My B-dae!!!!!!

Yay, my b-dae is today (posting this almost 24 hours after my previous one :D)

Thanks to all that remembered my birthday and sent me emails, smses, facebook wall messages :)

To those that din remember, here's the reminder:

My birthday is on the 26th of January

Read: remember next year or die

My birthday!

Tomorrow's my birthday!!!

That's 2 hrs and 23 min more!

Flu...

I am feeling so horrible right now.

Down with gastric flu and brain feels like cotton wool.

Missed Mathematics Probability TA and Chem OBA, must take tomorrow... sian

MacBook Air

The new Macbook Air is out.

*gasps in awe and dies immediately*

Maybe that reaction for serious mac book fans, but definitely not for me.

In my opinion, the Macbook Air (which from now on will be known as an acronym MBA) totally gets in the way of productivity. No CD drive? How on earth is anyone supposed to do proper installations/play music that is on a cd and so on?

Sure, it is light and compact, but does that compactness really count as much as the productivity one needs to get from his computer? Computers were made for a reason i.e. the simplification of work that was once tedious to do. Laptops were made for that entirely same reason, except with the choice of mobility added in.

The MBA is super mobile, weighing less than 3 pounds and is at most more than a centimetre thick. But back to the reason of making a computer, does it fulfill that? Costing perhaps less than a macbook pro, I feel that one is better off getting a macbook pro as compared to getting a MBA... The MBA perhaps is for those people who already have a mac, then just would like to get one of these to show off! :)

Mac fans, don't start flaming me, I love the mac as much as you do, but I think apple has lost the main idea of a notebook in this one.

It is still nice, by the way

Paypal confusion

Haiz,

wasting my time in front of the computer just trying to get the payments for the sensors I ordered right.

Paypal is confusing...

School

Quoting my previous English teacher Mrs. Nathan when she was quoting someone else:
"School can be very helpful, but, like a prescription, should be taken only when directed." (Charles M. Schulz)

Finally!

My solenoids are finally here!

Bad SL?

Am I really a bad SL?

Or so my junior labels me, straight to my face.

What did I do wrong? I've been as nice as can without losing the discipline, and does it mean that raising my voice to get them to settle down equates me to nastiness?

I don't know what to do.

But anyway, I have changed section :). Being officially now a Bass 1 means that bass section has 4 sls...

Happy for me, but gd luck to kj and ian!

Divinity

My SS teacher can read palms and faces.

XD Super scary lah, like when he ask for volunteers to have their face read, the whole class was like "MEMEMEME!!!". When he finally chose Aaron Tiong, it was like scary.

Shape of face, shape of jaw, shape of eyes, all put into a science that generalized the above mentioned. But funniest thing was like, "your eyes say something about you. I say that you are quite a cheeky guy and if I am not wrong, you have surfed porn before." (referring to Aaron)

Wow... super funny lah, whole class laugh like crazy

Sick

Now I know why I was feeling so tired the past few days...

I positively am sick, perhaps down with gastroflu...

Damn you, Zeyang, must be you pass to me one on Friday in the robotics lab...

My Life

Wow,

I have no life. Really.

While changing the description of me on this blog, I realised that I am governed by everything that happens in school, nothing that I can think of is of my own. ARGH... identity crisis

Who am I?

Member of RV, RIICC, B.E.A.T.S., CDC? No identity of my own, or maybe I just choose not to have it.

I am not much of a socializer, meaning I like to keep to myself and I might even have trouble communicating with others. Need to get out more even if I dun like it...

I don't know. Ever since I enlisted in the regime of Singapore education, I have felt this sense that I do not belong and never will. I cannot say that I have firm friends, even those people that are around me, with me all the time in school seem to like spending time with other people more than with me. I am not saying that that is wrong or someone needs to talk to me more. But I am just thinking: is there something wrong with me? Is there something within myself that I need to change?

Going to school or to CCA, I feel like I am putting on a mask, a show for everyone that is around me. I may seem fine to most of you people out there, but deep down, I know that there is something wrong with myself. I feel left out sometimes, rejected by people, basically something that I have always reflected when doing personal reflections. You people that are reading this post, if you went on the choir trip in 2005 to Germany and remember the reflection that Mr. Toh made us do, this is what I wrote in the reflection. Our choir teacher in charge, Mrs. Koh at that time, told me to try being a bit more outgoing and try to be part of the group. Socialize more and try more.

I feel weird every time I go out with people: dunno what to say, dunno what to do. Perhaps this is because of the fear I have in hurting others, or in doing something stupid, hurt myself emotionally and mentally.

A wordy post here, but trust me, this is as frank as I will ever get. Don't get me wrong people, I am not shouting out for attention here. It is my choice to be this person that I am, maybe feeling a little emo right now, but I will be fine in the near future.

:)

Back to School

I have no idea why I am feeling so tired today.

That was only three days of school, wait, two days of activities and one day of lessons...

Building sandcastles on East Coast beach, castle beach to be exact, was what I could call fun but damaging to the body. I feel a bit sick already from sitting in the freaking hot sun at past 12pm in the afternoon.

Well, any lessons to be learnt were taught, but most likely forgotten by most of us before we even reached school or home.

Tomorrow is the start of hardcore lessons again. Haven't seen who my physics teacher is, hopefully someone that can teach well. I am really lousy at physics. I can understand all the formulas and theories, but when you ask me to apply them during lab tests or school examinations, I just can't do it :(

Missed my Raffles Trail for choir that happened yesterday. Was doing my robot at a workshop in Ang Mo Kio... Chao tiring, all the sawing, drilling, machining, soldering. Still not done yet, with an order for a solenoid just being shipped in from the US. Not sure when it will arrive, but it had better be sooner than later. BTW, I got it from http://www.electromechanicsonline.com/. Not too bad a site, many choices up there. Gonna pay for this out of my own pocket *OUCH*

I also have to tell Mrs. Chor about a sensor that I want to buy for the robot soccer robots. Costs about AUS$49.99 and can only be paid for using PayPal or direct deposit. Hopefully she allows me to buy that.

Choir website is still in the process of being edited and coded properly. Hope that Ms. Chiang will like what I have done with it and that it will be able to be viewed on the school website. DUE ON MONDAY WHICH IS TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ARGH... so much to do, so little time.

Google Adsense

I just got banned from Google Adsense.

Reason: invalid clicks

I am guessing right now, that this is mainly because I was trying to change the html of my other blog. :) I kind of suck at html, because I rely a lot on WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) kind of website programs like Dreamweaver and such.

So basically, errors coming up here and there in my html programming meant that I had to view my blog a couple of times more than normal.

Which resulted in: banning me from Google Adsense

What's even better. When I appealed against the ban, they told me that it was not a valid reason and therefore, they could not reinstate my account. Why? Because I was a threat to advertisers -_-

Now when trying to find other stuff that can pay me, I came across forums that have a lot to say about Google Adsense. People got banned for the craziest of things, like someone who hated them used a clicker-bot against, amassing thousands of clicks within an hour.

Then came another site that compared adsense against other advertisement programs. It was like Google paid 9 cents a week as compared to Adster's $3.50 a week. So I am changing plans, and moving to Adster. Now, trying out even better stuff such as Text Link Ads and Adster, I think maybe I will be able to make even more money out of my idle time sitting at this laptop computer.

Well, here's to me making money from this blog. :)

Me

Well then, I guess it's time to talk a little bit more about me.

Name: Matthew
D.O.B: 26/01/92
Age: 15 going on to 16 in about 23 more days :)
School: Raffles Institution

That's the bare minimum of facts about me.

But let's not stop here. In a previous post I mentioned something about an a cappella group that goes by the name of B.E.A.T.S.

Well, I belong to this awesome group of 11 people that are in quite an attempt to sound better than that which a synthesizer can do. Here's a really, really old video to show you what I meant by that:




Well, if that video worked, I guess you can now see what I mean. (and yes, we have already improved from that standard) We sing, without music in the background or drums to give us our beat. Everything is done, believe it or not, with our vocals. So far, we have had performances for the Singapore busking festival in 2007 in aid of the Singapore Bone Marrow foundation. Hopefully we can do the same next year, with a better song repertoire. Oh yeah, the links on the side of my blog are mostly to the people from this group, so check their's out. For songs, check out guanwei's blog, there is a playlist there. :)

Back to me. I am currently in Secondary 4 and am proud to be part of a totally mugger class of 4A. New year means new teachers and I am currently quite happy with most of them. Hopefully, I will be able to maintain my current GPA standard, if not improve.

That's all that I can think of now. When I think of more, I will post again!

WTF?

What people will do these days to get what they want, I can't imagine.

Lying about your dad DYING in Iraq just to get tickets to a Hannah Montana concert? (Just saw this on Yahoo! news btw.) Oh please, like that concert is worth so much to you.

Well, the only thing I can say is: world's deteriorating, both physically and ethically.

Lag

For the first time this year.

2008.

A fresh new start of misery and sadness.

Farewell for choir was quite a long time back, last year in fact. 29th of December.

Was not what I can call a success, but we kind of pulled it off. The only thing that I am disappointed about is that I did not play much of a role in the planning, organizing or even during the event itself.

I cannot comment much about the overall success as I did not stay till the end but feedback from some people seem to show the lack of decision making abilities that we have. It was draggy and laggy, causing the overall feel to be boring. We could have done better, but as we have no longer any farewells to plan, we definitely will not have much of a chance to do so.

Ben Low's song, "You're here in the song", was a special piece that we had put together for the secondary fours, entirely composed and performed by B.E.A.T.S. (if this seems unfamiliar, I will explain it in another post at a later time). Somehow, we were not convincing as performers. :( Need to improve on stage presence, connection with audience and overall performance. Our singing might be there, but we fall way short in performing. Must improve so that we won't screw up our RE cum performance this year.

As we look forward to the new year ahead, I need to make a few resolutions:
1. Help my section (tenor as of now) improve so that we will not be scolded anymore
2. Work harder so that I can get a better GPA (3.82 now, aiming for 3.9)
3. Work more in Infocomm and on the robots, perhaps imparting more knowledge to the juniors

Here's wishing all a blessed and great new year!