. lucks to me man, gotta finish it before i leave for bkk.
i have this nagging feeling about pw. someone, HELP.
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7:10 AM;
Sunday, August 28, 2005
had a pre-birthday celebration for hwee today before i leave for bangkok and the only time when i can celebrate her birthday is after i come back then it'll be belated. it was kwite cool because she didnt know about it at all, mom and i bought the cake yesterday and put it in the fridge in church. then after service we lighted all the candles and started singing the birthday song after coming out from the kitchen. hwei was like 'huh who's birthday is it?' LOL. well i hoped you liked it/were pleasantly surprised my darling hweehwee <3<3
right, now i have nothing to look forward to except wednesday and thurday. oh not forgetting the essays i have to complete before i leave.
SIGH.
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8:07 AM;
Friday, August 26, 2005
im so shagged goodness! it was like PEEDARBERYOU from one thirty yesterday all the way to ten pm at night gee. we couldn't go for our interview in the end cuz the woman called us up to say her project manager ain't in town like waddaheck lar. so we ended up buying materials to construct our prototype and now it's half done and quite successful i must say. and we did surveys as well as w.r so accomplished quite a lot with regards to pw. BUT i did absolutely nothing about work, i.e. history math lit econs im so friggin stressed out. had tuition this morning and we finished up a.p so that's something off my mind. now ive gotta do that essay and hopefully i can make it down in time for hwei's performance! don't even know if i can go to church later :( mom's off for some high tea with her friend and i couldnt go because of all the work i have to do BOO and im stuck with this packet of cheapskate beehoon which is tasteless but i finished it anyway. too famished, and i have bread to devour too (sigh) i feel so pathetic :(
I MISS FANGS PETTY PET AND KATTIE SO MUCH :(:(
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10:35 PM;
Thursday, August 25, 2005
my day has jes been made better by an approval by goodrich global to go interview them for pw. FINALLY we are granted an interview. hope it'll be really productive and helpful. sigh pw really really sucks. it wouldn't suck that much if we didnt have so much to do already.
had extra history lessons with ms goh one to one after ms tan's history lecture. oh it's ms tan's birthday today hurhur and we sang her a birthday song after which she went 'do i get a birthday kiss?' then ching and i were like 'MR SAYERS!' hur hur but then ching thought of a better idea, 'IMRAN!' yeap ms tan would jes fly to the moon and back man. ha ha NOT.
right im really tired and i decided to postpone tuition to saturday morning. so tired so tired. have got to do that essay later and i shall try and enjoy it. really hungry too. thank God im not naked, if not i'll be cold, hungry tired and naked. sorry, ignore my retardedness.
the weather was a biatch today. it was pretty good in the morning with the slight drizzle, then it turned baking hot and then it started raining again. i was perspiring so badly i felt so damn gross. oh and ching kept frightening me today with the possibility of my contact lens stuck somewhere on my eyeball and i kept trying to find it, rubbing my eyes as if i had infection. then i went for a check up ended up there was nothing. ugggggggh i hate scares like this. why can't i jes have perfect eyesight HUH.
aiya whatever man i need to sleep. a few more days to bangkok baby!
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2:54 AM;
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
great now i have five essays to write because our dear ms chow has decided to bombard us with two econs essay to be done by the end of the hols. somebody say hallelujah.
well finished GP compre and our JC Decaux meeting is put on K.I.V so i can ignore that for awhile. i guess i shall start on history tomorrow even though i intended to do it today. Dr William Tan was so inspiring i could hardly believe he was there in flesh. seriously im proud that he's Singaporean even though im not this hardcore patriot.
typing letter for pw now and then its back to the math. tata.
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7:35 AM;
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
im feeling terribly restless now, and out of my boredom i shall blog. isn't that what blogs are for.
well the things i have to do by next thursday:
in order of urgency (ha ha)
1. GP compre
2. manage to persuade JC Decaux to give us details about the stupid mechanism
3. PW stayover
4. Cold War essay
5. European Nationalism essay
6. Ted Hughes essay
yup that's about all. ha ha i make it sound like 'oh so little only ah'. right and you wonder why i can say i'm bored. purely because i can't be bothered. bloodybloodyblah.
i'm thinking of thursday already and i can't stop thinking about it. only spoiler is that i'll have to study during the trip. like at night when all's quiet i'll prolly study in the cosy hotel room and gorge on room service. which reminds me, there's absolutely no way i can control my appetite in bangkok and i'd count myself lucky if i manage to jes be on the brink of obesity by the time i come back. ho ho perhaps studying shall burn all the fats away (it really does) and hopefull that shall give me more incentive to mug.
sigh school is so fun but it sucks at the same time. WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.
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4:52 AM;
Sunday, August 21, 2005
was feeling really shitty last night, stressed out about pw and promos, all that usual shite students go through.
got shiteloads of work to do tonight, still gotta go out for dinner. i feel like buying myself something to relieve the stress but that's so darn spoilt so i shan't (at least until i go out). but then i think i should jes save the money and splurge in bangkok. i really have nothing to look forward to except bangkok and hweehwee's birthday. anyway my darling hwee is performing this coming sat either outside wheelock or ngee ann city ALL GO SUPPORT HER IF YOU HAVE TIME PLEASE. phoonie you have no choice but to go okay. hrms okay perhaps i might get a bag on saturday then. a nice bag to lug almost anything.
haven't been ending my days well. i go to sleep with a heavy heart, getting all stressed out, i don't sleep well and i don't eat well too. i don't know, i feel really wasted/jaded/all that crap nowadays. i hate all my subjects now, i can't even think of anything that i'd want to study. im developing an aversion to history, i loathe lit now and i'm falling behind for economics. i really hate jc. i really do. i think i've reiterated that enough, but i jes feel the need to remind myself time and again. ah screw jc lar.
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3:27 AM;
Saturday, August 20, 2005
yay ive finished reading the book! gonna get the next two in the series. sooo addictive, i even had to forsake my math and history. i love this jappie and cheena oriental stories, its as if you've been trasported back to their time when there was fresh air and nice scenery.
right, so i've got two history outlines and math tutorials to finish by tomorrow. what the hell, don't think i wanna do them lar. not like mrs ang will check, but i've got no choice for history.
i feel this urge to go shopping but then i don't feel like leaving the house too. oh and i think today's weather's so damn good, it's really quite perfect for studying but then i used it to read. he he kinda added to the whole rainy thingy that was going on in the story. i wonder if i'll ever get to meet a real oriental beauty (not gong li please). i miss beijing and the forbidden city and all the fun nighs we had roaming the streets of beijing trying to act like we're not foreigners. i must visit japan someday, i will.
now what should i do. i feel a certain lack of direction in my life right now tsk.
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2:17 AM;
Friday, August 19, 2005
i really feel a lot better now, but my nose is peeling so bad from the incessant sneezing that it looks disease stricken ew. tuition jes now and i'm still struggling to catch up on all that i missed out. gah muggertoading for the whole weekend i guess. not that i can go out too. but ive started reading across the nightingale floor and i love it soooo much! couldn't put it down last night and i would have continued reading till the end if not for tuition the next morn. right so im gonna go back to it jes about now.
i cant wait for bangkok. gonna get sexaye new jeans and JUICYYY at horribly cheapskate prices HURHUR. and balenciagas (fake duh its bangkok) and um okay SNEAKERS (no not fake i hate fake shoes). i dont know lar, but i won't forget to get stuff for my darlings! :):)
stupid secretary, try and trick ur chief huh, HUH HUH HUH?
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10:39 PM;
I can now proudly say that i have finished both my prac crit and chaucer essays! WHOOPEEDOODA.
and JASMINE MY DARLING i miss you, ALL OF YOU!!! so so so so muchooo. can't wait for monday so i can see yall :(:(
my nose feels so unreal yet real at the same time. like when i sniffle, it feels unreal because it doesn't feel like my nose, yet it is my nose if not how am i supposed to breathe. ha ha geddit?
alrighty jes when i finished all my work, no one's online BOO. shucks what's with all the capitalisations. somehow this reminds me of Jen who's leaving veryvery soon. man, i wish i could go study in England too but yeah i'll prolly fall sick there too, and even more sick than this time. i need to be independent, i must learn, i will!!!
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6:19 AM;
Thursday, August 18, 2005
RAAAH i didnt go to school for the third consecutive day already and everyone in school must be thinking im terminal or something. sigh. mom refused to lemme go until im fully recovered which means monday. i'm so gonna be squashed to death under the weght of overdue and pending homework to be done. okay enough of this crap then i gotta go do (overdue) chaucer already. tata.
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8:06 PM;
okay im better now. i had better be, i went to the doctor THRICE already. got even more medication and gee it's damn tiring to swallow so many tablets. im kwite lucky i've no probs with tablets, because yeah ive been kwite a sick child. heyhey but im strong now kay, this time's jes an exception heh.
i think i can go to school tomorrow even though i've got another day of mc. ching says i should jes stay at home and rest the whole weekend. but i can't possibly miss THREE days of school!! tomorrow's kwite important if you ask me, lit lecture and tutorial and math tutorial. not that i'll be able to catch up anyway, they're going on to tutorial 8.3 already and i havent even done 8.2. gee. p.c essay was due today and i jes finished it. chaucer essay's due tomorrow and it's not done yet. heck i havent even read the passage. i hate falling ill i hate it i hate it i hate ittttttt. im sucha brat.
now fang's saying that im lousy because i dont have fonts such as 'adolesence (?!)' and 'adler' hurhur more like ur weird lar fangsy. :P sigh i missywissy her soooo muchhhhh. supposed to meet her tommorrow but im SICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK ARGH.
hmms queer how so many people don't understand my blog eh. i think i speak ( more like type) arabic.
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7:37 AM;
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
okay the doctor suspects i have dengue fever. OH MAN. and he gave me another day's mc, but i wanna go to school! there's math lecture and tutorial tomorrow, lit tutorial and HISTORY LECTURE. i relly wanna go to school but i guess i probably won't make it there even if i did. i'll prolly faint somewhere on the way. can u imagine if i fainted at bedok mrt station LOL. i hate this feeling. i can't do work, because im so groggy, i cant sleep because my whole body is aching and yeah all that shit you get when ur sick. :( this sucks big time. i miss my bombos + bombo ally :P
Kesava* hmm what exactly is it that you don't understand?
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6:00 AM;
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
im so sick it's getting a little freaky. at least i still have the strength to type this out. my fingers kinda hurt as i type though. sheesh. my whole body feels weak and it's a chore to even stand up. and my voice sucks now, which is the worst thing of all. i cant sing, laugh or even tell mommy 'i want water'. no no don't get me wrong, i don't order her around usually. it's only when i'm sick and i can't even hold a glass of water properly that i have no choice but to. but i'm sure she's happy to help me, aren't mothers the best people in the world?
gotta send ms tham the written report draft which is why i'm online in the first place. the internet's really boring and i'm cutting down usage already. i jes come online like at night and then use for a little while then sleep. all that after i finish my work. unless i needa do something then it's a whole different story. shucks my fingers hurt too much i think i shud stop here.
jinny* yesyes i'll never forget you too, my dear jinnnnnnny. :P
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8:54 PM;
Monday, August 15, 2005
and jes like that, it's a monday night again. last monday night was a pleasant one sans school. sigh you know this really is a vicious cycle, week after week passes by and hardly any work's being done. i have a bad premonition but let's jes hope it's another one of my lousy 'divination' thingies. hurhur this is so harry potter.
i don't have econs tutorial so i cant do it tonight. why am i always not getting my tutorials. i think it has something to do with me not being very closely knitted with the class. things are getting better but i kinda think that it's a little too late actually. sigh i really wish for jc to be over. jon and david keep telling me that jc was the best time of their lives. damnit it's so not for me and i'm jes dying to get it over and done with. after i leave jc i never ever wanna talk about it again, except about my bombos of course :) i'll never forsake you guys!
i cant do differentiation either, bloody biatch it is. alright i'm getting tetchy again, as usual. i always get pmsy when i can't do my work. i shall jes start reading history or something (while tolerating another headache). i think i'm falling sick.
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5:44 AM;
Sunday, August 14, 2005
i feel sick. having a fuggin headache and i CANT CANT CANT CANT study at all. fuggin pissed off at myself because i havent been able to do ANYTHING productive at all. whateverwhateverwhatever. i think i wanna abandon this thing. GOD HELP ME.
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7:24 AM;
Saturday, August 13, 2005
im so impossibly fat that im really not going to eat anything fattening from now on. im so sad lar, i can see like the spare tyres already :(
pw was fine, at least we're moving somewhere now yay.
im bored i should go sleep. yeaps niters.
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8:57 AM;
Friday, August 12, 2005
yay finished up my italian unification essay outline for edna tan! the longest ever outline i've done in my life, ha ha i'm rather pathetic huh.
i'm a happy girl now although notions of shopping keep popping up in my head. i'm like a shopaholic through and through, and a compulsive one at that. shitt gotta controllll. had my macdonalds breakfast this morning! my favourite egg mcmuffin a hashbrown and tea with no sugar (it's called kosong rite?) eh yani i can sprack malay kay! i'm smiling like an idiot now all because of a good breakfast. haven't had one in eons because my dear aunty murni's goneeeeeee :( i missy wissy her a lot can.
so with the finishing of my history essay is the commencing of my practical crit essay. SHEESH. then it's differentiation tutorial and after that it's all the way to ang mo kio for pw meeting. sigh okay perhaps it's good my life's starting to be a lot busier. i've been way too slack/free for the past few months for my own good. sigh alright then. i'd better get back to what i was doing. back to the books i go! :))
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9:26 PM;
i need a new pair of jeans. the current one's not really that nice and the rest are jes too damn big for me. shall jes wait till i leave for bangkok in september and then go kerayzae there. hurhur. went out with ching for a short while after math, and i got the prettiest watch ever, at a dirt cheap price i might add. hmm what else. oh! those belt thingies that yani tempted me with and guess wot, i got them at FIVE for ten bucks. HA HA take that yani :P well yeah but im sharing with yani and ching lar. why do i need five belts for. and yeah a necklace that i wanted a long time ago but ching kindly helped me bargain till i decided to buy it. i love my ching! we're gonna start saving as much as we can till the end of promos and then go shopping, like major shopping. BOMBOS! it's a deal kay? then we'll shop till the cows come home after promos. gosh i can't wait already. okay fine i might get a pair of pseudo-birkies/birkies IF i do go out. actually i think maryjanes are not bad too, but yeah i know they hurt hell a lot. yadayada i'm really crapping ain't i.
oh got back gp essay today and i'm pretty satisfied with it, though i made some really DUMB spelling errors. like inevitable became 'inevitible' waddaheck lar, don't believe myself sometimes.
really sleepy now. shall go nap then proceed on to my beloved economist. it's really not that boring! (yes there i go again) YAWN, alright i needa sleep.
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2:08 AM;
Thursday, August 11, 2005
watched charlie and the chocolate factory today! darn it was funny! especially the oompa loompahs but then i still think willy wonka's the funniest. he's so sadistic and messed up in this funny way. hmm don't regret giving up an afternoon of mugging for it :)
tuition was dreadfully long today, don't ask me why. i guess i'm jes tired. funny how i feel tired when today's like the first day of school after the long weekend. well good that tomorrow's friday already. but then it also means the promos are a week nearer. German unification notes are like in stacks and i havent even finished reading the risorgimento notes yet. PFFFFT.
well whatever la. at least i know what's il campanilisimo! lol like that's so helpful.
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7:31 AM;
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
oh gross gross grossnation! ARGH if you haven't read my current msn nick yet, i'll say it again for the benefit of all you innocent people out there. DONT EVER TRY KRAFT'S MACARONI AND CHEESE. it sucks like crap. ate a quarter of it and chucked the rest. sucha bad day, had bad food the whole day. mushroom soup for lunch and it tasted like crap too. hey my cooking doesn't suck okay, it's jes the lousy quality of the food. okay i feel like puking now, yucks all that calories for ZILCH satisfaction.
:( think i'm gonna sleep early in preparation for tomorrow. school's starting again, awful isn't it? at least i did my lit paragraph for leonard ng. read Italian Unification and nothing really went into my brain. as much as i love Mr Sayers, i really think his notes suck. as in he talks too fast during lectures and while u're clinging on to every word he says, you jes don't manage to write everything down. the pace is jes too fast, and as if it isn't bad enough, his notes are soooo scanty! i know he does it on purpose to make us pay attention so as to be able to take down notes. but isn't this too much? sigh i used to love history. now i jes cant sit down for more than an hour with my notes. funny how i can sit down longer doing math.
-heaves a sigh (not of relief)-
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6:05 AM;
things that i really have to get down to doing:
1. study (huge doses of it i might add)
2. lose weight
3. detoxify
4. pack up my room
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1:55 AM;
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
im having trouble putting my feelings into words nowadays. sometimes i feel as if my emotions come and go too quickly that i can't even trace them, let alone try and pen them down. i love too easily and forget too quickly. seriously i'm a scatterbrain in every sense of the word, be it pertaining to school work or deeper things like emotions or the like. don't really understand what i'm typing but somehow i feel this nagging urge to put it all down before it starts feeling as if i have the weight of the world on my shoulders. things that can't be said or written are usually the things that should be made known, and the things that we like to talk about everyday are usually considered to be of peripheral importance. yet we make it out to be the other way round. the paradox of life perhaps, but then life is after all a (tadah!) paradox. i don't doubt that life is a gift but it's beginning to feel like it's too mapped/planned out, that we forget what life was given to us for. yes i also know that we can praise and give glory to God in whatever we do, but then isn't it always the case that we get so distracted by the little nitty-gritties (however you spell the plural form) and forget what the whole point was in the first place. my thoughts are incoherent and random and you're witnessing it in its purest form now ha ha. i need to stop thinking so much, really.
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11:32 PM;
Monday, August 08, 2005
hrmms timmy smells funny, i think it's time for his bath. but he's kinda wheezing and i'm not very sure if i should bathe him lest he catches a cold.
finished harry potty! so sad, dumbledore died :( even though i already knew he'd die, i still felt sad. i hope snape dies, and malfoy too.
lunch with iggy (BERTIE!!) today and then it was harry potty at home and did some vectors. i should be going on to history later then it's off to bed early so that it'll be arise and shine early tomorrow. shall celebrate singapore's 40th birthday like a true-blue singaporean student; mugging. im serious, jes watch me do my thing (hurhur like whatever right)
feeling hungry even though i downed like almost one llitre of water jes now while watching the seven o'clock show. managed to catch a little of lee hsien loong's speech. he looked damn cmi, because it was pretty obvious he was reading off some screen thingy.
sigh the long weekend that i was so looking forward to is zooming past, no time to breathe man. i guess i really should stop going out. sighsighsighsighsigh whatever happened to determination, cheryl.
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5:04 AM;
Sunday, August 07, 2005
festival of praise was AWESOME. i can't stop thinking of it and i'm so refuelled with passion once again, so exciting!! :))))))
all i can say is, I LOVE YOU GOD!!!!!!
darlene zschech is, phwoar. can't think of any other better adjective to describe her. and i'm feeling really sad right now that i cant go today for the last session because mom wants me to stay home and study. seriously my heart is breaking thinking of all the wonderful worship they're having. and TULELE!!!! AHHHHHHH my ultimate (besides that hottie whoops)! well i still don't like city harvest and the way they were shamelessly advertising their cross cds like whatever man. and i hated the part when they preached about giving to God, a thousand fold or something like that. excuse me, God ain't a gold digger get that straight.
went out after church today ate so much im so not eating anymore. although i bought twleve bucks worth of famous amos cookies. hurhur still contemplating on whether i should go to school. okay that was so random but yeah i'm skeptical about it lar. oh got this preddy flower thingy and a jordi labanda notebook. hwei was going nutters there. i still havent found that perfect bag for me :(
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5:47 AM;
Friday, August 05, 2005
boy am i tired, haven't done any studying all day and i don't plan to either. started on harry potty (like after purchasing it for one week) and i can't put it down now. sigh, detrimental to my work. don't really understand parts of it though. i catch no ball about all the order of the phoenix stuff. i can proudly say that i've cleanly (and mightily spick and span i might add) forgotten everything i've read from the previous book. that's what my hardcore harry potty friends are for, to enlighten me :)
gah so tired. i think i should go sleep after trudging through more of the book. i wanna finish it by tommorrow so that i don't get distracted. hmm would be kwite a feat, considering how bummed out i am.
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7:29 AM;
Thursday, August 04, 2005
okay a short one before i go do lit. looking really forward to our loooooong weekend. perhaps i can squeeze in a little shopping even though i've made a resolution not to shop until promos are over. or i shall jes practice self-control in every sense of the word.
photo taking today was warped. we were trying to do some dao picture but i can't look dao for nuts. i kept wanting to burst out laughing. guess i'll look kwite weird in the pics. oh and the bimbo pose thingy was kwite screwed because the photographer didnt give us the cue and he snapped without us being prepared. heh i felt kinda cross eyed, hope it doesnt turn out that way.
we had a 'test' for history today, and it turned out to be one of Sayers' pranks. SHEESH. sample of one of the questions.
What was the first name of the Italian revolutionary that blah blah (i can't remember the whole question but that don't matter)?
GARI. (read: GARIBALDI)
i love Mr Sayers! <3333
ohohohohoh i MUST swoon about this cute little RI boy i saw on the mrt. he was so small, and he had HUGE bright eyes with looong lashes to boot. and his feet couldn't really touch the ground and he was reading a book. he had m&ms stuffed in his pocket and he was like popping them non-stop while reading. *SWOOOON* absolutely worthy of my paedophilic tendencies. hurhur why are the graduands i know soooo unlike him?? HURHUR i'm so gonna get slapped for this -sheepish grin- *huge hint*
alright enough crap. i'm outta here.
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5:35 AM;
Monday, August 01, 2005
Gateway to the Ivy League
Prestigious Singapore School Sends Droves to Top Colleges; Just $15 a Month in Fees
By CRIS PRYSTAY and ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 6, 2004; Page B1
Teh Su Ching began gunning for the Ivy League when she was just 11 years old. To get there, the young Singaporean beefed up her grades to win admission to a feeder school for Singapore's Raffles Junior College, the government school that landed her older brother in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other graduates in a host of top universities abroad.
A few weeks ago, Ms. Teh, now 19, was accepted by Yale. "I screamed when I found out," she says. Then she went down to Raffles and gave her teachers flowers and bottles of wine.
The school has plenty of reason to celebrate. Over 40% of the 820 students who graduated in December have been accepted by top U.S. universities. About half of that group will attend elite, Ivy League schools. Cornell University alone accepted 90 of Ms. Teh's classmates; Duke University accepted another 24. Dozens of others this year have been accepted by Britain's Oxford and Cambridge.
Raffles charges students just $15 a month in fees, but it's no ordinary institution. A product of Singapore's highly competitive approach to education, designed to fuel the national economy, Raffles is the peak of a government-controlled pyramid-style school structure that unabashedly pushes the cream to the top.
Starting with a "primary-school leaving exam" that helps determine what secondary school a child gets into, Singapore's system includes four years of basic secondary school followed by an exam that determines what junior college one attends for two years of preuniversity schooling. By the time they graduate, Raffles students have an extra year of schooling compared with U.S. teens.
Another key to Raffles' extraordinary college-placement success: Money is no object. To groom leaders for its agencies and the companies under its control, the government underwrites the college education of hundreds of top Singaporean junior-college graduates. Students seeking such aid must sign a contract, or a bond, to come back and work for a government agency or corporation for six years. More than half of the Raffles grads who are heading to the U.S. this year are on a government bond, the school says.
"It makes it a little easier for us to accept them," acknowledges Mike Goldberger, director of admission at Brown University, which has a limited financial-aid budget for international students.
Raffles Junior College, established in 1982, has its roots in Raffles Institution, a secondary school for boys established in 1823 by Sir Stamford Raffles, the colonial Briton who founded the city-state of Singapore. Raffles Institution, which still exists, built its reputation as a bastion of meritocracy, accepting gifted children from all socioeconomic classes and producing dozens of leaders over the years -- among them, Lee Kuan Yew, the patriarch of modern Singapore.
Today's Raffles is an Ivy League machine. A recent Wall Street Journal survey of high schools that feed elite U.S. colleges focused on U.S. schools and thus didn't include Raffles. Adding international schools, that list shows that Raffles sent more students to 10 elite colleges than any other international school and topped such prestigious U.S. secondary schools as Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., and Harvard-Westlake, in North Hollywood, Calif.
"It's very satisfying," says Winston James Hodge, the school's principal and a Singaporean like most of the faculty.
To attract top talent to its island economy, Singapore also offers scholarships to bright teens from across Asia. Anand Bhaskar, 18 years old, is one of 100 foreign students at the school. Most are from China, Malaysia and India and attended Raffles on full scholarship. Cornell not only offered Mr. Bhaskar, the only child of a financial consultant and a bank officer in Pune, India, a spot this year, but a partial scholarship, too. "I'm pretty excited," he says.
Cornell is pretty happy about the match, too. "What most of us want is a diverse community, a broad base of international students," says Wendy Schaerer, senior associate director, undergraduate admissions, at Cornell. "We also look at how well they perform here. The students we enroll from Raffles have done very well."
Very, very well. Mr. Bhaskar, for example, offers much more than the 1550 he scored (out of a possible 1600) on his SATs, or the straight A's he earned on his final exams. An active member of the math and computer clubs, he also danced in shows put on by the Indian cultural club at Raffles and tutored children at a day-care center in his free time.
Likewise, Ms. Teh edited a school magazine, played softball for the Raffles team, and performed street music for charity during school holidays.
At Raffles, as at most schools in Singapore, math and science are stressed. Just 8% of Raffles students major in humanities, and almost all of them still take advanced math courses as one of their four subjects.
To make sure students are more than just math machines, the school encourages them to join at least three clubs or teams, ranging from water polo to the economic and current affairs society, and do charity work. Last year, a group of students raised money and went to Cambodia to help refurbish a drop-in center for street kids.
University applications are taken extra-seriously. There are five teachers who serve as applications advisers, two for U.S. universities, two for schools in the United Kingdom and one for Australian schools. Between July and October, there is at least one talk each week by Ivy League alumni or an admissions officer from a U.S. school.
Those talks motivated Ervin Yeo, 20, now a freshman at Yale studying ethics, politics and economics. "When you hear all these success stories and hear about the students before you who go on to Princeton and Harvard, you feel you can be part of this," says Mr. Yeo, who is the first in his immediate family to go to college.
The government is backing Mr. Yeo, whose mother works in a supermarket and father in an electronics shop. He was given a scholarship by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also allowed him to defer mandatory two-year army service until he finishes college.
Mr. Yeo, who played rugby at Raffles and now does so at Yale, says the transition has been easy. "You're used to being the cream of the crop in Singapore," he says, "and it's just the same thing at the Ivies
SOB. WHY THE HECK DID IT EVER OCCUR TO ME TO LEAVE RJ. :(
written with ♥ at
1:09 AM;