CNY lanterns

Recently (before chinese new year) I have been making lanterns out of red packets, as chinese new year is just around the corner. It is not that hard. All that is needed is some careful inspection on how others make them (and that is where i got these ideas from).

Here is a model I have been practicing

12 x 5 model

As you can tell from the name. This is a 12 sided lantern. On each side is a star made out of 4 red packets.

Fold the red packet diagonally at a 45 degree angle

Fold in the excess portion of the red packet
r

Fold in the excess triangular portion of the excess rectangular portion to make a triangle

Staple it to secure and then puff the triangle slightly outwards

There! A component is done. 59 left to go...Lets repeat. Snore...
--- --- --- --- ---

Now after many boring repeats, we have to combine them together.

Start by stapling the insides of two components to each other

Same thing for 5 times, and now we get a star

And then we staple the edges of the star to more stars. Each component should touch two others as the 'lattice' expands

Continue...

Done! Now all that is needed is to add a string, which I am far too lazy to do so.

Variations: 20 by 3

Not the greatest way to start

It isn't a way too good to start a year, speaking in terms of my record with the school.

It has only been barely 1 month, and I would like to congratulate myself for having received 2 demerit points already. One for late coming and the other for inappropriate attire.

Inappropriate attire is one thing I would really like to laugh at myself at. It has only been two mondays (The formal attire days) and I received three warnings. On the first time, I could say that I was not very attentive to the change in days when we were supposed to wear a formal attire. Thus that was when I got my first warning. As punishment, I had to wear the formal on wednesday. This was when I got my second warning. I took it easy. Wore my formal and put my tie in my pocket, forgetting to wear it on during assembly. Although personally, I don't think that this should count over inappropriate attire as I brought my tie and wore the right attire, but the teacher was no person to be argued with.

Third offence, leading to a demerit commited yesterday. I was on the train when I was thinking about the last week, and my attire just happen to come across my mind.

Excellent.

I worried about my attire throughout the rest of the ride. I did not really care about my demerit points for some reason, and what else would I suffer than having to wear my attire again on wednesday? But for some reason, I was nervous all the way which I later concluded is that because that I do not know what the teacher's reaction would be.

The suspense is behind it all.

I told myself that I would calm down as there is not much worth in being scared about the teacher's reaction. I told myself and started laughing at myself silently of how I managed to get 3 warnings within two weeks, almost impossible to anyone else. It worked, and despite the nervousness I had while walking to my school, the joyful side overwhelmed me and I started smiling.

I entered the hall and my mentor was shocked to see me in my 'inappropriate attire' for the third time. As she frowned and asked me why I keep on forgetting about my attire with hopelessness, I replied with a smile and a slight tone of laughing in my speech.

This kept me smiling ironically for the rest of assembly. A demerit point.

I suppose that I really have to quickly adapt to the fact that we have to wear formal on mondays. It requires drilling and I have to get the idea imprinted in my mind before next monday comes...

As for latecoming, I have nothing to say about it except for two points to take noteof. Firstly, waking up early is no problem for me. The problem this year, unlike last year is a whole lot different.

Last year, I used to wake up late, and left house within 3 minutes of waking up. This year is the total opposite. I wake up 10 minutes before time, eat my breakfast slowly, fall asleep while doing business in the toilet, and only to realise that I am way off time by the time my mental state finally freshens up.

If I do not wake up earlier, I would have to wake up faster.

Secondly, alighting at clementi instead of buona vista does not make trips any much faster. Buses come at enormous intervals, and it is not every morning that I am ready to begin a 1.6km run to school.

This year has still a long way to go. I had better stop my own nonsense this instance, and a good way to start is by not forgetting to wear my punishment tomorrow.

Orientation-Day Three and the Initiation Night

It has been quite some time since I last posted, as school life has been quite busy for me over the last few days. So now, here I am writing about the last episode of orientation...

Finally, the last day of orientation.

Like the day before, we watched a video as a start to the next activity, which was the mad race. Unfortunately, I got called off to the dentist and missed the entire race, which sounded quite fun when people told me about it.

I went to the clinic, waited for some 45 minutes in a queue and it was at last my turn. The dentist spotted a root of my milk tooth and a small chipped of fragment of another tooth. Then, she told me that she had many others to attend to, thus I would have to make an appointment some other day. So, she scanned my teeth fo 10 minutes and then thats the end, which pissed me off quite badly due to the long waiting and yet having to come once again for another dental encounter.

Walking off with a slight trauma of the dentist when it was over, I proceeded back onto the track for the next activity, which was battleship.

Out in the sweltering hot sun, we sat on the burning podium and watched through the slits of our eyes. Finally, it was my class' turn to play, and I hoped that I would be splashed with a bucketful of cooling water. And yes, I did get wet, of sweat, not water. Still, it was still quite cooling while I was in the center of people getting splashed as water was all around. The bad thing is that unless I was splashed, the cool would be all gone once I returned to my seat.

After lunch, we rehearsed for our dance performance, which went quite well.

It was time for the performances as evening neared. Our performance went quite smoothly and well, as we can tell from people clapping and cheering. In the end, we got third! First went to 305, which did a 'terrible' parody of the song 'my love'. Basically, they changed the nouns only, which thus resulted in nothing but a bunch or words related to zoo. Still, the singing was quite good, but they could have had more action on the stage, which would make it even better; although they are already top. :P

308's singing was even better, but unfortunately they did not get the top three.

The evening progressed slowly, and as the limelight turned to the year ones, I started discussing about the academics in our school with the new students. Apparently, no one bothered.

That's the end of the three orientation days. Through the activities, not so much that I got to know my new classmates better, which would come even later, but more that I could communicated better with them and hopefully, our new class would become increasingly bonded through the next two years...

Initiation Day:

This is a day where lessons progressed as normal(unfortunately), and I got very tired, especially in the afternoon. Soon, it was time for the CCA fair.

I had absolutely nothing to do.

I followed people, but then, they were either too busy with their friends or too keen on looking at the different CCA exhibits.

I went to the hall, went to the concourse, and went to 305.

I played some chess with ben, but soon he left.

I went to the tennis court but there was nothing much to do there.

So I walked around without aim on my own.

I felt just as bad as how I felt science centre last year, probably worse. Maybe not so much of feeling as if no one cared, but I had another kind of mentality, that I was going to walk about for 3 whole hours without getting anything done, wasting precious time away. If I had someone to talk to, probably I would feel better, as it was a kind of relationship-building by chatting, and it would not be as time wasting as it would be walking around alone. But yes, I was alone.

I used to had these kind of feelings last year during certain weekends. That would be when I have almost no homework to do, and especially when I just sleep till noon, and then lie on the bed or watch television for the rest of the day. At the end of Sunday, I would regret having wasted this precious relaxing weekend without getting anything done. I could not call it relaxing, I could only call it watching time pass away slowly...

That was exactly how I felt, only a lot worse.

Still, I continued walking in hope of finding someone, and I did! Co-incidentally, I met gen and apparently she was wandering around too. So, we walked around and talked. Finally, I had someone to talk to.

We started talking about changing CCAs. I wasn't happy with my current CCA, and neither was she. She wanted to join track, and that gave me an idea to join track too. Thus, after some chatting, it was time for me to go for the tryouts.

I did not know what I was good at, in fact, I was not very good at running either, but surely, track could not be worse than my previous CCA. So I went, and did 100m in 16s and 400m in 1:20. Dayna was also there, and she was the fast one, who kept on pushing me to run faster. Still, my timing was better than before, but still not too good...

After exhaustion of my leg and abdominal muscles, it was time for dinner. The terrible thing was that my long pants were too small, I drank too much water before, and yet the dinner was heavy. I could not finish more than half of it.

At night, it was the initation ceremony, which was, not to say boring, but watching it was kind of pointless. The best part was when we received the light sticks and I started playing with it.

Soon, the concert was over. The crowd dispersed quickly and once again, I was alone. Walking with a drag in my feet towards the bus stop in the night, I thought about how the new year would be like...

Once in a while, silence is a lonely, yet beautiful thing.

Orientation-Day Two

It was Monday.

In the morning, we started off with some poorly designed mass games. After a few hours of boredom, we went for lunch.

However, every guy in my class disappeared, I could not find any of my friends, and there was not food for some half an hour. It later turned out that the food caterer had delivered the food to jurong instead of our school. After the big mistake was resolved, I finally got to have lunch at the 302 table full of girls. In addition, the food was rubbery. In contrast to the lunch on the first day, this was terrible.

Alone, hungry, yet having to suffer the torment of little rubber mushrooms and carbohydrate overloaded food, I started to feel very emotional about everything. The new classes, how some people acts as if I do not exist when in front of their friends... and my CCA, how bad it could get in this new year to come...

Anyway, I soon forgot about it after lunch. We went for station games, for instance; walking a maze blindfolded, transporting balls with legs, and crawling under others one by one in the fastest time possible.

Also, we have a class performance to put up the next day, and thus we started rehearsing. At first it started out with a stupid idea, then it turned out into a dance. We copied and created dance moves, and then combined them together. The music was 'Move it' from madagascar.

Well, it was around 5pm when we were done. I waited for the 305 people for sometime, Ben and a few others managed to get out early, but then we decided not to wait for more people anymore as it was going to take very long.

And so, Ben, sourav and I went home together.

What's left was the last day of orientation, and then it would be lessons.

A dental encouter

The secondhand ticked away to the last few minutes of the comfort in my seat. The teacher blabbered away with her lame jokes in the background, with listening to them currently being the best way to drain the seconds away. To the last few seconds this time bomb anticipated, and my heart rate accelerated with traumatizing suspense.

Finally.

2:30.

My near future raced across my eyes and waited for the right moment for the teacher to stop talking. I raised my hand.

"I have to go to my dental appointment now"

With the "free to go" gesture, I actually hoped that she would force me to stay in her lesson. I opened the back door with great struggle, turning the lock clockwise and anti-clockwise ceaselessly, until my friend pointed out that it was not even closed properly...

I walked alone, along those lonely corridors.

I scaled alone, down the steep mountaneous staircases.

I trekked alone, through the trees and across the grasslands of the car park.

Reached.

Stepping pass the door of the dental vehicle, I saw a dentist devouring one of his victims with the cruelest utensils.

I lay on the chair and felt the ceaseless vibration aggravating my heartbeat. The chair lowered, and he was ready.

As he drilled and my mouth got sprayed by weird tasting plain water, my heart never slowed down its pumping. Every minute pause was like a oasis in the desert, allowing me to catch my breath. But my mouth never got to rest; it lies open, and I did not even dare move my lips, in fear of getting hurt. Every moment the tools forced my teeth a little too hard, my torso would jerk up together with it. My breath would hold. Even when they were let go, as the probing and drilling continues, the slight breaths I took were precisely and carefully controlled.

Was he patching my tooth, or was he pulling out the baby tooth root?

The answer was out. It was the former, and that meant I was in for even more mental torture through the perilous atmosphere every dental clinic held.

This time, I got a longer rest. The words of the dentist reverberated about my head.

"I am going to give you anasthaesia."

"I am going to give you anasthaesia."

"I am going to give you anasthaesia..."

A squirt hit the side. It was like a bullet penetrating through my mouth, and the 'venom' spread quickly, numbing the entire left of my mouth. It felt really weird, and all the more I did not dare to move my jaws due to the numbness.

The needle pierced through my pitiful gums, and stayed there. There was not much pain, but the feeling of it being in my gums gave me some terrible mentality. As if he was trying to lengthen my suffering, the dentist just inserted the needle slowly, bit by bit, and each extension into the gums just gave me more fear.

At last, he pulled it out. He probed, yanked and scratched my tooth. This time, even more jerking, movement of my chest, and a imaginary rope hanged me by the neck as the jerking continued...

Finally, it was over.

I stepped out of that horror house.

Orientation-Day One

Last Friday - 2nd January, was the first day of school.

It felt so different to be back in school, after the long two month holiday. Everything seemed new once again. Its time to start afresh.

Yes, but still, we had to go through the usual...

Principal address...

Talks...

More Talks...

Some more...

zzzzz...

After the lullabies were over, we met up with our new classes. I think it isn't much of a problem. People from 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, transferred students, koreans, china people, vietnamese, a lively combination of people indeed.

Then came more lullabies, but the old year 3s were at least spared, so we went back to class. I had nothing much to do then, thus I started a quick sketch of the classroom from my view.


Here it is, 5th storey, ex-M08206 classroom.

Lunch was quite good, which made it a good transition from morning to afternoon.

Later we had some run-off-the-mill ice-breaker games in class. It wasn't extraordinarily fun, but it sure passed time quickly.

At the end of the day, we got some freebies.


And with in came an orientation shirt, towel and water bottle.

That's the end of the first day. The weekends passed just like a step across the puddle, and I was in for an emotional roller coaster not long after...

To be continued...

Its a New Year!

Happy New Year!

Sorry for being one day late.

This year, I resolve to:

-Get a 4.5 CAP
-Run 2.4km in less than 11:30
-Be more patient with my siblings

As my friend had said, this is a new year, so let all the not-so-nice things of 2008 begone and let the new year of school start afresh. Still, I should remember the lessons and not repeat past mistakes I made.

Being posted to M09302 in this new year, I could say that I do not really mind the class at all. However, a few of my schoolmates does not think being in 302 is nothing to be happy.

I have to agree that many of my friends are in other classes, and perhaps I have to admit to some loneliness to a certain extent, but that is nothing worth complaining about. I can't change my class, but I can change my view to it. Happiness is only something you can give yourself. No one else can.

As I am chatting with another person over MSN about new classes, I made a statement, and with this I shall end off - "I can't say that I like my new class, but I am happy with it"

Recollections of my Vacation

This is about my trip to hong kong earlier this december.

On the second day, it was up to go sightseeing about kowloon and hong kong island. We mainly went to the following locations.

1) Repulse Bay

It was a beach. Being winter, it was really cold. In front of the beach were some temples. After taking a few shots, I couldn't wait to get back to the tour bus already.

2) Some mountain

We went up, over the tallest skyscraper on Hong Kong Island. Although I wanted to take a few pictures of the scenery, the trees were just blocking the view, not to say the many twist and turns and bumpy mountain road which shook my about, giving me some motion uncomfort.

When we reached the top, there was an airconditioned building. In it, there was a wax museum. That was where we were going.

In it, there were many wax statues of famous people. Some looked very real indeed, but a few others were totally ridiculous. Also, there was a haunted house in there, but it looked really scary.

A small, yet neat little wax museum.

The trip down the mountain was no better than that going up.

3) Floating village

This was quite a waste of time to me, considering the many boat rides (two the day before) I have already taken. Basically, it was just a part of the channel where people lived and traded on boats.

4) Jewellry shop

This, I have nothing to say about. It was boring advertisment.

5) Medcine store

Here, we got a free check up on my brother and we bought around 200 singapore dollars worth of herbs.

Here, there was this sales lady which let my siblings and I try some preserved strawberries. Its taste was wonderful, and they claimed that they added some herbs to it. A can of it cost 50 singapore dollars. Real expensive stuff...

That was about all for the second day.

The next day, we went to the ocean park.


There are two areas of ocean park; before the mountains is lowland, over them is the headland, coasting the ocean. Lowland are where all the kiddy stuff are, while Headland was where the better parts came in.

At Lowland, my siblings and I did some quite childish stuff, but still, it was fun. We found a 'castle' with 'dungeons' and 'towers' and we played tag and hide-and-seek. That entertained us for quite sometime until we saw the frog-hopper, which was quite scary for a kid's ride. It goes up and down, up and down and hangs all your internal organs and releases them and periodic intervals. After going up there for 5 times or more, I could no longer take it.

After 'lunch', which was a few pieces of bread and packeted milk, we took the cable car to headland. I say, the cable car ride was spectacular. Just ride it back and forth 10 times and you would have earned more than you have paid for the ticket.

We rode the mine train, which was a real thriller. I did not dare open my eyes, but now, come to think of it, it was a waste. Afterall, it did not make much a differenc, as it was not the sights, but the many forces from below and sides which made my heart race. As seen in the map, there was also this part where we went round in circles at a really steep angle. I had to grab the handle and pull myself upwards to prevent my body from flying out.

Also, there was raging river, which was rather like escape theme parks 'wet and wild'. Although the final drop was not that high or thrilling, the rest of the ride was considerably scenic, with many twists and turns along the 'river', unlike 'wet and wild' which totally ignored eliminating the feeling that we were in a motorised machine which pushes waves out to propel an artificial boat between two old metal guards.

There was the eagle too - a ride which spinned me dizzy. I think it was even worse than the mine train. Lastly, the ferris wheel ended our day at the ocean park with a relaxing ride with views of the crimson sunset over the ocean.

After we got off, we rushed back in order not to miss the tour bus back to the hotel.

Second last day - it was disneyland.

The place, upon stepping in, gave the atmosphere of another world, unlike my local theme park which had no theme and was nothing but a permanant, gigantic carnival.

The simplests of rides, like the flying elephant ride, had striking colours and well furnished mechanism (although some were just for show) which covered up all traces of the internal metallic engine which turned the ride. The music was loud yet non-disturbing enough to keep the queue (at least me) entertained.

There was also the big tea cup which had many layers of rotating bases. I liked that quite a lot.

As for the 'its a small world' cruise, that was just for resting after we were over playing in fantasyland.

We moved on to adventureland. It was boring, but not as bad as main street.

At last, tomorrowland. The ride I enjoyed the most was Space mountain. This was not like the mine train. All I could say for this was that it was a lot less thrilling, yet it was so much more exciting. The music built up the suspense to the top of the coaster, and when it rolled down the twisting tracks, the lighting of props and the 'stars' made it not just a ride, but an adventure. I must say that although this is only hong kong, and there are better ones in US, this is really good for a small coaster.

Autopia was a waste of time. The electric cars were chained to a metal guide along the road such that we could not drive it freely. I rather go karts were replaced by these clean vehicles, than being stuck to those tracks.

Buzz lightyear astro blasters was not at all like the other rides, having the speed, or the thrill, or even the feeling of being in another world, but it was fun. My family went for that shooting game repeatedly for the night, even on the last day, just before we left.

Night-time, the theme park was about to close. There were fireworks. And we watched them. As we walked back to the exit when the show was over, artificial snow rained down on us accompanied by some disney classic songs. It was beautiful.

I might not have been to Tokyo, Paris, Florida or California, but all I can say for the world's smallest disneyland, is that it is great for its size.

Last day, kind of obvious what we all did isn't it? We finished playing with the astro blasters, then we went back to the hotel, then to the airport, plane and home.

THE END