Feeling Seasick

You don't have to go out to sea on a boat to get seasick. All you need is to visit Jurong swimming complex and stay in the wave pool.

Cmc, christine, gen, chew, poh and I went to Jurong Swimming complex yesterday, or Water Park as some people love to call it.

The toilet was quite smelly.

We went to the lazy river, but I was too small so I could not sit on the riverbed, so I had to half walk in it. The caves were nice and cooling. One even had a fog emitting from the ceiling, and with me without glasses, it looked like a fog in a fog.

We went to the wave pool, and apparently I was quite short and small, so the waves kept on washing into my face and that made it hard to keep afloat so I went somewhere more shallow until I had energy again to continue threading water.

Then we went to play the slides. The shortest slide, the yellow slide around 6 meters tall was the fastest. It spirals down to the pool at 45 degree angle and the wind blowing against my face was huge. The trip down only took 5 seconds.

Since yesterday patches of my body have been feeling painful and itchy. Maybe its because of the chlorinated water, or maybe because of the abrasion of my skin while zooming down on the yellow slide.

Unfortunately for the higher red and blue slides, a float was compulsory, so we went to rent them.

And it turned out long and boring. It was just the float flowing downstream luxoriously down a twisty tunnel, occasionally being thrown from side to side. In the tunnel it was very warm, and when cool air starts settling in for you to enjoy, you know you are near the end of the slide. It would have been more fun without the floats.

Then we went to the lazy river again with the floats, and we kept on overturning each others' floats.

And finally we went to the wave pool with floats, which was when I started to get seasick, after spending to much time in the sun in the wave pool chatting. Finally the waves stopped, but that made my condition no much better.

And for the rest of the day I have had a headache.

And the best thing is, it is still there today the moment I start to exercise, and that includes walking outside.

So 80 cents for high slides, relaxing rivers, wavey pools, seasickness, smelly toilets and itches and pain on the skin? (Oh yea it could be sunburn too)

I still like sengkang pool better with its clean toilets and shadey pools.

The Wrong Way

Everything was the wrong way round yesterday.

Yesterday was supposed to be my Primary 6 class gathering. So I left house and walked to pasir ris park at 8:30 am, as no buses could reach into that part of the park. I might as well walk all the way then.

So I reached the E-hub junction, and did not know how to access the park by cutting across the road, so I decided to walk through downtown east. However, I did not know that it was all fenced up, and since it was costa sands resort on the other side of downtown east, it was blocked. So I had to walk all the way back out of downtown east and go around it into Pasir Ris Park.

Thats around 3km of walking already. It was a humid morning, for it had rained the previous day. I reached the place, but saw no one. So I called my friend, but no one answered the phone. I called my friend's friend's friend to find out my friend's number, but either they did not know it or they did not answer. So I sat down on a bench, feeling very tired and sad. Had I gotten the date wrong? Maybe they left for another place? After a while, I decided to leave, finding out a 'shortcut' out of the park without having to make a big round.

Just then, the cold wind blew against my face, washing off the water off the leaves of the trees, showering them on me. I thought it was raining, and ran, until I realised what happened.

Passing by E-hub, I went to watch Hannah Montana the movie. My phone rang after I bought the ticket. It was Yx, and I asked when the gathering was.

"16 June"

"Isn't that today?"

"Yes."

"what time?"

"3-9"

"Oh I thought it was 9-3"

......

Then I went for lunch.

And when I reached home it was about 1pm. Walked 5 km in total.I bathed, played com and rested a while before leaving again at 2:30.


Walked there, talked and threw balls and frisbees around. It wasn't very interesting. I left at around 7:30pm, taking the bus home this time. That makes a total of 7 km of walking yesterday, and my ankles hurt up till now.

Housecooling

After pottery lesson on saturday, which was about making plates, I went to Jk's housewarming party at the Quartz at Buangkok. It is not a good home, for the smell of paint, dark corridors, malfunctioning lifts and eerie stairways makes it seems like it suffers slipshod maintenance.

My father took me there in his car, and I thought I would be late, but in the end I was the second to reach there.

Ivan, Jy, Jorg, Jk(obviously), cmc, Emily, Chlit and Chew, Dayna and Christine were there too.

It turns out that Jk's parents had bought the condo as an investment and wants to sell it at higher price soon, so he organizes this 'housewarming' just as it was going to be sold to let people know the existence of their ownership of the condo. How wonderful.

First we played bball in a cheap basketball half-court. We won the girls but were too tired to play against the 309 guys, so we went for drink.

The security guard let us enter the court via the entrance and locked it, telling us that we will have to take the carpark exit. Isn't that redundant?

And I was actually small enought to squeeze out of the fence of the condo to find some of my friends, but unfortunately the guards caught me attempting to get back in after that, so I guess I had to take a long way back in. And the bunch of us got lost within the carpark's many staircases.

So after playing basketball we went to the poolside for dinner. We talked, talked and talked, and played catching after that which turned out reasonably boring. So we went back to the poolside and some people dunked people with clothes on into the pool irresponsibly, but its funny to see them doing that.

After that we played dare or dare (truth or dare). So we could only choose a dare. Many people chose stupid things like running around the pool naked, talking to strangers and all, so some people called me a spoil sport and all and not daring to do anything. Well I just think that it is best to keep away from any risk of getting into trouble, just something that is completely among ourselves.

And as someone emphasizes, 'Its really so simple, whats so hard, its only a game. See, I done it'. It really tickles me to feel critized when I don't think I am wrong in anyway. After all, a game is to let everyone have fun, and not to see others having fun by risking someone else's. So I knew he was the sort that would not think that he is wrong on this part so I shutted up.

We went back up to the apartment with our shoes on to get our bags at around 8:30pm and headed home, saying goodbye to our possibly last chance on visiting the condo.

Physics Camp Day Two

Okay the next day, having learnt my lesson the day before, I left home later. But still early in case of the peak hour.

Bus 3 reached Pasir Ris MRT station, and I was too lazy to alight. So I slept and went all the way to Punggol. Thereafter, I took the purple line mrt and changed to the green line.

It took 2 hours, and I was just in time for breakfast.

Then we went for the science stations. First it was a lesson about fluids. Then a boring electron diffraction thing. And then something just as boring about light polarisation. Fortunately the acoustics was best and last interactive session because we could play with the musical glasses and this frequency generator which makes HIGH and low sounds.

And then we went for a series of boring experiements like on momentum, car down a ramp, projectile motion and centrifugal force. However the equipment used was quite cool, like the air track used in the momentum experiement, making the gliders move so smoothly without any force by blowing air out from underneath, making it maintain its speed such that it seemed like there is something under pulling the glider along the track.

And the day ended with a long quiz, which I passed the time throughout by a rubik's cube as usual.

I would rather go bowling than for this camp, but again, I rather go for anything that seems similar to this than staying at home during holidays.

Physics Camp Day One

Physics Camp was not too bad. On monday morning I reached at 7:30 not knowing that there was still one more hour, so I got bored and solved the rubik's cube 30+ times in total. Then there were lectures.

The first lecture was about particle physics - Things at a really really really...small scale, just like me. We were reminded to try not to emit "Z particles" ZZZZZzzzzz...even if we did not understand...lol. It was not too hard to follow, until all the weird experiments and reasoning on subnuclear particles came out. Another problem was the number of particles talked about. It was something like the particle physics topic discussed in 'beyond foundation' physics module joelle, nick, emman and I took last year.

Then properties of these particles were discussed. All kinds of numbers were introduced...like lepton number, baryon number, spin number, angular momentum number, strangeness number, charm number etcetra. And it started to become very funny and TL and I were laughing at how many types of 'numbers' were invented just to classify these small stuff.

Then there were also anti-particles. This part was very funny. Particles have energy, so anti-particles have negative energy, and according to Pauli's exclusion principle, things will tend to go to the state of minimal energy, and negative is smaller than positive, so everything will have negative energy. But that does not make sense, so a scientist invented a rule that negative energy were like holes in the universe and sometimes sometimes these holes run out so there must be positive energy particles when they run out. (something funny like that) But that would create ambiguity to the law of conservation of energy!

Then the speaker said there was another scientist who solved this problem by saying that these particles travel backwards in time, so its energy changes go backwards (or something else confusing like that) That will solve conservation of energy, but then violate conservation of time; but there is no law of conservation of time, so it was not as bad as violating conservation of energy...

Hmm...

The second lecture was about really really really BIG...stuff - cosmology. The speaker's voice and tone seemed a little weird to me. He kept on saying on how newtonian laws can describe the universe, and only two equations were needed, Fluid equation and the Friedmann equation. There was a lot of differentiation which we have not learnt in the lecture, and he kept on emphasising "It is ONLY simple differentiation why don't you try to do a LITTLE math and see what you get?"

I guess that explains TL falling asleep.

The third lecture was about things on a small but not so small scale compared to the first lecture - Nanotechnology and material science. The speaker was chinese and he was really interesting. Then he showed us some pictures of nano writings and sculptures like 'NUS' carved out on nanocarbon fibers.

Then there was also this demonstration where he showed us how toilet paper in ice can be so strong, unlike pure ice alone.

And how a special material could stop water from sticking onto the window, only that the material was black and would not be that suitable for making a window.

TL and I did not want the lecture to end, but lunch still arrived.

After lunch we had a talk about how cool, and cold superconductors were. Once you ran a current through them, it would almost not stop and would be able to run via magnetic levitation! Continuously.

Then as others went for some supercondutor competition, the rest including me did a cartesian diver competition; those stuff where you squeeze a bottle and the thing inside sinks, and when you let go it floats. We had to make a pair such that it fufilled certain tasks. But Ben, TL and I got bored quickly and started poking holes in the bottles and made fountains with them, resulting in a really wet mess...

First week of holidays have passed

I have several things to do during the holidays.

-Holiday Homework
-Prepare for music exams

There is this piece of chemistry revision practice which I have only done selected questions. As for the rest of them, either I cannot be bothered to take out my periodic table, or I have threw away my related notes needed for those questions. But that should not be too big a problem either, because I will soon figure them out when I have the mood to.

There is also a science fiction essay to be written. I have thought of some ideas, but none of them seem special or original enough.

1) Crew members getting killed one by one on a spaceship?
2) Earth getting destroyed?
3) Humans turned into livestock for aliens?

After fruitless mental attempts to get started on an idea, I have decided to wait for inspiration to come in my dreams and finish the whole story in two hours. Rather than to wreck my mind and waste time trying to write a story a paragraph a day.

---

As for music exams, I am not in quite a good situation. My piano exams is just a month away, and I have not even got the notes to my pieces right. Furthermore I do not have a teacher, and that requires me to put in additional effort.

But the pieces are so boring, and I can't gather the concentration to practice hours at a time, ever since I last broke my record at 4 and a half hours straight of piano before the holidays have started.

Rather, I am much more concentrating on the moonlight sonata, fantasie impromptu and probably attempt the flight of the bumblebee thingy. Looks like I have to juggle both exams and my 'personal repetoire' now.

Hopefully I would also be able to get my lazy body off the chair and bed to get some time to exercise too while I still have it.

Maybe drawing could pass some of my time too...I shall post a recent work of mine, on the next time.